#029 Building for Tech B2B with Lukas Hermann

[00:00:00] I think the art of product development is saying no to things. In the beginning we didn't know who our customers really are and once you know who your user is then you hear something it's like oh this is such an obvious winner for my users and on other things it's yeah I'm not sure do people really need this and then it's already a loser right they don't even have motivation to do it anyway so that's actually quite a good filter.

[00:00:27] Hi and welcome to the Code and Conquer podcast. In this episode we're talking to Lukas Hermann, founder of StageTimer and Rundown Studio, two tools that help people plan their events down to the second. We're talking how to say no to features and when to say yes. We learned from Lukas how he grew StageTimer to 10k MRR with word of mouth and some clever pricing strategies.

[00:00:49] And to top it off we're kind of flaming German business and techs a little talking about the challenges that founding a German company provides you with. So much fun. I hope you enjoy this one. I certainly did. Let's jump right in.

[00:01:05] And welcome to the 29th episode of the Code and Conquer podcast and today Lukas Hermann is my guest, a fellow German indie hacker and pretty well known I think in the indie hacker space but as we might have listeners that don't know you yet. Welcome Lukas for one and thank you two. Who are you and what are you doing in the indie hacker bubble?

[00:01:26] Yeah, so I'm living in the south of Germany and have been starting four years ago, three and a half years ago with indie hacking. I'm building a tool called StageTimer. You can think of it as if you've ever seen a TED talk, right? Somebody's on stage, there's a timer in front of them, it says you have five minutes left and I'm building just such a timer. And it makes a lot of money which came to surprise to everybody.

[00:01:50] Why did you think that was a huge surprise to people?

[00:01:54] It was a huge surprise to me of all because you think it's a countdown timer. Everybody has it on their phone, literally. Why would somebody spend money? And then people did spend money and then it was a surprise. But then I understood and learned the use case. So now it makes perfect sense to me. But it didn't when I started.

[00:02:13] I think your product is like one of those where you when you launch and you post it on Hacker News on Reddit. It's like the perfect example of something where someone in the comments probably goes something like, I could build this in a weekend.

[00:02:28] I literally did. I literally did. Yeah.

[00:02:31] And apparently it's not built in a weekend the way it is now. No. Otherwise you would have 100 copiers.

[00:02:37] Yeah. So what do you think? What do you think was needed to get over that bump of building something in a weekend and getting a product that seems easy to a point where it now makes a lot of money?

[00:02:49] What MRR are we talking about right now? So I usually say 10,000 plus. It's a bit higher than that and it's a bit milked.

[00:02:57] No, it's like muddy because we have these one time payments. It's not all MRR, but yeah, it's enough.

[00:03:03] And how did you think how did you get from having a product that's built in a weekend to a point where you were on that trajectory of 10K MRR plus?

[00:03:13] I think to a certain extent, every product needs to be able to be built in a weekend.

[00:03:18] If I put myself back in the shoes of three years ago, four years ago, and I sat there and looked at a problem, somebody having to start a timer here in another room.

[00:03:30] It has to be visible in another room, but he's here.

[00:03:33] Like I had this, my friend was sitting in the studio and then he had all this remote control, switch to camera two, microphone this and everything except for the timer.

[00:03:41] I thought surely somebody came up with a solution where I click start and then over there it runs, but nobody did or nobody did properly.

[00:03:50] There was like old windows apps and stuff, but I didn't find anything real working.

[00:03:55] So that's why this whole like, oh, I can build this in a weekend.

[00:03:59] I can just click start here and there starts a timer. It's super easy to build.

[00:04:02] So this first premise is like, it should do this.

[00:04:06] This should be super easy to build because it's just your, it's a single use case and it's your own use case of most of the time or somebody else's use case.

[00:04:14] Just one.

[00:04:15] And what happens is you, you put it online, right?

[00:04:19] And all these people come with their own use cases.

[00:04:21] Ah, it would be nice if you could do this.

[00:04:23] For example, one of the first questions I got, hey, can you make it?

[00:04:26] So it says five minutes, but it's actually four minutes.

[00:04:30] It's like, it counts faster.

[00:04:32] Okay.

[00:04:32] So the personal stage doesn't know that I'm saving time or like thinks they have more time and I can save some.

[00:04:38] Because apparently happens all the time, right?

[00:04:40] Somebody goes over time and then, oh, next segment I have to make shorter.

[00:04:43] Otherwise we don't hit our milestones.

[00:04:46] But I can tell the person they only have 12 minutes instead of 15.

[00:04:50] So let me just, anyway.

[00:04:52] Never would have thought about that, but yeah, that's a good idea actually.

[00:04:56] Yeah.

[00:04:57] And then you get 20 things of that and you think, oh, okay.

[00:04:59] So let me build it in.

[00:05:00] And it just continues the whole life of the product and it becomes complex and has to do all these things and has to do all these things.

[00:05:06] Right.

[00:05:07] And you don't, you want to avoid a single use case.

[00:05:09] I don't want to add a button for every use case.

[00:05:11] Otherwise your app is unusable.

[00:05:13] You want to integrate it in a way that people, that everybody can use it in a certain order.

[00:05:17] First of all, everybody understands what it does and then knows how to use it in their own situation.

[00:05:23] And they may call things differently and they may just word it in another way or just look for it in another place.

[00:05:29] And it's really hard.

[00:05:30] Anyway, you asked, how do we get here?

[00:05:32] Yeah, we do this.

[00:05:33] We listen a lot to what users and customers do and say and want and try to build it in as best as possible.

[00:05:41] I'm actually spending, even though the chant in the internet community is do marketing, I'm spending a fair amount on features because we have this quite active feedback loop between our customers and ourselves.

[00:05:54] But then, of course, marketing, right?

[00:05:56] That's how you get your users and nobody can avoid it.

[00:06:00] And in fact, you find out that while most of the time in the beginning of your product you spend on building, in fact, most of the time in the end or in the middle of your, like the mid game, the end game of your product is almost entirely marketing.

[00:06:11] Yeah.

[00:06:12] I have to get comfortable with it.

[00:06:13] How do you talk to your users?

[00:06:16] Because I can imagine like when you first launched, you obviously get some feedback on it.

[00:06:20] But how did that look like in the beginning?

[00:06:23] Did you talk to users even before you started really producing the product?

[00:06:27] And how do you do it now compared to that?

[00:06:31] Yeah.

[00:06:31] So if you think of the perfect world, you would find people that use your product and then interview them and then build something for them.

[00:06:38] Most of the time it doesn't work like that.

[00:06:40] In fact, it didn't for us.

[00:06:42] But what you want, as soon as you have them, especially the first ones, they're usually very engaged.

[00:06:49] They're like early adopters.

[00:06:50] They come to you because they try out new stuff that probably doesn't work properly, but they just want to try it out.

[00:06:56] And they're really willing to give you feedback.

[00:06:58] Oh, this doesn't work.

[00:06:58] This doesn't work.

[00:06:59] This should be better.

[00:07:00] And you want to take this along.

[00:07:02] And then you hit, you get a thousand, you get 2000 users.

[00:07:06] Eventually, you hit this point where people see your product as a product and not as a early experiment.

[00:07:15] And they tell, how often do you tell the products that you use, oh, you should do this and you should change this?

[00:07:21] You don't because you expect that they have a big team and it takes forever for them to change stuff anyway.

[00:07:25] So you really evaluate it on your current need basis.

[00:07:28] So what we do then is we reach out, especially if people do send us some requests or something and we have this product newsletter and we just say, and if people answer, we know, okay, they are probably engaged.

[00:07:38] So just reach out to them and say, hey, would love to talk to you.

[00:07:42] Just like that.

[00:07:43] Like there's no strings attached.

[00:07:44] Just talk.

[00:07:45] Just listen to them.

[00:07:46] Once you have them in a call, usually what happens is they tell you all the things that they want.

[00:07:53] Like they have the wish list already and they just tell it to you.

[00:07:57] I hardly ever need to ask a question.

[00:07:59] It might be different for other products, but for me, like I go on a call with people.

[00:08:02] I hardly need to ask a question.

[00:08:04] They just talk the whole time.

[00:08:05] The only thing I say, hey, can you share your screen?

[00:08:07] Can you show me what you're saying?

[00:08:09] And you learn incredible amounts of, okay, they use it in this way, this situation with this other tools together.

[00:08:14] And this is how they want to do it.

[00:08:15] Then you write it down.

[00:08:16] And what we found is if you do very few of these calls, like three calls, you already get such a good picture of what features are needed to get your tool to the next level.

[00:08:28] And then you implement them and then you repeat the process.

[00:08:30] But obviously, so I know from Basecamp, for example, that they do pretty much the same.

[00:08:35] They gather support emails to see what kind of features are needed or not needed.

[00:08:40] And they have the system where they never write down any feature requests and they just implement the ones that they can remember because those are the ones that came often enough to be then added to the software.

[00:08:54] And as you just said, there are a lot of things for a lot of different target users that you could add to something like a stage timer.

[00:09:03] Yeah.

[00:09:03] Did you ever like target specific users that you ever, like how often do you have to say no to feature to not have a thousand buttons and how to even like, how do you get to a point where you don't have a thousand buttons, but still have 20 features?

[00:09:17] I think the art of product development is saying no to things.

[00:09:22] In the beginning, we didn't know who our customers really are.

[00:09:25] And that is probably true for most people, right?

[00:09:29] Especially like indie hackers.

[00:09:30] We don't really know if you build for other indie hackers, of course.

[00:09:32] But if you like some of us actually build for the outside world, right?

[00:09:36] For other people that have money.

[00:09:38] Yeah, that's why that's pretty much why you were here because I tweeted that I wanted to have more indie hackers on that don't build for indie hackers.

[00:09:44] Yeah.

[00:09:45] You probably don't know who your customers are, right?

[00:09:47] You have an idea, but you don't really know.

[00:09:49] It was our case.

[00:09:50] So we try to figure out these use cases one by one.

[00:09:54] And then you have to make this interesting split between, I want to, don't make it too narrow because obviously I need some kind of target audience, but I don't want to make it too wide.

[00:10:06] Because if you build for everybody, you build for nobody.

[00:10:10] So when you go to our landing page, there's actually a bunch of use cases.

[00:10:13] We go from like live video production, which is our main use case, all the way to podcasting and e-sports and stuff.

[00:10:21] And even teaching, which has proven to be effective.

[00:10:24] However, there is definitely things that we say, ooh, we have to say no, like birthday timer, right?

[00:10:32] Countdown to a whatever event, a birthday event or something.

[00:10:36] And now this is kind of the obvious ones, but then, yeah, you, yeah, I'm lost for words.

[00:10:42] But the point is, right, like finding out who your users is really so important.

[00:10:47] And once you know who your user is, then you're almost like on this base camp level that you said before.

[00:10:51] You hear something, it's like, oh, this is such an obvious winner for my users.

[00:10:57] And on other things, it's like, ah, I'm not sure.

[00:10:59] Do people really know?

[00:11:00] Do people really need this?

[00:11:02] And then it's already a loser, right?

[00:11:04] They don't even have motivation to do it anyway.

[00:11:06] So it's actually quite a good filter.

[00:11:09] I think that's also hard to, like, if you already, like, obviously you should listen to your users mostly.

[00:11:17] But if you as the product person already have that feeling of, I'm not sure about this.

[00:11:22] I'm not sure you need this.

[00:11:23] I think there's a lot of convincing to do to then still build it for someone, right?

[00:11:28] Yeah, if you think about it, like in the beginning, you don't know.

[00:11:31] But your user who uses the tool, they know exactly.

[00:11:34] This is a feature I need.

[00:11:36] And this is a feature.

[00:11:37] So it's completely useless.

[00:11:38] And the more you talk to them, the more you get this sense as well.

[00:11:42] And then, yeah, you can filter it out already.

[00:11:45] So what's, like, the kind of standard user that you have now?

[00:11:49] My feeling is that it's mostly the live events, right?

[00:11:52] Is that, like, the user you try to target most nowadays?

[00:11:57] Yeah.

[00:11:57] So what happens is when any company does a live event and they want to have it live streamed, even if they don't want to have it live streamed.

[00:12:05] But usually a live stream is involved.

[00:12:07] They bring in a company that does the video production.

[00:12:10] Now, a company that does video and sound mixing and everything, they need to know what's happening, right?

[00:12:15] They need to know, okay, there's a second person coming on stage.

[00:12:17] We have a video of 10 seconds here.

[00:12:20] And then we have another video of 2 minutes and 41 seconds here.

[00:12:23] They need to know all this stuff in advance.

[00:12:26] So you need to make a plan of your thing that's fairly accurate, right?

[00:12:30] Two people on stage here, Q&A, so many minutes.

[00:12:33] So they call it a rundown.

[00:12:35] And usually what happens is that this company comes in to do the camera and everything.

[00:12:40] They use StageTimer.

[00:12:41] They may even receive, like, an Excel document, like a piece of paper that then gets reprinted five times before the event because somebody changed something.

[00:12:49] And then this has, like, notes all over.

[00:12:51] And then they have five papers.

[00:12:53] And then they put it into my tool.

[00:12:56] And this is what everybody sees on their screen.

[00:12:59] And that's our main use case, right?

[00:13:01] So these companies that come in, these kind of contractor live video production.

[00:13:05] And then the second most common is really large companies.

[00:13:08] Like we have IKEA is a good example I usually mention.

[00:13:12] They even invited us one day to Sweden to the headquarters and showed us, here, look, we have it running here.

[00:13:17] And we have this, like, internal event space where they do their Christmas parties.

[00:13:21] And whenever they do whatever they need internally launched to everybody and communicated, they have the stage.

[00:13:27] And this is where it runs.

[00:13:28] And this is how they use it.

[00:13:29] And a lot of companies do this, like the internal events inside companies.

[00:13:34] They have, whatever, four people, three people that run their internal events.

[00:13:38] And those are the ones that purchase stage time.

[00:13:41] Those are the ones that are looking at Twitter and found you to use them internally then.

[00:13:45] Yeah.

[00:13:46] So that's interesting.

[00:13:47] So I asked the guy in IKEA because we were sitting there in the conference room.

[00:13:50] And then I asked him, who finds this tool and who makes the decision to purchase it?

[00:13:56] And it turns out that they don't go on Twitter.

[00:13:59] What they do is they go on Google and they look for a very specific solution.

[00:14:04] Right.

[00:14:04] How can I show a timer with Companion and QLab, for example?

[00:14:09] Because that's the software they use.

[00:14:11] And if you have on your documentation page or some kind of article that describes exactly how to use your timer with these mentioned tools, you win.

[00:14:19] Because you get somebody who literally will just purchase it.

[00:14:24] Like we have this, right?

[00:14:25] Like we have these documentation pages that rank.

[00:14:28] Like when you look at the Google ranking pages and do the numbers, all full volume, right?

[00:14:33] A hundred searches per month or whatever.

[00:14:35] You wouldn't even target it.

[00:14:36] But those hundred people, like out of two people, one purchases.

[00:14:42] Like it's crazy.

[00:14:43] That's amazing.

[00:14:44] It's really cool.

[00:14:44] It really works.

[00:14:45] And then I asked, okay, but who makes this decision to purchase, right?

[00:14:48] Because I'm expecting B2B, large company that goes through whatever.

[00:14:52] The procurement manager and he has to talk to this person, whatever.

[00:14:56] And we have that, but not much.

[00:14:58] And this person, and he told me like, look, we are this video production kind of sub department.

[00:15:05] And we have an R&D budget of whatever, 50,000 per year.

[00:15:10] And every purchase that is like below 5,000, we just do on our credit card.

[00:15:15] We don't even need to ask anybody.

[00:15:16] We don't need to go through all these processes.

[00:15:19] He told me, like if you would use your timer in every single market worldwide, every single kind of local brick and mortar,

[00:15:28] then we would have to go through all these papers.

[00:15:31] But as long as we just use it, we use our R&D budget.

[00:15:34] And I think this is something very interesting to know for people that do B2B.

[00:15:39] Because if you are below like a certain price point, you're this no brainer purchase.

[00:15:44] And you basically can avoid most of the time this long sales cycle that a B2B is usually known for.

[00:15:53] It sounds like you're niching down into the company, right?

[00:15:58] That's one thing.

[00:15:59] Find the nerds in the company that actually need those products.

[00:16:02] And then have a price point where they don't have to ask their boss.

[00:16:06] Yeah, literally.

[00:16:07] And then you win.

[00:16:07] Because then you can market to the people that use your product, right?

[00:16:11] B2B is often the problem.

[00:16:12] You have to market to the people that don't use your product.

[00:16:14] And the ones that use don't have a say.

[00:16:16] Yeah, that sucks.

[00:16:17] Yeah, then you build software that sucks because you have to.

[00:16:20] Yeah.

[00:16:21] And then you have people that are very convinced maybe about your product.

[00:16:25] And then they have to go to talk to their boss.

[00:16:27] And they don't know what the fuck they're on about.

[00:16:30] And then you're out.

[00:16:31] Like 100% out.

[00:16:33] And I think we're talking a little bit about German companies later.

[00:16:36] But maybe you don't have an ISO certification.

[00:16:39] And then obviously you can't be a deliverer for that company.

[00:16:42] And then you're out.

[00:16:43] Even though the people that actually wanted to use your product would be 100% on board with paying, right?

[00:16:48] Yeah, yeah.

[00:16:48] You're not SOC 2 certified.

[00:16:49] You're not yet in their procurement list.

[00:16:52] But you're already using Oracle.

[00:16:54] Let's just solve it with that.

[00:16:55] It's much easier for me.

[00:16:56] Yeah, let's just ask Oracle.

[00:16:57] It's, I think, an idea that has never worked ever.

[00:17:01] But yeah, that might be the solution for some of them, yeah.

[00:17:04] So that's our experience.

[00:17:05] And I think it works quite well.

[00:17:07] Yeah.

[00:17:07] I think one thing that you've done with your sales process that was very clever.

[00:17:11] And I think you are of the same opinion.

[00:17:14] Is that you introduced one-time payments at one point for people that want to use you like once or maybe twice in an event.

[00:17:20] Or maybe like a weekend where they need you like three days in a row.

[00:17:25] Can you talk a little bit about that idea and how that worked out for you guys?

[00:17:30] Yeah.

[00:17:30] People accused us rightly that we are basically just turned our subscriptions into a one-time payment.

[00:17:38] And so we did it in the first place.

[00:17:41] We did it to reduce churn.

[00:17:43] But we saw that we have ridiculously high churn percent, 12.5%.

[00:17:48] And we asked ourselves, why do we have this?

[00:17:50] Why?

[00:17:51] This is the first.

[00:17:51] You knew you have to reduce churn.

[00:17:53] Why?

[00:17:53] Because high churn prevents you from ever growing well, right?

[00:17:59] In the beginning, it doesn't really matter that much.

[00:18:01] If you have 100, 200, 300 MRR, you don't care.

[00:18:05] But once you hit like 10,000 MRR and you get 12% churn, it means that you have to replace $12,000 of MRR just to grow, right?

[00:18:18] So if you want to grow by whatever, $10 MRR, you have to literally get $12,010 MRR new every month.

[00:18:30] And it gets worse, right?

[00:18:31] The more, the higher you grow.

[00:18:32] So churn is crazy.

[00:18:34] It really cuts into your growth.

[00:18:37] So we asked, how can we improve this?

[00:18:39] And we found out that people actually don't dislike the product.

[00:18:43] They all like, we ask, we literally send them emails like, hey, why do you cancel?

[00:18:48] And we were like, yeah, it was amazing.

[00:18:49] We loved it.

[00:18:50] We have this one event and then the next one is next year.

[00:18:53] So there's no reason for us to pay for 11 out of 12 months.

[00:18:58] Oh, interesting.

[00:18:59] So let's give them this option to just pay it for this one event.

[00:19:05] So we started with 10 days.

[00:19:06] And then people asked us, oh, but I'm preparing two weeks in advance.

[00:19:09] Okay.

[00:19:10] So we upped it to 14 days.

[00:19:12] And eventually we made it like here are 30 days.

[00:19:15] Just take it.

[00:19:16] You're fine with it.

[00:19:18] And it has a second effect.

[00:19:20] So first of all, you could say we just replaced a monthly subscription with a one month, one

[00:19:25] time payment.

[00:19:27] Basically, we make it easier for people because now they don't have to cancel.

[00:19:31] And the secondary effect that it has, why it was a really good idea, is people tended

[00:19:37] to buy this monthly plan and then forget to cancel.

[00:19:42] Oh, now I paid a second month.

[00:19:43] I don't have anything anymore.

[00:19:45] So they wrote us and said, can you reimburse me this second payment?

[00:19:50] It took a huge amount of time and money, right?

[00:19:53] Because each reimbursement, you pay a little bit of fee for the payment provider that you

[00:19:57] never get back.

[00:20:00] So with this kind of one month plan, we never get this again.

[00:20:04] Like almost nobody ever writes us, oh, I accidentally paid for another month because they can't.

[00:20:09] So it takes us a lot of time and money there and made people happy.

[00:20:14] Like they purchase it and they purchase it repeatedly.

[00:20:17] So we have this counter whenever somebody purchases it.

[00:20:20] It tells us how often they have purchased before.

[00:20:23] And we have people that purchase like 17 of these one month plans already.

[00:20:29] In 12 months?

[00:20:30] Maybe that's even better than before?

[00:20:33] No, over their lifetime, right?

[00:20:35] It may be 12 months.

[00:20:36] It may not be 12 months.

[00:20:37] I don't know.

[00:20:38] Okay.

[00:20:38] So in general, they're saving money.

[00:20:40] So they do come back.

[00:20:41] It's not, we don't straight up lose the money.

[00:20:44] That's what I wanted to say.

[00:20:45] They come back.

[00:20:46] And a third advantage, and this is very B2B again, right?

[00:20:50] They say we purchase from you, but then we have to expense it to our clients.

[00:20:56] And if we have a subscription, we have to awkwardly break it down.

[00:20:59] And we hate that.

[00:21:00] So if we just get an invoice from you like this, we can just say, go straight on the expense

[00:21:05] account and they don't have to think about it.

[00:21:07] So plus all around, I would say.

[00:21:09] I think that's like a perfect example for something that just works better in some cases as one

[00:21:16] time payments, right?

[00:21:17] I had Yossi on the podcast, I think a few episodes ago, who does SEO stuff, which is

[00:21:24] keyword lookup, stuff like that, but not as a Ahrefs does it or SEMrush with the subscription

[00:21:32] model, but with one time payments, having credits where I then have to spend them on keyword

[00:21:37] research.

[00:21:37] And actually he got me the first idea that maybe for our own product, which we're building

[00:21:45] right now, that might be the better idea and the more fair idea to the user as well.

[00:21:51] And that's like the thing where I'm pretty particular.

[00:21:55] I'm not sure.

[00:21:56] I think you are pretty much the same because you have done the one time payments.

[00:21:59] I think there's a part where I want to, obviously we all want to make money with, but I think

[00:22:05] getting the user happy with something that works for them and still makes me money is a better

[00:22:12] idea than having them like renew the subscription and then maybe 50% forget it and I make more

[00:22:18] money in the short term.

[00:22:19] I think that's not a great strategy, even though it might make more money at the beginning.

[00:22:24] Yeah.

[00:22:24] Yeah.

[00:22:24] Yeah.

[00:22:25] So there's definitely this like love and addiction to recurring revenue, especially among indie hackers.

[00:22:31] But not every product should have recurring revenue.

[00:22:35] Some products are just made for a credit system, like you said, or a one time payment or even

[00:22:41] like a metered payment, like where you say, how much did you use it?

[00:22:45] And that's just charge you at the end of the month for your usage.

[00:22:48] I'm not sure about the metered thing.

[00:22:50] I have thought about that and it would make sense the most for what we are building for

[00:22:55] the, for example, because I have obvious AI costs.

[00:22:59] I have obvious text, sorry, speech to text costs that I could calculate and then put a

[00:23:04] margin on it and then just spaces.

[00:23:06] But I think, and I'm not sure what your opinion on that is, that most B2Bs, I might be wrong,

[00:23:12] do not like that system.

[00:23:14] At least not the B2Bs we're targeting, which are small companies or people.

[00:23:18] I think the metered system is something that you have to sell really well compared to something

[00:23:23] like credits.

[00:23:25] So I actually asked this one time, what do you prefer, recurring or metered payment?

[00:23:31] And most people said that they hate, they are afraid of metered payment because they're

[00:23:35] burned from like AWS, where you suddenly have to pay so much and you didn't know ahead of

[00:23:41] time.

[00:23:41] So that's why I think that's where this fear is coming from.

[00:23:44] I have thought about it a fair bit.

[00:23:46] And I think a good middle way is you do a kind of a base plan for your subscription.

[00:23:52] I love this model that Postmark is doing where you say you pay $15 a month, you get your

[00:23:57] base, whatever, 10,000 emails that you can send.

[00:24:01] If you send, if you happen to send more, you just get this little extra charge on top of it.

[00:24:07] And if you send substantially more, we recommend you to upgrade to the next higher tier to save

[00:24:14] money.

[00:24:14] So it's basically a mix that says it's a subscription, but you're not, this is what I find with the

[00:24:20] subscriptions often the problem.

[00:24:21] You have to make these limits.

[00:24:23] And then what do you do if people need more?

[00:24:26] Sometimes people don't need that feature from your paid plan, but they need that limit.

[00:24:31] And what if they need that limit higher, but don't care about this feature?

[00:24:34] Do they really want to upgrade to the next plan?

[00:24:36] Or can you tell them like, Hey, here's a package for another 5,000 or for another 10,000 of the

[00:24:40] thing that you want to do?

[00:24:41] Yeah.

[00:24:42] That's something we've been talking about as well.

[00:24:44] I think that's also the thing that we will be doing at the end.

[00:24:48] Right now we have a pure credit system just to make it easier.

[00:24:52] Yeah.

[00:24:52] But I can imagine that there will be people like, I don't want to like every month go into

[00:24:57] the software and buy stuff manually.

[00:25:00] I just want to get like the credits every month.

[00:25:02] So we're going to move into that direction.

[00:25:05] And I think that's a great thing for then the indie hacker and also the user, because I

[00:25:09] think in the end, at least how I want to do a company is that I want to make money, but

[00:25:14] also make the users very happy.

[00:25:16] And that includes pricing and being fair about pricing with the user.

[00:25:20] Yeah.

[00:25:21] And this is something I think is not really talked about a lot.

[00:25:24] And I think completely undervalued and underrated is communicating value properly in your pricing.

[00:25:31] Like you could say, or if you do more, it costs more, but you can always twist your

[00:25:37] narrative a little bit to make it sound like the person is getting a deal.

[00:25:41] Oh, you pay less because you're using less.

[00:25:45] Things like this.

[00:25:46] What we did, we had this problem.

[00:25:49] Now we have recurring revenue again.

[00:25:50] It's not metered, but we had this problem that people didn't really understand the difference

[00:25:54] between our pro and premium package.

[00:25:57] What is the difference here?

[00:25:58] I see one feature that's different.

[00:26:00] Yeah.

[00:26:00] This is our biggest feature to cost forever to develop.

[00:26:03] They don't care.

[00:26:03] So what we did is we artificially introduced limits.

[00:26:07] We said, all right, in your document, in your rundown document you create, you can add a hundred

[00:26:12] timers in this pro plan, but in this premium, you can like add 5,000.

[00:26:17] It was just a ridiculously high number.

[00:26:19] It was unlimited before because it doesn't really cost us anything, but it just makes for this

[00:26:27] kind of value of, ah, here I pay, what is it?

[00:26:30] 10, no, 19, $19 and I get a hundred.

[00:26:34] But here I pay $30 and I get 5,000.

[00:26:38] 5,000.

[00:26:39] Optically, it tells you, you get a lot of value, even though it's a bit of a fake, to be honest.

[00:26:45] Like we know, like it doesn't really matter that much.

[00:26:48] Both are probably just fine, but it communicates, hey, you're getting more value.

[00:26:52] Obviously there's stuff in there where you get more value, but it's harder to communicate.

[00:26:58] So we just use this as a communicative device of, hey, you get more for your money.

[00:27:03] That's amazing.

[00:27:04] I think I have to write that down immediately.

[00:27:07] I have to look at our pricing table.

[00:27:09] I just add stuff that we might be able to do there.

[00:27:12] That's amazing.

[00:27:13] One thing I've seen you, I'm skipping a little on a different topic here.

[00:27:17] I've seen that you plan to stick to StageTimer for now, but you actually got an offer for StageTimer,

[00:27:25] which was in the ballpark of 500k for it.

[00:27:28] What's your opinion on that?

[00:27:29] I think you already said no, but why?

[00:27:33] So first of all, it's very interesting if you get an offer, right?

[00:27:37] Because I'm probably talking to all of us.

[00:27:40] We say, oh, somebody wants to buy my thing.

[00:27:42] And even if you have never thought about it or you're not planning to, you engage.

[00:27:46] I was not planning to sell it.

[00:27:47] But I engage.

[00:27:48] I was like, okay, tell me how much I'm worth.

[00:27:50] I want to know.

[00:27:51] Yeah, sure.

[00:27:51] What is the math here?

[00:27:52] How does this work?

[00:27:54] And the person was really kind.

[00:27:56] They explained to me how the process works from their side, how the evaluation came about.

[00:28:03] They sent me a letter of interest right after I shared some information with them about my finances,

[00:28:08] some actual real numbers.

[00:28:10] And they came back with this.

[00:28:12] And again, it's ballpark.

[00:28:13] I don't want to, for my own sake.

[00:28:16] And also to not reveal the seller or anything, the buyer to like giving exact numbers and

[00:28:23] what the calculation was.

[00:28:24] But yeah, I got to this.

[00:28:26] You get this number, like half a million dollars.

[00:28:30] And not to be scoffed at.

[00:28:32] It's a real number.

[00:28:33] But then you start thinking about it.

[00:28:35] Okay.

[00:28:36] Do I want to exchange my product for this number?

[00:28:41] And there was a really like this pro contra list where there's points that are in favor and there's

[00:28:47] points that are against me selling.

[00:28:50] And on the against list, it really added up a lot of things.

[00:28:55] First of all, just let's talk about the value in itself.

[00:28:59] 500,000 is actually not a lot.

[00:29:01] Why?

[00:29:02] Because you're exchanging the work of your last X amount of years for this money.

[00:29:10] And then it gets taxed.

[00:29:11] And then you have whatever.

[00:29:12] What is it?

[00:29:13] 400, 300,000 left.

[00:29:15] What do you do with that?

[00:29:16] Probably 300, yeah.

[00:29:17] What do you do with that money?

[00:29:19] You can buy your house, maybe a house for 300 or very hard to find.

[00:29:24] Very hard to find.

[00:29:25] Especially if you want to be in a city or even close to a city.

[00:29:28] Yeah.

[00:29:28] You want to buy your car.

[00:29:29] I don't want to have a car.

[00:29:31] So you basically say, I want to invest it in my next company.

[00:29:35] But I don't have a good idea for my next company.

[00:29:38] I don't right now, even though I'm sure there's plenty of opportunities, but I don't have something

[00:29:43] where I say, oh man, I wish I had a time to put into this.

[00:29:46] I know it can be more successful.

[00:29:47] I don't have it.

[00:29:48] I may have it in a year or two, if I think about it, but I don't.

[00:29:52] So the opportunity cost for me was negative, right?

[00:29:57] Because this money would give me almost more stress to come up with something new.

[00:30:02] I also know that building something from scratch is really hard.

[00:30:05] Even though I did it now, it's just, it's not given.

[00:30:08] Like it's so easy to fail in this journey of finding a product that people want.

[00:30:13] And it's so hard to actually get to a point where you find product market fit.

[00:30:16] It's, it needs, you need to value it.

[00:30:19] Okay.

[00:30:20] And then I tell myself, look, there's things that I can learn right now.

[00:30:25] Now I'm at 10,000, a little bit more MRR.

[00:30:28] I'm getting large clients, big companies.

[00:30:31] There's stuff we are learning.

[00:30:33] I cannot learn this if I start from scratch.

[00:30:35] There's no way, but there's no way that I can immediately employ somebody as easily as

[00:30:41] I can do it now because I have cashflow.

[00:30:43] There's no way I can approach a company as big as Ikea with a thing that I just built,

[00:30:51] no, two weeks ago.

[00:30:53] So these lessons have to be worth something.

[00:30:56] So I have to, of course, the buyer doesn't price that in because for him it's worthless.

[00:31:01] But for me, it has a lot of value.

[00:31:03] And then when the buyer makes this calculation, right?

[00:31:06] For you, you look at the revenue that you get.

[00:31:08] And I say, if I continue having the revenue I'm having right now, I'm going to earn this

[00:31:15] amount of money in a relatively comfortable amount of time.

[00:31:19] I don't want to mention exact numbers here just because I don't want to reveal exactly

[00:31:23] which multiple the buyer applied.

[00:31:25] But I say, I can earn this myself quite comfortably.

[00:31:31] However, what a buyer does is he has to not only take away all the expenses I have, but he

[00:31:36] also has to take away the expense that I present as a free working founder, right?

[00:31:41] He has to replace me with an employee.

[00:31:44] So his calculation assumes a much, much lower profit than my calculation would because I

[00:31:52] am putting in my time for free.

[00:31:55] Hence, the number that comes out is, I wouldn't say disappointing because I think it was market

[00:32:00] rate, but it is a reality check for indie hacker who thinks, oh, if I sell it 10 times revenue,

[00:32:09] I'm going to be rich.

[00:32:10] No, you're not going to sell it 10 times revenue because you don't have a company, right?

[00:32:14] If you have 20 employees and the thing just works, then you can sell it at that rate.

[00:32:20] But not if you are the only person working in it.

[00:32:22] Yeah.

[00:32:23] One, one interesting thing that might have come up in your thoughts as well.

[00:32:27] I talked to, I talked about this with, I think, Arvid, Arvid Karl in his episode when he was on

[00:32:32] was that one of the biggest reasons for him and his girlfriend to sell was that they wanted to

[00:32:39] spread the risk.

[00:32:40] Yeah.

[00:32:41] And that turned out very well for them because after like a year, that company would have been

[00:32:45] worthless because China banned the way that they were doing the business there.

[00:32:49] So what do you think about the risk spreading part of selling the business and then having

[00:32:55] being able to spread the money a little bit to different risk assets?

[00:32:59] That's very good because Arvid's tool, it was even shut down.

[00:33:02] I think last year I messaged him when it happened.

[00:33:05] So I looked at this too, like what are the possible risk factors and stage timer falls into

[00:33:11] almost none of them.

[00:33:12] So we don't have a, we don't have platform risk because we don't build on any platform.

[00:33:17] We don't really have an AI risk because it's very unlikely that our use case is going to

[00:33:23] be replaced by AI because it's a very specific working tool, right?

[00:33:29] It's not just a, anyway, you get the point.

[00:33:31] Yeah, I think the same, yeah.

[00:33:33] Yeah.

[00:33:34] And it is very unlikely to be disrupted by some big incumbent, some kind of company that

[00:33:40] throws some tool on the market.

[00:33:42] Because our niche, it's our disadvantage, our niche is very small, but also just small

[00:33:48] enough, I think that big companies look at it and say, it's not worth it for us to spend

[00:33:53] money on it.

[00:33:53] It's just not worth it.

[00:33:55] I think that the indie hacker has like the person like me has the same thing, right?

[00:33:59] They look at a market.

[00:34:00] It's already hard to do B2B, right?

[00:34:02] You usually tend to sell to other indie hackers or sell B2C.

[00:34:05] But then doing it in an industry that you don't know and trying to upset somebody like

[00:34:11] me as an incumbent, it's just, it's possible but unlikely that it happens.

[00:34:16] So I think the risk here is low.

[00:34:18] And the fourth risk was, yeah, regulatory.

[00:34:21] We don't really have, there's no regulation that would ever say you cannot use a timer

[00:34:26] in any shape or form.

[00:34:27] I think maybe the only thing we'll say that America now suddenly prevents people from buying

[00:34:34] from overseas companies when it comes to a software.

[00:34:36] But even that I find, so I say the risk was really low.

[00:34:39] So why sell?

[00:34:41] And oh yeah, risk spreading.

[00:34:42] I already built a second product.

[00:34:44] So I already have like the second leg to stand on.

[00:34:47] So even from that perspective, I'm just less sensitive to like that.

[00:34:52] But in a sense, if you think about it, if you sell your company, you sell the risk to

[00:34:59] somebody else, takes the risk and gives you money for it.

[00:35:01] And I say, if I keep the risk, but also keep the upside, right?

[00:35:05] From it growing, it's worth it for me in this case.

[00:35:08] I think the only thing that I would add there would be that for the American situation, you

[00:35:13] might have to, or you might run into the situation where you are affected by terrorists.

[00:35:20] Yeah, but so do all of us, huh?

[00:35:22] Yeah, that's pretty much all of us.

[00:35:24] It's something we can think about much or change much.

[00:35:27] So let's see where it goes.

[00:35:28] And I think that many of your customers, US-based?

[00:35:31] Most of them, most of them.

[00:35:32] Most of them, okay.

[00:35:33] I would have thought that you being in Europe, that you would be more connected to customers

[00:35:37] here, but that might be wrong.

[00:35:39] There's just so many people in the US.

[00:35:41] So many people doing talks and stuff.

[00:35:44] But I think, I'm not 100% sure, but I think I might have seen your product yesterday

[00:35:49] because we were at an event in Barclays Arena in Hamburg.

[00:35:53] And I saw there was like a mirror on stage.

[00:35:56] And I don't think that the guests should have seen that, but I saw like a big timer ticking

[00:36:01] down and they had some stuff that they had to orchestrate.

[00:36:04] So you might have been miserable yesterday in an arena in Europe.

[00:36:09] So some European customers are there.

[00:36:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:36:12] Yeah, I just wanted to mention that.

[00:36:15] The other thing that I was just thinking about is how much do you have to actually think about

[00:36:20] clones of your product?

[00:36:21] Did that happen?

[00:36:22] Did somebody just straight up try to copy your product?

[00:36:25] Yeah, I wouldn't call it a clone anymore.

[00:36:27] But like one year in, somebody else built a timer and they built open source.

[00:36:34] And it gave me a lot of worry in the beginning.

[00:36:38] And then I hope maybe they lose interest because it's open source, always hard.

[00:36:42] You have to keep at it.

[00:36:43] But he's still at it.

[00:36:44] And to his credit, he probably does a good job and builds a good tool.

[00:36:48] But what I found out is the danger is actually not as big as I thought.

[00:36:54] Because most people that come to us, they expect this.

[00:36:59] We don't have to worry about hosting.

[00:37:00] We don't have to worry about setting it up and making sure it works in a network and online.

[00:37:07] By us providing the cloud, we provide this value that people look for.

[00:37:13] And somebody who is tinkering it together, they may as well build it themselves or use

[00:37:18] this open source.

[00:37:18] And that's totally fine.

[00:37:19] That's totally fine.

[00:37:20] I have no problem with that.

[00:37:22] Other than that, we don't really have a copycat that builds a business just like ours.

[00:37:28] So I can't talk to that.

[00:37:30] Just like with all copycats, rebuilding the product is the easy part.

[00:37:36] Rebuilding the marketing, understanding the market, understanding the customer is the

[00:37:40] hard part.

[00:37:40] To that point, because we haven't talked about it much.

[00:37:43] What are you guys doing now for marketing?

[00:37:46] What's your number one strategy?

[00:37:47] So we have this, when somebody signs up, we actually ask them, how did you hear about us?

[00:37:54] Because everybody who does marketing knows it's so incredibly hard to figure out which is

[00:38:01] actually effective, right?

[00:38:02] You have multiple touch points and then your whole tracking works like 50% of the time

[00:38:06] because browsers block it.

[00:38:07] So we just ask them.

[00:38:09] And we find that fair split between a majority of people either coming from Google search or

[00:38:18] they come from recommendation from friends or coworkers or anything like recommendation

[00:38:23] wise.

[00:38:24] Yeah.

[00:38:25] So that is recommend like word of mouth is always a bad marketing strategy because what do you

[00:38:30] do, but building a product that people really love is what you do to make it happen.

[00:38:38] And I think, sorry, go on.

[00:38:40] No, go ahead.

[00:38:41] I think that one thing that people are missing right now on Twitter, because I just seen a tweet

[00:38:47] like yesterday was like the person with a good product and bad marketing is always going

[00:38:54] to lose against a person with good marketing and a bad product.

[00:38:57] And I was like, yeah, maybe in the beginning, but I think you can't get around the fact that

[00:39:03] you need to have a good product at some point.

[00:39:06] I'm sorry, but both have to work together.

[00:39:08] I think.

[00:39:09] Yeah.

[00:39:09] Yeah.

[00:39:09] So it's interesting that people that have very established products, they always say it's

[00:39:16] so much harder to keep a customer, like keeping a customer is more expensive than getting

[00:39:20] a new one or it's worth more.

[00:39:22] No, this is the thing.

[00:39:23] Like keeping a customer is worth more than getting a new one because getting new ones

[00:39:27] are so expensive.

[00:39:28] Right.

[00:39:28] So this is where this argument falls apart.

[00:39:30] Yes.

[00:39:31] Marketing is expensive, is important.

[00:39:33] And the better marketing does a better job.

[00:39:35] Right.

[00:39:35] We see that with everything in real life.

[00:39:37] You buy Nike shoes because they do good marketing.

[00:39:40] However, if you burn the ground, if they come in and they hate it, you can never be successful

[00:39:47] because your turn is high.

[00:39:48] A person that comes, uses it, hates it, will never come back.

[00:39:53] So it is really worth it to spend time and energy into making sure that the user comes

[00:40:00] back.

[00:40:00] And I think that we balance it out with how much money do we spend?

[00:40:04] How much energy do we spend into new marketing, like content marketing and ads and stuff?

[00:40:10] And how much money do we, how much energy do we spend on making sure people have a good experience

[00:40:16] if they are there?

[00:40:17] Yeah.

[00:40:18] I think like something that does both is probably the product that wins in the end, not one

[00:40:23] that does one of them, right?

[00:40:25] Like one marketing or coding or product, they have to work together.

[00:40:30] I think one thing that we had on the podcast very many episodes ago was the concept of not

[00:40:36] a minimum viable product, but maximum, sorry, a minimum lovable product.

[00:40:41] So you have one feature in the beginning that works really well.

[00:40:45] And the users, I want to keep using this and then they will also pay.

[00:40:49] Then you just have to get them in the door with marketing.

[00:40:51] But having an actual product that they want to use is, I think, the core.

[00:40:55] Sure.

[00:40:56] Yeah.

[00:40:56] Yeah.

[00:40:56] Yeah.

[00:40:57] And I love the Dropbox way of marketing where you can offer the person a way to naturally

[00:41:05] share your product with others, right?

[00:41:08] Share your file with them.

[00:41:09] And if they sign up, you get more space.

[00:41:11] That's how they got a lot of users.

[00:41:13] And I thought, how can I build this into my tool?

[00:41:17] And it turns out that we offer people these links that they can share with others.

[00:41:22] And here, there's a timer.

[00:41:24] Just open in your browser and you can see the same as we see.

[00:41:26] You can see ticking down and what's next and so on.

[00:41:29] And we made sure that always our logo is big right there.

[00:41:33] Bam.

[00:41:33] Except your pay, right?

[00:41:34] Then you can turn it off.

[00:41:35] And I, now it's, you cannot measure.

[00:41:38] How do you measure this?

[00:41:39] How do you measure?

[00:41:40] Did you see my logo somewhere on the screen?

[00:41:42] No.

[00:41:42] But basically, I think this recommendation metric, this word of mouth metric that we have,

[00:41:46] it pays, like it pays dividend to us building in this product markets itself mechanism.

[00:41:55] I think, what was the name of the product?

[00:41:57] I think Senja.io has a great way to do this as well, where if anyone uses their testimonials

[00:42:03] on their website, there's always like a Senja.io link back to the landing page, which also

[00:42:08] pushes their backlinks, which is like all around a great strategy for promoting the product

[00:42:14] in a natural way.

[00:42:15] I'm a huge fan of Tally.

[00:42:16] And they have this same opportunity, right?

[00:42:18] Somebody creates a questionnaire form and they just put their name underneath it.

[00:42:23] And it's such a good way to market.

[00:42:25] Yeah.

[00:42:25] It's awesome.

[00:42:26] If you can do something like that with a product, do it a hundred percent.

[00:42:29] Yeah.

[00:42:30] That's like the first thing you should do.

[00:42:31] And I think because we sometimes make jokes, right?

[00:42:34] That the first time founder looks things about product and the second time founder thinks

[00:42:38] about distribution.

[00:42:39] And it's really true.

[00:42:40] Once you think about your next product, you always think, oh, how can I build marketing into

[00:42:44] it?

[00:42:44] How can I market this?

[00:42:45] And I feel like such a kind of built-in way of letting other people know of your tool

[00:42:51] is a very good mind exercise for your second product.

[00:42:56] Yeah.

[00:42:57] And I think strategies like this are also good for people who are not like marketing geniuses,

[00:43:02] right?

[00:43:02] It's easy to just put the link somewhere, put your logo somewhere, promote it that way

[00:43:07] and don't feel like a hack or like a salesperson.

[00:43:09] That's very natural to put that somewhere and use it that way.

[00:43:13] Going from StageTimer to your second product, which I want to mention shortly here, you're

[00:43:18] now doing not only StageTimer, but also Rundown Studio.

[00:43:22] Yeah.

[00:43:22] The way I understood it is that it's basically StageTimer or sorry, that it's StageTimer and

[00:43:28] a lot of other stuff in one tool.

[00:43:30] So instead of having like only StageTimer, now this seems like a bigger platform where you

[00:43:36] can do more stuff.

[00:43:37] What's Rundown Studio about?

[00:43:39] Yeah.

[00:43:39] In a sense, I'm building my own competition.

[00:43:41] Is that a good idea?

[00:43:42] Yeah.

[00:43:43] Let's cut the market up.

[00:43:44] Let's get both pieces.

[00:43:46] So think of StageTimer as like a during event tool, right?

[00:43:50] You time the person that's on stage right now.

[00:43:52] And then Rundown is a bit more like a before event tool because it really wants to provide

[00:43:58] your tools to plan the event.

[00:44:01] I shared before with you how people have these papers of Google sheets and then they have to

[00:44:07] print them out three times because things change all the time.

[00:44:09] Now we try to replace that Google sheet with Rundown Studio, which is essentially, if you're

[00:44:17] honest, works like a Google sheet.

[00:44:19] It has like cells and then you write things into it, but then has the whole StageTimer timing

[00:44:25] engine essentially put on top of it.

[00:44:27] It doesn't do all the during event things that the StageTimer can do right now.

[00:44:32] And it's not our focus, but it can do a lot more when it comes to like asset management

[00:44:38] and just having people collaborate while building the event.

[00:44:43] Is that something like where you were thinking, what's like your thought with your second product

[00:44:48] and how can I connect this to StageTimer?

[00:44:51] How can I make people pay for both?

[00:44:53] Or is it something that you think there are like two different customers that nobody really

[00:44:57] uses both?

[00:44:59] My thought was never to build in the first place.

[00:45:02] So my co-founder, John, he approached me.

[00:45:05] We got to know each other.

[00:45:06] He has a community on Discord of live event professionals that do this kind of work.

[00:45:13] And he said, we always have the problem that we don't have a good tool to do this event

[00:45:18] planning.

[00:45:19] Now there are tools out there, but they are super expensive.

[00:45:22] So he said, okay, let's.

[00:45:24] And then he asked me, hey, do you want to help me to build such a tool?

[00:45:28] And I said, no, because I only saw the negative.

[00:45:31] I said like it's competition to StageTimer.

[00:45:33] If it has somewhere near the same price, it's just going to take away from my market share

[00:45:38] and then I'm a 50% owner and then I'm going to get half of it only.

[00:45:41] So that was in my head, my thing.

[00:45:44] But then he invited me to like calls with some people that actually use similar software.

[00:45:51] And we asked him, hey, how much do you pay for the incumbent, which is called Showflow?

[00:45:57] How much do you pay for it?

[00:45:58] And he said, yeah, we pay like 6,000 a year.

[00:46:01] And we're like, 6,000 a year for a stupid online tool that we exactly know how to build.

[00:46:08] And we were like, hey, we just make half the price and do it.

[00:46:13] And that's how we got about it.

[00:46:14] Yeah.

[00:46:15] Yeah.

[00:46:15] It's crazy how much people spend on it.

[00:46:17] And we can do it, make it so much cheaper and it's still so much more profitable than StageTimer.

[00:46:23] So one thing I was thinking about in the beginning and now again with Randon Studios,

[00:46:29] these people must have like established processes.

[00:46:32] They have like custom hardware that they're doing like microphones and video cameras.

[00:46:38] And it all has to be connected somewhere.

[00:46:39] And they have this huge control screen somewhere, at least usually.

[00:46:44] Was it ever like hard to get Randon Studio or StageTimer into that system of those?

[00:46:51] Like obviously StageTimer just runs in a browser.

[00:46:54] But I imagine that it's harder to get it into like their workflow, into their processes integrated so that they think, oh, that's easy.

[00:47:03] It's just a no brainer to buy this and use it.

[00:47:05] Yeah.

[00:47:05] So I would say like the 20-80% rule, right?

[00:47:08] So 80% of people for them, it's naturally understand how to get a browser window into their multicast setup, which is the big screen with all the camera perspectives and everything.

[00:47:19] But that's why I'm saying like how much time we spend on features because in the end, like every integration that we build helps us to get a little bit more of this market because people do in fact use different hardware, different software, different methods.

[00:47:34] They say, oh, can it output HDMI?

[00:47:36] Can it output SDI?

[00:47:37] Can it output NDI?

[00:47:38] Which is all different protocols to send video information over different kinds of wires and different kinds of distances.

[00:47:46] So yeah, you do, you are busy with exactly that.

[00:47:49] And then you write documentations.

[00:47:51] Like how do I use this timer with that tool and with that tool and with that tool and with all these different.

[00:47:55] And then you buy hard, like literally I have a box of hardware tools that I bought to make sure like it works with this and it works with this.

[00:48:01] Yeah.

[00:48:02] Yeah.

[00:48:02] Now I imagine like a part of your room with the 5,000 cables and five different monitor protocols like that.

[00:48:08] Yeah.

[00:48:08] But that's what I imagined that it's not that easy to just put a browser window somewhere because I imagined that all of this is like custom hardware, custom software stuff that they're using.

[00:48:17] Yeah.

[00:48:17] So that clears that up.

[00:48:18] So there are integrations.

[00:48:20] Yeah.

[00:48:20] And many more that we need to do and haven't done yet.

[00:48:23] All right.

[00:48:24] So there's still much to do.

[00:48:25] Yeah.

[00:48:26] I have two Twitter questions that don't fit perfectly here, but I want to get to them before we run out of time.

[00:48:33] Regarding the whole let's sell stage timer, I think on Twitter you already said that you have one or two years in you to do the product and to make it more valuable maybe.

[00:48:43] Dimitro Krasun and Arthur Liebhardt, both two Indie Hikers that I think we both know, asked basically the same question, which was in Dimitro's case, it was like,

[00:48:53] are you worried about living in comfort was one.

[00:48:56] And the second one was what's the next big challenge for you personally?

[00:49:00] So now a stage timer has like enough money that it sustains you.

[00:49:03] What's the next thing?

[00:49:04] That was like Dimitro's question.

[00:49:06] And Arthur's question was pretty much the same.

[00:49:09] What's the future about growing the MRR, selling the product?

[00:49:13] What's your personal dream?

[00:49:15] Where do you want to go from here?

[00:49:16] So that's basically the same question.

[00:49:19] What's the next steps for you?

[00:49:22] So we actually talked about this in our last Indie Hacker Meetup here in Stuttgart.

[00:49:27] Exactly this.

[00:49:28] What is your goal, right?

[00:49:30] And I try to be consistent.

[00:49:32] So when you go to my Twitter profile, you see this like graphic in the top.

[00:49:39] And I would just describe it because you're on a podcast.

[00:49:41] So it's three mountains, each one higher than the next.

[00:49:44] And there's a little guy who's climbing up these mountains.

[00:49:47] And the first mountain says 1 million AR.

[00:49:50] And the second mountain says 100 million AR.

[00:49:52] And the third mountain says a moonshot project.

[00:49:55] And it's this grand idea, right?

[00:49:57] Of saying, okay, I want to build one successful product.

[00:49:59] And then I have passive, quote unquote, passive income to reinvest into a really cool, bigger

[00:50:06] product.

[00:50:07] Right?

[00:50:07] Not just small niche, but big niche.

[00:50:11] And if this is successful, I will have the finance to do something like moonshot.

[00:50:16] Something that you do not know if it will ever give you money.

[00:50:19] Right?

[00:50:20] Like the Blue Origin, the SpaceX.

[00:50:22] I was thinking about the same thing.

[00:50:24] Yeah.

[00:50:26] And I find this interesting because I like building products.

[00:50:31] Right?

[00:50:31] I'm in it.

[00:50:32] Many people are in it for the money.

[00:50:34] I'm not in it for the money.

[00:50:36] I'm in it for building.

[00:50:37] I love this process.

[00:50:39] Eventually, I will be burned out, I'm sure.

[00:50:40] But I love this creating something people use.

[00:50:45] So I don't think I will stop with that.

[00:50:47] And the highest form of creating something people use is creating something that people

[00:50:51] didn't know they need.

[00:50:52] Like the iPhone of products.

[00:50:55] And bonus points for me.

[00:50:56] Can it be something that we will need in the future because climate change got to a

[00:51:00] point that it got really bad or overcoming one of our many challenges we have in this world?

[00:51:05] Yeah.

[00:51:06] And if you think of it this long term, you have to distill it down to what is my next

[00:51:11] step?

[00:51:11] My next step has to be teaching myself the skills that I will need.

[00:51:17] If I ever get there, which I mean, obviously, the chance is pretty slim.

[00:51:22] Let's be honest.

[00:51:22] But if I ever want to get there, I have to learn the skills.

[00:51:25] And I think one of the next skills for me is really how to have a team, how to build

[00:51:29] a team.

[00:51:30] Right.

[00:51:30] So as an indie hacker, we don't want to build a team because being alone gives us a lot of

[00:51:35] freedom, which is awesome.

[00:51:37] But if you want to, if I want to ever build a really big company, especially about things

[00:51:41] that I have no clue of, I do need people.

[00:51:46] And getting people, I believe, is really complex.

[00:51:49] Right.

[00:51:49] You have to find out who is good and who's not good.

[00:51:51] And you have to lead them and you have to figure out, do they do a good job?

[00:51:54] You have to give them like the room to excel, but also enough instruction so they know what

[00:52:01] to do.

[00:52:01] So this is, I would say, is the next step.

[00:52:04] Right.

[00:52:04] I already have contractors working with me and I know I see how much I have to learn there.

[00:52:11] Right.

[00:52:12] How far I can still grow before I can even think of building a great company.

[00:52:18] Yeah.

[00:52:18] I think you and Marie from Teleforms should talk because she's at this point right now where

[00:52:23] she hired the first employee who's not support.

[00:52:26] She was just on the podcast two episodes ago.

[00:52:29] I think you guys are at a very close point to each other, even though the MRR, I think,

[00:52:33] might be a little higher than yours.

[00:52:35] Oh, Tali, isn't it?

[00:52:36] I don't know, you're 100K per month.

[00:52:37] 100K, yeah.

[00:52:38] They're like super.

[00:52:38] They're really good.

[00:52:39] And they just got their first office and stuff like that there.

[00:52:43] I think at this, at the point, I think you are, you just described yourself as learning

[00:52:47] how to do this.

[00:52:48] I think they're now at the part where they're actually doing it and maybe learning on the job.

[00:52:52] Yeah.

[00:52:53] Yeah.

[00:52:53] They're starting to implement that.

[00:52:55] And to make the only way to learn it is to do it.

[00:52:58] And the only way to do it is to continue from here, grow.

[00:53:02] Personally, I'm comfortable.

[00:53:03] I don't need more money than we have right now.

[00:53:05] Would be nice, but it's not necessary.

[00:53:07] But without growing, I won't be able to learn these crucial lessons.

[00:53:11] So it's not as much about the growing money than it is to just grow into a person that

[00:53:17] you want to be to then do the other things that you...

[00:53:20] Yeah.

[00:53:20] Otherwise, I would have taken the exit.

[00:53:21] But I imagine we're running a little out of time.

[00:53:24] But I imagine that at least in my experience, and I think used to a German company is something

[00:53:32] you want to not do in your life.

[00:53:35] And looking at a 500k, the first thing that I see when I see you have an offer for 500k,

[00:53:41] oh, okay, that's maybe you get it.

[00:53:42] Maybe you have a company and you sell it and then the company gets the 500k.

[00:53:45] Okay.

[00:53:46] And then you pay the sales tax on it and then you pay that tax on it.

[00:53:50] And then you have to, again, tax it when you put it out of the company into your personal account.

[00:53:55] And in the end, you get not 500k, but something like 300 maybe.

[00:54:00] And that kind of changes the dynamic of how much will this change my life, actually.

[00:54:05] Yeah.

[00:54:06] Substantially.

[00:54:07] So Arvid Karl actually talks about that in his book.

[00:54:11] And he says how when he sold, what was it called?

[00:54:14] Panda?

[00:54:15] I forgot how it's called.

[00:54:16] Something with Panda, yeah.

[00:54:17] He did an asset deal.

[00:54:19] So an asset deal is you sell all the parts of your business without selling the business

[00:54:23] itself.

[00:54:24] Basically write an invoice for it and get all the money at once or over installments.

[00:54:30] However, it's taxed like that too, right?

[00:54:32] It's just like taxed like income, which is really bad because it's literally the highest

[00:54:37] tax rate that you can get.

[00:54:38] And that was in the back of my mind, right?

[00:54:40] But the alternative to that is say you create a company and you sell the whole company.

[00:54:45] And that's why in Silicon Valley, they love to do the Delaware C-Corp, right?

[00:54:49] Because everybody knows how Delaware C-Corp functions, how it's used, how it behaves.

[00:54:55] You can just sell it.

[00:54:56] People buy it because they know it.

[00:54:58] People don't buy a German, even GMBH, which is a limited liability company because it's in

[00:55:04] Germany and getting it out of Germany or like whatever, do whatever, international

[00:55:07] sellers, there's no go.

[00:55:09] So I understand this.

[00:55:11] So what do you want to do in Germany?

[00:55:13] That's the established wisdom is have a holding company that owns the other company.

[00:55:17] So when you sell it or all the stuff in it, it just, the money flows into your holding

[00:55:23] company and gets taxed at a significantly reduced tax rate and only gets taxed once you

[00:55:29] pay it out to yourself.

[00:55:30] And what you do is you don't pay all of it out to yourself.

[00:55:33] You just pay a little bit out to yourself as much as you need.

[00:55:37] And the rest, you reinvest into your next company as opposed to just getting all onto

[00:55:42] your own bank account, having everything taxed and then still reinvesting it into your new

[00:55:46] company where you obviously just gave the state a lot of money that you could have used to

[00:55:51] grow your next big thing.

[00:55:53] Yeah.

[00:55:54] So that's the established wisdom.

[00:55:55] And it's basically the only way because Germany fences you off from very interesting

[00:56:00] options like moving out of the country or moving a company out of the country.

[00:56:04] Like as soon as you do that, they say they treat it as if you sold it and then tax its value.

[00:56:11] And if you're unlucky, you don't have the liquid funds to pay your taxes and then you're

[00:56:17] screwed.

[00:56:17] So that's what it used to prevent you from doing it.

[00:56:20] And I have heard people going to lengths to do like constructs with Luxembourg family

[00:56:26] trusts to make sure like there's wild things, but in a sense, you don't want to do this.

[00:56:31] You can.

[00:56:32] And if you're really, if you're really worried about the money, you probably will.

[00:56:35] But in a sense, you also want to have less stress in your life.

[00:56:39] And I know from Marie who does Lama Life, which is this to-do list for ADHD.

[00:56:45] Really cool.

[00:56:46] So she got some funding and she had to create a Delaware C-Corp in addition to her Australian

[00:56:52] company.

[00:56:54] And even though it's probably fairly straightforward to do it, she told me how much stress it causes

[00:57:01] her just to have these two companies and to have to live in these two different tax systems

[00:57:05] and two different financial systems and deal with two different kinds of accounting firms.

[00:57:10] And I understand this and I don't want it.

[00:57:12] Don't you not, do you not still have the issue?

[00:57:14] So for example, if you have a holding company, which is usually also a GmbH or limited company,

[00:57:19] I have another limited company in that.

[00:57:21] Do you not still or still have the problem that you can't really sell it?

[00:57:25] Or do you like create a Delaware C-Corp that is owned by the German limited?

[00:57:30] No, but you always, you make an asset deal, right?

[00:57:32] You sell the product in itself and the money goes to the company and then on your bank account.

[00:57:39] Yeah.

[00:57:40] Yeah.

[00:57:40] That was what I imagined, what I've seen for European founders usually.

[00:57:46] Because I imagine, obviously, like you said, you can build so many like structures there that

[00:57:50] might work.

[00:57:51] And I've seen people with Delaware C-Corp be very happy with that.

[00:57:54] But yeah, we like, I can just say for myself, maybe some German founders are listening can

[00:58:00] write in.

[00:58:00] But our company that holds the assets for Repodcasted, which is our tool, is also a small

[00:58:07] limited.

[00:58:08] We have this German concept of an UG, which is a small, but also a company.

[00:58:12] So we can just sell the assets and have the money in company account and then see what

[00:58:17] we do afterwards with that.

[00:58:18] Now, there is a bad side to this too, like the other side of the coin.

[00:58:23] I talked the other day to Robbie, who is also an Sherman indie hacker on Twitter.

[00:58:29] And he said he does have a holding company and he has products under it, but they're fairly

[00:58:36] small.

[00:58:37] Like they're fairly like uncomplex and not like they don't throw huge amounts of money

[00:58:42] of profit around.

[00:58:45] And if you have that, you pay almost more for your accounting because you have to do accounting

[00:58:53] for these things.

[00:58:54] Then you actually get in profit.

[00:58:56] It's a bit of a, and this is really where you have to criticize Germany with the system.

[00:59:01] Like you're forced as an entrepreneur to make decisions like decades into the future.

[00:59:08] Right.

[00:59:09] Because once in 20 years, when I sell my company for 50 million, I do need this structure.

[00:59:15] Otherwise I'm screwed or I don't want to pay all these taxes.

[00:59:21] But in order to have that structure, I have to do it now before I even know if it's successful.

[00:59:26] Like there's no way around this.

[00:59:27] You cannot redo it later or very hard.

[00:59:31] So that's a bit sad.

[00:59:34] It almost advantages people that can plan so far in advance because maybe they inherited

[00:59:39] a company that is running 400 years already and is in decline.

[00:59:44] And the new entrepreneurs sitting there and saying, it's too much.

[00:59:47] It's too hard.

[00:59:48] And then either they figure it out like some of us or they move to the US, which is fairly

[00:59:55] a wise decision.

[00:59:57] Right.

[00:59:57] I'm not blaming anybody who moves to another country to start a company for that reason.

[01:00:02] You don't even have to move.

[01:00:03] Right.

[01:00:03] That's the thing with the Delaware C Corp stuff.

[01:00:05] You have to, you can make it with, sorry, I think you meant not moving physically, but

[01:00:10] also just moving your company.

[01:00:12] Right.

[01:00:12] No, I meant moving physically.

[01:00:13] You meant physically.

[01:00:13] Okay.

[01:00:14] Okay.

[01:00:14] Because you can also go the Stripe Atlas route and just create the company in the US.

[01:00:19] You can't.

[01:00:20] No.

[01:00:20] Okay.

[01:00:20] So here's the problem with that.

[01:00:22] Because I've done that.

[01:00:23] I had a company in Estonia because they have an e-citizenship program.

[01:00:28] So you can create a company there.

[01:00:29] It was amazing.

[01:00:30] It was a living in the future.

[01:00:31] I'd signed all my documents with a card reader.

[01:00:34] Amazing.

[01:00:35] However, what happens is that the tax law, and this applies to basically every country,

[01:00:40] the tax law says, if you are the sole proprietor of a company, companies in another country,

[01:00:47] you pay taxes where you work.

[01:00:50] Right.

[01:00:50] Right.

[01:00:51] So you live in Germany.

[01:00:53] German state essentially says, your company's here because you are here.

[01:00:56] It doesn't matter if it's registered in Estonia.

[01:00:58] You're here.

[01:00:59] You pay taxes here.

[01:01:00] Right.

[01:01:01] Well, fuck.

[01:01:02] Exactly.

[01:01:03] So what are the ways around it?

[01:01:05] One way that I think most people use is ignorance.

[01:01:07] They just do it.

[01:01:09] They don't tell anybody.

[01:01:10] But we all know that this goes well to a certain extent.

[01:01:14] And then as soon as you get big enough or something is screwed up, it really haunts you.

[01:01:19] And it haunted me for years.

[01:01:21] The other option is you are not the only one that owns that company.

[01:01:26] You're not a maturity stakeholder.

[01:01:27] You basically found it with other people together or whatever.

[01:01:31] Or for every executive decision, you travel into another country.

[01:01:34] Some kind of trickery around that.

[01:01:37] Or you just don't own it outright.

[01:01:39] Then it's fine.

[01:01:40] Because then you are not the company.

[01:01:42] You are just somebody who works for the company.

[01:01:45] But yeah, as long as you are like the sole proprietor, like you own 100%, you have this problem.

[01:01:51] And I had this problem that the German tax office says, here's your company.

[01:01:56] I don't care where it's registered.

[01:01:58] Okay.

[01:01:58] That might make like the holding GmbH the only thing that actually makes sense.

[01:02:03] Because I wanted to say one thing is the cost of funding.

[01:02:07] People might not even be able to found a company in Germany.

[01:02:10] Because I can tell you that small little limited company costs about a thousand euros to found.

[01:02:16] And then nothing else has happened.

[01:02:18] And you also have to put money into it so it doesn't go bankrupt.

[01:02:21] So all around, it took us like 3,000 euros that are now bound into the company and paid to the people that founded the company for us.

[01:02:28] Because you can't do that alone.

[01:02:30] And then you're like, okay, I might be able to do this because I'm a freelancer.

[01:02:34] I have the money.

[01:02:34] But an 18, 19-year-old indie hacker from Germany might not be able to do that.

[01:02:39] And they are inherently a worse outcome than I am because I have the money or the connections or the people to do it.

[01:02:48] That's one thing.

[01:02:49] And then also founding the company in Stripe Atlas or with Estonia takes two days.

[01:02:55] Founding our company took from this March to about two weeks ago.

[01:03:01] Yeah.

[01:03:01] October.

[01:03:02] Sorry.

[01:03:03] Yeah.

[01:03:03] October.

[01:03:03] I think October was when we got our VAT number.

[01:03:06] So the last...

[01:03:06] Yeah.

[01:03:07] Takes.

[01:03:08] It's crazy.

[01:03:08] That's also that to consider.

[01:03:10] You're not going to found a company here fast.

[01:03:12] Yeah.

[01:03:13] So you're in our situation.

[01:03:14] What do you do?

[01:03:14] You can't cry because it's not as awesome as in the US and Singapore and Great Britain.

[01:03:19] You can also be happy because we are not living in Portugal or Portugal is actually quite good now.

[01:03:26] But Spain or like how many indie hackers do you know that have businesses in Spain and Italy and France and Brazil and South America?

[01:03:35] It's harder.

[01:03:36] It's even harder there.

[01:03:37] You have to complain but then you have to remember that it's possible and somehow you can get it done.

[01:03:41] And that's still a good thing.

[01:03:43] Yeah.

[01:03:43] Maybe at one point in the future we'll change some stuff and actually have less bureaucracy.

[01:03:49] I think you just tweeted something about us being like the next...

[01:03:53] What was the country above us in the bureaucracy ranking that you posted?

[01:03:57] Azerbaijan.

[01:03:58] Azerbaijan.

[01:03:58] Yeah.

[01:03:59] Maybe we'll get to one or two positions further up.

[01:04:02] By the way, here's something interesting.

[01:04:04] So I looked for what are the least bureaucratic companies.

[01:04:09] No, they are the most bureaucratic companies.

[01:04:12] And I expected Germany to be up there.

[01:04:14] Now, here's a funny thing.

[01:04:15] The US was actually right next to Azerbaijan.

[01:04:18] Not in the screenshot.

[01:04:20] And I have heard people in the US telling me like it's actually as worse as it is for you, but it hits you later.

[01:04:26] Once you get big, you do have the same kind of problems with a lot of outdated processes and paperwork because these agencies are just as underfunded and understaffed as ours.

[01:04:40] However, in the US, you have the advantage that you can go by under the radar early on and you are in a very business friendly environment.

[01:04:50] And in Germany, you are basically in a business hostile environment.

[01:04:53] The common German mindset is very hostile to business.

[01:04:57] So that's that.

[01:04:59] Anyway.

[01:05:00] So maybe it's not as bad as we think or maybe it's bad everywhere.

[01:05:05] So it works out.

[01:05:07] Lucas, I think we're running out of time.

[01:05:09] But I have one question that I want to ask you in the end, which is one lesson or advice you would give to someone who's starting out as indie hacker now in this environment.

[01:05:19] I'm not very good with this question because I always feel like it doesn't really apply.

[01:05:25] And I would say I admire you because right now we have this.

[01:05:29] Like when we started, there was no AI.

[01:05:31] Now there's AI.

[01:05:32] I feel like there's so many opportunities, so many cool things you can build with AI.

[01:05:35] Like just do it.

[01:05:37] Just like we have, I literally have one guy in our indie hacker meetup right here.

[01:05:41] And he builds an AI tool that creates shorts, like short video format.

[01:05:47] And it's cool.

[01:05:48] I love it.

[01:05:49] Like it's a really cool product.

[01:05:50] And there's another guy I have talked to also from here who's building like 3D.

[01:05:56] AI that builds your 3D models.

[01:05:58] I'm not exactly.

[01:05:59] I haven't tested it myself.

[01:06:00] Yeah, I've seen something like that.

[01:06:01] Yeah.

[01:06:01] And he makes great.

[01:06:03] Like he is bigger than stage timer.

[01:06:05] Easily.

[01:06:05] Easy.

[01:06:06] And he grew so fast.

[01:06:08] It's amazing.

[01:06:09] It's maybe not what everybody will experience, but there's this cool opportunity.

[01:06:12] Just do it.

[01:06:13] We all just learn that we are failing.

[01:06:15] So we may as well.

[01:06:16] So the big tip is go into artificial intelligence at the moment.

[01:06:20] I would just try stuff out.

[01:06:21] Don't have to.

[01:06:22] Yeah.

[01:06:23] I think I might have to get back to that as well.

[01:06:25] Just try stuff out.

[01:06:27] I think a good idea.

[01:06:28] Yeah.

[01:06:29] Look us for that.

[01:06:30] If people want to learn more about you, where do they find you on the internet?

[01:06:35] Yeah.

[01:06:35] Best go to Twitter.

[01:06:37] My tag is, my ID is underscore L Herman.

[01:06:42] Two R.

[01:06:43] One R.

[01:06:43] Two N.

[01:06:43] And I'm trying to post interesting stuff that you want to read.

[01:06:47] It's not always, it doesn't always work.

[01:06:48] But yeah.

[01:06:49] I would say it works.

[01:06:51] Yeah.

[01:06:51] That's the best place where you can find me.

[01:06:53] All right.

[01:06:54] If you want to check out Lukas there, you can find that link and also links to his products

[01:06:59] always in the description as always.

[01:07:02] Lukas, thank you for taking the time to be on here.

[01:07:04] A great episode, I think.

[01:07:06] And yeah.

[01:07:07] Do you have final words for the listeners?

[01:07:09] Thanks for having me.

[01:07:10] Have a good day.

[01:07:11] Thank you.

[01:07:12] Goodbye.

[01:07:13] Bye.

[01:07:14] And that's our episode.

[01:07:16] Thank you for sticking with us to the end.

[01:07:18] You can find me on Twitter with the username IceBellApps.

[01:07:20] That's I-C-E-B-E-A-R-L-A-B-S.

[01:07:22] We have a website you can check out.

[01:07:24] Go to codeandconquer.fm to find out more.

[01:07:27] You can find this podcast on Twitter, TikTok and Instagram with the handle codeconquerpod

[01:07:31] and can write us an email at hello at codeandconquer.fm.

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[01:07:45] Thank you so much for listening.

[01:07:47] Till next time.