Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast. We're two startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig.
Speaker 1 00:21 All right, welcome to episode two, 10 of rogue startups, a rather somber one this week. Craig, how are you doing?
Speaker 2 00:29 A good man. I'm a, I'm through the Valley. I think I'm coming out the other side of the emotional roller coaster. Um, but yeah, it was, if we would have podcasted on Wednesday, we're podcasting Friday evening my time. Um, this would be a, this would be a really bad conversation, but I'm doing better now.
Speaker 1 00:49 Yeah. Ah, yeah. I'm still on kind of a little bit of a roller coaster there. So here in Colorado they're doing, you know, they've closed down the restaurants, the bars, um, they just shut down nail salons hairstyling places. They shut down the ski resorts last week. I mean, our governor is taking it very, very seriously and you know, varying people around here are taking it seriously and some of them are not taking it seriously. And then I see things like the idiots on spring break in Florida. And I'm like, Oh my God, we're all going to die. And entire generations gonna die out because of these idiots that want to go party on the beach. Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean we're, you know, we're doing okay physically. Nobody's sick in our family. Nobody's sick in our neighborhood. And you know, there's a little bit of a mental toll I think starting to be taken, but I don't think we've, we've really hit the peak of that here yet in the U S so my kids are on spring break this week and supposedly next week they go, uh, to virtual stuff at schools and for two of them that's going to be pretty straight forward cause their school already does this on snow days anyway.
Speaker 1 02:08 But the other one, it's going to be kind of an adjustment. And she's a, our kid that has a dyslexia and so she needs extra help for a lot of stuff. We're not really sure what that looks like and how that's gonna play out. So, you know, we've got that kind of anxiety kind of eating at us, plus the whole, you know, shit, we gotta go to Costco and get some food and we're running out of produce and running out of this and that.
Speaker 2 02:32 You're not the, you're not the asshole buying 10 things of toilet paper, are you?
Speaker 1 02:37 God, no, no. But I did witness if you people doing, you know, I didn't see anybody buy in like 10 but I did see people buying up to three, which I felt was a bit excessive. And it's a big Costco size that lasts like a month, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, I mean I live with four women, I understand toilet paper is like gold, but you know, at the time I think there's a balance that can be struck there. That's crazy. And there were definitely people not striking the balance, like the ones that have three carts. There was the mom, the dad and the kid all pushing their own carts. One of them was filled with paper products. One of them was filled with water bottles and the other woman was filled with everything else. And I was like, okay, that seems a little over the top.
Speaker 1 03:20 Like that's one thing I don't get, I don't know, I'm just getting off on all kinds of tangents here. Uh, yeah, I mean, in some ways my routine has not changed one bit. And so it's very weird because I feel like it's normal, but on other aspects of it, like my Twitter feed reads, like, you know, there's the zombie apocalypse down the street from me and you know, there's just craziness happening all over the world that everybody else has their own zombie apocalypse going on. And, you know, then there's the weird aspects in the evenings and the weekends where we're just not doing all the same activities that we used to do. So, you know, normal has shifted. Like I just had a, uh, a phone call last night, a video call with my parents and you know, my mom and dad weren't taking it all that seriously at first. And now they're like, Oh yeah, we're just kind of bored here in the house and like, Oh, okay, well, just stay in the damn house. Sorry. So, yeah, I mean it's just weird. That's all I can say is, it's just weird. And yeah, I haven't been sleeping as well and having weird anxiety dreams about things that are just not in my control. And yeah, I dunno. How about you?
Speaker 2 04:42 Yeah, so, so generally I think just for, for the listeners, we're gonna, we're gonna probably spend about half the time bitching and complaining and wondering and about half the time talking about business. So, uh, there is some potentially constructive stuff coming, but I think it's also healthy and kind of cathartic to acknowledge what we're all going through and share kind of our, our thoughts and, and feelings and experiences. Um, and that's this part. Um, so, so we've been in France, we've been on full lockdown, uh, all week, so restaurant's closed Saturday of last week. So a week ago basically, um, and uh, schools were closed. We kept our kids out of school last Friday, so it's been a full week now. Um, and we've not been able to leave the house since Monday. Um, and in a way then, not being able to leave the house thing is a relief from uh, a health perspective. It's a relief because well now like five days in, I haven't seen anybody else other than my wife and my two kids other than I went to the grocery one time. Um, and so I don't worry about us getting coronavirus really, you know, five days in the incubation period and all that. My exposure, I feel much safer now. Um, whereas before, like my kids were in school and I was going out some, you know, and, and people were around and all these, you know, there was transmissions all over the place. I feel like now the logic of confinement should be working, um, that, that people that are sick
Speaker 3 06:18 <inaudible>,
Speaker 2 06:19 uh, are sick and people that are, are going to get sick, are going to get sick. But everyone else who's able to stay home 100% should be safe. Um, and the shit of it is this has to last a really long time to be effective on a macro level. I won't say global level, but on a macro level, like, um, the country of France or my area, which is like whatever, half the size of the state of Georgia, um,
Speaker 2 06:49 in your talking months, uh, that, that you have to do something like this, which that, that gets really weird, um, to think that like we couldn't see anyone else for a month. Um, or more is, is really weird. Uh, thus far I'm, I'm mentally kind of doing okay. Like I've actually really enjoyed homeschooling our kids and we may do some more of it in the future. Um, because my wife and I are really different and what we kind of are passionate about and it's really cool. She's really right brain. I'm really left brain and so we kind of break up the education that way. Um, and so I've really been enjoying it and our kids are really doing well with it, which is super cool to see. Um, they're, they're coping really well with it and you know, they're seven and nine and they are pretty happy, you know, being with each other.
Speaker 2 07:43 They miss their friends some. And we're like planning to do like zoom calls with their friends to just let them talk. Um, and, but I think it's still the really longterm stuff. Like your corn teamed or confined or what is shelter in place that what you call it? The U S Dave. Yeah. I mean they, they get it. I see different terms being used in different places. So you can't leave your fucking house. You can't leave your fucking house. You can't, when you can't leave your fucking house. It's the social stuff I think on the really longterm that gets weird. Um, and that's about the only thing that concerns me is like if we can't see our friends and our kids can see their friends for a month, um, then like I, I hear people say like everything has changed. And generally I don't agree with that. I think that in two years we'll say, Oh, you remember the time we had to stay home for a while. You know, and this will blown over. But if it's months that we can't see anyone else, um, I, I think those are
Speaker 1 08:56 changes that will stick with us all for a long time. Um, and not even to mention the business impact of that kind of limitation of people's lives. Um, but not just on a purely kind of personal and social level. That's what, that's what gets me. Right. And I mean, I think that's a good time to sort of segue into the business impact of this cause that's something that's probably weighing on all of our minds. It certainly weighs on my mind. And I, you know, I've signed up for a bunch of reports and I've looked at various things and one of my competitors is doing like the survey of a bunch of eCommerce merchants and finding out who's doing what and going up and going down and all kinds of stuff. And you know, you're getting lots of conflicting information and you see things in the micro and it's kinda hard to see the macro at this point.
Speaker 1 09:47 But you know, I mean, this is like my fourth recession that I've lived through in my life since, you know, I'm, I'm really old. Uh, but, uh, you know, there's always consistent things about each recession, you know, in terms of, okay, there's the panic and then there's fear and there's some denial that goes on up front. And then eventually the denial turns into full fear and then the fear lasts longer than the actual event itself. That's always been true. And you know, those that are paying attention can see when the fear is still around, but the opportunity is shifting and changing. And that's usually when, you know, lots of good stuff starts happening business wise. And then eventually you get back into the irrational exuberance again. And then the people that were watching the fear before and took advantage of the opportunities, they're the ones kind of pulling back saying, Oh, I wonder when we're going to get the next thing coming and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 10:44 So, you know, I'm seeing those cycles still play out here again, but this, this one is so different. Right. You know, we've never had something that's just shut down individual economies, let alone the global economy. I mean, this is grinding everything to a halt. So nobody really knows exactly what that means in terms of the impact on your business. I mean, there's lots of stuff we can speculate on. And you know, I've had, I haven't had anybody at this point on recapture like come to me and say, yeah dude, I'm quitting. I'm outta here. Um, cause I'm, I'm close enough to the money that if they come to me and say that I have a pretty good argument, say, all right, look, I'm recovering this much for you. If you quit, you're going to lose that. And is that something you want to do right now? You know? And they'll probably say, Oh, Oh, Oh well maybe that's not so smart. Yeah. Okay. Yep. So, you know, that's, that's a good place to be in because this is exactly the time when, if you're farther away from the money, that's when they start cutting you because your luxury, you're not a necessity. You're not, you're a vitamin or a candy. You're not an aspirin, right? Yeah. I think the other, the other, I mean this is not fucking rocket but, but I think the
Speaker 2 11:54 other thing to think about as far as business impacts is maybe one that not a lot of us can change is how um, virtual or brick and mortar we are because the brick and mortar in-person businesses, whether you run a software business that has to do with in person interactions or you're an in person business, you know, running in person, other kind of transactions or whatever. Um, those are obviously affected a lot more. And I think like commercial real estate is a really good example of that. It's just that there's a bunch of people that can't pay their rent. Now nobody wants to buy it because nobody's expanding in person stores. The, the, the converse of that is e-commerce should do really well and food delivery should do really well and telemedicine should do really well. Um, and again, these are remote learning and remote learning. Yeah. I mean, I, they've, this is, this is a trip about this. Um, I was on a sales call yesterday with my mom.
Speaker 2 13:03 My mom is your mom, you had to sell to your mom? Yeah. Catch this. My mom is, um, isn't sales for a, uh, uh, a remote education tutoring company. Um, and they run just a giant like platform pro plus like in person or like virtual service, uh, for tutoring, remote education platforms in schools. And they are at this point are like spinning up a shit ton of webinars and are looking at, um, at doing podcasting too because their phones are ringing off the hook. Understandably. Um, but yeah, it's a trip. So if anybody out there has ever had to sell it to their parents, uh, hit me up, I'd love to hear about it. That's a, that's a trip. But yeah, I mean remote education, anything having to do with remote work. Um, obviously I, you know, and the other one is, you know, I think you mentioned what a while it goes, like, you know, some medical supply things are just going through the roof, I'm sure.
Speaker 2 14:12 Um, I've been seeing a lot about like distilleries starting to make a hand gel, like Canadian whiskey distilleries and even Louis Vuitton here in France is starting to make hand gel. Um, I think that's bizarre. But Louis Vuitton hand gel, you know, they're going to be charging a pretty price, but that's, yeah, it'll get 99.99% of the germs. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. That's just crazy. No, I mean, and what's weird is the behavior of the markets right now doesn't correlate with like any of our intuitions about this. Like, you know, I'm pretty plugged in to e-commerce and
Speaker 1 14:51 I know that some businesses are taking a bath right now. So if you're like a luxury good store or something that's a non-essential goods, so you're a clothing store or swimsuits or you know, stuff like that, your sales are, are slurred and starting to drop or they're tanking one of the two. But you know, if you're on the flip side of that, you're on something that's like a home delivery service or you're one of the DTC brands like dollar shave club or something that has like a regular um, refillable, reusable kind of thing that you're getting. Like tushy I bet that the orders for tushy right now have gone through the roof because everybody's freaking out about the toilet paper, right? So they're talking about, you know, the disposable wipes and all that other stuff. Those businesses are like, they're off the hook. You know, they, they've got the same problem that your mom's company has.
Speaker 1 15:44 Their phones are ringing off the hook. They don't have enough people to take the orders, they can't have enough people to fill the orders. They're having supply chain issues, all of that sort of stuff. So, you know, it feels like we just pushed a huge section of the economy to e-commerce now. So like I look at Shopify stock, and by the way, I will just say, I am terrible at stock advice. If you want the best stock advice in the world, take whatever I say to do. And do the fucking opposite of that and you will likely make money. Um, so with that said, you know, I see Shopify stock taking a bath right now and I'm like, okay, this doesn't make any sense to me because now you're going to have all these new stores that are going to come online in the next six to 12 months. So Shopify is going to have nothing but roses in their earnings reports, probably for the next four quarters, maybe six to eight quarters because of this right now, I mean there's a short term hit because of all the supply chain stuff and other things, but longer term, you know, I see this as a, as a general trend that's going to move forward. It's just like there's this panic and fear in the air and everybody's freaking out and selling things. And
Speaker 2 16:55 so I, I agree with what you said. If people are able to, and I say people, cause they're not, they're not the people that listened to this show. Um, but it's the brick and mortar business that's able to go online. If they're able to go online, their businesses will be successful, Shopify will be successful and people will be happy cause they can still get the things that they had to go to the store for a delivered their house or the services they had to go somewhere for fulfilled virtually or brought to them or whatever that is. Um, and I think that's the thing is like how we, and we is not just you and me, but how we people, um, and businesses can look at I think the new norm, right? And, and it's the new norm in the medium term at least like say the man, I hate to say it through the end of the year really, right.
Speaker 2 17:53 Even if the confinement in Italy resolves in two, three, say three weeks, right. The first part of April, that's really optimistic that it will lag in Spain and Germany and France by a couple of weeks. It will lag in the UK, which is a huge economy by another few weeks. And it will lag even more in the U S because what's behind, you know, it's the natural spread. And so you're talking about may before the top in those places. And the long tail of all this, if you're looking at like when we can get back to normal is super long. I think, you know, like when there are no new cases, that's cool, but there's still a lot of other cases out there. And when those sick people come back into society, um, there's the risk for reinfection and stuff like that. So, so like I think of those super long tail and like the exit trajectory of all this is not anytime soon.
Speaker 2 18:52 So you, I think we all should be thinking between now and the end of the year. What, what do we need to do to accommodate the different way that people are living and shopping and fear, you know, not, not to pray on anybody's fears, but like fear is real. And, and I think if you ignore it, that's missing, like acknowledging what your customers want and need. Um, you know, if your customers are feel fearful about a thing and you're ignoring it, then you're not serving your customers. Um, but if you acknowledge it and can adapt what you're doing to meet their wants and needs and desires, um, then then you'll do fine. I think, and I don't know what the answer is that even for my, for my business, I don't know what the answer is for that. Um,
Speaker 1 19:43 well I can tell you what we've done. I can tell you what we've done on the recapture side so far. So, you know, the first thing I did, um, is, you know, I had some other marketing campaigns that I was going on and they didn't really acknowledge or say anything about the Corona virus or any of the changes in the way that things shifted. So I just put all that stuff on hold because it doesn't make sense anymore. It sounds tone deaf right now to just talk about things in the old way without really acknowledging that things are different right now. So, you know, I would say if you're doing any kind of marketing campaign right now, if you don't know what it says relative and how it's being received in the world, I would say pause it right now and evaluate it and figure out is this the same message I need to be sending right now.
Speaker 1 20:31 Um, I sent a personal email out to all of my paying customers and trials and recapture and I basically said, shit is happening and the world has changed. It's crazy right now. I know you're experiencing disruptions. If there is way I can help you in, you know, I know other people in eCommerce and maybe there's something I can help you with and maybe there's somebody I know that can help you with that problem. But, you know, I just wanted to let you know I'm here for you. If you want to reach out, I will do the best I can to try to put you into the right, uh, person's inbox about whatever's going on that you need help with. So I think that reaching out to your customers in a personal direct way to say, Hey, I want to help and you know, put yourself out there so you know, you don't sound like a robot.
Speaker 1 21:23 Be human, right, be be kind, kindness costs, nothing. Um, and then the other thing I think you have to be really careful and cautious about is looking at your costs in a very realistic way. And that means cutting things that are absolutely not essential right now early. And unfortunately that can also mean staff. So like for example, let's say you're doing a website redesign, a website redesign is kind of a nice to have. It's not like this, Oh my God, you know, my customers aren't to, you'd be able to use my website if I don't redesign it. That's generally not true. I've never almost never seen that to be the case. So maybe it's time to say, all right, I'm going to stop this project, I'll pay the bills that we have up to this point. We're going to put that project on hold and I'll let you know when we're ready to pick it back up again.
Speaker 1 22:15 But I'm not gonna spend any more money on it. That kind of a thing. I'm cutting expenses of nonessential services. These are all things that I've had to take a very hard look at with recapture. Um, you know, making sure that your infrastructure is running as lean as possible and still support what you need. Like I had a very long discussion with my developers about do we need all these <inaudible> two instances? What happens if we pull these out? You know, because one of the biggest things we've got as a server bill right now, um, you know, I've got staff bills and I've got server bills. Those are my two biggest expenses in recapture. So, um, making sure that those are at a place where I can still serve all my customers, but at the same time, I'm not wasting the money that I have. And, uh, yeah. So, I mean those are the, those are the steps that I've taken so far with recapture, which I think, uh, everybody, if you're in a business right now, you probably added, at least be asking yourself those kinds of questions.
Speaker 2 23:11 Yeah, yeah, no, we've had a lot of those same kind of conversations and then kind of self-reflections, uh, internally. Um, you know, Dave, I, I, um, I find a lot of these messages from companies about Corona virus, um, off-putting. I don't, I don't know what it is. So we have not sent a Corona virus email to customers. Um, I sent one to our podcast motorless today about kind of the opposite of like, Hey, in this crazy time, um, you know, one, you can sit and watch Twitter and CNN or you can think about a way to, you know, pivot and find new ways to serve your clients and what they needs or you know, whether it's internal for your business or externally for your community or organization or whatever. And so we wrote that blog post for the podcast motor blog and I sent it to our list and it got a lot of reaction.
Speaker 2 24:11 He got a lot of negative, both, both. And I think that kind of tells to people's state, you know, P a lot of you know, fuck you. How can you possibly think there's a silver lining here? And all this kind of stuff. And a lot of like, Hey, thanks. You know, I needed this reminder that like, you know, we will all, not all, many, many, many of us will live through this and it's probably not as bad as we think. And the people that stick their head in the sand right now are the people who are going to miss those opportunities. Like you're talking about wind, the, the fear subsides and the irrational exuberance comes. The people that are still are thinking that the world is ending are going to miss the boat. And I don't know when that will be, but, but it will be some time. And, um, too, we're just trying to kind of highlight like, Hey, these times when people are consuming differently and living differently and uh, you know, interacting with other people differently is maybe the time when like if you had no idea what a podcast was before is the time, you know, like you can't go meet clients anymore. If you're in like in-person sales, maybe you should start a podcast and you can't fucking do anything else, you know, like, um, right.
Speaker 1 25:24 And I, I don't think that that was presented unkindly or what, you know, was untimely or whatever. I mean I've seen some, some tone deaf stuff where like, so there was a kettlebell thing that was posted on Twitter where somebody said, you know, this was a coupon that was sent out and it was like take 20% off. And that was like Corona time, you know, there was then was the code that they were using and it was basically trying to promote work at workout at home. And I thought, okay, that probably could have been done a little bit differently. I mean, it's still messages, the messages it wrong. I think the wording could have used some work, you know, the campaign itself was not awesome, but the timing was good. Like there are a lot of people that are regular gym attendees and are very big into fitness.
Speaker 1 26:11 And if they're like my middle daughter, they have to goddamn move every day. If you don't move, you just don't feel well. Like it really drives you crazy mentally and physically. So I totally get like, this is a perfect time to talk to somebody about that topic. But the way they did it just didn't sound quite right, you know? Yeah. So, and there's always going to be, when you, when you try to take a different stance like that, there's always going to be people shitting on you, you know, like, right. So, you know, if your message needs to be human and kind and you gotta be thinking, how is this going to be received across all of my audience? Is it going to be received well? And you know, if it's a joke, are they going to take it as a joke or are they going to think that the humor is inappropriate? So, yeah, there's a lot of stuff that's, that you probably wouldn't think about normally that now you really have to think about.
Speaker 2 27:07 Yup. Yup. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, aside from the kind of micro and internal things, um, like infrastructure and like, you know, some contractors and elective things that we're doing like ad campaigns or consultants or whatever. I think, um, I don't think that the world will never be the same. You know, like I S I hear that a lot like the L it's never going to go back to how it was, uh, all, you know, commerce as we know it has changed in businesses and they're in the same like that. I think that is very not true. I think, um, on the other side of this, if we look out two years, um, more people will have remote meetings. More people will not travel for business. Um, more kids will learn at home or an a flex or hybrid kind of situation. Um, and I think more consumers like talking about e-commerce will buy shit online so they don't, one for the environment.
Speaker 2 28:09 They don't have to go to the store, uh, to for their time, you know, so things like just e-commerce in general to like home delivery and services ordered online and fulfilled like at your home or wherever you work or something. Um, I think are all big macro trends that will persist after this is over. And so I think for folks who have existing businesses, like, you know, whatever, if you're locked in to your business, you can't change it obviously. But I think for folks who don't have a business or exploring kind of where they're going, you, you could be walking into pretty solid opportunity here. I think, um, like I, I know somebody who's getting big into like video production now and I think that's a really good business, you know, because like your people are going to be putting more videos online for whether it's sales or marketing or personal branding or whatever. Video and video conferencing is going to be a bigger deal than the in-person, um, equivalent of that, that, you know, it was a couple months ago.
Speaker 1 29:23 <inaudible> and I think there's a secondary opportunity that goes right hand in hand with what you just talked about and that is there's going to be a lot of existing solutions out there and people are going to have opinions about those solutions and maybe those solutions work well and maybe those incumbents suck. You know, there's a, so here's a story that my wife ran into this last week. So she does a dyslexia tutoring business here in the house and obviously we had to retool that, uh, we can't have people over to the house anymore. We kind of saw this coming in advance and she's like, all right, well what can I do? How can I do this? And I said, well, look for these things, I can get you set up on zoom conferencing. We can use Slack for chat if you want. We can also, you know, there was some tools that are specific to her niche of dyslexia tutoring.
Speaker 1 30:11 So she signed up for one of them and started using this. And I have to say this thing is supposedly designed for non technical teachers. I struggled with the user interface on this thing and generally I, you know, I can figure out a pretty complex user interface and be able to explain it to somebody else who doesn't understand it. And both my wife and I were left scratching our heads on this thing like why the hell is this behavior doing this thing? Why do I see these weird icons doing this thing? How do I get this content up to here? How do I enter things like it was, it was trying to be overly clever in many ways and then it was simply just not clever enough in places it really needed to be. And you know, I said to my wife, I said, Oh Jesus, I just want to rewrite this whole thing.
Speaker 1 30:56 And she's like, Oh you do a much better job. And you know, at that moment I was like, okay, well I'm not going to do this business cause I, you know, I don't have enough. I have one contact now, an education that doesn't really count also educations that not an easy niche to crack cause teachers are generally not people with lots of money. And on top of all that, the institutions that do have the money tend to be a little tight fisted with it. And there's a very bureaucratic process to get that. But with all of that said, if you have the contacts and you have, you know, the in insight and you have um, maybe direct connections to these institutions, this would be a fantastic opportunity because let me tell you, this tutoring software sucked and it was really hard to use. So I see that a lot of other solutions that people are like, Oh, I'm gonna use this for now.
Speaker 1 31:47 But if it becomes the thing that everybody becomes their favorite to hate, you suddenly run into another opportunity where you can kick that incumbent out if you do better than they do. Yeah. So that's, that's the opportunity I see right now is incumbents that are ready to take advantage of this are gonna fumble. And if they're not ready for it, if they're not really a best in class solution and not everything is, then those that can overtake them, do better, do it cheaper, do it more remotely, more easily, whatever. All of those things are going to become strategic advantages here in the next couple of years in my opinion. Yeah. And I think it can be and should be right for us as like, you know, bootstrap solo preneurs or whatever, really niche, really, uh, specific about the problem solving
Speaker 2 32:40 and, and absolutely looking, I think for those and come and players that are those old stodgy bastards that they haven't updated their UI in 20 years and say there's a need. These people are obviously making money. I can do this better. And just, I think, yeah, go do it. And I think, cause the, the, the thing about that is it solves all of the market validation stuff. You know, you look at it and you say, this is the problem. This is the audience, this is the solution. The solution just sucks. And if I can make a better one. Um, I mean it's like our, our conversation for with, uh, Arvin and Danielle from last week, you know, educators love good solutions and they are super kind of like social viral champions for your product, you know. Um, and I think that if you're able to tap into that user base that shares the message about your tool with other people especially versus an incumbent kind of situation.
Speaker 2 33:36 Um, and I mean we, we've been fortunate to benefit from some of that with Casto says, you know, I, I'm biased but I think we're a much easier and better tool than a lot of other older ones out there. And just for that, I think we're, we've had some success and I think other people might be able to look at the same thing and say, Hey, I mean w Rob would drip too, right? Infusion soft is hard and complicated in annual contracts and all this and you come in and say, w not to dumb it down too much, we can do the basically the same thing but make it nicer and easier and more user friendly from an onboarding and cost perspective and a ton of these kind of mid level customers come over. And that's not a bad playbook to run because it takes a lot of the questions out of the equation.
Speaker 1 34:26 It does. It does. But you know, I mean there that comes with a ton of caveats too, which we could probably spend an entire episode dealing with. Cause you know, I mean I, I took that same approach with support vine, but I wasn't being very smart about it. And uh, obviously my incumbents were much better than the ones I'm talking about here. So. Yeah. And I wouldn't have to
Speaker 2 34:45 though that there wasn't that gap there.
Speaker 1 34:49 No, there wasn't. But I perceived, I thought there was a gap. I tried to convince myself there was a gap and that's where I think the danger is. You ha, you have to be brutally honest about that. You really need somebody besides yourself saying, yeah, there's a gap here. Yeah. You know, when my wife is telling me this thing's a piece of shit that tells me, that tells me that there's a gap, right? Like my wife is the target market of the stuff. She's having trouble using it. It's not intuitive to her. Others that are very much like her would probably feel the same after I use the product. I'm like, yeah, this, this is a struggle. And you know, they have to go in week after week after week and for multiple students and do the same thing over and over again. So the frustration level on this would be super high. Um, yeah. Anyway, that's just not what was going on with support vine and other help desk solutions. And I was diluting myself on so many levels. So anyway,
Speaker 2 35:46 I thought you were saying that your wife thought support vine was a piece of shit and that was, that was
Speaker 1 35:51 no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, I mean, afterwards she was like, Oh, Oh, we spent 50,000 on that. Huh? That's great. Yeah. Well I'm glad. I'm glad we didn't spend more. That was her comment and I'm like, me too.
Speaker 2 36:04 Oh goodness. Yes. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, I think the, for me, the take away from kind of where we are, and again, like living in France and the tie, this is, the thing about the these times is the timelines are, are changing so quickly. You know, every day there's something new with how we live and how we buy and how we run our business and interact with other people. Um, for us, we're, I hate to say like at the end of the line, but I mean they can't do much more to us than keep us at home. Um, I think for folks in the U S the time when everyone in the U S is sheltered in placed or confined or whatever, we'll make a, another big difference to how folks feel and then the economy, like the world economy. Um, and that will, that will really be something. Um,
Speaker 2 37:02 and, and after that I think is the question is like, how do you unroll all that, you know, how do you unroll all this confinement from a, you know, an epidemiological perspective, like a virus perspective. And then like from a business perspective, how do folks get back to normal? I don't know. Um, but I think those are, those are the answers. When those become apparent, then I think the markets, the stock market and our businesses and people's confidence will go back to normal. Um, but I think we have several months left before we know any of that stuff. Agreed. Agreed to end on a positive note. No, but I think it's, I think it's only responsible to, to, to give people, not that we are the authorities on this, Dave, but like to be honest with what we think is the timeline, you know what I mean? I think, I think if you're thinking in weeks, you're going to get to the, you know, the first of the middle of April and say, Oh shit, this is, you know, I've got another two months of this. You know, I think until the summer at least and potentially until the end of the year with with some change, you know?
Speaker 1 38:07 I agree. I agree. So we'd love to hear from all of you. What are you doing while you're sheltering in place there? What are your thoughts on this stuff? We probably could have, you know, with the coming months, there's going to be lots of new stuff coming up and fruitful topics for other episodes, but we'd love to hear what you'd like us to talk about. Shoot us a message podcast@roguestartups.com and as always, if you know somebody else that's hiding in their house trying to stay safe and you think this might be a benefit, shoot him a link to our podcast. We'd really appreciate it until next week
Speaker 3 38:43 and stay safe. Please.
Speaker 0 38:46 Thanks for listening to another episode of rogue startups. If you haven't already, head over to iTunes and leave a rating and review for the show for show notes from each episode and a few extra resources to help you along your journey. Head over to rogue startups.com to learn more.
