Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast, where two startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig.
Speaker 2 00:00:20 All right. Welcome to episode 2 69 of rogue startups. Craig, how are you doing? It has been a while.
Speaker 3 00:00:26 It has been a hot minute, man. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm doing good. Uh, it's good to be here and to be chatting. Um, yeah, sorry for, for everyone that it's been so long, but you know, summer comes and we have a lot of stuff going on and taken advantage of longer days and great weather, hopefully. So, yeah, but Dave, I'm sorry. It's been so long since we talked.
Speaker 2 00:00:49 Yeah. It's uh, well, it's been kind of rough personally. Um, you know, I won't go into this and we won't spend the whole podcast on this, but I did lose my father back in June and, uh, you know, that, uh, was a, a decline that we saw coming for quite a while. And it definitely kinda, I had a whole bunch of plans for June. They all got thrown out the window. <laugh>
Speaker 3 00:01:11 Yeah. I'm
Speaker 2 00:01:11 Sorry to hear that. Everything that's tough. Yeah. Uh, it was tough and, uh, you know, my, my father's health had been on the decline since November of last year. So it wasn't that much of a surprise. He was 92. There were some, you know, a bunch of health issues that kind of conspired at the end there to, to do him in. And, you know, I'm glad it didn't linger. I'm glad that he was able to be at home. I'm glad that it was peaceful in his sleep. There were lots of things to be glad for. I'm glad my mom is okay. I'm glad that, you know, she's very independent and was able to continue running the house. And I was, you know, I was really thankful that I had the business here to be able to like step in and help her at any time.
Speaker 2 00:01:57 And there was just zero stress on my side, aside from, oh, I'll just take a 30 minutes and make sure I catch up on customer support at the end of the day. Mm-hmm <affirmative> like, that was it. Yeah, literally that was the, the most stress I had from recapture the whole time. You know, my team was really great and they, you know, were able to deal with things in my absence and, um, you know, I didn't have to take a ton of time, but when I did take time, I didn't stress about the time. So, but yeah, you know, my, my whole June, I had, uh, some grandiose plans and those grandiose plans all crumbled like a house of cards. So I spent July kind of rebuilding on that. And, uh, you know, now we're kind of back on, well, we'll sort of say on track here in August, but yeah, it's been an interesting summer that's for sure.
Speaker 3 00:02:46 Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I'm sorry to hear about that. I know, even if you, even, if you see it coming, it's tough to know, like to, to, to kind of deal with loss of a family member. Yeah. I think we have one probably probably come in the next couple of years as well, and I just, yeah. Thankful for your business and the flexibility to be able to help, like you said, your mom and your family members and yourself in that time, but I'm sorry to hear, hear about that, man. That's really tough.
Speaker 2 00:03:12 Yeah. Well thank you very much. And um, yeah, you know, we're, uh, we're still dealing with the aftermath and all of that, but, uh, yeah, I think in the end we're all gonna be okay. So that's good. Good. So I'm happy about that, but yes, uh, despite all of that, you know, recapture has, has been humming along and we've had, you know, the past three months have all been positive growth months, which is great.
Speaker 3 00:03:37 Not a lot of people can say that
Speaker 2 00:03:39 <laugh> no, no. I mean, they're not, they're not wildly positive. We're not talking double digits of percentage of growth here, but they were positive and, you know, uh, in no small part due to efforts that had been put in, uh, previously. So, you know, it's nice to kind of see some of those things paying off down the line and, you know, it's funny, there's, there's a lot of talk about, are we in, you know, an eCommerce pullback, an eCommerce recession, and you look at certain graphs, like the one that shows the pre pandemic growth of eCommerce and then the pandemic growth. And then afterwards it looks like we're, you know, kind of sliding backwards and it's true that the growth isn't as high as it was, but, you know, we're kind of trending back to the original line that we were at for eCommerce growth rates.
Speaker 2 00:04:30 And I'm not seeing like the full on recession that everybody's talking about, but I'm also not seeing the same level of COVID pandemic growth either. So, you know, it's a mixed bag out there and, and it's kind of weird looking at recaps dashboard on some months because I'll see really successful stores and they're expanding and I see other stores and they're shutting down and, you know, I try to like, look at the balance of all of that, but to be able to still say, Hey, we're putting up some numbers on the board here and you know, we're not wildly growing. Like we were two years ago, but Hey, we're still doing it. So yeah, I feel pretty, pretty happy about that.
Speaker 3 00:05:09 That's awesome. That's awesome. I know last time we talked, you had just brought on a new developer or where're looking like where, where did things stand? Like from a team perspective.
Speaker 2 00:05:21 <laugh> okay, so this, this is a good story. Um, yeah, so the last time that we published, uh, was early June of 20, 22. And now here we are in early August. So we had just brought on this guy and he was okay. Uh, you know, that's, that's what I can say about him. We, we ran him for four weeks and we were in the middle of the trial when you and I podcasted. So he had passed his two week evaluation. So he wasn't like a complete dud, but at the same time, he wasn't blowing me away either. And you know, we, I was talking with my tech lead, uh, Mike and he and I were both like, is he a hell? Yes. Or is he a no? And he wasn't a hell. Yes, but both of us were like, I don't know. And looking back now, I can say he was a, no, we should have just let him go sooner than we did, but I let it go for a full four and a half weeks before I finally just grew the stones to say, yeah, no, this isn't working. We're not heading in the direction. I want ahead. We gotta start over. And let me tell you, both of us were really sad about that. <laugh> yeah.
Speaker 3 00:06:37 A pretty long time for an evaluation, right? Like, were there in hindsight, were there times or things that happened to where you, you felt like you could have made that move earlier? Cause I struggle with the same thing by the way. Like, so yeah.
Speaker 2 00:06:51 I, you know, I feel like, so I already feel like I'm a pretty judgemental person <laugh> so I, I, I, well, so here, here's why I said that I try very hard when I'm managing other people to withhold that judgment, because I feel like I'm just too harsh too quickly. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:07:13 So as a result, my management style can be a little more passive than I probably should be. Mm. So that impacts, you know, things like this, when I'm going through that eval period, I'm doing that and I'm watching them and I'm like, okay, if they make a little mistake, should I fire? 'em it's like, no, no, Dave chill the fuck out. Like, that's, that's a little overly harsh here. Let's, let's look at the whole picture. Let's see how they're doing in general. Um, but there were a couple of, you know, I won't call 'em red flags, but we'll say that they were yellow flags. Yeah. In the first couple of weeks, like he, um, he took a day off without saying anything. Uh, yeah. And that one, you know, definitely, uh, that did not endear us to him. And then he also said that he was gonna get some stuff done by a certain time and then it didn't happen. Yeah. And you know, in both cases, the non harsh manager came out and I said, well, let's give this a little bit more time. And I, you know, we, he was doing most of the things he needed to do. So that's why it was not an immediate, oh, this guy needs to be kicked out under the street. It was not that obvious.
Speaker 3 00:08:26 Cause you want to go someone a chance to like, learn how you communicate and maybe your expectations weren't super clear. Uh, like those are the questions I ask myself.
Speaker 2 00:08:35 Yes, yes, yes, yes. A hundred million times. Yes. That's the stuff that I was, I was questioning myself. Did I not set the expectation? Did I not document this? Was this missing in our onboarding? Yeah. Did I fail to have this meeting? Like, so I went back and questioned all of these things and I double checked the documentation and I reedited stuff. And I was like, all right, let's just, let's keep going here a little bit. We'll do it two more weeks. So we did two and I was kind of like, eh, and then by the time we got to the end of the other two, it was pretty clear that we had the wrong guy for the role we needed. And that's when I, you know, uh, and the only reason it went another half a week is cuz I had conversations with Mike and it took a while to connect with him to get his opinion, to have him agree.
Speaker 2 00:09:22 Yes, this is the wrong person for this role. So that's when I kicked him out. Um, and then we had to pretty much start over and oh man, that, that sucked mm-hmm <affirmative>. But at that point, uh, at that point I had a pretty good idea what was gonna be successful. So, um, I realized at that point that if you're doing Upwork right now, and so this is August, 2022, if you are doing Upwork the way for you to keep a constant stream of candidates is to repost your job once a week. And you post on Mondays Monday morning, first thing, you get a bunch of candidates. And by Friday, the, the job listing kind of dies off. So you gotta repost it again the next Monday. And that's how you keep getting new candidates through. And so I figured that out finally, and was able to start getting a list of people that I could churn through faster.
Speaker 2 00:10:15 So that was, uh, hack number one that I started in, uh, early June. And by the end of June, we finally found somebody that was really good. I also was trying to hedge my bets. I started up another job board and I can't remember which this was a free trial on something that was recommended. And I can't remember the name of it. And it was just a complete dud. Like I got, I got a handful of candidates off of it, but they all sucked. Like there was nobody that was even worth reaching out to and talking to the, the quality of the applicants was really poor. So that was bad. And then I also, uh, ended up hiring a recruiting agency and they said, yeah, well this could take two to four weeks before we're able to start providing candidates. And I said, okay, that's fine.
Speaker 2 00:11:00 Uh, but realize I am actively hiring. I'm not stopping, waiting for you guys. Yeah. So if I hire somebody, uh I'll come in and tell you, sorry we're done. And they said, that's fine. So I started the process with Upwork and by the end of June, uh, we managed to find somebody and then I had a whole batch that we were going through in an interview and he was the first of that batch. And I was like, oh shit. All right, well, I've got three other interviews scheduled. I need to go through those first, before I can say yes to this guy because the other ones look pretty strong too. And I was like, oh, geez. I don't know. So we went through all of 'em and he was still the best one at the end. And you know, my wife was like, you should hire him, hire him.
Speaker 2 00:11:40 Right. Like the second I found him, she's like, don't wait, just jump in. And I'm like, okay, I'm trying not to be the reactionary guy here. Right. And, and, and go through and be a little methodical about this and careful. And so anyway, we got to all the end of the candidates. He, and I told him, I said, you are my top candidate. I need to interview these other candidates. But right now you are the, the, the, the leader in all of this. And I will definitely let you know, by this date. And so I got to that date and I'm like, congratulations, you made it. And he accepted the offer at that point. And everything has been fantastic since like, I am so, so glad that we waited for this guy. He is like easily in order of magnitude better. And the exact same price. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:12:28 Where is he located?
Speaker 2 00:12:30 He's in Senegal, actually in Africa. Okay.
Speaker 3 00:12:32 Yep.
Speaker 2 00:12:34 And yeah. Um, you know, I had not thought to specifically look, uh, in that region over there. Uh, but I guess, you know, there's a, a growing community of developers and he is outstanding. I mean, truly, yeah. He's actually a founder in his own. Right. So he did a startup he's, uh, he's young, he's in his twenties and he graduated from college, did a startup with some friends of his, it was like a local based startup about, uh, transportation, local transportation stuff, not Uber. Exactly. But it was like about maps and stuff like that. Okay. In his community. Yeah. And I don't, I don't remember if he got funding for it or not, but anyway, you know, it, it was great because he was exactly the kind of guy we were looking for. Yeah. I wanted somebody who had ownership mentality who was independent, um, self starting, motivated, driven, and, you know, communicated really well functioned, you know, by himself, all of that stuff. And because he was a founder, like it was just a perfect set of, of things. And so, you know, it's great because he's also asking really tough questions about the business when, when we had the interview, you know, he's asking, all right, well, what's your runway and, you know, are you funded? And what is your marketing plan? And what's the growth been like in the business? Like, he, he really dug into it like more than any other candidate we had. So, yeah.
Speaker 3 00:13:58 That's awesome.
Speaker 2 00:13:59 That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, like, he was just checking all the boxes and lightening up all the green lights and you know, both Mike and I really like this guy. And so we hired him and he's been working out, like he just hits his one month anniversary here this week. And yeah. He has all the keys to the kingdom at this point. He's fully integrated, activated. He's doing production deploys. Yeah. Everything, absolutely everything. That's awesome, man. If I had more thumbs, I would give him that many thumbs up. <laugh>
Speaker 3 00:14:29 That's awesome, man. That's awesome. I think it's a good lesson that like, you know, like the, the, I think the really good operational companies say like higher slow and fire fast, and that sounds ruthless, but I think that's the right move, right. Is like, be really deliberate about who you hire and when you, you know, allocate budget and stuff like that, and then make sure that they're absolutely the right fit. And I'll tell you that, like, we have not done that. Right. We've done the opposite, which is like high air fast and fire slow. And yeah, it is it's bad for, for so many parts of the business. And so many people, right? Your peers, like the peers say like, you know, whatever, a developer or a marketer or a salesperson, the other people that they interface with and even cross functionally, like they're saying, Hey, what what's this guy doing?
Speaker 3 00:15:20 Or what's this person doing? If they're not a good player. And then as the manager, you're saying like, Hey, this is at minimum, like a lot of cognitive load that I have to carry. And, and at worst, it's like, I gotta put this person on a performance improvement planner. I gotta go back and question your beliefs about what a good, good developer or marketer designer, whatever could be. Yeah. I, I just like, we, we made a developer higher as well, probably about the time you and I spoke last and guy's amazing. Same, same kind of thing. He's here in the us. So he is ultra expensive, but he is fantastic. Totally changed like the, the landscape of the product in two months and
Speaker 2 00:16:00 Nice
Speaker 3 00:16:01 It's. But, but I mean, one like just pay for a really good developer <laugh>, you know, like that, that was my lesson is like, they make a ton of money. Rightfully so, because they're that good? You know, if, if you actually have that kind of like a plus developer and the other part is like, if you don't have those people, like you gotta just be honest with yourself first and then be honest with them about that. It's not a good fit. And like, that's really easy to say and really hard to do on a personal and professional level. But I think that as we learn about ourselves and grow up right in business, we'll get closer to that being the default. So, uh, yeah, I've, I'm right with you, man. It's, it's super hard. It's easy to say hard to do for sure. Um, and hard to do on a consistent basis, you know?
Speaker 2 00:16:47 Oh God. Yes. So much. So, uh, you know, the guy that we had to let go, you know, when I, when I sat down with him, I was like, all right, you know, I, I was as direct and honest with him as possible. I said, what was working? I said, what wasn't. And I said, what we needed. And I said, how, you know, I laid it all out in very clear terms. And, you know, I said, this is just, it's not the right fit for this role. And I really wish we had a different role for you because I think he would've been okay if I had the supervisory capacity or the extra budget to have him and somebody else, but you know, it, it just, I needed a tech lead. He wasn't a tech lead and that was non-negotiable. And that, that part, you know, people represent themselves as something on their resume that, you know, you, you can end up seeing that they are not <laugh> and this, this was very much the case, you know, it said, he, he said, you know, senior developer, yada, yada. And he said that he had tech lead experience, but it was clear once we got in there that he hadn't really spent a lot of time in those leadership roles in the way that I expected it. So, yeah. And, and I
Speaker 3 00:17:51 Don't, and I don't think it's malicious, uh, or even intentional on, on their part a lot of times. Right. It's just that right. Your
Speaker 2 00:17:58 Definition of these
Speaker 3 00:17:59 Things, I believe this yeah. Your definition, expectation of these things is different than theirs. A lot of times, right?
Speaker 2 00:18:04 Yeah. Right. I mean, I, I had a very different experience of what it means to be a technical leader than he did, and it's not to say his was bad and mine was right. Yep. Um, it's that my expectations didn't meet what he was able to deliver. And, you know, I, I didn't think the guy was bad and, you know, I, if there was a different role, I would've hired him for that, but not for this role. I couldn't do it. I'm, you know, I'm heavily budget constrained and I needed somebody of a certain technical expertise to be able to do a wide variety of tasks. And that just wasn't him. And if I wasn't honest with myself, we would've burned through a ton of cash and I would've lost my sanity and I would've lost the respect of the rest of the team if I had kept him around too.
Speaker 2 00:18:49 Yeah. And, you know, I, I saw this with the plugins. I had a couple of hires like that. One of 'em I got rid of pretty quickly, but not quickly enough. And the other one I didn't get rid of at all, and I should have, uh, but you know, it was right before the sale and I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not gonna put that disruption in here. And so, you know, it's totally for selfish reasons at that point, but yeah. I mean, you cannot, you cannot put the wrong people into roles and expect that you will have a healthy organization of any kind. And I don't care what you're hiring for right. Person right seat. Right. Yeah. You know, if we're going for the EOS thing here. Yeah. You, you know, you really have to be ruthless about that. And I feel, I mean, it's, I can't express the amount of emotional relief. I feel knowing that I got the right guy in the right seat.
Speaker 3 00:19:44 Yep. And that's why, I mean, it's why CEOs of say like 25 plus people, companies say that, you know, people in hiring is everything that they do, you know, because they see that. And then I think at, at that scale where you're hiring a person every month, then the amplification leverage, uh, that, that has to, to the business becomes really significant, you know?
Speaker 2 00:20:09 Right. And you, as the CEO have to establish the cultural norm, like what do we expect from people that we hire? What are we willing to put up with? Yeah. When somebody comes in here and, you know, if you don't have the highest of high standards at the very start, I promise you that as things go on and that other people start to hire in your stead things already start to slip there. I've seen that at plenty of companies I've worked at, but if you don't start with the absolute, highest of expectations and standards, it's only gonna get worse over time. So don't expect it to improve <laugh>. Yep,
Speaker 3 00:20:46 Yep. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Speaker 2 00:20:48 Yeah. So yeah, in a nutshell, you know, that's probably my biggest thing on recapture. I literally had to shove everything off of my plate. Like I had several rocks that I was trying to accomplish in Q2 and I, it came down to the fact that I needed this hire and it wasn't even one of my rocks originally when I started Q2, because that kind of came up maybe three weeks into Q2. And I never like revised the rocks to say, all right, hiring is now my rock. Yeah. But it really was my rock at that point. And I had to like clear everything else off the plate, cuz I had no other bandwidth other than to focus on finding a candidate, sourcing them, vetting them and then setting up the interviews and then getting feedback from the team to say, is this the right person or not like, that was it. That was all I had the time for. Yeah. Whew.
Speaker 3 00:21:38 <laugh> sounds like a lot. No, it sounds like a lot, but I'm glad it ended up like in a good spot at the end. That's that's great.
Speaker 2 00:21:44 Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the timing couldn't have been better because you know, I wouldn't have wanted to go into the holidays here in October still doing this because that would've been a real frustration for all of us. It's been a huge relief for Mike cuz now he is like, oh my God, I can finally take a vacation after five years on recapture because literally there was no time that he could take off. He was the sole technical resource. He always had to have his laptop with him. He always had to have internet connection somewhere. Yeah. And you know, to, to Mike's credit, he did it and he did it with a smile. But you know, he has more than earned that at this point. And he's right. You know, having a backup on this is super, super important. Yeah. I get that. That's awesome because I feel, I feel the same pressure with customer support.
Speaker 2 00:22:26 You know, I, I go on vacation, the laptop's coming with me. I don't care. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and I gotta check it at least once a day. You know, it doesn't take a ton of time, but I don't have anybody else to defer that to. And you know, occasionally I've asked Mike to help out with it when I knew I was gonna be outta range for eight hours or so to make sure that people didn't get left, uh, standing around picking their nose, waiting for me. But um, yeah, by and large, I, I totally understand. So, you know, that's, if I'm thinking about what my next hire is eventually gonna be, it's probably looking like support.
Speaker 3 00:22:58 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:23:00 Not right away. We're still, the budget is not quite there yet, but you know, with another couple of quarters of growth like this, I probably could afford to hire a support person at that point and then free myself up for more marketing and sales cuz you know, I have three things on my plate right now, uh, aside from just the general CEO hat and I really need to start losing some of those things on there because my ability to do strategic thinking, uh, is really fucking hard. Mm-hmm <affirmative> uh, I just don't have enough of that time.
Speaker 3 00:23:33 Yeah. Yeah. You know, what I find is like, um, it's not, it's not even the time cuz like I have enough hours in the day, but like today, like I have four calls and I'm just, just tired. <laugh> at the end of those like four calls that are an hour long and I got a prep for all of 'em and I've set the follow up with afterwards. Then I got fucking email on team coordination and all this other stuff is I don't have the mental capacity at the end of the day to, or around those even if it's before right. To, to do that deep thinking stuff, uh, like marketing or strategy or whatever. Um, even if I have the hours, like I don't have the, the mental capacity to, to do those things. So yeah. I mean, I think that when, like when people talk about like the highest leverage use of your time, it's not even like, do you have time for this? But like, can you make the most important thing? The most important thing? It from a like prioritization perspective, not just like, do you have time to do it, but like, can you make this, the thing that regardless of how long it takes or when you do it in the day, you have the flexibility to do that so that it gets like the best part of your day. Like that that's something I'm slowly realizing.
Speaker 2 00:24:45 I so struggle with that too. Uh, that's a huge thing. In fact, I've, it's taken me this long to, to get to a point where I've organized my calls so that I stack all that shit on one day. Oh,
Speaker 3 00:24:58 That's nice. Like
Speaker 2 00:24:59 I try, I try to, I try to stack it up on like one or two days a week. So this week is heavier. I have like a, I had a bunch of calls yesterday. I have a bunch of calls tomorrow, but today I don't and Thursday I don't and I'm taking off Fridays to go help my mom. So, you know, I basically have two days a week that I can get into deeper work. So this is one of those days and I'm finding that that schedule is very empowering and very effective, but I have to <laugh> I have to remind myself if I don't stack it, screws my, it screws everything. So if I like, oh, I could take that and put 'em on this Tuesday right here. Uh, the rest of my Tuesday's hosed after that.
Speaker 3 00:25:36 Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2 00:25:37 Yeah. Cuz I just lose that flow. I lose that focus, so.
Speaker 3 00:25:40 Right, right, right. Well man, I know we wanted to touch on like, uh, like positioning and kind of, you know, critically thinking through, uh, like who we are, who our companies are and, and kind of who we serve and, and some stuff like that you want to, you want to kind of hop into some questions you're asking yourself,
Speaker 2 00:25:59 Uh sure. Uh, you didn't really give an update.
Speaker 3 00:26:02 Yeah, man. So I'm trying to think like update from my end. Yeah. Like the, the middle of June, we did our team retreat, which was really cool. So the first time in three years we've had a team retreat. We got together in Chicago and it was amazing, man. It was amazing. There was eight of us and uh, some people couldn't come cuz of family stuff or visas or kind of whatever. Um, but definitely like a good number of us came, the folks who couldn't make it were, uh, were on the, on the call remotely, which was cool. Yeah. Like two full days, like three nights, two full days in Chicago did like, uh, half a day of working and half a day of, of like fun team building tourist stuff.
Speaker 2 00:26:46 Nice. Yeah. Did you take a picture under the bean of the team?
Speaker 3 00:26:50 We did not take a picture under the bean. No, no. Other than that though, like it was perfect, man. It was like, it was great to get together. It was great to do some, the bigger picture strateg stuff that we talk about a lot. Yeah. Just like everything about it was was right on, you know, it was, it was really cool. Yeah. It was really cool. I'm so glad that after all of the shit of COVID <laugh> that were able to do it and that everybody was safe. One person got C we think at the airport on the way home because none of the rest of us got sick. So yeah. Pretty pretty awesome. Um, and since then, just like, you know, we came back with a lot of good like direction and strategy and just been implementing man, just been executing on, on the stuff that we know is important in a lot of good ways.
Speaker 3 00:27:41 Like not a lot of really crazy updates, just like the product is better every day, which is awesome. Like our new developer, Jesse is just really doing a great job of leading the team and the rest of the team is really, you know, focused and executing. Yeah. Nothing, nothing else like super crazy, man. I gotta say like just in a good way, it's kind of like boring times. You know, I made a comment and slack the other day. Like there's not a lot of chatter going on here, you know, and that's not bad, you know, everybody knows what they should be doing and they're doing it. And we have plenty of time where we, we kind of get on a zoom and just hang out and stuff. But like there's not fire drills every day where, you know, this major issue or whatever. So like I, I consider that a huge win that like we're able to take vacation and things don't fall apart. We're able to stay heads down and not be dependent on each other entirely for getting stuff done and knowing what the heck is going on. Um, so like I, I view that as like a huge win, they were able to be a little quieter and calmer, uh, and still getting a ton of stuff done. So yeah. Overall really good.
Speaker 2 00:28:52 Nice, nice. Well, that's good to hear. That's good to
Speaker 3 00:28:55 Hear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's talk positioning, man. Let's talk. Uh, what, what, what are we doing here? Who are we <laugh> who are we serving? I, I think we both have some questions about that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:29:07 Yeah. So, um, you know, I, I posed this question to myself when I was doing my Q3 rocks and partly I was motivated, uh, to, to understand this better for a couple of reasons. One was, I've been redoing the website for several months and this question kind of has been nagging at me. What kind of a company is recapture? You know, what do, what do I wanna be when I grow up? Mm-hmm <affirmative>, that's really what it is. Right. And the, so there's, there's two flavors of this question. And the, the other thing that, that kind of motivated this is that when, uh, my new tech lead, Sally who came on board, he said, Hey, do we have a list of competitors? And then Julia and Mike were chiming in saying, Hey, yeah, that'd be really nice to see. And I'm like, oh yeah, I could totally write that document.
Speaker 2 00:29:56 So then I spent like an hour doing this four page document about all of our competitors. And I talked about, you know, that we kinda live in two different categories, we're in the email marketing category and we're also in the abandoned cart recovery category. And that got me thinking like, okay, you know, I know we started in abandoned cart recovery and we kind of ended up in email marketing, but which one is the one that should win here? Like which one should be really would, should we be really paying attention to, in other words, are we an abandon and cart recovery company that happens to do email marketing because I'm not getting rid of features at this point. Uh, those, those things that have attracted customers, we're keeping that, or are we an email marketing company that also happens to do abandoned cart recovery? And so I, you know, I, I've been struggling with this philosophically trying to look at it from a lot of different perspectives because this is going to really focus the message that we're trying to convey with recapture, especially now that I'm going through and redoing the website and I'm updating the marketing to emphasize that messaging, cuz right now, if you look at our website, we are a hundred percent a ban cart recovery.
Speaker 2 00:31:14 You don't know anything else about us accept a ban carts and that's not a hundred percent true. So when I've been redoing this, uh, you know, I started leaning into more of the email marketing, but as I'm like looking in the space, I'm trying to figure out, well, how do customers use our product? What are the features that are most used? Uh, you know, if I look across all the customers, what's the one thing that absolutely everybody has and the answer is abandoned cart. So everybody kind of knows us for the abandoned cart piece of it. And the email marketing is kind of a secondary piece, but our, or, you know, if I look at our growth and our expansion, a lot of that has come from the email marketing piece. So, you know, I, I, I've been having this soul searching question. That's been nagging at me for a long time here and I'm trying to figure out what are the questions I should be asking right now to figure out what kind of a company are we?
Speaker 2 00:32:10 I mean, I have an opinion and I definitely have some data I could back up the opinion with, but I don't know that I've asked all the right questions yet. And so I kind of wanted to know how you had done this with Casto because, you know, you started out as, you know, the seriously simple podcasting plugin, and then you did the podcast hosting and then you did the done for you service and you know, you kind of worn a lot of different hats and now you've settled on what you are today. How did you get there?
Speaker 3 00:32:42 Yeah. So, so did I hear you right? That like you've seen most of your growth from like the email marketing side of things. I know you don't want like an answer, but like a, a decision making process, but is that, is that right? Well,
Speaker 2 00:32:53 It's, it is significantly helped. Like I've seen bringing on bigger customers because we've added the email marketing features.
Speaker 3 00:33:01 Yeah. Um, I, I think that like from a, like, it, we, you and I try to like abstract away ideas and lessons right. In this podcast to, to be able to be applicable to everybody's condition right. Or our circumstance. And, and I think that like the way I would answer this and, and cuz cuz we go through this question kind of all the time. Right. And I think it's a healthy thing to always be asking yourself this question, you don't wanna pivot too much. Right. But I think that like if you're just heads down and you do one thing, you could end up like just running into a wall and, and like missing, missing an opportunity or a movement entirely. But I think that like, it's a, for me it's a balance of who or like what are you known for already? And, and what do your customers value in your product today?
Speaker 3 00:33:50 Like your existing customers value for and then where is the business opportunity in the next couple of years and are there marketing and positioning and product things that you need to do to get you ready for those, you know, and for you, this may not be right. But like SMS marketing kind of comes to mind there, like right. Is SMS marketing gonna be this big, huge thing that you getting yourself and the product and everything ready to not necessarily pivot, but like expand your expand. Your focus is like, is a funny term, but like include in your offering, uh, to, to like broaden to SMS marketing. Like for us that was private podcasting, right? Like, yep. They just said we are, we were a WordPress plugin and then hosting whatever that only connected to WordPress. And then we're a general host hosting provider that also has a WordPress plugin.
Speaker 3 00:34:41 We have the services and now like the big focus for us is, is private podcasting, but a minority of our customers use that. And so we have to stay anchored to like the core of what we do, which is podcast hosting and analytics, and then be able to say, and if you want this, we also have it. And if you wanna get Bitcoin from your, your listeners, we also do that. And if you want the production services, we also do that. And if you wanna sell a private podcast subscription, you can do that, but you don't have to. And I think that that's where that, that's how we try to, to couch. It is say like identify the core thing that everybody needs from you and then say, and if you want French fries with that, you can have it. And if you want a milkshake, you can have it.
Speaker 3 00:35:24 And if you want whatever, you can have all that stuff, but don't make people buy those things that they might not need. That's how we try to do it. I'm sure it's wrong. But, and, and so like, if I were you, uh, I would, I would kind of be thinking about like, and, and maybe this is just, I don't understand eCommerce, but like I would kind of think about how Intercom is positioned and kind of do that for eCommerce, right? You're a customer communication platform for eCommerce, right? Because that touches abandoned cart. It touches email marketing, it touches like retention and all of this stuff that like, you want to bring existing customers back. And that way people come and they see that and they say, oh yep. I need to stay better in touch with my customers. And recapture can do this a bunch of different ways. And they can pick those from like a feature pricing product kind of, you know, point of view.
Speaker 2 00:36:16 Okay. Okay. Well the good news is you, you mentioned SMS marketing. We already added that last year. Yeah. So, so, you know, we, we have that, but it's interesting, like you said, we pushed it out there. I promoted the hell out of it to customers and I probably need to repromote it right now, but you know, the adoption has not been like, they didn't all come like bursting through the door. They're like, ah, I gotta have SMS. Yeah. Like it's been very slow and people sort of pick it up incrementally. Oh, well I'm thinking about this now. And yeah. I mean, so to answer your question, we're known for a band in carts and one of the interesting and kind of weird observations I've made over the years is that so I'll use a tool like built with, and you can go and take a look at somebody's store.
Speaker 2 00:37:03 So when they install my app, I just go pull their Earl. I looked unbuilt with, and it'll tell me all the other things that they've ever installed on their store. So, you know, if they put on Clavio or MailChimp or Omni send or other, you know, abandoned cart apps, I'll see all of that on there. And the weirdest thing that I've noticed on the stores that are the most successful, they're running at least two to three different kinds of communication apps like that. Mm-hmm <affirmative> to start with, like, I will see us installed right. Alongside Clavio. Yeah. Or we'll be right alongside MailChimp. And they're using the other one for their regular email marketing and us for abandoned carts. And I ask 'em about it. And they're like, oh, we, we like you better for this. Yeah. And I'm like, interesting. Okay. I wouldn't have expected that.
Speaker 2 00:37:54 I kind of would've thought, all right. Why do I need two tools that do the same thing? I'll just stick with one of 'em, but they don't like the other one for what we do. And they don't wanna switch everything over to us for what the other one does. It's like that, you know, for a long time, I just sat there, scratching my head. Like, why would they do this? Why do they like, okay, stop asking why they're doing that. They are doing it. Like, that's the observation right there. They want you to do this thing and do it really well. Yeah. And so that's what I keep coming back to. Like, we are an abandoned cart recovery service that also happens to do email marketing. That's the direction I'm leaning because I feel like we are really well positioned amongst our other competitors. And I can carve out a very nice section of the market, uh, and know that, you know, when somebody installs clavia, I'm like, okay, fine, great. We do abandoned cart recovery. And there's a lot of people who like us better than Clavio. And, you know, I can put those people up on testimonials on the site or whatever, instead of like trying to go toe to toe with Clavio because they beat the crap outta me on all their features. And I don't really wanna go toe to toe with them on their features. They got 775 million in funding and it, you know, an engineering team of several hundred, a company size of a thousand. I can't compete with that on any level.
Speaker 3 00:39:15 Yeah. So I, I think that like, um, two, two things that come to mind as you're, as you're saying that stuff, one, I think of Podea like in the, in the kind of maker world, right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and there USP is we don't do everything perfect, but we do everything right. So you don't need fucking Zappier to MailChimp, to V Vimeo to all this. Right? Like you just, they do membership sites and payments and courses and community. Right. Everything is there, but, but they, they know and admit, and I think they kind of leaned into the fact they're like, yeah, their community stuff is not as good as discord or circle. And their membership stuff is not as good as whatever membership tool, you know, but, but everything is there and all works together natively. And so, like, I think those kind of tools are like, you're saying really hard for us to build, you know, as, as like bootstraps are mostly bootstraps.
Speaker 3 00:40:09 Like, so, so like that for you to go head to head with Clavio, Clavio is not really feasible probably, but I will like two things about what you're saying that give me pause. And this specific to your use case is to me, abandoned cart technology is pretty commoditized and, and podcast hosting is too. And that's why we're trying to differentiate ourselves from saying like, you know, just being a good podcast host is not enough. And so I'd argue like just being a good, a abandon cart tool is not enough to continue growing a, you know, a quite big company. And just really generally, if you look at like some of the unit economics and the business model stuff of like email is it's super sticky, it allows for expansion revenue. I know you have expansion revenue baked in, but like Clavio is such a big company because they offer like this really, really valuable service to customers. And I would just argue that like, that's more valuable than abandoned cards and that's my pretty ignorant, like impression of, of like the eCommerce tool space. But I would just say like leaning into abandoned carts as your thing limits you probably.
Speaker 2 00:41:31 Well, yeah. I mean, I hear what you're saying. I mean, so when I say that we are an abandoned cart recovery and we also do email marketing, it's not like we're shutting off the other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I definitely have to continue expanding those things, but I have to expand them intelligently. Right. So I can't just like arbitrarily start picking everything down Clavio's feature list and start banging it out. Like that doesn't make sense. I have to find the things that are the most important to customers that are asking for them. Yep. And I've, I've actually got a list of those things already. I've talked to customers and they're like, oh yeah, do you have this? And I'm like, well, no. Uh, and they're like, oh, well, if you had that, that would be really important to me. Like, okay, great. That helps.
Speaker 2 00:42:10 Thank you. So, you know, I do have some of that stuff tucked away in our, in our issue list here. So we've got that, that piece of it, but, you know, yeah. I hear what you're saying on the going toe to toe with Clavio and that, that will never make sense at any point, but you know, there's a couple of other things like Clavio is still pushing up market. Uh, you know, they just announced a hundred million of funding that they got from Shopify. Yep. They're, you know, become the preferred solution of Shopify plus, which those merchants are paying two grand a month for Shopify. They're already out of the class of merchants that I am trying to get for recapture anyway. So they are very much pushing higher and higher in the market. They've announced a clavia one service, which is enterprise based. They just raised their prices.
Speaker 2 00:43:01 Uh, there's a lot of stuff in there that kind of ticks off the middle market. And, uh, on top of all that, you know, I keep hearing from agencies about the complexity of Clavio and how hard it is that as a partner and these are experienced partners, these aren't just like randos that are starting to use the tool that how frustrated they are, that they try to use it. And every time they go in, it's like harder and harder for them to do the most basic of things. And they're just trying to get shit done. So yeah. You know, from that perspective, you know, if I feel like we're still winning, so I think it's more than just, we're an abandoned cart recovery. I think I have to emphasize the message of, we are an easy to use, simple to get started, low complexity, no agency required abandoned cart solution.
Speaker 2 00:43:52 And maybe there's some other things that we do to enhance that as well. I, you know, I've been flirting around with the idea of a done for you email marketing service that is a fixed price thing. And then, you know, I give them a menu of things that we'll do for them. And we say, we're not doing anything off this menu, but we'll do this. And it's charged you, it's a flat fee every month. Uh, and we'll help you with your email marketing. So that's valuable to customers. And I know I've had a conversation with, uh, Jesse Hanley from bento about how this has impacted their AOV. And it's pretty significant. Like it makes a huge difference. Um, you know, but also, uh, Jesse is about to have his first kid. So he has a little bit more free time than I do. Mm-hmm
Speaker 3 00:44:34 <affirmative>. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:44:35 Yep. So there's that. And I'd probably have to hire somebody to manage that. So that's a little, you know, the calculus isn't exactly the same. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. I, there's no easy answer to this and I feel like I'm still gonna, you know, it's not like by the end of the month, I'm gonna have this question fully answered. I think I'm gonna continue to struggle with this for the next few years as the tool evolves. And I think every year we're gonna have to reexamine this and say, are we still this? And does that make sense? Hundred
Speaker 3 00:45:03 Percent. Yeah. And I think it's super healthy to, you know, that's part of maybe part of like annual planning or something, right. Is this is what we said last year. Does it still apply? Yes, no. Should we revisit it? And, and like, have the frameworks maybe kinda like we talked about what's working already, what's the opportunity. Does the op that, does that opportunity make sense? Right. Because the answer is no, a lot of times, especially for us as smaller companies. So yeah. I mean, I, I think you're asking all the right questions and I think the other part of it is like, what do you want, right? Because like, if you don't wanna be Clavio then doing what Clavio does is not smart. Right. <laugh> so like, I think right. Asking all those questions and then put it in the context of you and your lifestyle and your business goals and all that kind of stuff. And I don't mean you, I mean, people like is, is the other part of that question, so,
Speaker 2 00:45:49 Right, right. Well, that helps a lot. And cool. Yeah. I'll continue to, to wrestle with that. Like, like I said, it's not a, it's not a one and done thing it's gotta be, I think pretty regularly. And I think maybe every quarterly rock, I'll try to revisit this to some degree and definitely on annual planning. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:46:08 Yep. I think that makes sense. That makes sense. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and for everyone listening, like if you have kind of thoughts or suggestions or, or feedback for, for Dave or I, or just kind of this process in general, shoot us message podcast, rogue, startups.com. And, uh, we promise it won't be two months before we record again. I'm gonna be on vacation next week. So it won't be next week. <laugh> that we're back out. But, um, we'll get back out here as soon as can thanks. Uh, so much for listening to everyone. Talk to you soon.
Speaker 1 00:46:35 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.
