Bootstrapped Web

Bootstrap Web, we're back. Second week in a row. Jordan, how's it going, buddy?

Catching fire two weeks in a row.

Right.

Last week was a great episode. It was a lot of fun to do. It's cool to listen to. And congrats again. It was really fun to see all the talk about it on Twitter and people congratulating you who have kind of followed the journey.

Yeah. Was, it was really great. You know, that we're recording on Friday, so that actually just came out yesterday and, just tons of really great feedback from folks. I appreciate all the, all the nice, notes and emails and stuff. And yeah, that, that tweet went around like a lot, a lot more than I expected.

I am definitely ready for a vacation. I don't know about you.

I'm a bit toasty around the edges. I had a pretty tough week last week. I think it was last week. MicroConf was last week, right? Not this week.

Well, yeah, you went to the Portland one. Yes. I was bummed. I was supposed to go to the one in Boston this week. I had to just sort of stay home because I had so much work to do.

I was in Colorado last week with the buddies who do Big Snow Tiny Comp and then home this week trying to ship a bunch of work. Then next week my wife and I are going to Cabo, Mexico for, it's a vacation for my wife and then I get to hang out at Cabo Press. Super excited to go back.

That's pretty good. That's pretty good for both of I have not been able to marry those two together. You know, with microconf that we used to go to, Regan used to ask me like, should I come to Vegas? She's, she's never been to Vegas and there's there's she just won't like Vegas. She doesn't gamble.

She doesn't like, you know, so we've never been able to do that. But Cabo Press always looks fantastic.

Yeah. My my wife doesn't come along very often, but occasionally when it's I mean, when it's at an all inclusive resort in Cabo, like, sure, I'll go.

Yeah, fine. Fine. So MicroConf was great. I gave a talk. So there's always pressure and stress around giving a talk.

What my issue is that my talk was about, it was titled, What Would You Do Differently? And it was posed like this hypothetical. And if you could start over, what would you do differently? And in reality, that's what I'm doing. I did Cardhook for a long time and now I'm starting over.

And so I kind of identified the things that we are doing differently and doing the same based on the experience at Cardhook.

And I feel like that, at least for me, probably for you and lot of people is like, that is the model of entrepreneurship, right? Like you start one business, the next business based on something you learned from the previous one. And then that's how it's always been for me for sure.

Yes. And Rally is very much like an extension and evolution around what I learned at Cardhook. The thing is that the stress of giving a talk is one thing. And then I had to just think about everything that happened at Cardhook for like a week. And you wake up thinking about it, you go to sleep thinking about it, you're in the shower thinking about it And it's stressing me out, man.

It's a lot of trauma. I don't know how else to say. There's a lot of difficult trauma around what happened there. And when I gave the talk and I think it went pretty well, it was great to see people. It was awesome to see micro conferences.

It was fun. And I came home after that talk and my body was done. I fell asleep on the couch for like three hours. I think I was just been holding in so much stress, frustration, anger, all the stuff that came out while thinking about this talk and how to talk about it.

Yeah. Plus like two years of not going to conferences.

Yeah. Yeah, that too. That too. But it was great. It felt great to get it out and now I'm moving forward.

Yeah, What

are we talking about? Yeah,

well, you know, last week it was kind of all me, so we got to get a rally update over here.

Okay, cool. So it's my turn. It was it was fun though. It's cool to have JD on and everything else too. All right.

So what what do we have going on? We we are we're having our coming out party. We have been quiet for a long time. We put up a landing page and that's about it. We stayed pretty quiet, but we are there.

We are at the point of being ready. The product is in a good place. And now we are entering an early access period. We have a bunch of applications that we're going through. So I'm doing demos and I'm talking to merchants feels so exciting.

What I will tell you, the most exciting thing for me, I definitely wanted to do demos myself. I feel like in the early days, like I don't care how much money you have in the bank and how many people and whatever else, like you got to get as close to the market as possible. And what I am getting in the demos is very reminiscent of what happened in the early days of Cardhook. And in those early days when I did the demos, people were like, Oh my God, I can't believe what you guys are building. Like, that's exactly what I thought it was.

And you're confirming that. And that's what I want. What do I need to do to get there? You know, it feels like, okay, okay, on the right track, you know, now let's just, let's just keep going. So that feels good.

You know, you've talked before about like the, the ideas in Kartik, but what do you think is like the top benefit that people are really latching onto? Like when, when they see it, it's like, yes, that's the thing.

So everyone experiences online shopping themselves. And if you are a merchant or work for a brand, you are hyper aware when you go shopping and when you have a good buying experience compared to when you don't. And there is a very real sense of shame and frustration if you feel like people are having a bad time buying from your brand and your website. So what's happening there is outside of Shopify, a lot of the checkouts are not that good and you still have to fill out your information. You still have to go and put in your first name and last name and address and city, state, zip, and your credit card info.

And then you hit buy and you have to do it over and over again. And that feels archaic because that's actually not necessary. It's just that the technology isn't there on some of these big platforms like Salesforce and BigCommerce and so on. They haven't done what Shopify did in building a network. Shopify built the shop pay network.

So when you buy something from a Shopify store, anytime you come back to another Shopify store, you don't have to reenter any of that info. You get a modern buying experience, whether you're using PayPal or Apple Pay or Google Pay. That's one thing. That's a wallet, but that's still a minority of shoppers. But if you want to use your credit card, all you have to do is fill in your email address and then you get an SMS authentication, you authenticate, and then you go to the last step and you buy with one click.

That needs to exist everywhere in the web. And so what our checkout is doing is it's bringing it to these new networks, these new platforms and these new merchants that are like, Oh my God, finally, I can give my shoppers that version of the experience. And you're telling me that it's not just my shoppers. I'm going to benefit from everyone in your network and everyone else in your network to benefit from my customers. It's all going to be this open network.

Shopify uses it to say, if you want to be part of this network, you need two things. You need to run on Shopify and you need to use our preferred payment processor, Shopify payments. So we just took an open approach to that. We said, you don't have to be on any platform and you don't have to use any specific processor. We'll just make it all work regardless of which processor you use or the other people in the network use.

So people are like, yes, that's, that's what needs to come next because I don't want to move my business or I can't move my business to Shopify, but I want the same type of a shopping experience.

The decentralization all the way.

Amen. That's right. And then we say, yes, you get that and you also make more revenue with these post purchase offers. And they're like, all right, sign me up. Let's go.

So it feels good. All right. So now think about the position we're in. We we're going to go early access through the end of the year. And so when I looked at that, I said, okay, if we're looking at that, we're looking at the context of the market.

Our our competitors are raising money. We have to compete on that front as well. And so what's the best thing we can do for ourselves? And what I concluded was, okay, what we need to do is we need to maximize the amount of attention and heat that we can bring to ourselves in as short of a time as possible, only once we're ready for early access merchants. And so now that we're ready for it, we are basically kicking off our attention strategy.

And so by the time this podcast publishes next week, the first blog post from me at Rally will be published. And what you'll see rolling out is a blog post on Monday. That's this coming Monday. Then another a second blog post. It's a series, it's three part series.

So part one, we'll talk about like our history and what we're doing. And we'll start to kick off a critique of the of the norm of what exists right now. Part two will be published a week later. So another Monday. And that one focuses on the impacts to merchants and app developers of the status quo.

And then part three will be, here's our solution. So we've kind of like laid out, here's who we are, here's our critique of the status quo, and then here's our solution to it. So that's three weeks in a row, Monday, Monday, Monday. And then two days after that last post will be our big PR push around our seed funding. And so we're kind of bundling all those together, and then there's something else coming out two weeks later that I can't talk about.

And so everything is geared toward maximizing the amount of attention and heat and love that we can get from three parties prospects for the early access partners to work with and integrate with an agencies to work with and investors for them to see, uh-oh, these guys are thinking really big. I should get in touch with them before other people do.

I really liked this because it's like these buzzword terms, but like, like three pillar posts. It's really based on like the whole underlying thought of the whole company. Right? And so it's like, you know, these three content pieces can basically form the basis of like all messaging going forward. Like when you're talking to your marketing team and your PR team and the sales people talking like this is where the message begins.

It's like, this is the problem. This is the opportunity. This is the solution. Right?

That's right. This is us leading with ideas. I think that is what we want to do and that's what we want to be known for. Here's our unique point of view on the market. A lot of this is based on an article by David Sacks.

David Sacks from Kraft Ventures. He wrote a post called Your Startup is a Movement. So let me just open that up. So if we can link to this in the show notes, it's called Your Startup is a Movement by David Sachs. And the first four points.

Point one is define a larger cause. Point two is articulate the problem better than anyone else. Part three is attack the status quo. And part four is define a category. So the next month is us following that strategy.

We want to define a category and the way to do that is to identify what's wrong with the market and how it works and articulate it better than anyone else.

This is something that I wanted to, and I have tried to do a little bit with Zip Message, like plant a flag on like asynchronous communication. And I and I did write a couple of long articles on on the site, but they didn't seem as strategic. They're they're a little bit more geared for like SEO optimization and and I don't think it was my best writing and all that. But like, I've been tweeting a lot about like async and why async is actually better, not just for the convenience, but it's actually better communication. Like, I have a lot of like arguments to make around that.

Yes. I think that's the thing.

Like I need to structure this kind of like what you're talking about it. You've like crafted your, your message, argument to the world on why Rally is here and everything. You've written it up. What are the mechanics of this? You mentioned that you're publishing them like once a week for the next three weeks, right?

So publishing a blog post, what else?

So just publishing a blog post. Woah. That's a lot of work. We don't have a blog page right now. So we got that designed and built in Webflow.

And I guess what I mean is like, how do you, how do you get those out there? Like, are they going to all is there also going to be like a like a Twitter thread? Are you going to send it out to influencers? Are you going to like have a launch of these blog posts? Yes.

And the assumption is that blog posts one will get more attention than the others. And so we kind of have to think strategically around like, where are we going to spend our energy and our time and so on? But yes, our investors are involved in this in terms of the strategy, right? So when the press release at the end goes out about our funding, we're going to ask them to make a big of a push as possible. And between now and then the blog posts, I will look to my network, our friends, anyone who owes me a favor and multiple channels.

So Twitter thread, LinkedIn thread, and then ask people to retweet it and push it out as much as possible.

There are threads on LinkedIn.

No, it's just a big post basically. Yeah. Okay. And then it's not done because the argument that you can make in a blog post is constricted. You can't just go on and ramble forever.

So it has to be pretty tight. And that means you have to leave some things out and you can't make these certain analogies and points and arguments and you can't use your passion and all that. So the blog posts were an incredible amount of work. I'm not done with them yet. I finished the first one.

It took me about twenty hours. It's a lot of freaking stress and going back and forth. And we hired a writer to write our other pieces of content. But she is helping edit this and is really helping improve the writing along the way. And then we're pushing it out to the small team, to the leadership team, really the head of content or chief of staff.

And the three of us are working together on these posts.

You know, this this whole exercise of crafting this into into articles is such a good thing to do because, like, I'm just thinking about the I don't really do it too much anymore, but like the years where I was writing and speaking and teaching about productized services. Right. I remember like noticing that I kept basically writing a very similar article over and over again. And whenever I was like giving a talk at a, like a conference or a webinar or something like that, like I would be like reiterating sort of the same key points about productized services, the benefits, the problems, and stuff like that, that I've like written time and time again before in using different words, or different examples, different ways. So like what you're doing here, think is like the first crafting of those words.

And you're gonna, know, from here on out, you're gonna be giving conference talks and going on other people's podcasts and stuff, and talking about the same ideas over and over again. And the more you do it, you know, the tighter the way that you explain it is going to be.

That's right. That's what

it's all about.

And fundraising did that to a very large degree because fundraising is storytelling and storytelling consists of these like anecdotes. Like here's a way to look at it, right? What we just said was like this rehearsed set of sentences that I can just say at a drop of a hat, like in terms of like merchants wanting this new checkout experience. Like I have like five or six of those that I could just at any time just get into and I will find my brain falling into a pattern. Sometimes I feel like I'm an actor reciting lines And sometimes I'm worried that I've already said this to someone and they will think I'm an absolute psychopath because I say it the exact same way every single time with the emphasis on the same words and everything else.

But honestly, when you see the best people speaking at conferences and stuff like that, like they've said that stuff like hundreds of times.

Yeah, you like internalize it and then it becomes And the repetition is not a bad thing. And so in many ways, these blog posts are actually taking what I've been saying out loud to the team and to investors and to people behind the scenes. And it's like bringing it out to everyone else. So I'm excited about that because I feel really strongly about those arguments and the need for them and the truth of them.

I think the other thing to point out here, if I'm hearing it correctly, is that these articles are literally your personal thoughts and opinions. You know, you're not just writing words on a page for SEO value. This is about the, the, the base, the baseline message for the company. Right?

This is, this is has another place.

Like you'll have that stuff, but like, you know, I think when, when people think about writing an article for the website, you know, is this going to rank or is this gonna, is there a search volume for this or like, that's later. This is about like the message, you know? Yes. You're not writing for bots. You're writing for your people.

I'm writing for the true believers. I've been waiting for someone to say this out loud and I feel really strongly about it. And I'm scared because I'm taking a risk. I'm not being nice. I'm saying the truth.

I've been sitting on the truth for years.

All right. Let's get, let's get, like, what, what can you say here about that? Like the fear and what are you, who are you calling out? What are the bits that are, that it's like? Yeah.

So I don't think calling people out and being negative and pointing fingers is a good look. I don't think it's effective. I don't think it's attractive. And so I'm minimizing the finger pointing. What I want to talk about is what's really happening in the market.

And what's really happening in the market is that the power is residing at the platform level instead of where it should in the merchant and app developer level. And that's happening in a lot of different places. It's happening in social networks. It's happening in search. It's happening in a lot of places.

And it's also happening in e commerce. And e commerce is where we live and where we want to point it out and say, don't think this is this is good. This isn't healthy. This isn't right that this is the way things are and we don't think it has to be that way. And so we're building for a new version of it where the power comes back to the merchants and the app developers.

We have some credibility and some moral authority to stand on because we were just the recipients of a very bad experience based on the way things are right now. And I feel okay getting on my high horse a little bit because I feel it. I felt it. I still feel it every fucking day.

Yeah, yeah man. And how much of your personal story, whether it's Cardhook or anything else previous is included in the messaging in Rally and like your stories and examples and things like that?

Only enough to identify the fact that we have a lot of familiarity with the current dynamics, but no more than that. Not harping on it, not using it as like this crutch, but just identifying. And what you'll read in the piece, which will be out by the time this comes out, is that we don't actually throw blame on individual people or companies. We blame the way things are set up and the way things have unfolded on the internet over the past decade or so where power accumulated at platform level.

And I think it's really natural, right? Like it's just a natural progression of basically just like the mass embrace of, you know, this sounds so stupid today in 2021, like the the mass embrace of of the Internet. Right? Like like in the in the early decades of this, it was like companies making a simple user interface for people to use to access things on the internet, but now people are so much more comfortable using all sorts of different tools, you know?

Yeah. And it's right. There's always been this natural cycle of bundling and unbundling on the internet in different places. And this is this is an unbundling period, but it feels different because there are a new set of rules in Web three point that are being written as we go and people are confused by them and excited by them and people are anti and pro and it's causing chaos. It's a

really tricky time. Honestly, it's a really tricky time for SaaS because, know, like the idea of integrations and also the idea of categories of SaaS. I was just literally working on this today in in ZipMessage. Like, I have one tool for email marketing, customer messaging, and customer email marketing, and trial onboarding sequences. And then I have another tool for, like, our knowledge based docs.

And then I have a tool for the in app, Beacon and like all these these three things need to talk to each other and they need to sync with each other. And obviously having integrations is really important, having APIs and Zapier and stuff like that. But like if you're getting into SaaS, like sometimes it helps to like sort of like cross into multiple areas and like I'm part of like one foot in this category, one foot in that category. Anyway, it's it's it's all a mix now.

Yeah. Things are things are fluid.

Do you go from here? So you got, you got this stuff sort of like lined up over the next three weeks. What's sort of like the game plan from there?

If we go back to what we were talking about before, where these are in written form and they serve as the pillars of who we are and what we're doing and why we're doing it, then we want to expand on that. And so once that's out, I will go on podcasts and be able to articulate these things in a thirty, forty minute timeframe audibly. And then you could reach different audiences and have this different format in an audio recording that can then be used in different places. And then it's the gospel and repeat it ad nauseam until everyone knows exactly what we do, who we are and why we're doing things the way we are. The goal is to then take the attention we get from merchants and turn that into early access opportunities and to pipeline for when we launch in Q1 and use the attention from partners to turn that into agency partnerships and app integrations, and then use the attention we get from investors to continue our ability to resource ourselves.

So right. It's on purpose and it's all stacked. We're going to make the most of it.

Very nice on the product side. Are you, you have, early access, like applications and stuff. Do you have like merchants kind of lined up to start using it?

We do. We do. So that's our second integration went on to production this week. So now we have both BigCommerce and Swell as production ready. And we have started a WooCommerce integration and have gotten a surprising reaction from WooCommerce merchants.

That was great. We asked our early access list to come in and fill out an application for us to identify what

mean, we WordPress itself is like decentralized, right?

So that's right. And at WooCommerce, they don't have that creative a checkout experience right now that they can use that has all the stuff that we're building into it with the network recognition and all this other stuff. So people are very, very interested in it.

Excited to hear those updates, man.

Yeah. Me too. Me too.

We're going to probably be off next week, but we'll, you know, we might be back in like two weeks. So we should be like right in the thick of this.

In the middle. Yes. So that'll be very interesting to see, you know, where we are and where I am after having this blog post out in the wild. I think it will be cathartic. I have been sitting on so many secrets.

It's not healthy. It's not healthy to be quiet and fearful. That is not my natural state. And so this feels like finally being able to say it and put up the flag and whatever comes after that is okay. Because on the other side of that, at least I will be rid of this thing that I've been I've been carrying in silence.

Yeah, man. I'm excited. On a similar note, last week I had the news about audience ops. It felt really good to finally get that out there and announced because it was sort of like really like two months in the making, but then it actually closed and then there was like another two weeks before I was even public about it. I've got a similar piece of news today with Zip Message.

Zip Message has taken some funding from Com Fund, you know, formerly known as Earnest Capital. That also happened about a month ago and I've been sort of sitting on that news for a couple of weeks. I wanted to get the audience ops thing out first, but but yeah. Alright.

So let's let's talk.

Okay. So first thing first first things first, we're gonna have to like rename the podcast.

Change the name. Change name. Okay. So okay. So we'll we'll we'll put out like a Twitter question and see who can help us with a new title.

So Bootstrap Web is fully no longer bootstrapped on I either

guess not.

Okay. So now more importantly, let's talk about what you did and why. So take us back before you make the decision and like, what are you looking at? What are you thinking about when you go toward this direction?

You know, I'm trying to remember back about two to three months ago, you know, Zip Message has been off to a pretty good start this year, you know, really good traction. And the idea of taking any sort of funding actually wasn't initially my thought. Like other people came to me like, Hey, like this seems like the type of thing that you should probably raise funding for. A few people came to me like, if you are raising funding, I would be interested in that. Just offering little notes like that.

And I guess that sort of planted the seed for me that like, maybe this is something I should kind of consider. That was one piece. Then another one was that I was looking to sell audience ops as I described in last week's episode. So I knew that was probably coming in the next few months. So I had to start to think through what does the post audience ops picture look like for me?

And it came down to, well, I could take a bunch of that money and plow it right into Zip Message as I've been doing up until now, you know, like Audience Ops has been funding Zip Message, or I could take a bunch of that off the table and, know, take a bit of money if the terms are right and just extend the runway and really give this a good shot. So, so that was the thought. Then, and then the question was like, okay, well, if, if I'm going to raise anything, what, what type of funding do I want to look for? Who do I want to look for it from? What type of terms, all that sort of stuff.

I started thinking through what it looks like to raise a small angel round. Just for the record, like I have never raised investment ever. Like this is the first time I've ever taken it. So completely new to me. It is not my default.

I really feel like I'm a bootstrapper at heart. Like, I've just always operated that way. Like keep it simple, make a thing, sell it to customers. That's always been

We my believe you. That's a credible statement from you.

Well, you know, I say that just to just to say like, I like simpler the better,

you know.

I started to do a ton of research because since I have never really raised funding, I've never really learned all that much about all the different options out there and all the newer developments and how these things work. Right? So I spent a lot of time just really reading up on and talking to a bunch of really, smart folks who gave me a lot of really good advice. You of course were one of them. I started to really think through it all and initially where I landed was, okay, I think I'm going to raise an angels round from a group of angel investors if I could, you know, reach out and find enough people, to write a few checks and raise a good number.

Learned about like the safe agreements and that sort of thing. Not going to get into all the weeds there, but, I started down that route and I spoke to a few people, got a few verbal commitments from friends and contacts so that started to look good and one introduction led to another. I spoke to the guys that like SureSwift Capital, spoke to who then connected me to Tyler Tringus. I think Tyler and I had spoken at a conference before and stuff like that. So I had a really good call with him.

Got to understand a little bit more about how Comfund works. Again, they were previously known as Earnest. They take a bit of a different approach than a typical SafeNote. So I had to really spend a few weeks kind of like wrapping my head around how, how their, their terms work. The offer was, was good.

It made sense in terms of the amount, the valuation. I'm just trying to think of the sequence of events here. It was basically like, I could have kept going down the route of just gathering a bunch of angels and safe, but I liked the terms on the comm fund actually a little bit better than that. I don't know what this means, but basically my conclusion on the angels route was I could have kept going. I could have talked to more and more people from my network, got more and more introductions and maybe you

could have definitely done it.

I could have done that, but my, my one hesitation was, you know, like, even like the terms on that, like the valuation and the amount of money could potentially be better than, Give or take.

Get to decide to a much larger extent.

But my one thought was like, you know, for an angel check for it to be a huge win for the angel investor, this thing really needs to be on a path toward VC. Not a 100% of the time, obviously, like if if it if I could bootstrap it and grow huge, it could be a decent return for investors. A lot of angels will say like, well, I just want to be along for the ride and stuff like that.

Yeah, but valuations these days start off pretty darn high. And then you look at that and you're like, all right, five X that that's starting to get into a pretty big number. So did you feel like that some misalignment around like lot

of misalignment, even if the angels themselves say like, whatever you want to do in the future, it's cool. I just want be along for the ride. You know, there's still, I'm the one who took the money. I still want and especially if a lot of these angels are friends of mine, that's another thing that all of those thoughts and options seemed a little bit moot once I once I got the offer from from Comfund which really was very attractive. It was it was enough money for me to say like, yeah, this, this sort of feels like a no brainer and the valuation was right.

And, and it gave me plenty of runway. And then, you know, plus I have other cash in the bank from the exits. So like, yeah.

Now, what I recall from our conversations though, one of the things that was most attractive to you is that running the company profitably for ten years is great outcome

for Yeah. Exactly right. I think what CommFund is designed for has a lot more alignment with where I think I would like to take ZipMessage.

Like your view of success.

Yeah. I mean where I sit today, know, it's still unknown and that was probably the hardest thing about considering all these options. Like audience ops was also very difficult for me to work through the process of exiting, but at least with audience ops, it's like all the choices that I have to make are like, this is on the table right now. Do I want to take it or not? And that's that.

With funding, you're making decisions about the future, about like the distant future. Like if I do this, then that positions me on a path to go this way or that way years from now that like, I don't know how I feel about that years from now. And so that, that gave me a lot of stress to try to figure it out. But it seems like Comfund, obviously their branding reflects this, but the way that they're, I their terms work, does sort of align with the idea of sort of operating like a bootstrapper, profitable long term. I would like to build a long term company here.

And it doesn't, obviously it doesn't preclude taking future funding rounds and things like that. I honestly don't know what might happen in the next few years, but for right now, the way that I'm operating it, way that I'm, the roadmap is looking that this just sort of seems like, like the roadmap that, that makes sense for me, you know?

Okay. Now when you take on money, right, like like what does that do to your mindset on the approach? Like how you wanna grow it? What the first year looks like, what hiring looks like, right? It's not, it's not an enormous amount of money.

It's not like millions and millions of dollars. So it's not like,

yeah, it's not, it's not a ton, you know, it's so, so in that sense, really a lot of my thinking hasn't changed, like pre taking investment to post taking investment. Was really a question of like, I already have these plans. These plans are already in motion. I already have the developer. I'm already spending in these little marketing areas and I have plans to do this and that.

Like those plans really didn't change. It's really just a question of like where is that funding coming from? Am I gonna self fund it or do I have outside funding? That said, I I guess there are some things that I'm I'm now it's funny. It's little bit of two sides of the coin here.

On on one hand, I feel a little bit liberated to to be a little bit more aggressive in the types of types of things that

I but can

maybe this is the bootstrapper in me. There is the other thing which is like, I have a runway and and now I gotta be extra careful with how I spend that run. I'm not spending money, I'm spending runway, you know. And so, so obviously it's a, it's a balance between like, all right, grow, you grow revenue, you extend the runway, right? You spend faster, you eat up runway, but hopefully the spending results in growth, right?

So that's, that's what it is.

I'm glad you brought that up because I felt the need to bring it up because when I heard you talking, I started to remember some of our conversations over the last few weeks. And one of them was, you're so excited about the opportunity that you want to push on it effectively using corporate money to push on it, as opposed to looking at your own savings and saying, I'm funding every single thing. That liberation is important to be a little bit more aggressive. It doesn't change so dramatically. Right.

The difference at Cardhook of having four people and saying we need to hire number five, but we'll only going to do so when we get from 20 ks MRR to 25. And now with Rally, it's like 16 people before we've launched a product that is like night and day. But that twist in your ability to go after what you are really excited about is still a big deal.

The way that I really think about it though is, is like, it's, it does buy more time. Like it to me, it's a it's a timing thing. It's it's not like, I'm not going on a hiring spree right now. You know, I'm not tripling the the the dev team. Like me and my one developer, we ship really fast.

Like, I I don't have an immediate need to hire another developer. I will in a few months, but not right now. You know? I still have the mindset of like, don't spend unnecessarily, spend smart. And actually right now, like today, the strategy is conserve this cash because we're, you know, we're still making the product right.

We're getting, we're still building the early traction. We haven't even like fired up marketing on all cylinders yet. Like it's so like for me, it's really more about time. Now, now I have, I've got like a good two years in the bank to just really, really hack on this thing. Of course as, as MRR grows, which it has been growing month to month.

So like as that continues to grow, that just extends out the runway, you know.

Okay. So it sounds like it's coming more in the form of you feeling comfortable focusing on it for a long period of time and knowing you don't, you don't have to change anything. You can just keep going on this. You believe in this, you can keep going for a long period of time until it gets to where it needs to go.

I mean, don't get me wrong. Like I have the same urgency that I've always had my whole career. Like I have to move fast, that's just how it happens. Always, I know. MR never grows fast enough, you know?

But like that's how I naturally operate, but now this just gives me more breathing room, you know, because if I was funding this using my own money, then I think that would just add to the stress, You know, like I guess you could say I am supplementing the runway with my own money still, but it does relieve some personal stress to know that like, look, the bank account is padded. Now I could just focus on executing product and marketing, you know, over the next a while Yeah.

I am so excited for you because you, you gave yourself buffer on the personal side and then you gave yourself buffer on the corporate side and now you can just do what you do best, just get to work.

Obviously it's not just the money. I mean joining CommFund is everything that I have seen so far, I have really liked to be honest. First of all, I just love that there are these options for folks like us, Bootstrappers, whether it's CommFund, TinySeed, there are more angels out there, there are more of these funds popping up like the I love this ecosystem how it's been evolving. And you know, I've been so tied up in the audience op stuff that I haven't fully dove into all of the resources that are now available to me through CommFund. It's

pretty cool.

I've been inside the community and stuff like that and spoke to a couple of people on the team there and a couple of things that I really like about it. Number one, the mentors network. I have not yet fully tapped into this. I can't wait to line up some calls with mentors. Are literally things on my plate right now, like strategy wise that I am trying to figure out that I will be tapping some mentors for advice on for sure.

What I like about it, and I think this is the case with a lot of these funds is that I believe most of, if not all of the mentors are investors in comm. So when I'm talking to one of them or a group of them, they are literally incentivized in my business. I also just like the way that it is organized internally and just sort of like the overall, how do I explain it? Like the overall ethos or the overall approach is like, they're offering all these resources, whether it's the mentors, discounts and stuff, whether it's like weekly meetings or check ins or investor updates, all different like perks and things like that and like resources and educational stuff. But it's all completely optional, right?

Like everybody's on a different path, everyone's at a different stage, each company is working on different things at different times. And so it's all like, look, we're here for you as much as you want, but like literally every meeting, every call, everything is completely optional. We want you to just like, we want to be as helpful, but like, we're not going to be, you're not like in like a class or like a program that you have to go through.

Right. That fits. Right? The whole remote thing. Like if you wanna come do the synchronous thing with us, feel free.

But if not, that's also fine.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, it's like super, super new experience for me. I'm still kind of figuring

it It's good. I feel like you're, you're good. You thrive in communities and these are very like minded people.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm excited to dive more into it. There's a lot of folks in the comm fund, whether it's the startups or the mentors that I have not gotten to know yet. I'm really excited to kind of dive into it.

Very cool. All right. So look, next week you're in Mexico. Enjoy yourself. And then the week after, let's do another catch up on how things are with me in the middle of the storm.

And and then I wanna hear about Cabo Press and what you're learning there and just keep going, man. So congrats on the funding.

Congrats to you on the rollout here, Rally.

Thank you very much. Hell yes.

It's the coming out party, man. Awesome.

Yes, keep an eye. Alright, thanks, Talk

to you soon. Alright. Later, folks.