Creating Content & New Product Ideas
Welcome back, everybody. Another episode of Bootstrapped Web. Just getting back from spring break. Brian, how are you?
Brian Casel:Yes, sir. Yeah. Doing good. Doing good. Back back in it here.
Brian Casel:So you're just back in town from Austin, Texas.
Jordan Gal:Got in last night. We're supposed to get in yesterday afternoon, but we we were in Austin with another family from Portland that we're close with. They have three kids. Everyone gets along. It's great.
Jordan Gal:So we've got two separate houses. Been hanging out all week.
Brian Casel:Nice. Airbnb down there?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Airbnb. Cool city, man. K. You know, it was very very entertaining for a family vacation.
Jordan Gal:Every day, something cool. Some swimming hole, bike rental, University of Texas campus. Took a drive down to San Antonio for the day. Like the whole thing was really impressive and just just fun. Just 75 and sunny and just fun.
Brian Casel:Oh, that's great. Yeah. It seems like a good time I think to be down in Austin like weather wise. I love that kind of vacation. Like that's that's exactly what we do a lot is we just k.
Brian Casel:Go to a city or go somewhere and get an air b n B and just Sounded like just like tool around the city for just do like random like go, you know, restaurants and just go check check stuff out. Like, not like a crazy adventure vacation, but just living in a city for a week, you know. A different place.
Jordan Gal:We didn't didn't have any plan. We had, you know, two or three dinner reservations or something but we didn't have big plans. We ended up seeing music. We just kinda like you said, just jumped into the flow of the city And that city is alive. It is Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Ambitious and optimistic and energetic. People are out. Everyone being nice. Barbecue. It it was really it was really impressive.
Jordan Gal:I generally default toward sitting on a beach. But but we had a great time dispersion.
Brian Casel:Every time I'm down in Texas, I just love the state. Know? And I Like, you know, growing up in the Northeast, like it it That's that's like a part of the country that just seems so like polar opposite from where you and I have lived our lives. But, yeah. I've been down there a few times.
Brian Casel:I I love this I love Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and then just like driving through the the state is is beautiful. I I love it down there.
Jordan Gal:There's a lot of building. I I had Okay. Here's here's the my little thesis from being there for a few days. You tell me if this sounds like complete bullshit. But here's here's my take on it.
Jordan Gal:You and I grew up in the Northeast. I live in Chicago now. It feels like to me, like we here are coasting on the efforts made and the foresight of people a hundred plus years ago. We have these amazing institutions and cities and architecture and established organizations like cultures and that feels great at one level, but it is it's decaying. It's like the
Brian Casel:You mean like here in the Northeast?
Jordan Gal:Yes. It's like Yeah. You know, the the hard times make hard men and that that that cycle.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And and now it's it's it feels like it's decaying and it's not it's not on the rise. It feels like a very slow decline. So here's I
Brian Casel:yeah. I I really agree with this especially in New York City and the Tri State area and Long Island, New York.
Jordan Gal:You you see it.
Brian Casel:You you see it and feel it and and that's why I really believe NYC is a is a is another thing. I think there's love NYC. It's just like in terms of the energy and everything.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:But like Long Island which is where where I'm from and
Jordan Gal:Same.
Brian Casel:And you grew up. That I I I say it all the time. I think it's like one of the most overvalued like, it's the the worst value place to live in America. And I'm from there. I I grew up there.
Jordan Gal:Life. It's crowded.
Brian Casel:Just in terms of like how extremely expensive it is, and how like old and run down so many parts of it are, and overcrowded, and you're stuck there. It's hard to take road trips out of it, to get through the city, and it's just And like and prices are just like insane. Yeah. Compared to even compared to where I live. I'm I'm in Connecticut like an hour away from the border of New York and where and where I live is like a fraction of the price of living in that area and like so much better quality of life.
Brian Casel:It's crazy.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And and I think that a long time ago when it was being built out, it was so attractive and and and attracted a lot of people and that created an amazing tax base. And then it fattened up the government and his bureaucracies and they've gotten stale and the money goes there and it isn't productive. Yeah. And the roads get beat up and the subways aren't safe.
Jordan Gal:So that's my general feel.
Brian Casel:So that And then and then you'd look at places like Chicago and even down in Texas and and all over the rest of the country. I remember I I used to live in Chicago when I was in college. I I lived there for two years and I remember driving around the city with a real estate agent finding an apartment. And I was commenting on like, know, oh man, like this city is great. It's so clean.
Brian Casel:He's like, yeah, only New Yorkers say that. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Well, look. I I would put the city of Chicago firmly in the decay camp along with New York and others.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But there I I love Chicago, man. It's like it's especially like downtown any big city is gonna have its its share of like parts that are sort of like run down and decay. But like, I don't know. A lot
Jordan Gal:it feels like policy choices. Yeah. It's not doesn't have to be that that way. So you go to Texas and in my mind, I'm like, oh, this is like the land of the free here. Everything is gonna be better.
Jordan Gal:In in reality, it was like a mirror image. So driving on the highway from Austin to San Antonio, that drive is ugly. It's not. It's not. That stretch of highway is every national chain ever invented.
Brian Casel:That's true. Yeah. That that stretch.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Chaos. We did that. It is chaotic. I don't know what what other word to put.
Brian Casel:That's true. And and couple years back we did like around the country trip where we drove through like through from from like We we were actually in Galveston, Texas on the coast then out to Austin and then out through West Texas and then into the Southwest. And that drive is I mean, you're just miles and miles of nothing but it's like beautiful, you
Jordan Gal:know? Yeah.
Brian Casel:So it's So what what
Jordan Gal:I felt was like this flip side of you are more free there. You do get to start a business more easily. There is more economic movement and the ability to go up in your income bracket is there. And capital is welcome. Like, you can build a big office building in Austin and the government's not gonna tear you to shreds and you can make money on your on your risk.
Jordan Gal:And because of that, there's a lot more. So it was like the opposite of decay, but it's not it's not perfect. Because when you let things go with a lot less restriction, it doesn't always end up as beautiful as a Downtown Chicago with its unbelievable architecture that you can't believe this country was ever even capable of doing that.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So it's a really interesting kind of like I'm happy where we live and it's really nice to know that Texas exists Yeah. As an option.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep. Yeah. Totally. Bootstrapped Web.
Brian Casel:This is our travel podcast where we where we comment on the on the state of architecture in America.
Jordan Gal:I don't know. That's what's on my mind.
Brian Casel:I love it. Let's talk about business.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I also wanna say that today's podcast is gonna be sponsored by Thesis, a new nootropic nootropic that I'm testing. They're not giving us any money. I'm just high as a kite off of nootropic right now. And it's depending on how sharp I am or how repetitive or, you know, inarticulate.
Brian Casel:Oh, alright. We're in for a good one today.
Jordan Gal:No. I I like it. I like it.
Brian Casel:Nice. Nice.
Jordan Gal:Any enhancement I can get, you know.
Brian Casel:There you go. Performance enhancing drugs, right? Yes. That's right. Alright.
Brian Casel:So I I don't know if you've been following like my Twitter or my LinkedIn or my YouTube this past week. But I made a conscious effort and I'm continuing to do this to You know what happened? Okay. I realized about two weeks ago, it's been on my mind for a while this year that like I have been living with a fear of clicking publish on content. Okay.
Brian Casel:And You don't usually have
Jordan Gal:a fear of publishing, so what what is that?
Brian Casel:Not not historically. I like through my career, I've I've made a network of of being out there with with content. But I have found that for Like with the exception of this podcast. Like this podcast essentially and a few and a few random off the cuff tweets here and there. Other than that, I've been pretty quiet in terms of like content, legit content creation from me personally.
Brian Casel:In my in my own voice and like sharing my own ideas or opinions or theories or you know, creative projects. Like just being public. Other than like publishing like, hey, we launched a feature in Clarity Flow. That's like the final product of something. I I have not been public like hitting publish on content that I feel proud of.
Brian Casel:And I think that that has been a factor of a result of a bunch of things. Mainly just feeling like I don't have I've sort of lost my voice in terms of like what do I what do I think is interesting? What do I think people want to hear from me? Or value in what I have to offer? You know, because my my focus has shifted so much from Like years ago, I was publishing a ton of content around productized services Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And helping freelancers level up and become business owners and things like that. But like I've moved on from that years ago. I'm I'm more in product management, product creation, product design world now. Full stack, right? So so there's that.
Brian Casel:And then the other thing that occurred to me is that this year, I'm launching I'm I'm developing my new business called Instrumental Products, which is this product studio. Primarily, I'm working with clients. Right now, I'm working with a couple of good clients on building out a new app for one, for another one. They're a SaaS company I'm helping with UI and UX refresh work on their interface and stuff. And it's been really good work.
Brian Casel:And I worked with a couple other SaaS earlier this year. And many of the folks who I am friends with and have good relationships with, I've been reaching out and and telling them like, hey, I'm starting this thing. If you happen to know anyone who has a need for this type of value that I could offer as a consultancy. I'm out there, I'm looking for projects. Right?
Brian Casel:And it occurred to me that like, that actually doesn't result in bringing in many leads and projects.
Jordan Gal:It's a good way to start.
Brian Casel:It's a good way to start, but but like in all the effort, I like week after week, multiple weeks this year, I have I've said like this week, I need to personally reach out to 20 people to try to drum up some business for this thing. And so the outbound, First of all, it's just really hard to do for me personally. Doesn't just ask ask friends like, hey, do you know anyone who who could hire me for this? Right? I don't like just doing it.
Jordan Gal:There's tension or friction or whatever you want. Resistance.
Brian Casel:But more than that, I I just realized like, know what? It actually doesn't work for the most part. And I looked at all of the clients that I am working with now. And where And and actually none of them were people that I reached out to. They they all came to me because they are listeners of this show or they're long time followers of of my content.
Brian Casel:In some cases like I'm not even very like close with them personally but like they they know of me because I I put content out there.
Jordan Gal:Yep.
Brian Casel:So so then it occurred to me like, well, like the outbound approach and and even if I were to like fire up more traditional marketing stuff like cold outreach to lots of companies who could have this type of need, That's not not nearly as effective as inbound interest in you know, like customer client interest. There's nothing better than just inbound because they already built up the the trust like they they know, like and trust you from afar. So they so they come inbound and they have a need and and it's a really good fit. So that so I I was just like literally analyzing like the list of clients that I've been working with this year. It's like well where did they come from?
Brian Casel:Oh they actually came from content and so maybe I need to actually prioritize publishing more and actually being out there and and actually circling back around to what I was trying to do this year which is rebuild my audience. And that's a long way of saying like, I I It's just a reminder that I have to a make priority and that literally means like spending more hours and more creative effort on content creation and rebuilding that muscle, reactivating that muscle. And that's what I forced myself to do this week. I I think this week I ended up publishing new like pieces of content. Unique pieces of content like I think four out of five days this week.
Brian Casel:I published to LinkedIn for the very first time. I published I think four new YouTube videos. I got a new camera for YouTube. And I published to Twitter a bunch of stuff. I can talk more about like the the creative process because I sort of flipped the script on on that as well.
Brian Casel:But the funny thing about YouTube Not YouTube. LinkedIn. I have had an account on LinkedIn since I don't know what, like, I don't know, fifteen, twenty years, something
Jordan Gal:like that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I I actually looked at my profile to look at my posts, like my activity. You have zero posts. Like, I have never posted ever. Literally zero.
Brian Casel:Literally zero.
Jordan Gal:Oh my god.
Brian Casel:Like, I've had a profile. My my work history or whatever listed on there. I have never wrote and published anything on the LinkedIn network ever.
Jordan Gal:This week
Brian Casel:was was your first LinkedIn post? Monday of this week was my very first LinkedIn post. I ended up like like three more. Like this week I think I published three times. Those are my number like three first post ever on LinkedIn.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Alright. You're on the map. The leads are the leads are gonna come pouring in now.
Brian Casel:And the very first day that I published on LinkedIn No. I got a I got a lead for a No joke. And it was a And the funny thing was was that it was it was somebody who was like my second or third ever freelance client from fifteen years ago as a freelance web designer. I haven't spoken to her in fifteen years.
Jordan Gal:She
Brian Casel:saw me post on LinkedIn and reached out and and this could I don't I don't know if it's gonna happen but it's like a potential large software development project that could happen.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Fine. No more making fun on LinkedIn?
Brian Casel:And the reach like you look at the analytics like I'm I'm a person who has no history. I've I've Whatever the connections. A lot of spammers in my in my connections list. But like, these posts that I put, like, they definitely have like even more reach than some of my tweets do. Because network seems to be a little bit more
Jordan Gal:Okay. Or
Brian Casel:their algorithm is interesting.
Jordan Gal:I have a few questions. Can I write off a few questions? Let's go. When you say publishing content, is it just social? Just tweet and LinkedIn?
Jordan Gal:Nothing that lives elsewhere like a blog?
Brian Casel:This has been an interesting learning for me. I think I think what I'm getting into the groove of is like, I I have one idea for content in per day and that's ultimately gonna go to all the places.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:So this week I I posted I think three or four different unique pieces of Like different ideas, different topics. And all of those showed up on my LinkedIn, on as like long tweets Mhmm. As YouTube videos. And I also copied it to to my threads account which I don't really use. But Right.
Jordan Gal:But you made a made a video also.
Brian Casel:Yes. Okay. Yeah. And I think at least one of these, I haven't done it yet but I'll probably send it to my newsletter this weekend. Oh, and one of them I did publish as a blog post on the instrumental products website.
Brian Casel:Okay. Because I I felt like it was a good fit for that site. Okay. Yeah. So so the other thing that I As I'm getting back into this like rebuilding the muscle of content creation, I'm also flipping the script on how I create content.
Brian Casel:Because I have a few goals when it comes to this. Aside from just publishing, I need to optimize how I produce so that I can do it consistently and do it Have longevity with it. Right? I wanna keep doing this for the rest of the year.
Jordan Gal:Right. It can't be too big of a mountain to climb every time or or you can't you can't keep
Brian Casel:Exactly. Yeah. I thought a few weeks ago, I thought the flow would be like, alright, I wanna focus on YouTube. Let me create a YouTube video first. Put a lot of effort into that.
Brian Casel:And then turn that video into written content like tweets Okay. And blog posts. I thought I thought that would be the case. For me personally, I do my best thinking and and content creation as a writer first.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So the other direction then.
Brian Casel:So the other direction first. So I ended up now now where I'm at with it is like, I write first. And I I think I'm sort of writing for LinkedIn first. But the You could also say like, I'm essentially writing a blog post first. But but my thought process is like, I'm writing as if I'm writing for a LinkedIn post.
Brian Casel:Where I don't feel too constrained on like length, but I'm trying to keep it short and and and crunchy to Mhmm. Put up there. I'm doing a bunch of editing. So I start with a topic idea and we can talk more about like where Yeah.
Jordan Gal:How deliberate. This that's my question. It's like this week I'm gonna talk once about UI Well Once about onboarding. Like how deliberate is that?
Brian Casel:I'm keeping a running list and I'm And this is another thing that I'm still trying to explore and find my voice or find my theme and find the thing that resonates most with people. And the thing that I The things that I've I've always been most interested in publishing on and what I still wanna work toward is just being, I love building in public. I love the I love the content of building in public. I love watching others build in public. Right?
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Not the not publishing your MR graph. That's bullshit. I'm I'm talking about the creative process of especially product design and development. But what I really like and what I get fired up by is that, is like the design and development of products and and how we connect those creative dots to the business. And actually just an hour ago, I published a YouTube video that I'm proud of it because it's the first I think it's the closest that I'm getting to what I'm talking about here.
Brian Casel:Which is I I published a video where I showed how I design in the These things like popovers. Tool tips inside of an app. Little like a a little question mark icon. You hover over it, it shows you a little tool tip on what this setting does. I have like a 100 of those things spread out around the Clarity Flow interface.
Brian Casel:And I and I'm working on a new app now and I I I use the same component. That seems like a little UI detail. Right? And and I did a YouTube video on how I design and develop that. I showed the code and and all that.
Brian Casel:But that's a tiny design detail, but it actually has a huge impact on my product businesses. It keeps support down. It makes customers feel confident in using the tool. They they feel like they are more successful. It actually turns our users into power users because I'm giving them in app instruction without them needing to go hunt the docs or needing to contact support.
Brian Casel:It means I didn't have to hire a tier one support. Instead I could go straight to hiring a more senior level customer success because customers self help themselves thanks to these little pop over components. So like I did a whole video on that and and like that's the kind of like connecting the dots between like product design and hey, this is actually a growth lever for a product business. You know. I wanna I wanna try to do more of that.
Brian Casel:Like bridging the gap between like design and code and how this How how to make a product business work, you know.
Jordan Gal:It sounds to me like a search for what an audience will eventually think of you for. Yeah. Become known for I mean, we we all have we we can't help but categorize people that we follow
Brian Casel:That's the thing.
Jordan Gal:As like one sentence. Yeah. That person does x really well or is known for or has done, whatever that is. It's You don't get a paragraph. You get a
Brian Casel:You're exactly right. And I still don't really know what what category people put me in today.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I don't think you you need to, but that that's direction you're you're going.
Brian Casel:That's what I'm looking for is to try to figure that out. Because the other thing that I that I really keep in mind when I'm creating content right now is, what do my current clients through instrumental products, what do they value Like why do they hire me for stuff? Mhmm. And and I'm And the thing that I think that This is lit We literally talk about this in like the sales calls that I have with people or working in the projects is that like, I'm not just a designer and developer. I also think like a business owner and a founder.
Brian Casel:And so a big theme of what I do is like look, let's find the most efficient way to go from path like point a to point b. How do we ship this thing? If it Like I did a whole post yesterday on like, how to ship. Like what what's the difference between just a builder and somebody who ships product. And and like I feel like that's the kind of thing that like if I'm posting that on LinkedIn, it connects with other business owners.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Oh, interesting the difference there.
Brian Casel:Because they are You know, like I I've heard some some people that I work with voice it and like, yeah I could hire a designer developer but like they don't they don't think like I think as a business owner, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And they're left to make that connection
Brian Casel:Yeah. Alright. So so Brian I'm I'm still trying to like figure out how to like make like make that like a consistent stream of content. But, I mean the sort of difficult thing, but the thing that I'm coming to terms with is that like this is really like being a content creator in this way is actually really important to my business and I have to keep it going. And that means I I need to give it the actual hours that it deserves.
Brian Casel:So so when I'm doing this this week like turns out I spend like three or four hours in the morning creating this content and publishing it before before lunchtime and then that's when I actually get into the actual project work is in the afternoon now. Instead of just thinking about it like, alright, I do all this product work and like as an afterthought, as a side hustle, I I post to Twitter and YouTube every now and then. No. Like it has to actually be part of my business strategy. And if if that means giving it like 50% of my hours, then that's what it takes, you know.
Jordan Gal:It's better in every way than the than the outbound. You you enjoy it It's better for the long term. Inbound will match you up with the right people more closely. It's it's better. Exactly.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It's like with inbound, I don't I don't need to convince you why why why it makes sense to work with me. You already know, like, and trust me. Right?
Brian Casel:And, yeah. Like better better terms on projects. Just better projects in general to work on. Like even Like the ones that I'm working on now are great. It's it's been a sort I can't believe like how much I'm actually enjoying working on these projects, you know.
Jordan Gal:It's a good sign.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So
Jordan Gal:Very cool. Alright. Well, gonna keep watching for more content and we'll we're gonna check your LinkedIn.
Brian Casel:Hey. Hell yeah. You you can connect with me along with like the hundreds of other spammers that are in my list there.
Jordan Gal:That that does seem to be a problem on the messages there. Alright. Well, Brian, I I have some crazy news. I think I have big big news. I don't even know how to categorize this.
Brian Casel:Let's go dude.
Jordan Gal:You know and I get like a little nervous talking about it which I think is a good sign.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So I think I'm leaving e commerce.
Brian Casel:Okay. Okay. Explain.
Jordan Gal:I've been in e commerce for I don't even know ten years. I think more at this point. I started off as a merchant, went into Karthook as the abandoned cart app, then turned into the checkout, then exited from that, and then rally and and raised money, and and we offered the checkout product, and then recently I talked about pivoting. So I think the best way to explain this is just kind of talk about what what happened to me internally in my head over the last few weeks. As we decided to pivot out of the checkout product and toward the offers product.
Jordan Gal:Right? It made sense in that it's the same code base, same go to market strategy, same customers, same ICP, all that, and we can get to a new product in a matter of weeks. So that's what we did when we pivoted. It made sense. We stopped offering the checkout product.
Jordan Gal:We published a new website, only the offers. We started selling that. We've closed a few deals for you know five k upfront and then a percentage. But what happened underneath that like to to me as the founder here, when I disconnected emotionally from the checkout, Checkout was something that I like wanted to make happen on the internet. It was wrapped up in like this ideological experience around Shopify and I want to go out and create like a token for it so that it was like this free thing out on the web that people could use and it would reward them.
Jordan Gal:You know, it was it was a thing I really believed in. It has a it had a very direct emotional connection to what I was trying to accomplish on the business as well. I've talked about how that was not nearly as emotional decision as I expected it to be
Brian Casel:because it was just kind of
Jordan Gal:the truth. Hey, we've tried to push this boulder up the hill for a while. It doesn't wanna go up the hill. Some boulders you should just stop pushing. But once I did that, I started viewing the product skeptically or objectively, less emotionally.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. And when I did that, I started looking at our offers product more skeptically and more objectively. And what I started to come to terms with was I don't I don't like what I see in ecommerce as a software company for us right now. Mhmm. And I went to ShopTalk, is like this giant annual conference in Vegas, and it was almost like confirming all of my bias.
Jordan Gal:And yes, I was looking for it to be confirmed, but I found my confirmation. Mhmm. And and that is, in in very simple terms, to sell software to ecommerce merchants and not sell it inside of Shopify is idiotic. Shopify is where all the energy is. They're gonna continue to just eat market share because they're better than the other platforms.
Jordan Gal:The other platforms are not good. Bcommerce has way too many issues. Salesforce doesn't care about Commerce Cloud. Adobe kinda cares about Magento and Adobe Commerce, but not really. There's just no energy there and ambition.
Jordan Gal:And we would lose one or two merchants every month as rally customers because they left for Shopify.
Brian Casel:Because they're going to Shopify.
Jordan Gal:That that's just the direction that is the vortex, the polar center, the magnetic north, whatever you wanna call it.
Brian Casel:And if you and and you know, we talk and think about like these riding these waves of demand so so much, you know. That the the waves flow in the direction of shopping.
Jordan Gal:All going that way. Yes. Because they're awesome. They are executing a 100 times better than the others.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Now,
Jordan Gal:the checkout was intended specifically to be outside
Brian Casel:just a quick I wonder how I'm so disconnected from both WordPress and e commerce, but like how does WooCommerce in in terms of that
Jordan Gal:part of of e commerce an important role in that it exists as an option, but it doesn't have any heat. There's no fire there.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Serious e commerce business is not choosing WooCommerce. They're
Jordan Gal:If they are, it's it's out of wanting a lot of control or not being allowed on traditional platforms.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:Or having been there for ten years not wanting to replatform. Mhmm. And I love WooCommerce and I love Paul and I love the team there. I'm not talking shit. That's just how I feel.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Now, the checkout product was specifically for outside of Shopify, so it made sense. Now, that we're starting to sell ecommerce software outside of Shopify, I'm like, what what are we doing here? So then the then the option becomes, well, do we wanna go into Shopify? Two comments there. Comment number one, it is not a good place for venture venture scale businesses.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. There are a handful that got momentum and escape velocity earlier on. Recharge, Yachtpo, Postscript, and those guys are gonna cruise to a 100,000,000 ARR. God bless them. But that is really, really difficult to do right now.
Jordan Gal:The you you know what I think of it as? It is an efficient marketplace. The app ecosystem in Shopify is efficient. There are a bunch of really smart, really ambitious, really talented people, all solving problems on one little API. So every nook and cranny of bug or feature request or issue is filled in.
Jordan Gal:And if you come up with something novel that does happen from time to time, you get annihilated by competition, copycats, undercutting on price, and everything.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Shopify itself.
Jordan Gal:Or or if you get too big, Shopify might just take you out. Yep. You know, even Klaviyo that just went public. Shopify tried their best to kill them. They tried to kill them.
Jordan Gal:They tried to acquire them. They tried to compete with them and then damn it they and then on the way to IPO, invested like a $100,000,000. So they still made their money anyway.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So it is an amazing place to build a 1 to $3,000,000 bootstrap business. There are not many ecosystems on the web better than Shopify to do that on.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But to build a $10.20, $3,050,000,000 dollar ARR company like we wanna build in an adventure scale, not a good place. And so I see all that. Alright. And and then comment number two. I have no goddamn interest in working there.
Jordan Gal:I have Of course. Zero. And we're all in business to make No surprise there. No surprise there. We're all in business to make money, but you gotta like what you do.
Jordan Gal:I can't Of hold my nose and say Not worth it. Yes, I have to go into this. Who wants to do that for the next ten years of
Brian Casel:the What are we doing here?
Pippin Williamson:No thanks.
Jordan Gal:What are we doing? Exactly right. And so I looked around and I checked my bank balance and I said to myself, shit. It's time to build a completely new product. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And so what we did this last week is we cut the go to market team. We cut burn. We cut our expenses. We have a core team. We have a few great developers, product managers, dev ops, and one go to market person myself.
Jordan Gal:We got our designers. We got our own little studio, Brian.
Brian Casel:I love it. I'm so Yeah. Psyched.
Jordan Gal:And and I I cannot express what happened to me externally. The energy and opt I'm up late. 01:00 in the morning, I'm researching. I'm reading Reddit. I'm going I'm back.
Jordan Gal:I feel I'm so excited and I was really worried about talking to the team. But I said to myself, you know what? There's actually nothing to worry about. The only thing to do is to be completely honest. This is a situation where you need to have complete trust, complete transparency, small team building stuff together.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Remote. You you need a ton of trust. So I was like, I'm not holding anything back. I'm just gonna say completely exactly what I think, which is basically what this conversation has gone.
Jordan Gal:And I said, if this sounds crazy to you and you don't want to be part of it, I will understand. Mhmm. But if you do want to build new products together, we've got years of runway and let's let's do something exciting and I think what what really
Brian Casel:What what was the react So so yeah. Like so so so just to just to recap like what I understand is you know, you trim down the team as as you should scenario. Like it wasn't an operating growing business to support a large team. Like now you're back into studio mode. Like like exploration mode.
Brian Casel:We're we're looking for a new product to and build. And so so now you have Now now the the team that you do have is like a like a product focus. Like the developers, designers.
Jordan Gal:That's right.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's right.
Jordan Gal:It's not go to market. And so alright. So a few things on this. We have existing customers. We have existing revenue.
Jordan Gal:And so that needs to be maintained because that is Of course. A huge help on burn. Right? So you you leave that alone. Actually got a few deals that might close next week.
Jordan Gal:The product works. We're not gonna build a bunch of new features for it, but people get value out of it. You know, leave it alone.
Brian Casel:You know, this right here is one of the hardest things I've I've found. What?
Jordan Gal:This weird like guilt thing?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. Yep. Like especially you and me doing this podcast, building in public or whatever on Twitter and it's like, yeah. Like like, just because we're saying we're we're focused on something new does not mean what we have is dead or or Like, I I still have a whole business in Clarity Flow that's operating with a a new customer success person.
Brian Casel:My developer is working every day on it. Yeah. Like, we have customers more
Jordan Gal:than one thing.
Brian Casel:Who actually like it. Like, you can do more than one thing. Yes. And just because we're talking about something here, does not mean that like other areas of our life or our business are not still functioning. Know?
Jordan Gal:I think that's a good point because a lot of people hold themselves back and they they think they don't have the full set of options that they really do. Mhmm. I am personally not good with guilt. If I say something that wasn't nice to someone that came out the wrong way, I'll feel bad about it for years. But there's a line I heard in some movie.
Jordan Gal:I don't remember it, but it stuck with me for like twenty years. Guilt is like a bag of bricks. All you need to do is set it down. So I refuse guilt. When it comes to business, personal, I go out to dinner with someone, I say the wrong thing, I feel like a jerk, I apologize and I do feel bad.
Jordan Gal:On the business front, no guilt. It's like a weird fake emotion that's bad for you. Yeah. So
Brian Casel:I really
Jordan Gal:Now now now you you brought up something interesting when you talked about inbound. And you talked about how that's you you want customers to come to you, not just because it's easier, but because it's better in a bunch of different ways. Yep. And so my experience over the last few years has been one of complex sales process. And going into this brainstorming of what new product should we build, what has been really helpful for me is like a list of characteristics.
Brian Casel:Like Yeah. I I love this kind of strategy and and exercise. It's like the the criteria. Like what are we looking for? Mhmm.
Brian Casel:We know that we're looking. We're like we we've committed to We are a studio who's looking.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:Now.
Jordan Gal:What filter can we run through
Brian Casel:what are the filters that we're running through here? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. It's like it's like DNA. It it determines how you're gonna grow up. Mhmm. And And this is
Brian Casel:that thing. I I real This is why I love it so much is because it's like, no amount of of marketing tactics or technical skill when it comes to growth or even product skill can beat making the right fundamental decision on choosing the customer, choosing the market, choosing the category of product and the characteristics. Like that stuff is what ultimately mattered. That's literally the difference between you know, products that
Jordan Gal:take Easy off path.
Brian Casel:Rather the easy path or the hard path. Yes. You could have the best SEO, you could have the paper click. You have the best interface.
Pippin Williamson:You got
Jordan Gal:the wrong DNA. Yeah. You can't you can't grow the way you want. You don't work with the people you want. All these different things.
Jordan Gal:So that is what I see as my primary responsibility. Mhmm. Choosing wisely. Yep. And when I looked at the offers product, I didn't like the you know, once I start viewing it objectively, I didn't like the DNA.
Jordan Gal:It's ecommerce. It's outside of Shopify. You you have to go out and get the customers. There's no search volume for it because people don't really understand the concept that's a new category. It just had all this bad DNA.
Jordan Gal:I was like Yeah. I I you know what I'd rather do? I'd rather launch a new product every few months and fail and maybe one of them hits or we run out of money. I'd rather do that than just grind my face against the sidewalk for the next two or three years trying to make it, you know, sustainable or something else when it has the wrong DNA to begin
Brian Casel:Yeah. But even before you get to the idea of like multiple products iterating through idea after idea, there there's still a huge list of criteria that that something would need to check the box before you even consider it as like the next thing to try. Right? So what what what like comes to the top of the list for you in terms of like, this is Once I see that, I'm interested.
Jordan Gal:Okay. One sec. One sec. Let me open up. Canvas.
Jordan Gal:You use Slack canvases? I love Slack canvases.
Brian Casel:People talk about it. I've never used it. I use Slack. I love it.
Jordan Gal:It's like a little bit right in right inside of Slack, you know.
Brian Casel:I'm still pretty big on on Notion now.
Jordan Gal:The only I I do like Notion, but everyone else hates hates it on my team. The only bad thing about Canvas is you can't edit on your phone. And that's a problem because then I just Slack myself notes. Okay. So solves a clearly defined pain.
Jordan Gal:Right? No no vitamins. I've been selling vitamins for a little while. I don't want, hey, I promise you how much things are gonna get better. I'm gonna say I'm gonna take that pain away.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. K.
Jordan Gal:Large markets. Large. Mhmm. Remember I told you about that story about the SDRs and the guy who had 60 SDRs and I thought to myself, we can never have 60 SDRs.
Brian Casel:What are what are
Jordan Gal:Our market isn't big enough.
Brian Casel:What what are you what are examples of large markets that you think about?
Jordan Gal:Lawyers, doctors, accounting firms, know, gigantic markets. Yep. Large markets. Cool. Ability to advertise.
Jordan Gal:I think
Brian Casel:that's
Jordan Gal:a that's a built in advantage when you have millions of dollars in the bank. If something works and you can spend $10,000 and it works and you can spend a $100,000 the next month, I that takes advantage of our inherent advantage in the market. We just have we have money to spend. Mhmm. You know, it's it's been a weird exercise for me.
Jordan Gal:Okay. MicroConf. This is part of the reason I'm going back to MicroConf because I'm looking to acquire products. No. Just kidding.
Jordan Gal:Not kidding, actually. But I wanna go be around new ideas. Okay? And one of the things about microconf that you and I come from, there is a there's like a arbitrage opportunity between our microconf background and having millions of dollars in the mic. There there is an opportunity there because you and I view a product.
Jordan Gal:I started Cardhook with like $20,000 of my own money, and then I raised $200,000. And in this situation, I can basically allocate $250,000 to like four products and see if they work and still have years of runway.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I you know, alright. So listening to this list, pain instead of vitamin, I'm totally on board. Okay. Large market, I'm totally on board.
Jordan Gal:Right. Start with a niche but a large potential market.
Brian Casel:Yep. I don't I don't I'm feeling a little bit of a disconnect in terms of like looking at like can like advertising Advertising. As a criteria. That just seems like that just seems like numb like you're thinking about the marketing channel before thinking about the market and the product. Okay.
Brian Casel:We don't we don't know what the marketing channel's gonna be. But also like, I think advertising in general, I'm sort of down on it. But the the main thing for me is is more about that product market fit and and and riding the natural demand first, and then going to things like like ads to to throw fuel on that fire. Fair. I I think lawyers in the world.
Brian Casel:You you can you can run all the ads there. It doesn't it's not gonna make them buy whatever that they're gonna buy, you know.
Jordan Gal:I I guess what I'm doing is I'm thinking about distribution. I'm thinking about how do I get this out there? And so the the thing that exists right alongside the ability to advertise that I want is existing search volume.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Like there are people out there looking for a for this thing. It is understood. And I think when I think about advertising, I think about being able to identify that and capturing the initial search volume, and then saying, hey, how do we just get out in front of that search volume because no one knows who we are so we can just use money to get them out in front
Brian Casel:of Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I mean, you know, you could use money. Not that this is like an easy button that you could just go push.
Brian Casel:But like the idea of like buying a high volume YouTube channel or buy you know, buy buying somebody's website who has a huge audience. Number one, like that you have the cash to be able to do that. But number two, it shows like somebody or maybe multiple people have built large audiences of this customer. So so there are there are audiences to be built around this customer.
Jordan Gal:Right. The fact that there's an audience interested in it is like the key thing for me. The fact that like existing search volume, whatever that existing demand, I guess is the umbrella term.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Another one is self serve.
Brian Casel:Interesting.
Jordan Gal:I have been outside of the self serve game and I don't want that friction. To go from onboarding five customers to 20 customers is a challenge when it's not self serve. And then to go from 20 to a 100 is very challenging. I would like to go from one sign up to a 100 sign ups the next day and not actually experience much friction at all.
Brian Casel:Yeah. One thing I don't know if you Alright. Yeah. Actually, keep going with your list. I I've I've one that I wanna throw at you but
Jordan Gal:Okay. Right next to that I have product led growth Okay. As an ideal. So like of virality, freemium, touching other people, inviting other people. Some element of that adding value to the product as an ideal.
Jordan Gal:It's not not a necessity.
Brian Casel:Well, And and that's that's actually like what I was saying earlier. Like rather than being like ad driven, be more product driven. Product led meaning like people actually use it and they talk about it because it solves such a hardcore pain that so many people have that they're excited to spread it for you. That's Yes. That you
Jordan Gal:wanna Yeah. Spread. Yeah. Alongside that. Or what what was the one you're
Brian Casel:There's one that I feel like I've never really been able to find and Okay. And achieve in any of my products that I've always felt a level of jealousy of with other people's products. And that is this set it and forget it value.
Jordan Gal:That it's not required to actively use the product on a day to day basis.
Brian Casel:In order to get value. Yeah. Like you I
Jordan Gal:like that. That's interesting.
Brian Casel:That's a big one dude because it's like that's retention. That's that's churn prevention. Like plug it in and it makes you money or it prevents you from losing money on a regular basis without you and and without require without making it a requirement that you and or your team have to like log in Log in. And use it every single day. I like that.
Brian Casel:That's huge dude. I mean, you know, there there's mean honestly like a a checkout process the product is sort of like that. Like you you plug it into your checkout and it's like it runs your business for you. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. A little bit like a gum road type thing that just once you set up, you can just share the link and it gets used.
Brian Casel:The one that I I tend to think of is like, I was a customer of of Richard Felix's product for years. He had a dunning product.
Jordan Gal:Stunning. Stunning.
Brian Casel:For stunning. It was called stunning. It was first, you know, it's You plug it into your Stripe and it sends failed payment emails to your customers automatically. It recovers those things for you. Great product.
Brian Casel:I was literally a paying customer for like, I don't know, eight or nine years or something like that. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Just left it alone.
Brian Casel:From from Restaurant Engine all the way through like Process Kit and Audience Ops, we used it. Like, I was just a customer for years paying him $50 a month for that thing. I never even logged into it, but it made It it fixed a problem in my business. Cloud did it. And like, there are so many little things like that, you know.
Brian Casel:That I just set it and forget it and it's Like I I like that. Because you know, like as I've talked about for years on this podcast, like with Clarity Flow and with ProcessKit before that, the the big hurdle was not only onboarding and activating customers, but convincing them like, hey, you should keep logging in and using this product every day and and keep Get your clients to use it every day and make it Yeah. You want it to be essential and part of their workflow, but like as soon as there's friction in that, that's when they start to look elsewhere and churn. And so it's a constant battle of like keeping the product up, keeping keeping customers engaged, making sure you're solving an ongoing feedback. Improving it, taking feedback, fixing bugs, But the set it and forget it.
Brian Casel:Like, it doesn't matter what the interface looks like. You know?
Jordan Gal:It's interesting because you're you're really you're really talking about minimizing the amount of change in behavior that you're asking for.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's just yeah. The the set it and forget it thing means you don't
Brian Casel:have to
Jordan Gal:change your your behavior that much because that's where the friction comes in.
Brian Casel:Yeah. May maybe the first two weeks or the month requires a little bit of effort to get it installed and get it activated, but but then you just let let it go and Yeah. You know.
Jordan Gal:I I I like that. I had that with the card abandonment product for a while.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Because that would literally
Jordan Gal:not log in for three months at a time.
Brian Casel:Another another good one. Yeah. I I have a bunch of friends who have like incredible SaaS businesses. They're And like the the thing just drives like like Charles Poleski runs Spark It's like a Zapier for e commerce. It just connects these like obscure like like e commerce providers and inventory management systems and all these different things.
Brian Casel:Like you just plug it into your system and and and it's and it drives value. Yeah. Month after month, And you
Jordan Gal:I have I have one last one. And this is connected to why I think the engineering team is so excited. AI brother. AI. What are we doing here?
Jordan Gal:I raised my up in VCs. What what are we doing here?
Brian Casel:Okay. Alright. Talk talk to me. What what are we looking at? What's exciting?
Brian Casel:What Okay. What does that mean? Like, yeah.
Jordan Gal:Alright. One of the one of the most important things about AI is that it because it's new, there isn't as much competition. So not only is it a growing field, but a lot of things haven't been done and solved and figured out and and, you know, competed away on a margin front. So that's really exciting. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:There's also a lot of investment. And more importantly, there's a lot of spending. Like, revenue is growing. I've been looking at these graphs and these presentations. When I went to the Montgomery Summit for March Capital, our lead investor, a few weeks ago, they had this slide that showed the adoption in the enterprise of tech.
Jordan Gal:I might have talked about this before, but it was like Internet, twenty years. Cloud, ten years. Mobile, five years. And then AI is predicted to be like two or three years. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And so I think it took SaaS as a an industry ten years to get to 2,000,000,000 in ARR, and and and AI has already done it. Yeah. So the revenue is the most important part, and that is mostly aimed at cost reduction. It's mostly aimed at headcount. That that's the truth.
Jordan Gal:It's people. It's replacing people. It makes people more
Brian Casel:I mean, it just is. Yes. I I totally see it. I I personally use AI every single day. I I'm I'm a big user of like Co Pilot and ChatGPT.
Brian Casel:Okay. And I totally And you know, we've talked about like there was I mean crypto is is sort of having another moment right now, but like Sure. I still, even despite that, I still question like the use case and the the worldwide adoption as as a trend. But but like
Jordan Gal:Not a problem on AI.
Brian Casel:Not a problem on AI. Like you totally see how it fits in and you can see act like activity across so many different industries. You like Yeah. Like it's so so obvious. Like the the the so many different use cases are so painfully obvious with AI.
Brian Casel:The the question I do still have though, and it's it's also obvious that there are already very successful SaaS businesses built completely on AI as the core
Jordan Gal:infrastructure level stuff Yeah. For
Brian Casel:Yep. And everything from bootstrapped businesses up to VC. Right? I still, at the same time, despite all that, I question where Who who is really spending the Spending on on AI tools these days? I mean, sure.
Brian Casel:I I pay for ChatGPT Plus, but like And I guess I pay for Copilot, think I Yeah. Think I guess that's a paid I I pay for that. But like, I'm not seeing Like, if I think about my my father who who's a lawyer, he's not buying AI tools. You know?
Jordan Gal:His law firm might.
Brian Casel:You know? But not like not this year, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There's a bit widespread. There's a bit of a disconnect in my ideal of a self serve product, and the fact that a huge amount of spending is coming from enterprise. So that that is a bit of an issue.
Brian Casel:But even even like where is that spending going? Like is it just going to Microsoft or is it going to lots of niche tools? I don't
Jordan Gal:So a lot of it's going to the big companies. Right? Google and Microsoft and OpenAI and and those. Others are are are becoming more point solutions for like legal documents and, you know, speaking of March Capital, it makes me think of one investment that they just made and and is public now. 50 plus million dollars series a in an AI company for dental x-ray analysis.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. So you just don't need as many people looking at x rays when you have a machine that looks at it and says, here's what's what's good, what's bad, what to look at. Basically the same decision making as a dentist. Yep. So that leads me to I think the thing that I'm most excited about.
Jordan Gal:That verticalization just got started. It just it's so horizontal now. Everything's like
Brian Casel:You're right.
Jordan Gal:AI for developers. AI for, you know, these huge verticals. Everything is super super wide and the verticalization just started. That means taking existing tech. So this is actually an interesting thing from like a product point of view.
Jordan Gal:I think there is a huge potential to build really healthy businesses using UX, UI, branding, positioning, and marketing while leveraging 90% of existing tech. So you're you're building on top of ChatGPT or on one of these other frameworks and other models, but you're taking that and dragging it over into a particular vertical. Yeah. And you're branding it, positioning it, marketing it, the UI, the UX on top of the experience solves the actual problem for the niche, for the industry. But you as a software company, you're not you're not doing the hardest part of the tech.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:The and that I I love that opportunity.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah. Totally. Like like being able to leverage these these you know, large language model APIs. It's
Jordan Gal:like You know what I saw?
Brian Casel:That's the big unlock in terms of being able to build Yes. Products with this.
Jordan Gal:So they Here's an example I of still wonder
Brian Casel:about like like which categories of software can Are are people actively, like, think about the big categories of software, like CRMs and help desks software?
Jordan Gal:Oh, okay. Okay. No. No. Go ahead.
Jordan Gal:Like, which which pieces are being replaced?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, those are still like, I guess people like software tools that are used by people. And like the the obvious one that you that you're you see everywhere. There's hundreds of tools that do like content creation Sure. Done by done by AI.
Brian Casel:Obvious use case.
Jordan Gal:You know,
Brian Casel:plug in your your YouTube video, your podcast, turn it into AI written blog posts or tweets or whatever. And speaking of content earlier, like I've I've been trying different tools trying to make that work for my personal content. I I just still come back to like, I wanna I wanna write my own words. I Even even trying to edit it myself, I end up being like, the the time it took me to edit the AI written stuff, I could've just written this myself.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:So I don't personally, I I wonder maybe like more like higher volume like marketing content can be written by AI. I don't know.
Jordan Gal:I think that goes in the wrong direction because all of the established players are going to just add AI features. Right. So HubSpot can like don't come out with a new AI CRM because HubSpot's just gonna add AI features and it's you know
Brian Casel:I think just yesterday I saw, I think the latest update in Google Chrome is like, any any field on the internet, Chrome, like Google's AI thing can like help you write. Like all these all these like SaaS tools like like Help Scout and Notion that they build in like an AI button to help you write content. Yes. Built into Chrome. Yes.
Brian Casel:Now it's like no matter what you're using, like have Chrome write
Jordan Gal:it. Like that's Right. Why compete at that level? I think I think the most interesting part about the position that we're in is to go towards something novel. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:That doesn't exist because it couldn't exist in some form or another. Here's an example. I have a friend. His company is working with power companies on their solar panels. And up until now, these companies have people walk the fields and look at solar panels and analyze the health of the panel and how efficient it is.
Jordan Gal:Now, they're taking drones, they're taking pictures, and the AI is analyzing the reflection and heat and all that, and it's telling them, here's your efficiency, here's the problems, here are the solar panels that are messed up that you need to replace, here are the areas that are messed up. So instead of employing people to walk fields, now using drones plus AI and it saves them a ton of money.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right. So that that is not it's not adding an AI feature that someone else is gonna add anyway that has more distribution than new. It's something new. Another example is a company came out today that shows uses camera overhead of a chef, and the chef is making a perfect version of the dish. And then the camera can be used to analyze how other people are making it and kind of work on it to perfect it.
Jordan Gal:So that your cooks in your Applebee's throughout the country are able to get feedback on here's what you're doing wrong and here's what you need to improve so that it's throughout. Things like that, they're novel. They're they How
Brian Casel:do we go about finding these niche pain points in these industries that like, how do how do just walk into a foreign industry that we've never heard of, you know? Yeah. I feel like all the all the successful like SaaS companies that you see walking around MicroConf, it's like, oh, they got a brother-in-law who is a kitchen countertop installer. They have to have this like insider track into this really tricky painful problem that they can build a SaaS around. How how do we find that if you're not connected to someone?
Brian Casel:Right? Just knocking on doors like show me what you're working on. Take me through your process. Tell me about your industry. Like
Jordan Gal:I think it requires curiosity Yep. Research, willingness to talk to people, willingness to copy others, and willingness to take the ideas of one person or company and apply it to a different area. Yep. All these different things combined. It happens to be like my favorite part of business.
Jordan Gal:So I'm really excited about it and what I told the engineering team was it is my I'm very open ideas. But it is my primary responsibility to find the idea. It is your secondary responsibility to look for ideas. But it is your primary responsibility to get up to speed on models, on how to build with AI. And that's when their eyes lit up.
Jordan Gal:And they were like, oh, this crazy this crazy guy is gonna pay us a salary to get up to speed on AI. Yeah. And then we're gonna launch an AI product and that's when people on the team were like, alright, I'm game.
Brian Casel:Like, It's super cool to
Jordan Gal:have fallen behind and now now this is my favorite company ever.
Brian Casel:This this is what's so exciting about your situation right now is that you have these resources and the team around you to be able to prototype and do like the technical research and the technical You're you're exploring for product ideas, but they but they can do the technical exploration. Like for me, I haven't had any time or bandwidth or active projects for me to explore building with AI. Because we haven't done that in Clarity Flow. And I'm not currently working on any products that are like AI focused. So I I don't have the resources to just go explore what's possible on the tech side.
Brian Casel:Unless I have an active project to to work on. Mhmm. So that that's really awesome benefit to be able to like, do you know. That that that would Again, it's also like a challenge of me like being like a solo founder and not having a partner where maybe like one partner is more technical, the other is more like product focused. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's it's a really really good situation. Because you can you can make a lot of progress on the underlying tech research. You know, like your team can just be throwing out prototypes while you're while you're exploring ideas, you know.
Jordan Gal:Right. And and so I I I think what we'll talk about on this podcast a lot over the next few months is what is the right process of launching a product today. Right? If you look at it like one of the one of the frameworks I have in my mind is like this like four month experiment. And if it's a four month experiment, you basically should start marketing on day one.
Jordan Gal:Get a landing page out. One of the cool things now is waiting lists are back. Like so that's that's totally cool now. People join waiting waiting lists especially for AI products. And so you should basically start marketing on day one and building a a talking to people in the industry doing whatever you can and then call it month two.
Jordan Gal:Like the you know a day 60 launch an MVP and have it in the market for two months and then kinda decide. Is this an experiment worth continuing or drop it?
Brian Casel:Yep. Yeah. I mean the the is being able to build the core thing that that a customer group wants. Like just build build that part of it first, and then build the bells and whistles out around it. I I really think that Like, heard Jason Fried talking about this with their recent launch of the Hey calendar
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Thing, right? Which I I haven't used that product but I I'm always a fan of how they go about launching these. And he was talking about, you know, we focused on the most unique differentiating factors first. Like those those features first and we didn't launch with a bunch of table stakes that other calendars have.
Jordan Gal:Right. Big counter intuitive.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean it it like I think a lot of us get hung up on like if we're gonna compete in a competitive market, the only way to enter that market is to match all the features that the other help desks or the other calendars Yeah. The other CRMs have. Right. Feature then layer on our our special sauce on top of that.
Brian Casel:Like, no. Start with the special sauce. And the the customers who really really care about that special sauce, they will they will deal with the the other shortcomings of like of not having the other
Jordan Gal:attracting the right people for your approach. Yeah. Yeah. And then lastly, I'm I'm open to acquiring existing products. And that's part of why I wanna go to microconf and see what people are doing.
Jordan Gal:I'm definitely open to someone who's gotten a little bit of traction but doesn't have the, you know, resources or experience or desire to kinda keep going and then have them join forces. I mean, I'm I'm I'm open anything at this point.
Brian Casel:Super interesting people.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Alright. Well sunny and like 60. I'm gonna go take a walk. Hell yeah.
Jordan Gal:I think think thesis did good. I think this new nootropic did good.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I think so too. I think I think we found the new the new special formula for this podcast.
Jordan Gal:Yep. I don't know if you saw I tweeted earlier or I think maybe yesterday. There's this drink on the market called Breeze. Bro, these guys are selling drugs online. They're selling a six pack of like a mushroom THC drink.
Jordan Gal:And I'm like, let me try this thing because that looks interesting. Bro, it's drugs. They're on Shopify with a credit card on the web, selling drugs, using the mail, shipping across state lines.
Brian Casel:Wild West. It's the Wild West.
Jordan Gal:These people are going to jail or they're gonna be billionaires. I don't remember one or the other. But I tried one. I had one can. I went off into outer space and I immediately went downstairs cause it's in my fridge where my kids live and I dumped all six of them.
Jordan Gal:I mean the remaining five into the sink. Like I cannot have mushrooms laying around the goddamn house. I I tweeted the the founder. I was like, dude. Like what?
Jordan Gal:It's so obviously illegal. What are you doing? I respect it. But Jesus.
Brian Casel:Oh, man.
Jordan Gal:Go Breeze.
Brian Casel:It's so it's so funny like the like the difference between us. Like for for me like I I need to be watching a movie or like just playing some video games. I can't get on a podcast after after the stuff. Like, no no way. I would just be like silent.
Brian Casel:That would be a terrible episode.
Jordan Gal:Well, I'm looking for new product ideas. I gotta be out there.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's right, you know. The Yeah, man. Cool. Alright, everyone.
Brian Casel:Thanks for listening. Alright. Take it, bro.
