Startup Names
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Wood Strap the Web. How we doing? It's Friday, Sunny?
Brian Casel:It is Friday. Yes. The Knicks are winning? Oh, dude. The Knicks.
Brian Casel:Oh, man. This it's this Okay. So the Knicks won last night. It They won in in, you know, a six game. Yeah.
Brian Casel:They they won game six. We're moving on to the next round. They're likable.
Jordan Gal:They're fun.
Brian Casel:Is the I think one of the best store Obviously, I'm a lifelong Knicks fan, so I'm a little bit biased here.
Jordan Gal:But Yeah. Sure. I never liked the Ewing and Oakley. Those teams were exhausting.
Brian Casel:Dude, I mean, I loved those teams. But I mean, but like, no matter what fan you are, this team is just unbelievable to watch. Like the There are so many different storylines and the the hunger of the Knicks fan. My my daughter was asking me like when was the last
Jordan Gal:time the Knicks Desperation.
Brian Casel:When was the last time the Knicks won the won the championship? And I was like, 1973. And she was like, I wasn't even born then. I was like, I wasn't even born then.
Nathan Barry:Like, this is the this is the hunger of the Knicks fan.
Brian Casel:I know. I mean, and just so many storylines, dude. And this series was one of the most unbelievable NBA playoff series Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Every game. Every NBA.
Brian Casel:In history. Every game. I mean, literally last night, game six, Sixers are playing for their life. The the the Knicks are trying to close it out. First quarter, Knicks are up 14.
Brian Casel:Second quarter, we're back to tied. Third quarter, Knicks are down 14. Fourth quarter, it's tied and the Knicks pull it out. Yeah. I mean, and that was the story of the whole series.
Brian Casel:Was unbelievable.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I
Nathan Barry:saw And then like all these New
Brian Casel:York fans like traveling from New York to to Philly. And then the Philly ownership trying to protect against the invasion of the Knicks fans buying up all the tickets in Philadelphia. The the ownership buys up 2,500 tickets.
Jordan Gal:2,500 this is basically to avoid To prevent New York fans. Take over of the stadium?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Because the like the the chanting from New York fan from from the Knicks fans in the Sixers Arena
Jordan Gal:has like So easy to see New
Brian Casel:York. Unbelievable storyline.
Jordan Gal:I And I saw saw pictures of you and the girls. That was the that was the one time. You didn't go in a second, did you?
Brian Casel:No. No. Yes. We went to game one and and I've been, you know, watching all the other games on TV.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Fun. Fun. Well, I board meeting and a root canal on the same day this week. So I had a I had a different experience than than you did watching the next.
Brian Casel:Yeah. There you go. That's the I don't know which of those sounds more fun. The the root canal or the board meeting?
Jordan Gal:Well, this the root canal was definitely worse. The board meeting the board meeting's good.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:It's always helpful. It just organizes your thoughts. And this board meeting in particular was unique because the last time we had a board meeting, all the numbers and the updates were about the checkout product. And this board meeting three months later is here's this new product we're building, here's the problem we're solving, here's the solution, here's the competitive landscape, the tech strategy, the go to market. You know, it's like this very very different thing.
Jordan Gal:And what I found myself doing after the board meeting was texting our lead investor who's on our board and basically just saying thank you for trusting us and trusting me. Because I didn't ask for any permission. I'm just following my gut and the fact that a VC investor that put a lot of money in is not generating any friction around that. That is, know, a real sign that they invested in me and the team. Yep.
Jordan Gal:And they trust and that that's awesome. That is not can't be taken for granted. So Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm I'm not so obviously tuned in to like the whole VC thing. But I feel like if if the first step because like I guess the bet of of VC is like, alright, like we're gonna invest in a bunch of these companies and hopefully a couple, like a small minority of them will will work out.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Right? And the assumption is most of them won't. And if your first crack at this business you know, didn't nail it. Instead of instead of just putting it in the group of companies that that that they're just gonna write off, it's almost like they have like another another chance and you have another chance because you're you're going.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I think
Brian Casel:we You're taking on something else.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I think we course corrected early enough that it is a full chance. It is a full round of funding and then some. So it is a full chance. It can be seen as maybe giving up too early but I laid out my thinking on that front.
Brian Casel:I don't think so. Mean, maybe Yeah. Neither. And
Jordan Gal:and the alternative is giving money back. And sometimes there's pressure to do that. I have not gotten any pressure to do that. The only thing that I was given was was an out. Basically, in case you want to shut this down, please know that we'll support you in doing that.
Jordan Gal:So just to make sure, like, you're not doing this out of, like, guilt or obligation. So, you know, I feel like all those points were important to address. Now it's like, no, we love the team. We have money in the bank. The valuation wasn't so high that we feel like it's, you know, we're so underwater that it's pointless.
Jordan Gal:And so everyone's like, alright. Cool. Let's see let's see what we can do.
Brian Casel:I have a question for you. And we weren't planning on talking about this. But so, okay. Given what you know now about where the trajectory has has led you to with Okay. With this rally company, would you have gone the same route?
Brian Casel:Whether it's funding structure of of things. If you were starting from from zero today.
Jordan Gal:If I was starting from zero today, I would not raise venture. Mhmm. Unless I had an idea that I thought, hey, this thing needs a lot of money.
Brian Casel:Is that a function of like today's market or or like inject like
Jordan Gal:It's a combination of of the market, but also I think more important than the market. You can build things that grow fast with less money and fewer people. Yes. You know, it doesn't mean it will grow fast. It just means the the DNA of the Internet is kinda set up in a healthier way than it was a few years ago Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Especially around AI. And right Mhmm. It's not like a surprise that I I wanna go in that direction. But yeah, I I think bootstrap companies with a few people that are really profitable are, you know, that is a phenomenal position to be in. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yep. VC, you have to get a bunch more things right. But looking back, I think it was a good bet. The the
Brian Casel:And I think that's a different question too. I think a lot of people mistake that like if it's like if you were to do it over today, you do it differently? Like, yeah, probably. But that doesn't necessarily mean that like it was the wrong decision years ago. And I feel the same way about my stuff like I think given given what I knew then, I think I made a lot of the right decisions but did I end up where I wanted it to be today?
Brian Casel:No, probably not, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Same. And and I you know, when I look at the checkout product and I think about what we should do with it, maybe we should sell it off, that sort of thing. It's still I still get a lot of hesitation at giving that thing up and take taking it out of our hands because that that idea is going to be worth an enormous amount of money. I think what we ran into is that there are so many powerful interests.
Jordan Gal:Interests with distribution
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And far far more power and money. So, you know, Stripe I love Stripe. Stripe wants Link to be a vault. Yeah. You know, so there are just limits to what you can do with Stripe as a partner.
Jordan Gal:If you look at these e commerce platforms, you look at what Pays is doing with their partnerships with the banks, you look at what PayPal PayPal's building a rally. Yeah. PayPal's building And dude, I still
Brian Casel:use Apple Pay on like if if Apple Pay is an option, I'm 90% That's probably gonna
Jordan Gal:use the
Brian Casel:no matter what it is. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So in many ways, it's almost like we we would have been better off not being an independent product trying to sell directly to end users. We maybe would have been better off selling our tech as like a white label type of licensing solution to companies that wanna I mean, who knows. Right? But but going in and trying to attract merchants one by one, you know, it didn't work.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep.
Brian Casel:Yeah. For sure, man.
Jordan Gal:What else brother? What you got going on?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, the only thing that's sort of on my mind is really more of a big question. And it's not an urgent question but it's one that I that I'm just floating around with lately. And I'll I'll sort of lay it out here. Maybe we can jump back to it in parts throughout this episode.
Brian Casel:But Okay. The the main question is like where to direct my energy and my time in general. And I and I've been talking about this but I I now see this year in 2024, my time is quite literally split in in three. Like it's a pie chart of of three parts. And it's like actually third each.
Brian Casel:And I and So like Clarity Flow is one third. Right? And it's it's literally like one third of my time. And it's also sort of like one third of my income. And I and I think at this point, it has like right sized down to that.
Brian Casel:It it used to be I was giving it full time effort on a on a runway to profitability but not profitable. And now, I'm I'm done with that whole game. You know, we were just talking about like the last few years and I'm I'm done investing more time than than what I'm seeing in return. So now it's like right sized to down A
Jordan Gal:third, a third.
Brian Casel:It's literally like a third of my time and it's and it's about a third of my income. Okay. Is what I'm pulling off of that. And then and then the other third, a second third is the consulting. And I guess that's sort of the other way around where I'm Where that accounts for like the rest of my income at at the moment.
Brian Casel:But it's about a third of my time. Two or three days a week. And Clarity Flow is about two or three days a week. Probably spread across five days. Whatever time management is a little bit different.
Brian Casel:But So Clarity Flow and then consulting. And then there's this third chunk which is about a third of my time. And I've been investing that piece of the pie into In general, it's like I'm investing into audience growth. Mhmm. And and that has been mainly on YouTube.
Brian Casel:And and that's that's where the open question is. Because it's I still believe that like in 2024, I'm pretty bullish on If if you are interested in growing an audience and growing a distribution channel through a personal audience. YouTube is a a fantastic discovery platform if you can make it work well. Okay. It takes a lot of work, a lot of creative energy, a lot of strategy, a lot of technical chops with with video and getting better and better at that.
Brian Casel:And I feel like I've So I've published about 12 or 13 videos this year on on my channel. And every time I publish, I try to improve something. I I learn a thing or two from the last couple of videos and I try to improve a thing. And I feel like now I'm starting to get a little bit better. I'm I'm not great but starting to unlock a few creative process learnings when it comes to recording, camera, lighting, editing, production, topic, script writing, all this different stuff.
Brian Casel:Right? Thumbnails, positioning. But I still have the open question now of like, what am I going for here? Like, what's what's the end goal here? You know, I And I and I've been I've been experimenting with different topics and different angles and different target audiences and But at the end of the day, I don't have I don't necessarily have a product to sell at the end of this funnel of grow audience, get audience into a funnel to sell what product.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's indirect.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I guess you can maybe say that it it's leading to some consulting leads. Like when I But that's mostly Yeah. Because I'm sending stuff to my email list. And like when I have a new video, I'll send it to my email list and that has generated a few leads for the consulting.
Brian Casel:And I am booked out for the next two months. But like, the thought generally has been like, alright. Just get back into investing in into audience. Because I know in general, when I have a large audience, things are easier, good things happen, opportunities come my way, and product opportunities reveal themselves. Right?
Jordan Gal:Where's where's the disconnect?
Brian Casel:The disconnect is, you know, like we we've talked about with your stuff about like, well, should you sell to SaaS companies. Right? Like, should you sell a SaaS to SaaS companies?
Jordan Gal:Yep.
Brian Casel:And the the topics that I'm making videos about are about business, about product strategy, about bootstrapping, about product ideas, about entrepreneurship mindset. And so, and and that I'm just kinda speaking from my experience. But, I don't know if this is the best audience for me to invest my time into. Like, don't know if I'm gonna have any products that are that are worth pursuing for this audience. You know?
Brian Casel:I I don't know Like I don't have a specific A few years back I used to do teaching about productized services. But that was a much more clear cut like freelancers have a problem they need to scale their business. Productized services is the answer. I could teach a course on that to solve that problem. And that worked pretty well.
Brian Casel:But now, I don't I don't know that I have like another course in me. I don't I don't know that like a
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:Course, like a target audience with a target problem is necessarily revealing itself. I don't know if I wanna do courses. I don't know if like a community is is is where this ends up going. I don't know if I wanna do that. Ultimately, what I probably wanna end up doing is just making more software products.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. That's probably what I'm most interested in doing is just growing a portfolio of small software products. And, yeah. So, I don't I don't know if Like, with with the YouTube thing, it's like, yeah. I get a little bit better with each video and some videos do better than others in terms of views.
Brian Casel:But, I It's one of those things where like, yeah, I'm putting a lot of time and a lot of energy in this. And I know that it's a long term investment. But I don't know if it's the kind of thing that I just need to give it more time to see it grow and then opportunities will reveal themselves. Or if all this time is sort of wasted. And I should be redirecting that energy somewhere else.
Brian Casel:You know, because if I go back to my pie chart, like I I still wanna make sure that I am investing in assets that will benefit me long term.
Jordan Gal:Right. And that third
Brian Casel:piece is the most long term asset is is the audience, the distribution channel. If I can keep watering that plant, eventually I'm gonna have something useful that I can do something with.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. I mean, in many ways what you have now that is useful, that is generating income is also partly from previous efforts to build an audience.
Brian Casel:Yes.
Jordan Gal:So it does make sense to keep watering it and Yeah. Feeding I could like to consult and just raised your hand and just make money. Like that that's not like
Brian Casel:Yeah. It did You know what? To be honest like it didn't come as easy as it has in the past. Like when I started audience ops in '20 back in 2015, I announced it and I had instant MRR. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like, instant. This was not that. This this took a few months to get a few good clients in the door, you know. True. It's like I just either Like I don't have the same reach that I used to have and a different different service, different time, different market, you know.
Jordan Gal:Things are more fragmented.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Attention is spread out to more people. There are more creators. There are more It's I think it's just a tougher, more competitive Internet.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know what what there is in that because it's like Yeah. Because it's like that third piece of the pie.
Brian Casel:I could invest in anything. I could invest in I I still believe in YouTube like may maybe I do YouTube in a in a different a totally different space and start planting some seeds. But maybe that's too different. Maybe I keep doubling down on what I already have which is you know, some inroads into this community. The the SaaS startup world.
Brian Casel:Right? Maybe I just spend this time just going deeper into into code and just build build stuff. Like I iterated on on like, should I be like a teacher? Should I be just a building public guy? Should I be like a Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I don't know. Like it's
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You know. That A different way to look at investing time would be building something because Yeah. It's it's not immediate reward. It's not immediate income but it is planting a seed in much the same way that our audience building is.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But the thought there is that like, yeah, I could build stuff but that doesn't feel like an investment because I'm not actually This part of the pie should be invested in growing a distribution channel. Anyone can could code up apps all day.
Jordan Gal:Right. Like a compounding element to the effort.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I can't just build quietly. And and so, I don't know. That's like the the open question is like, I do do like the idea of creating and and creating on YouTube and putting myself out there and creating content. But I'm still sort of like stabbing in the dark in terms of like, what's the topic?
Brian Casel:Who's the target customer? What's the problem that I'm solving? And where where is this going ultimately? It it's kinda weird now because I'm I'm not on a timeline. Like I could I could just keep doing this.
Brian Casel:Like I'm I'm generally sustainable with the type of consulting that I'm doing and I've got a little bit of clarity flow stuff going on and then you know, I could sustain this for a while but I would like to at some point get back to like building toward a larger goal. Okay.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. I don't think you should put too much pressure on exactly that out. I think this introspection is a natural part of it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. And I'm trying to to not rush into that pressure mindset that I had the last few years. I'm just trying to experiment with different things. Try try different things on, you know.
Brian Casel:That's basically all I've got right now. We'll hop over to you, but I guess I could talk through some clarity flow updates and
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Why don't I talk about the, you know, the the big thing for my week was we got to a point on this new product that we're building that the marketing was being held up. Right? So we're looking at it as two tracks. Right?
Jordan Gal:The product track and the marketing track. And we want them to keep pace with each other. So I'm pushing product and product is pushing back saying we'll get us people to talk to and you know we're we're having these these healthy debates. It's been a lot of fun actually because choosing an approach or like our our new philosophy on how to build this product and that usually results in debate argument between Rock and Jess and myself. And it's like this three person argument and sometimes you side with one person, sometimes you're against that other person's point of view and it moves around.
Jordan Gal:It it feels good because it's there have been times where we kind of are on Slack and someone will be like, hold on. I think you're getting a little worked up about this. Let's just jump on Zoom.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? This isn't nothing personal here. We're not actually mad. We're just arguing.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Nathan Barry:So that that definitely happened once or twice.
Brian Casel:Alright. What can you share about like, what are the debates? Whatever you can or
Jordan Gal:can So so let let me get to to that in in just a sec. The fun thing of this week was choosing a name. Yeah. Because that that that was like this roadblock that once you have a name, then you get a domain, then you start to then you can start to move toward getting a site online and that allows for new marketing and sales activities to happen. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Some cold stuff and you mean just being able to send people to a site that says what you do instead of explaining it over a call like is necessary.
Brian Casel:Oh, totally. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Of course, I agonize for days. I'm up late. I'm looking at all the new startup name generators, permutation domain of it like I'm deep in when
Brian Casel:I did rebrand to Clarity Flow, I killed myself for like two months with lists of names and So and what domains are available and all that Right.
Jordan Gal:So I was I was worried about that and I knew I don't have that luxury. I have a few days, period.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Like, you're right trying to force myself to be fast on this stuff. So I go to Twitter, I'm like, should I look for domains? Of course, people are like name cheap. Like, no guys. Not where do I register.
Jordan Gal:I'm in a different form of agony right now.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So I do this for days. Eventually, I just go to my wife. I explained what we're trying to do for her in that first response. She nails it.
Brian Casel:Wait. So she and I for those listening, we're not gonna reveal the name here.
Jordan Gal:No. Not yet. Not yet.
Brian Casel:You you told me earlier what it is but you but are you saying that she came up with the name? Like suggested that as a name or or did you have the name and and you ran it by her?
Jordan Gal:No. She came up with the name.
Brian Casel:Oh, that's great.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. First thing. She just let me think about it. Three minutes later
Brian Casel:Here you go.
Jordan Gal:Boom. Nails it. I go to the team. Everyone's like, I love it. I'm like, okay, fine.
Jordan Gal:I gotta give my wife credit.
Brian Casel:I gotta say, knowing I know what it is and it is a good name. It's good. It's good. It's well done.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yes. I like it. So I'm psyched. We went out and got a domain.
Jordan Gal:It was right at the the budget level that I wanted to spend. So that that was like fun. Now, you know, beyond fun, like the actual debates inside the company have been super interesting because what I'm finding is that AI is a weird part of the Internet right now. The everything's okay. So now I understand why things are called foundational models.
Jordan Gal:Maybe I'm wrong here and there's like a technical explanation, but there are a few models that everyone builds on. And as people start to build layers on top of those models, it gets pretty confusing.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:What's a wrapper? What's real value? What's an API? What's an admin on top of APIs?
Brian Casel:Like You probably know more about this than I do. So Okay. So what what do what do you define as a foundation of model? Are are we talking about like there is open AI and then there's like Anthropic and then there's like Google? Are
Jordan Gal:those the the Yes. Yes. Individual models and And Facebook has LAMA. Right? Yes.
Jordan Gal:That's right. And here, let let me just try to open this up. Where is this?
Brian Casel:Those are the four that I know of. Yes. In terms of like foundational, like large language models.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Now the thing with those is that they they they do different things and what we're describing right now are are like LLMs. So an LLM like the language model is the thing that gives you text. But our product has three components. It has the model that we just talked about, that's the LLM.
Jordan Gal:It has the transcriber that turns speech to text, and then it has the voice element that turns text to speech. Right? So like AI voice, like talking to a machine feels like magic. In reality, it's relatively straightforward. I say words as the human.
Jordan Gal:I say words to the system. The system listens to my words and then takes that speech and turns it into text. That's the transcriber.
Brian Casel:Right. So that Then it takes that has okay.
Jordan Gal:Let me finish like so and like the explanation's complete. It then takes that text and submits it to an LLM. The same way you and I go to GPT and we write in text and hit enter. Mhmm. Then it talk then the model does its thing and it gives you a response in text.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And then there's the voice element that takes that text and responds to me, So the human it's like not magic. It's just all A couple
Brian Casel:of different pieces. It's like a Yeah. So like the transcribing piece, the voice to text, like that's not AI. That's There are APIs for that. Like AWS offers that as an API.
Brian Casel:Like there's a there's a bunch of them out there.
Jordan Gal:Yes. But there are there are specialized AI models for for this stuff. So, something like a Deepgram, for example.
Brian Casel:Okay. Don't know what that is.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So so there are there are tools like Deepgram that maybe they're not like LLMs, like an open AI model, but that's a pretty foundational thing that you need. You need you need to nail that. And Mhmm. Not only do you need to nail that, you definitely should not build that.
Jordan Gal:No. Yeah. Given what we're doing, we shouldn't build it.
Brian Casel:I mean, so far everything that you described should should not be built. Like
Jordan Gal:That's right. And that's where it starts to get weird. That's when you start to look at it and you're like, okay. So we're gonna build our service. We're gonna take this LLM model.
Jordan Gal:We're gonna take this transcriber and then we're gonna take this voice generator. Right? There's one called PlayHT for example. Awesome voices. So now we're we're taking these three parts, and then as as the company, as ourselves, you start looking at these like, I know OpenAI isn't going anywhere, and I know Facebook isn't going anywhere.
Jordan Gal:Feeling good about those.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Then you start looking over at like Deepgram. You know, like, okay. They raised a bunch of money. They're pretty good. Like, I think we can bet on this.
Jordan Gal:Then you look at PlayHT. Then you look at these different parts. You know, like, what are we doing here? We're kind of building a service on top of existing services. Some of which are on, you know, built by startups that just raised like $3,000,000 and so it starts to feel a lot less steady than building an AWS with Laravel and and like something else.
Brian Casel:Yep. It's Yeah. Like you know you're not gonna build the LLM. But like if you're gonna if you're gonna use some startups tech, no matter how much they just raised, they they are still new. But then the question is like, what are they building?
Brian Casel:Can we reverse engineer that and just build what they're building?
Jordan Gal:Yes. It quickly turns into the Spider Man meme of everyone pointing at each other. And you're like, but what what but what the point what's the point of your system?
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Like why would we build that when we can just go right to the API?
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:So so it it quickly be it feels like
Brian Casel:a
Jordan Gal:game of really really identifying where you wanna add value and then being honest with yourself on like, is this where I wanna live? At this layer? The conclusion I came to is that I only wanna add value for the end customer. I want a direct building relationship with the end customer. I wanna get good at marketing and selling to them
Brian Casel:less concerned with building deeper and deeper into the chain. You're with having like the surface level solution even even knowing that there's gonna be tons of competitors doing it.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Like literally surface level is a good way to describe it because the surface is where it like touches air. Let's just say that's where the customers are.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Then there's our layer of an admin that you log into and you onboard and you you know, choose feature parameters inside of the app. My contention is that everything underneath that layer will be both amazing and commoditized.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:There will be endless number of voice models and endless number of transcribers and amazing models by multiple gigantic multi billion dollar companies.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But your yours will be like tuned to an industry's needs and a market's needs.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So industry and a problem.
Nathan Barry:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So so as as a as a software company, that feels for for a non technical CEO, I'm looking over at my tech team and what I'm trying to convince them of is that they need to think with efficiency in mind. Almost like think lazy. Like, don't we will not be rewarded for building anything underneath that top layer of value. So don't even think about it. Outsource almost everything.
Jordan Gal:We will be rewarded for adding features and integrations and solving problems properly in our UI and UX for the end customer. And what will really be rewarded for is building a sales and marketing machine. So it's weird to like Yeah. Tell your tech team like you you are already commoditized. Anything below all the way at the top layer is come on.
Jordan Gal:Don't try to be smart. Everything that you think is just kind of okay is gonna be incredible. So it's it's a that's where all those debates are. Mhmm. Like, what what are we doing here?
Jordan Gal:How fast should we go?
Brian Casel:What should we you're pushing for like like the the speed. Like let's Yes. Dirty Let let's just let's just you like use whatever startups tech if we can brand it and Yes. And implement it.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yeah. I'm like, if you can't beat that and that costs a few cents a minute, like don't don't spend our engineering time on it because that's not what we're gonna be rewarded for. Because if this fails, there will be 10 other options within twelve months and that it doesn't matter. We're if we're not touching that layer, then let's not touch that layer.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that makes sense. You know, at the end of the day, it's it's like you're you're just You're focusing on the on going to market and getting the relationship with the customer first. And and it is a race.
Brian Casel:And especially in in AI more than anything else right now, I I feel like it is a race.
Jordan Gal:Yes. From from there, my my debates are around how how fast to be versus how quality, like between speed and quality. Mhmm. Right now, where we live in AI voice, the the competition is unsophisticated. There are a lot of companies that are like two or three engineers went to YC, launched a product, and they don't get marketing, they don't get branding, they don't get positioning.
Jordan Gal:It's like a technical website. It's dot AI. Like all all that. Mhmm. So it feels like an opportunity to leapfrog on branding and positioning and marketing.
Jordan Gal:And the odd thing is it I I think this is also might be unique to AI where if you started a year ago, you do have a head start on certain things. But because you built your tech a year ago, you can be leapfrogged only because the company's launching today instead of a year ago.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:So it feels like we can jump out and have better marketing, better branding, better positioning, and better tech because we launched late.
Brian Casel:Because you happen to be getting into it now. Yes. Where are you on like industries and target customer or target problem to solve? What are what can you share there?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So so what we're going after everything I I think this is common to software, just AI, but it just feels new because I haven't built a product in a while. But all the pressure feels like it's it's toward doing more and going wider in terms of industries and like use cases. And I wanna stay really really focused on something very painful and very valuable. So right now, we're aimed specifically at inbound sales call handling.
Jordan Gal:So when you are a business and you spend a lot of money on ads and you want that spend to result in a phone call, not a web form, a phone call
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And that phone call is worth a lot of money, you are my people.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:So what that leads me to think is any service that's that's done locally.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Right. Because because as soon as you limit your geographic area of advertising, the costs go way up. And because local businesses want phone calls as opposed to web form. Right. If I'm a software company or if I'm a mortgage company, like, want I I just want leads.
Jordan Gal:I don't care where they're from. Yeah. If I'm a pool service company, I only care about people within an hour drive of my business. And if you think about the way you analyze local businesses, you search online and then you call. So that is the normal pattern.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And so that's the the smaller umbrella that I really like is home services that happen around the home. Mhmm. And if I go up one layer from that, like the biggest umbrella I'm willing to live under is just local businesses in general. Small businesses. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes.
Brian Casel:I like it. I I like that. Yeah. It's it's still pretty it's still a wide net, but it's like a still a set of criteria that makes sense.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Then you can start to add in things like number of employees and and revenue. Right? The I had a great conversation with someone who owns a painting company and also sells software to painting companies. You may have introduced us.
Jordan Gal:Maybe it was someone else. But this person gave me a great like picture to keep in mind where these types of trades, these types of categories have a very wide flat pyramid where 95% of people, 95% of the lower part of the pyramid is mom and pop, one or two person does everything by text, email, and excel. And you do not really wanna aim for them.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But that top 5% sees investing in technology as a differentiator against their peers.
Brian Casel:And Yeah. I was gonna ask like how are you how are you learning from those from your end customer? Are you talking to them like how yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Learning and and we're talking to a few people and now what I need to figure out is how to talk to a lot more people a lot faster. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm trying to figure out signals.
Jordan Gal:Right? So if you run your business on ServiceTitan, right, that's a CRM that you're gonna pay, you know, 20 to $100,000 a year for. That that's who invest in technology. Those are my people. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:If you invest in Field Roots, which allows you to do fleet management for your trucks, you're my people.
Nathan Barry:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:If maybe you are a franchisee of a larger franchisor organization, you buy into systems and maybe you're my people also. So I'm just trying to figure out all this stuff on how to zero in on the right audience. Yep. Right? Like if you're a roll up, if you're a private equity company that rolls up HVAC companies, like that's my people.
Jordan Gal:So I'm just trying to figure out how do we identify them and then what what's the best way to reach them.
Brian Casel:You know this this question has come up. I've I've heard this from listeners of this show and I think you and I have talked about this. I've certainly had this question many times and that is, how do we reach potential customers for for customer research for a potential new product? Like Mhmm. You're not in business yet.
Brian Casel:In a foreign industry. Right? Yes. And that and that's the thing where where it is really difficult because so many of us builders in Yes. The SaaS industry.
Brian Casel:That's why so many SaaS people try to build SaaS for other SaaS.
Jordan Gal:That's our
Brian Casel:people, you know? Yeah. We we wanna sell to our friends. But the reality is most successful businesses find success because they go sell to the to the local paint companies or the or the insurance agents or the dentists or the you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But it's really hard to know how to get them if you don't have that experience.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And it's I mean the way that you're describing it like makes a lot of sense like how you can find this this criteria and then when you have that like firepower, can like run ad campaigns and start to literally test marketing channels. Cause it's like you're you're testing marketing channels and talking to first customers and and research at the same time. Mhmm. You know, lately, like kinda going back to what I was talking about earlier with like how I'm sort of like wandering and and looking for direction on where to where to maybe plant some seeds for some future investment in audience or target customers or markets.
Brian Casel:And and and one thought has been And and just for To be clear. This is We're on very different tracks. Like, I'm not rapidly trying to chase after a new product idea right now. But just trying to spend that that last third of my time like poking around, exploring. And one thought has been, you know this could be an interesting use case for podcasts.
Brian Casel:Like to start a brand new niche podcast as a way to not grow an audience. It's just a way to get into conversations with a target customer in a target industry that is foreign from your So like
Jordan Gal:I Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm starting to think about an area that I'm very interested in. Like I I have some personal interest in it, I've but never been connected to it professionally in in any way. Okay. And to go like full on like, it it would be a a super hard pivot to to do. But like, but to start to learn about like, who's who in this industry?
Brian Casel:What are what are the processes? What are the different business types? Who's spending money where with who? Who's connected to who? Who's doing well?
Brian Casel:Who Where where are the niches within the niches? Like, there's so many So much of that, but when you're talking about a different industry that that that you are personally not necessarily connected to, if you could just talk to people who know a thing or two about that industry, who are really in it.
Jordan Gal:You learn fast.
Brian Casel:And and then But like, it's so hard to just cold call and get into these deep conversations. You know, because again, they're a foreign industry. You're not necessarily connected to them. But having a podcast could be a way to, you know, invite well connected people to promote themselves on a podcast. Like invite Just do an interview show where like you're interviewing them, publish it.
Brian Casel:It's content, fine. But it's mainly, you're learning. Like, just just be curious and do an interview show and publish it. And and that it's like a win win. Yeah.
Brian Casel:And it's a way to to to learn and and step into the door. Put put your foot into a door of a of another industry. And you never know what you might find in there. Know? But that's To me that that's like a a move that a bootstrapper can do.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. You know? If you think that like because I've I've literally heard this from like listeners of this show. Like like, I feel so limited because I don't know anybody in any other industries. I don't know any other problems to solve even though I know how to build software products.
Brian Casel:Like, what do I do? I'm stuck. Like Yep. There. Like, just invite people to interviews and interview them.
Brian Casel:And and if it has to be a public podcast, just do that, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. I think that would be incredibly effective. I mean, the way I learn about a new industry is I listen to a few podcasts in that industry. And even just from that, you'll see some guests on multiple shows.
Jordan Gal:And then you hear the way the host talk. I mean, it it is an accelerated way to learn about an industry. Yeah. I got into franchises recently, and I, like, start listening to, like, the Brian Beers podcast and the Wolf of franchising. You you listen to 10 episodes between those two, like you are up to speed a lot than you were before.
Brian Casel:I'm exactly the same way. I you know, whenever I'm interested in in an industry, I start to consume all the podcasts and lately it's been more YouTube channels than anything else. And and then as I start to look at all these YouTube channels, I'm like, no, this this guy's got like 15,000 subscribers. This one's got 50,000 subscribers. This one's got 350 k.
Brian Casel:I'm thinking like, you know what? Like, I'm a nobody. I'm I'm not connected to anyone in that industry. But I bet if I reached out to this to this person with 350,000 like I bet that they would accept an invitation to be interviewed on on a on my podcast.
Jordan Gal:Right. And you might get introduced to that audience.
Brian Casel:And and now I have an hour long sit down conversation with this person, and you know, developing a relationship that could that could lead to connections to something else. And and at times, know, do that 20 times. Do that 50 episodes over the course of a year. All of a sudden, you are now
Jordan Gal:You're in the industry.
Brian Casel:Now, have in into this industry with all sorts of learnings, you know. So that's that's you know, getting back to that thing where it's like, what am I investing my my spare time and energy into? That could be something. I I, you know, I don't wanna get too far into what I'm thinking there, but like that's that's like an area of exploration that I'm thinking of.
Jordan Gal:But but that is a could
Brian Casel:use something like that, you
Jordan Gal:know. Right. Yeah. Speaking of like audience and outreach and, you know, basically just being found. One of the things that I have been thinking a lot about is SEO.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I don't know SEO. In the past I have been an SEO skeptic. I think partly because I didn't know what I was talking about, still don't. And partly because in e commerce the SEO is I mean it's all tied up.
Jordan Gal:Like, there there is not much room. You're not gonna come out with better content. So I just didn't see SEO as a real channel for our stuff in the ecommerce world. Now, my hope around what we're doing is in much the same way that a lot of people benefited from search volume for AI content. Right?
Jordan Gal:AI content generation exploded over the last two, three years. And people who were in that category benefited tremendously. And AI voice feels very primitive right now, and it's actually not that good. And you haven't you haven't seen very public displays. You haven't you you see Siri a little bit, but like it hasn't had a breakthrough moment.
Nathan Barry:Right.
Jordan Gal:So I think the search volume's gonna explode. And so I'm looking at SEO like, that I should actually invest from the very, very beginning, and that's that's where it ends for me. I don't I don't know what to do with that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. I go back and forth on SEO. I think it's very case by case just like most channels are. But I we definitely see SEO traffic and leads for Clarity Flow that continue to flow in to this day.
Brian Casel:But it's But I also have I I I've reached a plateau with it. And that could just be a limit of my skill or experience with it. But It You know, my my challenge with it is like, I could I could easily see how traditional SEO maybe already is, but will will become less and less important as we go forward. There's so many different factors in that. There's there's literally AI.
Brian Casel:You look at the front page of Google, now the top half of it is Google's own AI, followed by the other half is like Google's ads, and then there's a few There might be one or two organic things down there, and even those are like so SEO Yes. Like optimized that like they're they're practically ads themselves. That's right. That seems like every Google search, yet at the same time, I know that I still get customers from Google. So it happens.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I still think that the the low hanging fruit for almost any software business is still really worth putting in place. But these things run out quickly. So I'm talking about like, the alternative to competitor pages.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:Or the comparing popular competitor one to competitor two, compared to your tool. Like, those posts sort of still actually work. At least in my experience. But then, there's only like a limited number of those that actually play well for any given tool. And then and then those get super competitive on, know.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. I do really question the whole backlinks thing. I think it's still a factor to a certain extent but I I'm guessing it's less than it used to be. I really don't know. I don't know.
Brian Casel:I'm gonna I'm
Jordan Gal:gonna reach out to a few people in in that area that I trust and and kind of see if I can come up with a plan that makes sense in terms of investment. But yeah. I don't I don't wanna be caught six months from today saying, oh man, I'm I'm missing out on a ton of opportunity because because we didn't invest.
Brian Casel:I think for any for any new startup, for any new product, especially a new domain, new brand, like yeah. You definitely gotta do some work to put yourself on the map. Mhmm. It's a question of like, is that gonna be like our number one channel? I don't know.
Brian Casel:But like you shouldn't ignore it. Like Yeah. You should definitely do the basics. Put put the basic pages in place. Optimize like
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Because I I think there's another thing about that whole SEO question and that's just our behavior as people on the Internet. I think more and more This is probably, especially the case with us tech people, but it's but it's probably expanding out into the mainstream, which is like, like I said, like people are less interested in in purely just trusting Google to give them the answer, and they're more interested in trusting their communities, their friends. Mhmm. Like, when you have a question, you're much more likely to go to your friends or or people that you know for advice.
Brian Casel:And then maybe a layer beyond that is like going to places like Reddit or Twitter Yeah. Or where you might not know the people responding, but you know that they are people. You know, like like lately when I when I Google for stuff, I noticed myself heavily prioritizing results from Reddit. Because I just know that like those are humans.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There's a debate going on there between Yeah. People.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like of of all the links on the page on on the Google search results page. If I Like if I'm googling physical health thing like, oh, I've got back pains. What what should I do about these back pains? You know, am I gonna trust the the ads for these medical companies or the super SEO optimized blog posts or the 50 posts on Reddit of people who have actually had back pain and here's how they dealt with it, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's it's like an indirect admission that commercial incentive skews the actual answer. Yeah. So you are cutting through and saying who has the least commercial incentive to give me an answer here and that's actually Reddit.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Well well before we go, just want I wanna mention one thing that really helped me this week. Once we got a domain and a name, I went to our designers and I said, okay. You know, very exciting. We got our name.
Jordan Gal:Let's go. And what they said to me was, great. We would like to start with a branding exercise. So I rolled my eyes and said, okay. And it act actually turned out to be extremely helpful.
Jordan Gal:We spent an hour on it and what it was they they use Figma but it doesn't matter. It's just like
Brian Casel:Are your teammates or did you work with an agency or what is it?
Jordan Gal:So we've been working with these two freelancers for three years.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So we just you know they're in our Slack. They're like part of our team. I mean Mhmm. I give them equity. The whole deal.
Jordan Gal:They're like they're freelancers but they're they're awesome and they do a lot for us.
Brian Casel:Cool.
Jordan Gal:But they like to maintain their freedom and independence and we like it that way also. It's kinda worked out really nicely to have freelancers, contractors with an hourly rate and everyone's happy.
Brian Casel:Love it.
Jordan Gal:So it's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven columns and we just filled in information for each column. Column number one is the company philosophy and values. Product, column number two is product goals. So what's the product trying to do? Third column is problem solved.
Jordan Gal:What problems does it actually solve for the end customer? Fourth column is target audience. Who are you going after? The next one is the personality, like of the brand, of the The Us, our products personality. And then there was one called brand attributes and that was like a scale.
Jordan Gal:So between feminine and masculine, where are you leaning? All the way feminine, in the middle, or toward masculine? So we had like feminine, masculine, simple, complex, muted, bright, innovative, traditional, approachable, authoritative, serious, cool, commonplace luxury, contemporary classic, orthodox, unorthodox, and then safe and dangerous. And that just kind of forces you to make these little decisions around the personality and the brand and and the positioning. Then finally, the last column was competitors and differentiation.
Jordan Gal:And just being forced to write stuff out for each of those columns like brought out actually what we want out of the the company and the brand and the positioning and who who it's for. Really really helpful.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Super interesting. Are they so they're your team is running with that for doing what? Like designing the first version of the site? Yeah.
Brian Casel:The brand?
Jordan Gal:Website, colors, personality, how modern versus not modern. Right? If it's if it's a dot AI domain selling to developers, you wanna look at like linear. Right? Different website entirely.
Jordan Gal:If you're selling to HVAC companies, you don't want that type of a design insight. Yep. So it just gives them a foundation to make decisions on. What should the logo look like? What are the colors we're gonna use?
Jordan Gal:How fancy or not are we gonna get with animations? How clear should the text be versus modern? Just all these decisions at least are all flowing out of the same set of facts.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Interesting. I do feel like there's and this is I think that there's like I think that that seems really helpful, but a lot of it is like premature. Like, it's it's a good it's a good starting point. But like of a evolve as you go as you go forward.
Brian Casel:As you as you talk to a lot of customers, as as your team grows into this.
Jordan Gal:Yes. A lot of it, I was kinda confronting for the first time while on the call. Right? Yeah. Like you it's the beginning of these decisions that get refined over time.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But it it did force some answers.
Nathan Barry:Mhmm. Interesting.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. A lot of it, I think next week, what we can talk about is the debates we have internally around the product and how many assumptions to make on what people want and what to put in the admin and what features are basic versus what should we wait for user feedback.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like my I think I feel like my my instinct would just be to like create landing pages of of a product that exists and put that in like maybe multiple versions of of that and like show this like Put it out there.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully by next week we have something up on the web and I can share the domain.
Brian Casel:Super interesting, man. Alright, brother. Alright.
Jordan Gal:Friday. It's beautiful. It's sunny out. Enjoy weekend with the fam.
Brian Casel:Yes, sir. You too. Alright. See you all. Later, folks.
