Episode 91
· 57:51
Welcome back to the Product People Show. It is 02/2018, brand new year. Hope you had a great holiday. I'm back today with an interview with Josh Nielsen from Zencastr. You're really gonna like this one, especially because Josh is, very humble.
Speaker 1:He has all these comments like this.
Speaker 2:I I I mean, I I think there are some good takeaways, but
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I really I really do think, like, most of it is, like, a, I got lucky, and b, I just kinda kept moving.
Speaker 1:So with honesty like that, you know it's gonna be a good show. This show is sponsored by Mega Maker Club. This is my community for product entrepreneurs, developers, designers, anyone looking to launch their own thing. Megamaker.co/club. We don't always have registration open, but it is open right now just in time for you to kick things off for the new year.
Speaker 1:Alright. Megamaker.co/club. It was previously product people club, but we changed the name. Alright. Let's get into this interview with Josh.
Speaker 1:I'm here with Josh Nielsen from Zencastr. How's it going, Josh?
Speaker 2:Hey. How's it going?
Speaker 1:And where where are you calling from today?
Speaker 2:I'm in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Speaker 1:Salt Lake City, Utah. And, the last time we talked, you were in Thailand. And I think that was it it was a couple years ago, and you had only been working on Zencastr for a little bit. Maybe just quickly describe what Zencastr is and who it's for.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Zencastr basically helps podcasters record their remote guests in studio quality. It does this by doing what's called a double ended recording where you have everybody open up our web application and when you hit record it records everybody locally on their end and then sends you each as a separate solo track per guest once you're done. And this is in contrast to what people commonly do where they record with Skype, which can be subject to having a VoIP artifacts and, you know, inconsistencies in the quality throughout the call due to the network conditions.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And how did you come up with that idea in the first place? Like, how did you know that that was even something worth pursuing?
Speaker 2:Well, I was I was I was pursuing a different idea where I was trying to make a digital audio workstation in the browser because they just come out with all these neat tools to play with audio in the browser and synthesize audio and stuff like that. And, you know, I just was starting to realize that a, it was really early for that idea, still is. And b, it was gonna it was a huge amount of work. I was kind of just it was half of a it was a half of a toy idea that maybe I would turn into a business at some point. And I just realized that, you know, you need a team of people and the platform need to be much more mature for that to work.
Speaker 2:And then I had a found out I was having a baby. And so I was like, okay. I need a quicker path to revenue and, you know, something that's simpler. And, anyway, along that time, I previously, when I was working on an even earlier company, someone had told me, hey, I don't know about what you're doing here but podcasters have this problem, dealing with audio, getting their audio something. I didn't even really know what he meant.
Speaker 2:I didn't I didn't even really ask. I didn't care at the time and because I was totally focused on what I was doing. But it kinda stuck in the back of my head. And when I was looking for a new idea, I was like, I wonder what I can take that will use my know, you this knowledge I've learned about this audio stuff in the browser and apply it to something a little bit different Mhmm. That had a more kind of fixed scope or so I thought.
Speaker 2:And so I started I just I knew some people who had podcasts, and I started asking them, hey, you know, is there a problem here? What's going on? And as I started to hear them explaining, you know, the problems that they had, I could see, you know, that this brand new technology, you know, would allow for a new solution that didn't exist before. Mhmm. And so I was like, oh, I could build that in a cup you know, in a month.
Speaker 2:And so I started working on it. Six months later, had a beta for people to try out. And, yeah, I kinda went from there.
Speaker 1:So it took a little bit longer than you thought.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm probably years behind where I thought I would be right now at this point just because it's been such a crazy technical endeavor that has definitely put me in over my head a few times. And at the same time, you know, the browsers are still kind of shaping up how these APIs for doing the audio stuff works. And so things change every time they do a release.
Speaker 2:And so there's been a lot of, kinda adapting, and and it's kept me on my toes for sure.
Speaker 1:And what year was that? That was 2014 when you started, like, talking to people and working on it?
Speaker 2:Yep. November 2014.
Speaker 1:Okay. And I just wanna pause there because there's been this trend as I've talked to, like, more and more people. You started by kinda looking at this emerging technology in the browser and trying to build a business out of that. And then you realized that wasn't gonna work. And it was in a human interaction that you'd had earlier that kinda ended up being the business idea.
Speaker 1:Do I do I have that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I definitely came kinda full circle from, being know, trying to having a solution in search of a problem to then kind of hearing that what a real problem was and then adapting the solution to fit that, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it it just seems like sometimes, you know, especially people that are technical, we can really be enchanted with new technology or enchanted with maybe a technical challenge. But in your case, was like running into real human beings and these kind of almost like, that was kind of a serendipitous moment, you know, that person reaching out to you and saying, hey. I don't know what the heck you're working on, but this is this is something I need. And I
Speaker 2:mean, it it totally was. It was actually at just to give you even more context, the the company that I was working on at the time was called Soundkeep, and we were trying to build, like, a GitHub for music. Mhmm. And which we found out later no one want no one really want. I mean, people kinda want it, but not in the way that there's a couple companies that have kinda carried the torch in a way there, but the way we were doing it was not at all workable.
Speaker 2:And musicians are quite different about their creations than programmers. But anyway, so we I was actually out of Techstars for a day in San Antonio trying to pitch that company when one of the mentors there was like, hey. I don't know. But, What about this?
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, it was totally kinda out of left field. But it came as a a part of the process of of digging down on that previous problem. Even though it didn't end up being the right angle, it you know, we wouldn't have I I wouldn't have I would have heard that otherwise if I hadn't been trying to do something.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I I think that's the like, the question a lot of people have when they're getting started is, like, where do ideas come from?
Speaker 1:And then as they're kinda growing their business, they're like, okay. Well, where and where does, like, the improvement in a business come from? And and
Speaker 2:and also I think part of the the lesson there, at least for me, was telling people about what you're doing is a lot more valuable than trying to hide what you're doing. Yeah. Because then people people wanna you know, people can collaborate with you easier if they know what's going on. And so
Speaker 1:Yeah. And until, like, AI, like, until, like, AI robots start buying products, you have to interact with real human beings because they're the ones that are ultimately gonna be taking out their credit card. Right? So that that, like, if you're just keeping it to yourself and not actually getting it in front of people, even just the idea, getting the idea in front of people. Like, I don't did you did you pitch Soundscape to any musicians?
Speaker 1:Like, did you try to get like, see what their interest would be, you know, just talking to them? And, like, what was their feedback?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, yes and no. We definitely didn't do enough of that. The idea kinda came out of, we did the node knockout for, like, 2012 or 2011, I think. And we won the the team prize for building this collaborative beat sequencer
Speaker 1:Okay. Yep.
Speaker 2:Which I think is still alive if you go to, like, ebb.sound. Actually, I forgot. I'll have to we'll put in the show notes.
Speaker 1:It's
Speaker 2:okay. My ebb.somethingcoded.com, I think we'll load it up. Yep. And it's real simple, but it was real it's it's a cool, real fun, like, social experiment where people could make beats together live in real time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we're like and, you know, it was popular enough to win the the contest and it's like a popularity whatever. Yeah. It's like, oh, maybe there's something here. Maybe we've struck a chord or something. And so that's kinda where we got the confidence to move forward with some sort of an idea around music collaboration online.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But we didn't do nearly enough actually talking to like, you know, people about like pulling out their wallet and, you know, what would really be valuable enough and not just a toy and that sort of thing. Mhmm. And and and we we came to find out that, yeah, it's fun to, like, do this jam thing together. But once musicians start actually, like, composing, they're very protective of their art.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:A a, they don't necessarily wanna collaborate with just anybody. Like, the idea of just putting it out there and letting someone else mess with it was really threatening to a lot of people. Yeah. And, you know, the idea of, like, sharing it for free or, like, doing, like, a open source kind of an idea was not flying very well with with many of them either. So, you know, that's kind of how that went.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so you've decided to investigate this idea of doing, you know, this podcast app. When you started working on it and you thought it would take you a month, did you do any marketing? Like, did you put up a landing page? Did you do any sort of validation work, or were you just heads down working on this thing for six months?
Speaker 2:You know, again, I didn't talk to as you know, I didn't talk to, like, hundreds of people or even dozens really. I talked to, like I had, like, you know, five friends who are podcasters. And because I thought I could build it pretty quickly
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh, you know, these guys seem to think there's a thing there, and I'll just build it and see what they think. Yeah. You know, again, I've you know, I think maybe most software developers have this problem of, like, vastly underestimating how long things will take, but that kind of let me blunder my way into it. It was a bit of a you know, looking back on it as I got basically got lucky that it worked. But, you know, at the end of the day, I was having fun.
Speaker 2:I didn't quit my normal job at that point. Yeah. I I I was doing contract development at the time and so I just paired my hours back to like twenty, thirty hours a week and, you know, if it had flopped, wouldn't have been that big of a deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And did any of those initial friends of yours, did they any of any of them become customers?
Speaker 2:Like, no. I don't think so. But what, you know, what it is is kind of like supposed to like, one of them didn't isn't podcasting anymore. The other one was not, like, a host. He was, like, a kind of, like, the cohost on the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so he wasn't the one that was really his host, I think, has used the service. I haven't checked recently. Yeah. But the friends of theirs and that through that, their podcasting network that they're associated with are definitely, you you know, paying users of the service.
Speaker 2:And but, yeah, I know. It's it's kinda funny in that regard. Like, most of the people that I've worked with closely on, like, getting a lot of feedback even through the beta plan that were really, really helpful and, you know, excited about the service aren't paid users, I don't think right now. But part of that is podcasters churn a lot. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Like, there's a you know, even if you're even if the service you're providing for them is perfect, you know, it it takes a lot of work to keep a podcast going and staying involved with it and stuff. So, you know, that's one challenge to the business, I suppose.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And the reason I bring that up is it's always interesting to hear, like, who people thought would be their customers and who ended up being their customers.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, another thing is I have a very liberal free plan. Too liberal, actually. We're probably gonna have to to rein that in a little bit at some point. And so Some
Speaker 1:people need to get in now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. So that that's part of it. There's a lot of people that are even, like, using it for, you know, business purposes that are happy with the free plan. And that's okay for now because I wanna initially, I wanna try and offer some more follow on services to bring the to bring those people into paid plans.
Speaker 2:And I've got some ideas about in the future how to monetize the free users as well. So I'm not super as long as I can cover my costs and keep some growth going, I'm not super worried about getting every last dollar out of it right now. Mhmm. So I see.
Speaker 1:And so I I wanna kinda go back to something you said too. You mentioned briefly that you felt like you got lucky, in a way. What were what do you mean by that? Like, what was the what role did luck play?
Speaker 2:I think one of the I was just in the right place at the right time. For instance, like, right when this technology was shaping up, I kinda caught wind of this idea. This idea of doing a double ended podcast recording has existed since, well, before podcasting. It's a radio technique. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:They they they used to, radio stations I mean, I think they they still do this. They have sister stations in, like, other parts of their country or the world where if they wanna record two people talking, they'll have them one person come into the studio over there and then this person do it here so they can get a good studio quality recording of each person, you know, for, know, for for later. So because most of them are not live like it sounds like on the radio. Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and so so this is an existing idea. And even when I launched the the beta for Zencastr, there was even since podcasting was kinda heating up. Right? Well, that's nothing I got lucky about. Right?
Speaker 2:So from when I started till when I launched the beta, like, serial came out and a bunch of these in, you know, this big, kind of resurgence and interest. But, like, there was a company called PodClear, and they were building they're trying to capitalize on this new resurgence and interest, and they built, desktop applications that do this. You got that got this friction about how to get them into install it and all this stuff. And it was kind of funny because I and I I've I've since, like, you know, met these guys, great people, and I would have done the same thing in their situation. But when I launched the beta, you know, within a week, they announced that they were gonna be working on a web version because it was just it was like, you know, this is obviously where this tech is going.
Speaker 2:And so and they ended up getting bought and then by Blab, actually.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Wow. And and so, like, you were working on this November 2014. So, obviously, you didn't make any revenue on this in 02/2014. 2015 rolls around, so you launch in, like, April.
Speaker 1:Is that right?
Speaker 2:Like, May 2015. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. May 2015. And so did you launch to paying customers? What was the the launch like?
Speaker 2:No. I ran it in beta in a free beta forever, and I probably shouldn't have done that. I made probably things a lot harder on myself than I had to, but, you know, it's tough because, like, people don't care if your podcast recording software works like 80%.
Speaker 1:You know? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like like, stability and reliability is a huge part of it. And, you know, when I started building it, I didn't realize at the time it was actually wasn't possible to do. And like, it became possible as I was building it. Yeah. Because I've been really riding the bleeding edge of the technology.
Speaker 2:And, mean, there's still some, you know, there's still some things that need, like, issues and problems that can happen in recordings like with audio drift and things like that that I you know, the browsers are you know, they're gonna be fixing it, but it's not there yet. And we're just gonna have to kinda work through it until then.
Speaker 1:So so it ended up being a lot tougher than you thought, and you launched in May. And do you remember how many people you launched to? Like, who did you launch to? Did you have a waiting list, or was it just you just send it out to
Speaker 2:No. I had no I had no waiting list. I sent it out to some friends. Nobody knew. Nobody cared.
Speaker 2:I you know, in the early like, I don't know if there's a way to go back to this, but if you go back to, like, the early early days of the Twitter or of, like, people tweeting at me
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, it was it was, like, it was really rough. Like, they were, like I remember when someone tweeted me. They're like, you need to wrap caution tape around this thing. Like, I was like, okay. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I'm trying my best here. It is beta. We're testing. You know? But, you know, as soon as it's available, you know, there are some people that the beta thing scared off.
Speaker 2:But Yeah. That's one thing to keep in mind is people I don't know. It didn't register with a lot of people that, like, beta meant, like, experimental testing mode. Yeah. And so the pressure was on pretty early to, like, get get it solid and reliable.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it was I really didn't nobody was really using it initially and or knew about it. I didn't launch to a big audience, but what I did do is I just went on Twitter and started searching for, like, people who were swearing at Skype about the audio quality on their podcast.
Speaker 1:Nice. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, like, expletive Skype or, you know, whatever podcast and, you know so I just I would just sit on Twitter every day and had searches for those things, and then I would just tweet to him. And I had a decent amount of success just at least getting people to try it because the problem was real.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And especially in, like, countries like Australia or in South America where the Internet is a lot less reliable. Yeah. It was a major pain point for for those people. So, yeah, that was kinda how I got the initial, you know, thing rolling.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Just reaching out to people directly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. After about I didn't I only did that for maybe the first few you know, couple 100, couple 100. Somebody product hunted it kinda early on in that time period, and that took me to about a thousand, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah. July Which
Speaker 2:is did you
Speaker 1:07/12/2015.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so that was a little a good little boost. Nothing huge, but, you know, going from 200 to a thousand was nice. And then, luckily I mean, podcast you know, the other thing is podcasting is just kinda and podcasters are just social anyway. They've all got Twitter accounts.
Speaker 2:They're all on Facebook. They're they're talking about it in their show. They're having other podcasters on their show. So it's kinda naturally viral in that regard. So Yeah.
Speaker 2:I haven't really had to do. So far, I haven't done any real marketing. It's all been kinda organic word-of-mouth. And Yeah. I think right now, we're at something like 30,000 registered users or something like that.
Speaker 1:Wow. Wow. So you so you launch and you get a couple 100 users just kind of like you working working Twitter and everything. And then July, you get up to a thousand. And since then, you've grown to 33,000.
Speaker 2:Some some something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:When did you like, when was the first time you got paid? Like, when was the first time you had a something people could could pay for?
Speaker 2:It wasn't till last November.
Speaker 1:So November 2016.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Which is I think which I think is like you know, I think most people, like, probably laugh behind their backs at me about that. But, you know, I just I wanted it to be ready, and I wouldn't have even launched it then except for, at some point, TechCrunch wanted to do an article on it. And they're like, do you have anything coming up that we can, like, do the article about? And I was like, I guess we could I guess I might as well launch.
Speaker 2:And so we set a date. And, man, I, like anyway, I wasn't really I had to work through you know, I had to miss several nights of sleep just to get the thing ready for that Yeah. TechCrunch launch. And the the article ended up being terrible. I'll probably never work with TechCrunch again.
Speaker 2:Oh, really? Yeah. But Did
Speaker 1:it did it end up bringing in any users? So, yeah, I'm looking at it right now. So 11/13/2016. Yeah. Did it end up helping you at all or not really?
Speaker 2:Not really. I mean, they launched the the thing was is I needed to launch on a you know, on, like, a a slow day because I already had a decent amount of users. So I had to do it on, like, a Sunday or, like a Saturday night, Sunday morning. And they wanna do the article right then. And so it was it was they they post the article at a bad time.
Speaker 2:TechCrunch readers are not necessarily like my target. Yeah. I don't know if I thought about that much at the time. Mhmm. And, you know, they didn't ask really ask me very you know, they didn't do very good research.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And they used my I gave them a bunch of new artwork. I just redesigned the site. They used the old stuff. So, anyway but the thing is is, like
Speaker 1:That's inter I just wanna kinda stick there for a while just because I know for some people that would be the holy grail. It's like, oh, if I could only get on TechCrunch, then everything is gonna be okay. Like, I'll get thousands of users, and that's basically the only thing stopping me from being successful is getting on TechCrunch. But I've I've heard other people have similar stories. Like, it's not the It's not
Speaker 2:that I mean, at least for me, I it was I don't think you'd even necessarily notice in my you know, maybe I have my page visits were a little higher that day or something. It wasn't substantial increase in my sign ups or anything like that. Would you
Speaker 1:say that product tenant was better for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Probably. I'd have to look. But, I mean, definitely, at the time, product hunt made a bigger dent Mhmm. In my over in, like like, I don't know, percentage wise.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So you decide to launch November 2016. Do you remember, like, who was the first person to pay you?
Speaker 1:Or the first is there anything know
Speaker 2:who it is. I don't I I probably can't, like you know, I don't know if they've revealed that they use Zyncaster in public or not.
Speaker 1:Was it it was it was a beta user that was already on?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, it was somebody who's who's you had used the service for a long time. I've I've got a lot of users who have been through been with it for since early beta days. So, you know, there's some of them stuck around. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Some of them like, I think something like the first month let me just look real quick. It was like $8.08 or 12 I think I was did $12,000 in revenue the first month.
Speaker 1:Wow. See, that's pretty crazy. You know, maybe people made fun.
Speaker 2:But I had I had been building up for a long time. Like, I you know? So I had at that point, I don't remember, but it was something like at least 10,000 people in the in the in the the registered users. Yeah. And, you know, so I had at least that many people who I could just blast it out to.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, you we were just you're just saying some people kinda made fun of you for waiting so long to launch paid plans, but there's not very many SaaS apps that launch into, you know, that into five digits even. Right? Like, that that doesn't usually, you start really low, a couple 100, and then the next month, you do more, and the next month, you do more. And that's why they call it the long slow SaaS wrap ramp of death.
Speaker 1:Right? It it takes a
Speaker 2:long time. Yeah. I mean, I still feel like I'm on that ramp. I just I just popped the clutch of it, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so but, you know, I it was it was definitely was stressful not having that revenue for a long time.
Speaker 1:I had
Speaker 2:to admit I mean, the reason why I did it that way is because I didn't wanna you know, the one of the reasons why my previous attempts didn't work is we've quit our jobs and ran out of money. Mhmm. And I didn't wanna have a limited amount of runway. Mhmm. That that meant that I had to couldn't devote all my time to it, and it took a lot longer to get to where I wanted to be.
Speaker 2:But, you know, it you know, once I was able to, I'd already built up enough users to and but, you know, I didn't know. I was still praying at that point. Yeah. Like, okay. I hope that because at that point, I think two months before that, I was like, okay.
Speaker 2:I think I'm ready. I'm close enough to launch. I'm out of money. But so I I think I took out, like, $20. I applied for, like, five credit cards at once so they wouldn't so they wouldn't see each other.
Speaker 2:Like, they wouldn't register, so I could get and then as I got, like, $20 in credit quit quit working, and then spent that two months launching. And then at that point, I was like, okay. I either can either this is gonna work or I'm probably gonna have to go get a job
Speaker 1:get a job.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 1:I mean, that's pretty so how many users did that represent? Like, you had 10,000 registered users. How many ended up converting that that month?
Speaker 2:You know, I think I told you this before the call. I'm not that great at, like, tracking things and knowing things Yeah. About the business. I
Speaker 1:because it wasn't it, like, $20? Because the TechCrunch article says it's $20, initially per month. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's always been 20 I mean, the first person the the first guy that I asked about this that who was a podcaster, you know, I asked him, like, hey. How much would you pay? He said $20 a month. I was like, okay.
Speaker 2:So that was kinda where my pricing came from. Yeah. So this is He's a he's a an adviser in the company now. But
Speaker 1:Cool. So that's like 600 paying users your first month. That's that's pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I was I was hoping that it would get at least enough to cover you know, I was I think, you know, I was like, if I can get, you know, 6 or $7 a month out of this, then I was like, 4 or 5. I was like, I could probably make work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and, you know, so
Speaker 1:Yeah. So so great, yeah, great first month. And so how did it grow from there? You you'd launched you've probably still have some headaches around the product. Like, maybe talk a little bit about that because a lot of folks just kinda lead up to launch day, then they're like, okay.
Speaker 1:You know, they think it's gonna be smooth sailing. But do you remember any of the struggles you had back then right after you launched?
Speaker 2:Well, one of the big problems that I and one of the things that I'd probably try and figure out how to handle better next time if they you know, if there's a next time Mhmm. Would be I I I really underestimated the gravity of, like, support requests. It was totally feasible for me to, like, spend every day just talking to people and not actually making progress on the code base.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because when you have a product that's, like, almost what people need, but not quite there, they're gonna be talking to you all the time. And, you know, that can be really overwhelming, especially if they're not charging anything. Yeah. And so, I mean, there definitely were weeks that went by that I was just handling support requests and doing my my contracting and not making progress on the company. Partially Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I just burn out and and just, you know so How did you get
Speaker 1:out of that?
Speaker 2:Don't know that I did. I mean, now I have now I have help. I have I have, you know, customer support reps that help me, you know, field most of the stuff. But, you know, they're not like developers. And so a lot of the stuff, you know, if it's a bug, it's hard for them to logically reason about what might be causing it if they're not familiar with the inner workings of it.
Speaker 2:So a lot of it, I still do have to handle myself. But, you know, it is good. And for the first I mean, it wasn't until a couple months ago that I took my personal email off of all of our, like, transactional emails that went out
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Which I still feel kinda bad about, but it just got to be too much having those come directly to my inbox. So now let's go to the support support tickets.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And if we kinda plot your growth because that was a year ago. Right? That's November 2016, and now it's November 2017. What where are you at now?
Speaker 1:You said 33,000 registered users. What are you doing in MRR now?
Speaker 2:There's about there's about 30,000 registered users. The MRR is around 33,000. The actual net is maybe 5,000 more than that because the you know, people sign up for yearly plans or I also have some other revenue that's not recurring, like free users can buy, like, la carte post production credits and things like that.
Speaker 1:Okay. Gotcha. So and how many paying users? Do you do you have an idea of that? Yeah.
Speaker 1:I guess we could do the math on that. Just even
Speaker 2:1,500 ish, something like that.
Speaker 1:Okay. Wow. Yeah. It's I mean, that can
Speaker 2:give a real number if I let's see. Get my metrics. So so about 1,700 paying customers right now.
Speaker 1:Cool. Yeah. So you you've basically been able to double the number of paying users and the amount of monthly recurring revenue in a year. What what have you been doing, to make that happen? Like, has it just been organic?
Speaker 1:People are just sharing and telling other people about it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I've just been keeping my head above water, really. I think there's actually a lot of headroom as far as, like, if I wanted to, like, really crank up the volume on the marketing and stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I I still haven't done a lot of stuff that you know, I did I I did some consulting with you or you with me a while back around, you know, just how to, like, fix my user flow and AB test the the login page and stuff. I still haven't even had time to do that. Yeah. So I think there's a lot. I think I think I could really, you know, make you know, pump it up a little bit more if I had time to focus on it.
Speaker 2:But, you know, I'm at kind of this place where I'm trying to figure out how to grow the company in a way that keeps it fun. Because, like, my goals going into this where I wanna be economically, fully financially independent. I wanna be geographically independent. So I wanna be able to, you know, my wife is her family's from New Zealand. She's always dragging me over there.
Speaker 2:And I wanna be able to, like, work from cool places, and I kinda have to sometimes. And then the other thing is I wanted to be decision making independent. And I so I didn't want like, you know, investor, you know, I don't I hated the dynamic of like trying to get investors to like believe in you, You know? Mhmm. Because you just feel like you're trying to impress these people, and you don't know what they want.
Speaker 2:And, you know, you feel that you'd have catering to the investor rather than the the user. And so I was like, I don't want you know, at least initially, I wanted to, like, get a bootstrap to profitability without that. And then, you know, I cofounders also can be tricky. You know? If if you're not all on the same page, you can kinda compromise everything into, you know, a subpar product or you know?
Speaker 2:And so I wanted to be able to kinda be you know, if I say that this is the way it is and this is the way it is for better or worse, just to cut out the, you know, the time spent deliberating and compromising on things. Yeah. So with that said, my you know, now I'm reaching this point where it's like, okay. Well, you probably need to have, like, an office and a bunch of people who are, you know, working and helping you and, you know, you might wanna try and raise some money to dump into marketing and to be able to hire a CTO so you can focus on, you know, and all this stuff. And so or to hire a CMO and
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Try to figure out what, you know, what do I really want out of it. Because it it takes a long life of its own. Yeah. If you don't if you don't really grab it by the horns and say, this is what I want this to be, it'll become something. And it may not be what because I kinda, you know, I kinda created this so I didn't have to have a real job, and can it's you know, the the other thing that I thought I wanted well, I still want this, but I thought it was possible is, like, I wanted to work, ten hours a week Yeah.
Speaker 2:On something. I did not pick the right product for that.
Speaker 1:How much do you think you're working?
Speaker 2:All hours a week? I mean, I There's never there's never time that I don't have stuff to do. I mean, here's another problem with me and growing the company is I'm a very like, I'm great at, like for three months, I can work, you know, fifteen, twenty hours a day, but then I need, like, a month of, like, really slow. You know? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And and that's how I get the stuff done is, like, you know, kind of like a, I don't know, manic. And then what what's the other one? Manic depressive kind of a thing. Maybe I've got maybe I'm crazy. I don't know.
Speaker 2:But, like, I work really great in, like, spurts. Yeah. But what it requires now is, like, steadiness and consistency, and that's not what I'm good at. Mhmm. And so, yeah, trying to navigate that.
Speaker 2:So to answer your question, you know, sometimes, when we had when we we just did a big launch to move away away from using Dropbox to our own cloud storage, and we had a a solid deadline on that because Dropbox was turning off their API. Okay. And I I didn't sleep for like four days straight Wow. Working on that. So that was like the most I've ever worked on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But then, you know, and then there's sometimes when I just kinda go into maintenance mode and, you know, I'm not programming much and just trying to keep, you know, handle any support request that can't be handled without me. And, you know, and sometimes it's but I've never never ten hours a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That that part of the dream didn't come alive.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, this is an interesting point for you. Like, you've you've kinda got to the point now where it's it's profitable, where it's growing organically really well. But, yeah, if you're gonna get to the next stage, you have to make some decisions. Right? Like, are you going to hire, like, a bunch of full time staff?
Speaker 1:Are you gonna have an office? And then and then you also have to figure out what your role is gonna be in the midst of all that. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about that recently. I mean, I think I'd in my perfect scenario, what I would be doing is building out new new features and products. Mhmm. That's what I like doing is breaking new ground with the in programming most of the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, you know, we wanna start offering hosting plans soon. I'd love to just lock myself in a room for a few weeks and make the build that and not have to worry about anything else. Yeah. But, you know, one of the things I've learned is you can't really hire people or at least it's very hard.
Speaker 2:I haven't figured out how to hire people to do some something that you don't know how to do. Interesting. To to bring someone on to just you can bring someone on to do something for you, but you're not gonna get out of having to deal with that yourself
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:At least initially and without having a lot of trust with this person as well. Yeah. Because you know, yeah. I don't know. Maybe maybe other people have found the magic bullet there, but it see it tends to be that I have to dig in and learn how to do it myself, and then I know what exactly what I need and who I should hire and how what how I should what I should expect from them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then I maybe can kinda back off from there. But
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think that's a pretty common obstacle is the and there's even some wisdom in that of not hiring anyone for a role that you haven't done yourself, at least a little bit. So you you have some sort of sense of what is this what's actually involved in this and, you know, and even what how how would you know they're doing a good job? If Yeah. Because the best the best feeling is when you hire someone and then they come along and they are clearly better than you were.
Speaker 1:But unless you have that baseline of knowing, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You yeah. You might not know how good they are. They you might not know how bad or how good they are if you don't have any kind of a baseline, like you said.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah. So that that's one obstacle you've got, you know, for this coming year, it sounds like, is figuring out how to hire, who to hire next, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Figuring out how to delegate portions of the business out that in ways that free me up to do what I'm good at and also don't cut me completely out of the loop of my business. I mean, like, this is the point where, you know, it would be nice to have a cofounder who could be like, okay, you please be the CEO, include me in any major decisions, and let me just build. Yeah. But now it gets very complicated if you wanna, like, bring in, you know, some sort of a high powered CMO or a CEO to kinda push you to the next level because, a, they're gonna either be very they're gonna be very expensive either cash wise or equity wise or probably both.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, you know, it it it's hard to figure out. Like, I've been working at this for, you know, what, for almost four years. And how do you value that? And how do you value the new contribution?
Speaker 2:And how do you've come to, like, a a meeting of the minds from both sides. And Yeah. Then how do you test that and make sure you don't jump into the water too soon without you know? Yeah. It's it's tricky.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally. And and do you think because it it sounds like well, we touched on this a little bit, but, like, in terms of what you're planning on improving in your business this year, and one thing you mentioned was new features and new products. Is there anything else that you'd like to get out of the business this year that, you know, that you've thought about? Like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:2,018 would be great if we, you know, grew to this many users or we were able to implement this or I was able to, you know, cut myself out of customer support. Have you what kinds of, improvements are you looking for in 02/2018?
Speaker 2:You know, I don't have my revenue goals aren't that I don't know if my goals are typically based around revenue. Maybe they should be. I think, you know, I think I think in the next I think over the next twelve months, it wouldn't be crazy to to get to, like, a million ARR or something like that with you know, but I'd need some probably need some help with that. But the what I'd like I mean, the things that get me excited Mhmm. Is like mean, a, I wanna be able to pay for you know, wanna be able to have enough money to travel.
Speaker 2:Someday, I'd like to be able to buy first class tickets when I travel. That's the that's what I want money for. Yeah. But aside from that, like, I just get excited about building stuff. It's really cool to be in a space where the field is kind of wide open because this technology wasn't didn't exist before.
Speaker 2:And so there's all kinds of new cool stuff that could be built. There's a bunch of new feature, like, I mean, hosting plans are kind of a obvious thing for the future Zencastr. Mhmm. All kinds of stuff about, you know, matching people with advertisers, you know, adding video support, being able to then bring in some of those ideas that I was originally working on with the audio workstation so you could do some of your audio editing in Zencastr. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's let's see. What else is kind of I I don't know. Like, just making it more of like a one stop shop right now. Podcasting is very, like, spread out across lots of different services. It's really hard for a new podcaster.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because they're like, well, yeah, we'll help you record. But then if you need hosting, you gotta talk to these guys, and then they're gonna help you probably publish this RSS feed, and the next gonna gotta go to iTunes, and then you got all these, like, you're gonna be on Spotify or SoundCloud. You know? There's always, like, this big network of services you have to kinda know about and be aware of.
Speaker 2:And I think consolidating that is gonna is is happening and will continue to happen. And so just figuring out ways to do that. Like, making the soundboard in Zencastr, I I really like the idea of, like, instead of doing a bunch of editing in postproduction, making it so that you can drop in your intros and outros and whatever sounds and things during the call Yeah. Just on the fly. Save on the fly.
Speaker 2:And so more of like a live radio kind of thing. Live streaming. Like Yeah. Did you did you ever use Blab? Yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Blab was so cool. I can't I it's I was so stunned when they closed the doors because, like, it like, I actually kinda get chills now thinking about the experience that they created. Mhmm. And so, yeah, I would I think if I had time to just build stuff, I'm you know, I might start working in that direction because I think it's a shame that that experience is gone.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think it's interesting, like, because you're clearly really you get really excited about the product side of it. What what about, like, is is that some of that is just your own interest, but some of that, it sounds like, is coming from customers. Like, how have you stayed in touch with your customers? Has that just been, you know, doing customer support for so long?
Speaker 1:And when you're thinking about those things, are you thinking about specific customers that are, like, wanting those things, or is it more like, oh, I I just wanna build that stuff?
Speaker 2:Yeah. All of the above, I think. I mean, it's definitely a rush when you see somebody tweeting, like, oh, wow. This is the coolest new thing I've ever you know, on Twitter. Like, that's great.
Speaker 2:It all it also has a real downer when someone says something bad. But Yeah. So I get a good and I've I've had to rely heavily on users because, I mean, we didn't really talk about this, but I wasn't a podcaster.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Like, I'm I'm now recording a podcast. I would never had time to launch it because I've been so busy just, like, keeping the thing running. But, you know, I've I've had to rely very heavily on user feedback to know what what's needed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Luckily, it's that hasn't been a problem. I get more feedback than I can handle, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But maybe sorting through it and figuring out what's the really important pieces are. But, you know, some of them are just obvious when you're getting you know, every other person is asking you for like a mobile app. You're like, okay. Well, maybe I should have a mobile app.
Speaker 1:Do you have a mobile app right now or you that's not
Speaker 2:I don't know. I I don't. I I'd love to. But that's another thing. It's like, I just don't have the I just don't have the momentum for it right now.
Speaker 2:Like Yeah. We it it would be a whole separate code base. I'd need at least one full time dedicated person on that, and it's not something that would go away. You can't just build it. Like, there's so many people that wanna offer you a service where they're like, we'll charge you $80,000, and we'll build this app for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I was like, well, that's not Who's being
Speaker 1:retained that?
Speaker 2:It's it's not like that just is gonna be done after that. So it's more than just paying for an app. You have to build a team for that. And it's easily one of the most highly requested features, but it it's just not the right move right now. But next year, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That that might be something else you add to your road map.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is is there, like, a a certain customer type that's emerged? Like, you started just talking to your friends, but then, you know, you actually had people coming out of the woodwork to pay for this. Is there a certain type of person that buys Zencastr?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. Again, I don't know enough about the broad demographics, I think, as I should. But, you know, one thing I've learned is that there are definitely different categories of users. Like, you got the kind of the brand new well, there's there's broad there's a big span as far as like experience level. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:People that don't know anything about audio or technology or podcasting and they just have of of what they wanna say something. Yep. And this is how they wanna do it. All the way back to people who've been podcasting since the day one and they've got 20,000 studio at home. And so that's across the, you know That's
Speaker 1:spectrum. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's the spectrum there. And then but you've also got, like, as far as, like I guess you could think of it as, like, business mindedness.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You know? Some of these are a lot of these are, like, college kids playing League of Legends and wanna just wanna talk about, like, the latest hero that became available, you know, whatever. And that's why I always wanna keep a free plan because I love facilitating that. And I think that's great. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The the hard part is is those ones typically wanna have those are also the people that wanna have, like, five people and all their friends. Yeah. And so try figuring out how to have the free plans be more permissive in that way, but still, you know, finding ways to keep business users. Anyway, I'm rambling there. But Yeah.
Speaker 2:It goes it goes on to, like, you know, then you got I think the people who are doing well, you know, or who are actually like making money podcasting are people who have a side business or a side product, and the podcast is the funnel for them. Gotcha. And then you do have that top tier of people who've got, you know, hundreds or thousands or millions of listeners who just run ads and that's their thing. But Mhmm. Most I would say that's very rare.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you'd say most of the people paying for Zencastr are folks that, you know, they have some sort of product or service, and they're using the podcast as marketing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. People people are using it as a marketing channel.
Speaker 1:It's it's interesting because I think when people are dreaming up ideas, like, if I was dreaming up a podcast app, I'd be like, oh, you know, it'd probably be I think of a lot of hobby podcasters or, you know, people talking about their favorite board games or their favorite video games. And then maybe I can think of really popular podcasters that make lots of money in rev ad revenue. But for you, like, the customers that have emerged are kind of these these these business people that are this is just, like, another way for them to communicate to their customers. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm seeing more and more that, like, a podcast is just kind of becoming another facet of, like, your marketing strategy. Mhmm. You know, it's like you're gonna need to blog. You're gonna have maybe do your SEO stuff.
Speaker 2:Let's get a podcast going.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, it's like it's like one of those boxes to tick. And that's why it's really important that it's super easy
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it's not like their sole purpose. Right? Yeah. And a lot for a lot of them, it's like the the way it's being sold to them is like, hey. You wanna have blog posts, but those are kinda hard to create and do well, and they take time.
Speaker 2:But if you just have forty five minutes, you know, like, a lot of it a lot of what's happening is, like, producers are getting clients and then telling them, hey. Give me forty five minutes of your time. We'll meet you at Zencastr. I'll schedule it. You come in.
Speaker 2:They'll come in. I'll be there. We'll record. I'll edit it for you. Bam.
Speaker 2:So it's really just like, you know, they they so in a lot of time in a in a lot of cases, the p the host is not even pressing record. Like Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's these other folks. It's so interesting. Like, you would have never been able to guess that back in now I'm going back again. Back in November 2014, you'd have never been able to guess that those would have been your paying users really. Right?
Speaker 1:Because you you didn't have the information.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I had no idea. Like, I had no idea about the business or economics of podcasting or, like, any of it. I just it was really just kind of, like, on a whim because this guy told me he'd pay me $20 a month. You know?
Speaker 1:And and maybe we'll end on this and make and make this the last question. But kind of along those lines, what do you think aspiring product people get wrong about, you know, building products? What what mistakes are they making early on, or what kind of wrong thinking do they have?
Speaker 2:I I think trying to get trying to get I think the information gathering phase can take too long. I think a lot of people just read books and books and books about business and don't ever actually get started. Yeah. I I think that the
Speaker 1:So put something out. Like, even if it in your case, if you hadn't been working on Soundscape
Speaker 2:Sound Soundkeep. Soundkeep is what it was.
Speaker 1:Sorry. Soundkeep. You would have never met that guy at Techstars. You would have never heard that thing. It was the process of making things and putting it out that
Speaker 2:Yeah. You gotta put your neck out there, and even go heading in the complete wrong direction is gonna be faster camp, think, in a lot of cases than trying to read books about what you should do forever. You know? Yeah. The the other thing is, like, I'd depending on what your business is, but was really struck me how how useful Twitter is.
Speaker 2:And even though people, like, get get down on Twitter's business model or whatever, I own stock in Twitter because of this. I'm like
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was so important, you know, for for me to be able to access those people. Like, in the future, I probably if I was having, like, a consumer facing product at all Mhmm. I I would probably not do anything unless I could find dozens, if not hundreds of people complaining about this problem on Twitter because that's what people do on Twitter is they complain. Yeah. And if they're not complaining on Twitter, then maybe there's not a problem.
Speaker 1:Yep. That's a great that's great. I think we'll end it there. Josh, thanks so much, man. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Folks that are folks that are interested in Zencastr can go to the website. It's zed or zencastr.com. And, Josh is on the web at Josh on the web. Sorry. He's on Twitter at Josh on the web.
Speaker 1:And then there's also Zencastr Twitter handle. Anything else people should know about?
Speaker 2:No. I think we covered it in-depth.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Great. Thanks so much for doing this, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Alright. So that is episode 91. You can go to productpeople.tv/91 and get all of the show notes. Thanks again to Josh. And, go to megamaker.co/club.
Speaker 1:Go to for the product people club, that's now called Mega Maker Club, and go to, megamaker.co/profit if you want me to email you all of these case studies, including one from Brennan Dunn, Nick DeSabato. Lots more coming up in 02/2018, and I will see you next time.
Speaker 2:I I I mean, I I think there are some good takeaways, but Mhmm. I really I really do think, like, most of it is, a, I got lucky, and b, I just kinda kept moving. You know? Like
Speaker 1:Yeah. But there's some key things, like, I think Twitter giving you access to what people are complaining about is an interesting insight. Because often people will try to pull it out of folks like, hey, what are you struggling with? Or and I that whenever I get that question, it's usually they're asking me at the wrong time. Like, if if someone emails me and goes, hey, I really wanna know what you're struggling with.
Speaker 1:I might I might not be struggling with anything at that moment. But if you look, you know, on my Twitter feed, I've probably complained about dozens of things, you know, along the way. Or if you were working in my office here with me, you might be able to observe me, like, swearing or getting frustrated with something. Then you can see it. But, you know, just like emailing someone out the blue and going, hey.
Speaker 1:So what are you struggling with right now? I've nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I agree because I get emails like that too where, you know, especially, like, it'll be existing services that I use. And they're like, what's your biggest pain point? Because they're trying to build out new products. I'm like, I don't know, man.
Speaker 2:But the the yeah. Yeah. Like, I bet you could even like, if you just search Twitter for, like, fuck Yeah. And just and just browse for a good while, you'd start to see, like, them complain about something that maybe you had you had an interest in, and then he could, like, go from there.
Speaker 1:Totally. I've I've often searched so frustrated with. And then There
Speaker 2:you go.
Speaker 1:If you, like, search that, it's like, number one is, like, so frustrated with Sprint right now.
Listen to Product People using one of many popular podcasting apps or directories.