AI Products
Welcome back, everybody. Another episode of Bootstrap Web. I'm Jordan. Brian, how are you?
Brian Casel:Doing good. Doing good. We're back at it. It's Friday. You know, is Friday.
Brian Casel:Tonight is game six of the Knicks and Pacers. Let's see if they can let's
Brennan Dunn:see if
Brian Casel:they can close it out in Indianapolis.
Jordan Gal:We'll see. This is this is top priority in the podcast.
Brian Casel:Course not.
Brennan Dunn:That's all I'm thinking about today.
Brian Casel:Getting the getting the competitive juices flowing. But no, you know, I I was thinking just, you know, earlier today, it used to be, depending on the phase of our businesses, like, when we would record these podcasts, like, you you know, in back to back weeks, and we'd really get on a roll, I I feel like we would struggle, or at least I would struggle to have new things to talk about because it's only been seven days since we last recorded.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:But right now, since I am in, like, new product mode and so are you, I feel like so much happens in a seven day period.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:It's like so so chaotic, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. I I like it. I have I have been enjoying this this phase.
Brian Casel:Me too.
Jordan Gal:It's fun. It's
Brian Casel:I was thinking the other night in, you know, the other thing that happens when this happen when when a new idea is is in the striking phase, like, it's just it's just coming into there's this excitement, and I was literally up most of the night last night, think, or two nights ago thinking about it, and and I was think and this is a new idea that unfortunately for listeners, I'm not gonna share what it is that I'm getting very excited about, but I really Another like
Jordan Gal:another seven days. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I I like, this is like the most excited I'm ever gonna be about this thing. Because it's like in that phase where it it work it checks my boxes for so many reasons, and I have not yet shown it to basically anyone, except for like a few people privately.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Okay.
Brian Casel:So it's like it's like even before I start to like put it out there for feedback and and start to see market signals and start to gauge this and that and see and and poke holes in it why why this is wrong or that is wrong like, before all that, right now I'm just super excited about it. So this is like the most excited I'm gonna be about it.
Jordan Gal:We talked about this cycle that that happens and it is it can be counterproductive counterproductive to share too early.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:You're like not you're not even sure. Like, you know it's just emotional excitement. You're not even sure of how you really feel about it yet. You're like infatuated. I I had to tell well, Rock and Jess specifically that I need room to be wrong and silly.
Jordan Gal:I need to I need to be I I don't wanna be embarrassed about sharing an idea. Mhmm. And so I'm just gonna share it. It's almost like, don't take it too seriously because this is I'm gonna be sharing when I'm in peak excitement. That's why we're just gonna share it at the leadership level.
Jordan Gal:Because if we shared it at the entire company level, people would think I was a lunatic and would lose confidence in me. But I do need a space to be able to just share without repercussions.
Brian Casel:Throw stuff out there.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes.
Brian Casel:I love it.
Jordan Gal:Now, I'll tell you, when I did share, like, the email idea and then I talked to people, it did help me go through the cycle and conclude that it wasn't right for
Brian Casel:me. Right.
Jordan Gal:There is value to sharing and almost being forced to articulate and like seeing how you feel and try to almost trying to defend the Yep.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. You're right. I I feel like you did a really good job of that because you you went even further down the path of like, oh, this idea this idea this idea. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Brian Casel:No. Like, I That I thought that was pretty impressive when you were on that email idea, where you There were a few weeks there where I thought you were just gonna do it. And then
Jordan Gal:and then you just
Brian Casel:changed course, you know. Yeah. Was it was pretty fast.
Jordan Gal:Think was two weeks. Maybe maybe three. Maybe it was like a week and then and then some planning. And then I had that one week of maybe 12 or 15 calls with people. And by day two of that five day week, I was already convinced that it was wrong.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And then I kinda went through the motions, and many of those were like friends, we just kinda caught up. But I was already like, you know, convinced that it was wrong.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm working on on a thing. Like the idea that I'm working through right now is like something that I've been thinking about for a very long time. And I sort of assumed that I would maybe get to it at some point and and I've I've been evaluating a lot of ideas, but this one checks a lot of boxes. For me, what happened in the last seven days, what's what's what I'm the project that I'm working on right now is writing the the landing page for this idea.
Brian Casel:K. And that is the is the thing, the exercise that is getting me really really excited. Like like it took my excitement level from a three to an eight. Like because I've I've noticed that like when I'm starting up something new, if if if I have a hard time writing a sales pitch for the thing, it's just not clear enough. It's not I'm I'm having a hard time grasping what the value is and who it's for and how it solves problems.
Brian Casel:But this thing, it's like I had an initial concept for it and then I started fleshing out what the what the headline copy should be and the and the key benefits and the and the problems that it's solving and and laying out like like, it's like this but it's different for these reasons. It's it's a little bit better in these reasons. Like, all that just started to flow out over like a two day period and it's like, oh, man, I'm even more excited about this than I thought I was, you know.
Jordan Gal:Oh, so okay. That that's interesting. I think you have gone through that process and are better at it. I am writing the copy for our website now, and it's pretty difficult Because I'm writing about a product that doesn't exist. It's, like, in my imagination, so I can't help but need some foundation to touch on.
Jordan Gal:And and that ends up being a collection of competitors and kind of pulling different ideas and identifying, well, this feature, do we care to talk about that feature? This one, we don't wanna build yet, but it's really important, so we're gonna put a a coming soon on this set of features. But it's not it's not easy.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I am like for like when I was writing the copy for my consultancy site, instrumentalproducts.com, it's it's now in it's like third iteration of the of the copy on that site over the past like five months. And every time I I still had a hard time like writing it. Like I don't know who I'm writing to, what the value proposition is is here and I, you know, that's one that just hasn't come. I have a better idea of of the type of consulting and work that I do with SaaS companies now, but like but that's not even really reflected on the site anymore so anyway I like for you I wanna hear because you know this this week was the OpenAI announcement.
Brian Casel:I thought it was a super impressive evolution of their product and an absolutely terrible name. Like GPT four o, the letter o.
Jordan Gal:I can't tell if it's a zero or an o, so it's
Brian Casel:Yes. So dumb.
Jordan Gal:Very strange.
Brian Casel:But what what do you think of this? How how does this impact where you're headed with your with your product?
Jordan Gal:So this week was a was a taste of what it's like to be inside of the AI zeitgeist tornado. There's so much focus on it, so many eyeballs, so much talk about it, so much hype. So there are, like, these, like, reactions. There are there's a lot of money being spent on press. There's interviews.
Jordan Gal:There's press attention. It's just intense. You know, the the fire's pretty pretty hot. And, of course, the timing. I I'm gonna I'm gonna call it good timing.
Jordan Gal:This update was a lot of it was around voice. So it's OpenAI voice and the demos and that that little session of them on the couch, that was all about voice. And it was really impressive. Right? The latency, the responses, the language elements, like, was pretty damn cool.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. So so two things. Let's talk about what it does for the space in general, which is kind of on track with my set of assumptions and hopes, and the other one which was like a test of our hypothesis on which layer in the stack to build. Mhmm. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So generally speaking, I felt pretty good about, like, okay, everything in the middle is in trouble. You're either the foundation and you're OpenAI, or you're at the very, very end of the app layer talking to end customers. And then everything in between feels like it's in danger.
Brian Casel:So Meaning, like, if you have an app that is, like, the value prop is, like I don't know. I I I can't think of it.
Jordan Gal:I can describe can describe specifically. There are services that we are looking at to use that combine multiple tools to give a company like us the end service to be to build what we wanna build. So they'll combine the LLM and allow you to choose which model. They'll combine the voices and they'll integrate with Eleven Labs and PlayHT so you can choose which voices you want in your app. And then they have the trans transponder transcriber transcriber through Deepgram, these other services, and they put all that together and bundle it.
Jordan Gal:And what that does is it takes these three disparate elements that are coming from multiple companies, put them all together in APIs, and we can build more easily.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But now a p open OpenAI
Jordan Gal:is giving
Brian Casel:giving you all that.
Jordan Gal:That's right. OpenAI comes along and it's in one model. It does the it does the speech to text and the model response, and then the speech the text back.
Brian Casel:I will be On one model. I see that the other thing that maybe related to that. So I think you're talking about like the the companies in the middle are still technically like API companies. Like they're they're still they're sort of like technical middlemen between OpenAI and then like SaaS products like yours.
Jordan Gal:Yes. But I
Brian Casel:I guess what I'm also wondering is like, which products just aren't gonna have a long lifetime because soon enough, regular mainstream people are going to just use OpenAI directly to to do certain things that Yeah. That like like the job to be done, you know, so like that's that's the thing that I'd be more worried about, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So that's why I said, generally, I feel good about it, but it felt a little warm flying close to the sun that way. Yeah. Because so there's a lot there are a lot of assumptions being made by companies like this. Right?
Jordan Gal:It's not just the companies that I'm talking kind of, you know, walking around their names because I don't wanna put put them in out there. But even the individual parts, the Deepgrams, the transcribers, the voice, like, OpenAI might offer that also. So everyone along the stack is worried, and we talk to those people. They're in our Slack now because we're, you know, doing pilots with their products, and they're stressed, and they're being honest about it. And, like, this is where we're gonna focus.
Jordan Gal:This is where we're add value. This is what we think. The the general consensus seems to be that people think OpenAI is gonna go toward consumer. So you and I and, like, the AI assistant that you and I are gonna use and blockbuster partnerships. Right?
Jordan Gal:Apple.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:So if there's an AI assistant in my iPhone, it's a partnership between OpenAI and Apple. And then a lot of these individual use cases and talking to small and medium sized businesses, like that feels less likely for OpenAI to get into because that's a that's a service game compared to their very, very, very scalable approach that they're taking. Yeah. There there's some that's kind of like where the comfort is around a lot of these products and ourselves included, but it definitely pushes you and forces you to look in the mirror and say, where are you really gonna add value beyond just the capability of the speech to text subscriber? Like, where else are you gonna add value?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, I I think I try to think about a lot of these parallels, like selling to small businesses. Like, even still today, like, there's still so many small businesses. And small doesn't doesn't need to be super small. They could they can still be businesses with like twenty, thirty, 50 employees, who still like even struggle to do things like getting getting a website up.
Brian Casel:Like, we we think that like using WordPress or using Webflow or using whatever So is
Jordan Gal:ubiquitous.
Brian Casel:So so easy, but like there are still plenty of businesses that do millions a year that still rely on like hiring contractors or hiring high priced agencies to do a basic simple website for them, you know.
Jordan Gal:Right. Or or just put things together or just be knowledgeable on what the tools are and then apply them for their what I'm saying
Brian Casel:is like even if it it ends up being like easy enough for basically anyone, even a small business owner to just go straight to ChatGPT and like set it up for their business to communicate with their customers, like that's it's they're still a long way off from that being like an easy thing for most people to do.
Jordan Gal:Very long way off. So like, if you're building an app for iPhones and you're gonna do something that these models are capable of, like that's a scary spot
Brian Casel:to be in.
Nathan Barry:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So now the second part of that, the attention, this is my search volume hypothesis
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:That this stuff will break into the mainstream in a similar way as AI content writing broke through. And with that, the search volume will explode as press mainstream stories, funny stories, things that reporters like to write about, you know, things that SNL sketches, like things that seep into the pop culture. Yeah. That's and that this was very this week was very helpful for that because it put voice like front and center in everyone's
Brian Casel:It is funny, you know, thinking about like SEO. It's something that that's coming up again for for Clarity Flow actually currently. And and I was looking at at Ahrefs the other day and a bit of keyword research and and I was just kind of glancing through some of the stuff that we look at it on Clarity Flow and for the first time in a in a few months like the the terms with the word AI in it are showing up with with like volume that these were not in the list just a few months ago, you know. And it's it's also interesting that like, know, we we get a lot of feedback from customers and we don't we still don't yet have like feature requests for AI in Clarity Flow. Like people are not asking for it, but there is search volume there.
Brian Casel:So like it's just like an interesting development, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I have been looking at a lot of competitor websites and it's really hard to tell if the use of AI on the marketing front is is smart or stupid. Because you think, oh, the end customer doesn't care about the tech, doesn't care that it's AI, unless they're specifically looking for something with AI. Right. Then you do wanna put it front and center.
Jordan Gal:So I I think a little bit of a balance. Generally speaking, what we've seen is a lot of our competitors are too heavily pointing at the tech and how cool it is. Mhmm. So something in between feels right? Yep.
Jordan Gal:We'll we'll Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep.
Jordan Gal:You wanna hear about my domain drama?
Brian Casel:Yeah. What can you share there? You told me a bit earlier. I didn't know you could talk about it here.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I don't know anything about domains. Don't even I don't know how the Internet works. It's all magic to me. I don't care.
Jordan Gal:You know, Rock does it and he says, we're all wired up and I say, amen. Right. But we we bought a domain for a decent amount of money. Nothing crazy. You know, 5 figures, low 5 figures.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Which Which I think is like the appropriate amount for us to spend. I looking back with Rally, I think we underspent. And so my my thinking on that has generally changed on how much you spend on a domain in in our situation. When it's you know, when you have millions of dollars in the bank that isn't yours, buying a property feels more appropriate.
Jordan Gal:So we we found what we really liked. We paid for it, and then it was, like, fourteen business days to get to us because it's from another registrar. It's gotta make its way over to where we keep things, I think, name cheap or something. Something. So we buy it.
Jordan Gal:We start building. Yesterday, we get an email in the morning saying, sorry. The domain's no longer available. This happens sometimes when it's still up on marketplaces even though it's been sold. I was
Brian Casel:like What?
Jordan Gal:I I did not know that was possible. I I think Did someone make a higher
Brian Casel:offer? Or I
Jordan Gal:I don't think I mean, this is one of those cases where these things should be like NFTs, and you buy them, and you know where the ownership is, and then you own them, and now it's yours. Evidently, this is possible. I I was shocked. We paid for it. The money went through.
Jordan Gal:Like, we were just waiting for it to hit our account, and I think the people were being shady. I think they, like, lied and said it's no longer available because then I had someone that I I I got introduced to through a friend as, like, a domain broker. He reached out to the owners and they were like, no. We want a $100. I was like, what?
Jordan Gal:So then, of course, Rock and I get mad. We go look for other domains. We spend another whatever
Brian Casel:You got the money back.
Jordan Gal:We got the money back.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:But, like, we started, you know, falling in love with with the domain. We went out and found two others that are similar, not as good, but similar, and and bought both because it was cheaper to buy both than the original one. So it was fine. And then this morning, we hear back from them, and they're like, you know, how basically, much do you wanna pay? And we were like, you know, so we we named a number.
Jordan Gal:They came back. They said, we're okay with that number plus a minority stake in your business. Get out
Brian Casel:of here.
Jordan Gal:Like, dude. I was like, I want you to tell them to GFY, but just in case a year from now, we're gonna come back to them and want it anyway. I was I was polite about it, but man, I I had never been kinda, you know
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, so going with one of these newer domains?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Unless they come back and accept I I just said, no. That's the amount of money and no freaking ownership. Are you are you out of your mind? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Frustrating. I I didn't know that was that was possible.
Brian Casel:That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Shady.
Jordan Gal:Right. Shady.
Brian Casel:I mean, at least it at least it's not like they're they're locking up your your payment or some some stupid shit like that.
Jordan Gal:Right. But it's frustrating because now if we move forward, once they see a website on the Internet and they can look who we are and see how much funding we got, then the price is gonna go up back to a
Brian Casel:100 k.
Jordan Gal:So if we want that domain a year from today, it's gonna be much more expensive. It's just super shady.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, it's like go I don't I I do think that like A lot of people say like, oh, the domain or the name doesn't doesn't really matter all that much. I really do think it matters, and it really is super hard to to rebrand later. So I think it's worth spending some time and and if it if if it's needed, like spend some money on a domain early on if you can.
Brian Casel:This one this week I I registered a domain as well. A couple domains and they were and they were all available. I couldn't believe, like some of these There's one that I'm not gonna share it, but it is pretty good. It's it's pretty short. It's a.com.
Brian Casel:It's relevant to what I'm doing. I think it sounds good. And I thought about it in the shower. I got out and I was like
Jordan Gal:Looked
Brian Casel:there's there's no way this is available. And it turns out it was and I grabbed
Jordan Gal:There there are moments in an entrepreneur's life that we remember. You know? Looking up a domain and having it just be available It's unbelievable. Yeah. It's really high.
Brian Casel:Like Clarity Flow and and Zip Message and Process Kit were all domains that I that were not available. I spent a few thousand on each of those. Yep. But yeah, this one, I I think is probably gonna be it. Like, I I've registered a few domains that that are like, this is it.
Brian Casel:Then like tomorrow, it's like, no, this is it. And then Yeah. My my list is growing again. But I wanted to talk so I I could talk a bit more about I'm not gonna share the idea yet, but I have some some notes on like why I'm getting excited about it, like the the boxes that it's starting to check for me. Maybe before I get in that into that, I just wanted to talk a little bit.
Brian Casel:I don't know how interesting this is to people, but I I just feel like it's significant at least for me. Sort of the mental state of heading into a new product again this time around. I just wanted to like I'm more stating this for my own purpose to like to to just state it publicly that like this time around I'm trying to take an like an intentionally more calm approach to starting a new product business. More or I should say less urgency, less riding on this than cause I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself and and but the the other thing is whenever I get super excited about a new product idea like I am right now, it it works against that that notion of of of staying calm and staying measured. Right?
Brian Casel:Like, I the excitement fuels the the need to just move fast, get this out there, get feedback, like do all the things like
Jordan Gal:Pressure builds next.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and I I get super optimistic because I'm really excited about how this thing actually fits into the market, you
Jordan Gal:know? Mhmm.
Brian Casel:So so that starts to bring you like higher and higher up this mountain like, oh, this is gonna work. This is gonna work. This is gonna work. But of course, you know, there's there's always the reality of this is SaaS, you're gonna get punched in the face a lot. It's gonna
Jordan Gal:get longer, it's
Brian Casel:gonna get
Jordan Gal:harder, you didn't get this right, you have to make this adjustment.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So so I just wanted to like sort of state for the record that like I'm I'm I'm trying to take a calmer approach. What that actually means for me is I'm pretty much set on bootstrapping from here on out. I'm I'm sort of done with taking any form of investment, and and that means bootstrapped and profitable and sustainable. So what that logistically probably means for the foreseeable future is a mix of consulting and working on SaaS, you know.
Brian Casel:And that's fine. I I I got a good thing going with with the consulting, and I am happy to spend half my week doing that and half my week working on a SaaS. And, you know, like that that's a good living and it's you know, the other thing is I I wrote down here, like, don't overheat on on building the SaaS and what that what that means is like I think it's I think it's okay to to keep building and keep making progress, but then pause like from time to time. Just pause the train. Whether it's because I feel like I'm working too hard on it, or I'm getting too emotionally invested in it, or I'm just putting in more hours than I should be, it's it's fine to pause it, work on other projects, and and then unpause it whether whether that's a month, whether that's three months, like, it's I'm not saying I I have no plans to to stop working or on any predictable schedule.
Brian Casel:I'm just saying like the the huge benefit that we have to remind ourselves when we are bootstrapped and sustainable and profitable and we have other income sources is we can we can go as slow as we wanna be. Like, we the the we like, I'd naturally wanna move fast all the time. I'm always impatient, especially when I'm building and shipping stuff. But I have to remember that, on this business and going forward, I don't have a runway that I'm that I need to hit before some date in the future. I'm done I'm done with that game.
Brian Casel:So, it's fine to just work on it, make progress, let it coast a little bit, pause, come back to it, work on it. And then the other thing is like, and I learned this sort of the hard way with Clarity Flow is it can be successful early on, like pretty quickly. And that does not mean that to me that is not an indication of like it's time to go all in. Like just just some early wins, some some early revenue, some early customers like it's probably not a sign to just pause right now but it's but it it still continue the balance of consulting and SaaS and just keep because there there's always gonna be plateaus. There's gonna be multiple plateaus at at every stage.
Brian Casel:And and it's also just fine if this thing totally flops, I can just let it go and kill it and move on to the next idea, you know, like, no pressure. That's that's the that's the game plan that I'm gonna have to keep reminding myself of, which will be tough.
Jordan Gal:I think we should, like, check-in on this over time because it is I it's like I see what you're doing ahead of time and trying to get into the right mindset for a roller coaster, for a long term endeavor. Right? It's not thirty days and it if it it's a gangbusters home run, then keep going. And if not, then drop it. You're almost like like coaching yourself into the right mindset.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:And and the the challenge is kind of staying there once once you're once you're off to the races. I think all of us at some point get into this form of, like, a mental game with ourselves on how to basically be happy and keep building and have the right balance so that you're not, like, at the mercy of these, like, big ups and downs. I I have been enjoying the last few weeks. It feels a little bit like a calm before the storm. Like, I don't even have an email yet with this domain.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Right. So it feels like I I I always have this very familiar feeling when I start a new email with a new domain, and I look at a totally sparse empty inbox, and I just think, nice and quiet now, at some point in the future
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah.
Jordan Gal:This can be a mess. Yeah. A good mess. That's you're literally creating not something from nothing, and people out in the world are gonna be replying. They're be spamming you.
Jordan Gal:They're gonna be, like, asking for things.
Brian Casel:It does drive me crazy every time I, like, open up, like, one password or something, and I see all the email addresses that I own. Like, there's there's Brian at restaurant engine. There's Brian at audience ops. Brian at Brian. No.
Brian Casel:I mean, most of them are like shut down at this point. Like these these like logins are are still like in my list of things and like Yes. You know, the the autocomplete on all my devices like still autocompletes like Brian at audience ops which doesn't work anymore, you know. That part
Jordan Gal:that part pisses me off. The the Apple autocomplete like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's been it's been ten years.
Brian Casel:Right. Yeah, man.
Jordan Gal:I I like, I I have been finding myself working at a coffee shop recently.
Brian Casel:Nighttime.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Something about the warm weather, just being home for too long. I'm like, I feel the need to go get out and then I've been productive when I go out there. So I I thought it three times this week. I I'm enjoying it and and that feels like part of that mental coaching
Nathan Barry:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Of, like, settle in, you know, urgency, but don't put unnecessary constant pressure on yourself. This sounds very much like a couple of guys in their forties talking right now.
Brian Casel:Because it is.
Jordan Gal:Yes. This may not be optimal for the absolute maximum potential, but every time I've tried to go for the absolute maximum potential, you end up unhappy along the way. Mhmm. So this is some balance inside of that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm I've always been a big just for me personally, like, really look, we're we're all in this to, make money and and have a and have a good living and have a big outcome at the end of the thing. Like, that those those things, of course, motivate me. But I think equally if not more motivates me what motivates me is like loving the work every single day and really you know like you know, being being creative, getting the deep work in, creating value, like, just building things, just being a builder, like, just getting to do that every day is really really important to me.
Brian Casel:I I don't just go into things. I mean, and and this is also this also sort of plays into the last couple of weeks as I've been actively searching for what is gonna be the next product that I work on. I've I've one thing that that was interesting about this search has been like, for the first time I think in the that I can remember, this is the first time where it was truly wide open for me. Where because I if I think back to all the other other products that I started, those were like true shiny object ideas.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:Meaning like I was I was like super active like on a business, and then the idea for the next one came very quickly and I shifted very quickly to that one. Like like I didn't do like a strategic exploration of like, I'm gonna start a new business relatively soon so let's let's evaluate all these different markets and then pick pick the one that's right for me. It was more like I really really want to do this one idea so I'm just gonna go do that next. That that was the case for most of the previous business ideas. And it might speak to why most, you know, they maybe they didn't all pan out the way that I hoped.
Brian Casel:This time around, I feel like it it took me several months to even get back in the game of thinking about a new product idea.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You kinda have to walk away a little bit from it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I did. I was I was exploring other stuff, doing consulting, did YouTube. But, yeah. This time it was like wide open.
Brian Casel:And then I started to think more about like, how what is the optimal way to find a new product or a new opportunity? So, you know, I I thought like, okay, maybe I'll just start with markets. Just think about like verticals, like, I don't know, like, I don't know, like lawyers or accountants or doctors or medical field or SaaS or ecommerce. Like, think about those and then and then with and then, like, choose choose one that's, like, very active and high volume and then start to zero in on, what are the main functions functions in these businesses? There's there's sales, there's marketing, there's hiring, and and then pick one of those sectors, and then zero in on like, alright, so if we attack hiring, then what are the products in that category, and and where can I fit in?
Brian Casel:And so that was like one path and I didn't really get very far down that path. Mhmm. It And a lot of this is like, I don't know, like my own style of of thinking and and looking things Yeah. Like So there's that approach then. Then there's like the category approach, like, we start with hiring, or we start with sales, or we start with marketing tools, or we start with, I don't know, like whatever else.
Brian Casel:Think about those categories, think about volume in those categories, and then think about, like, okay, which category is right, and then and then zero in on a niche vertical within that category. And then there's always the option of, scratch my own itch. And that's that's there's different versions of that. I think that there are like the the idea that I ended up settling on for for now at least, is probably a mix of of starting with the category and scratching my own itch, but it's but scratching my own itch is not so much about like I have a problem that is completely unsolved and I'm looking to solve it. It's more like observing my own behavior in my businesses, like which tools am I currently paying for, and why am I paying for them.
Brian Casel:And I and so this this idea that I'm working on is is one that like I am definitely paying for actually multiple of this type of tool in this category already. And and I've been subscribed for a very long time and with no plans to cancel, you know.
Jordan Gal:I I think we we've talked about this before. I definitely talked about this on podcast before. The idea for Cardhook, the original one, the abandoned cart app came out of selling the ecommerce business and then looking at our accounting statements and looking at what apps we paid for. Yep. And it was the exact same calculation.
Jordan Gal:This app makes us we pay $50 a month for. It makes us $3,000 every single month and I would never cancel it. And we we clone that. That's what Kartik was. So very very similar dynamic.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And that that's pretty much my thinking on on this one. It's it's something that I am paying for. I am paying for multiple tools and hundreds of of dollars a month for these tools, and it's a problem that I have paid multiple thousands for to solve in my business, several different times in across several businesses. So, you know, like, when when doing any sort of customer research and validation early on and and talking to customers and getting like, the the best approach I think is to position these conversations around not what would you pay for, not what not what, like, would you see this as a problem, it's like, what did you pay for?
Brian Casel:What are you paying for? Show me evidence that this is a problem that you have actively tried to solve. Like, I always try to focus those interviews on that way. And so for me, like, the the meaning of scratch my own itch is like turn those questions on myself. Like, what am I actually paying to solve this problem?
Brian Casel:And this one is definitely yes, you know. The other one, and I've talked about this a lot lately, is the set it and forget it factor.
Jordan Gal:Keeping that in mind.
Brian Casel:And and, yeah, I thought for me that it was just a factor in the list, and I and as I started to look through ideas and evaluate and make a list of ideas that I might work on, I noticed myself throwing out a lot of ideas, just eliminating them because they didn't they didn't have really any form of set it and forget it, and and that made me realize like that's actually a lot more important to me than I even realized it was. And this one does have, I think, pretty strong element of set it and forget it. And not only that, I think that this one becomes even more valuable the longer you remain subscribed to it, which is also interesting to me. Like
Jordan Gal:set it and forget it plus.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Okay. There's something there's something funny to to the set it and forget it characteristic. But but if we, like, dive a little deeper into it, you you can see the reason behind that. That there it's a really high bar to create a piece of software that people log into and click every single day all the time. Yes.
Jordan Gal:It that is no joke. You gotta be slack and even then people complain.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Even then people do it and they hate it.
Jordan Gal:Gmail and still people complain.
Brian Casel:Yes. Yeah. Exactly. And again, just observing my own behavior. I pay for tools month after month for years on end.
Brian Casel:These are tools that I log into maybe twice a year. Mhmm. Maybe three times a year.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That that's that's
Brian Casel:and I have no plans to cancel them.
Jordan Gal:Like Now now that does that it it is linked to a very delicate pricing, like, issue. Right?
Brian Casel:You can't
Jordan Gal:be too expensive.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, yeah. Right.
Jordan Gal:You can't do set and forget for $500 a month. It's like, you know, you it that's too hot. You you pay attention to $500 a month.
Brian Casel:I don't wanna get too into the idea yet. Right. But I think that there is a case to be made that it could be something. There could be there could be versions or tiers of this for certain segments of the market that could be like that.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Some dream dream territory. You know? Yeah. I mean, like fantasy territory, I'm talking about like ideal.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I think what was I gonna say? Another reason that I'm at I I don't know what the final pricing model on this will be, but I'm I I think that there's a case to be made for like metered pricing, which lends itself to to nice expansion revenue for this. That that needs a little bit more exploration. But the another thing that I like about it is I think I was talking about it earlier.
Brian Casel:There's a good model where this works for both service and SaaS, or or SaaS powered service or, you know, linking the two, really. And that that just works perfectly with the desire to bootstrap and self fund this. Like, how can we grow revenue as quickly as possible and and have it sustain, you know, throughout through the long slow ramp of death. Like, I I loved the story of Patrick Campbell with ProfitWell or it started as Price Intelligently which was a sir a high priced service.
Jordan Gal:Right. And he built some software.
Brian Casel:Built some software and just any I I've always liked the the matching of like, you know, what do they call it? Like, tech powered services or software and services like Yeah. SaaS enabled now. SaaS enabled services like the this really I think that there are multiple ways that that could work too, like different service ideas that that pair well with this. So I'm getting oh, and and then there's the AI angle.
Brian Casel:Here we go. Alright. Well, there's a few things I wanna say about this. One is like, what was interesting about the set it and forget it criteria for me as I was looking through different ideas, I did find myself just eliminating a lot of AI centric ideas for that reason because because I just think that like a lot of the AI product ideas do require like especially if you're thinking about generative AI. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Tools that you use AI to generate, like let's say like Create
Jordan Gal:things. Okay.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like blog writing content. Like blog writing tools or whatever.
Jordan Gal:Ad creative
Brian Casel:Like you have to you have to constantly be creating content for for that to remain valuable and and paying for it. Or creating images or creating video, whatever you're gonna use the AI to create. Like if you're generating stuff, if if that's the tool, then it's not sad and then forget it to me. Like you you gotta keep using it. So so that was just interesting.
Brian Casel:But on this idea, I there there there is gonna be an AI component to to it. I think that's one of the key differentiators. I think there's a few differentiators, and one of them is is AI powered. And I like how I like what it adds to the value prop for this product, but it is I also like that AI is not the centerpiece of this product. It this this product could totally exist without AI in the picture.
Brian Casel:Right. It just
Jordan Gal:makes it better, easier.
Brian Casel:But at at the same time, it's not like we're just slapping on AI just to say we are. I think it really it really solves a compelling problem with it. And I also think that the way the way that I intend to use it is not something that would be at risk of just being eaten by the next OpenAI update, because it is just very specific to the context of this product. I know I'm being a little cryptic here, but the No.
Jordan Gal:It's fine. The Yeah. There there are there are some okay. One category is AI as a feature added to existing product categories.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And that is that's just gonna be everywhere. You know, all types of products. I mean, whether it's Canva or whatever else, it can be useful. It can be useful in taking things and putting them into natural language, customer service, all this type of stuff. And then there are these other these other types of product where AI is really like at the core and it wasn't really possible before and now it's possible.
Jordan Gal:So anything if if I were building anything that didn't have AI as its core proposition, you should definitely be thinking about what features would be valuable to add for both improving the product itself and, let's be honest, the marketing value of adding it. And Yeah. I mean, it definitely the third volume that you're talking about.
Brian Casel:I mean, it definitely adds value. Like, if I think about it, if I were to do this product years ago before these AI capabilities existed, The part of the problem that I would solve, this would require like human. Like, if if we were gonna offer the SaaS plus service, like this would this would probably be a server like a consulting option to go along with your SaaS subscriptions. Like you get a person to to do this and that or or tell you this or that. Whereas like now we can we can actually solve that part of the problem using AI, you know.
Brian Casel:Cool.
Jordan Gal:I have I have two things to talk about.
Brian Casel:Let's hear it.
Jordan Gal:I have I have self serve as like a mechanism and a point of view on on this product. And then I have something related to that, which is a a Twitter post by David Park, who's the founder of Jenny AI. So alright. What
Brian Casel:what is that again?
Jordan Gal:So Jenny AI is it's content writing, but aimed at, like, research.
Brian Casel:K.
Jordan Gal:Research, aka this thing writes your papers for you. Right. So so let let's talk about one and then the other because they kinda blend into another. So a lot of what we've been thinking about internally is we wanna go about this product differently. We don't wanna build a big sales team.
Jordan Gal:We don't wanna do enterprise sales. We want it to be self serve. Maybe not the first month because you want to talk to people blah blah blah. We want this thing to be self serve. We want it to be able to take on a 100 new sign ups in a day.
Jordan Gal:So if if you kind of go in, right, and this is what I'm like saying to the product engineering teams, we want to be able to take on a 100 sign ups in a day. What like, take that in as gospel and start making decisions with that as one of your key factors. So think about the spectrum of powerful to simple. Where should the product live? Much more towards simple.
Jordan Gal:Like sophisticated versus basic. Like all these different spectrums like, features, fewer features. All these things, that kind of point of view of a 100 sign ups in a day, right, that, like, tells you certain things. It's gotta be self serve. You the team to take on a 100 sign ups in a day.
Brian Casel:I What comes to mind? Well, I'm curious to know, because I think that there's something that if you're selling to businesses, especially small businesses, and if you're targeting a function that is like critical to them, like essential, like they will pay a lot to to to solve this problem in their business, that to me starts to move you away from self serve. Because the more like the more critical it is Yes. The more they wanna talk to somebody
Jordan Gal:and someone make sure yes.
Brian Casel:And then and also the more critical it is like there's installation work that needs to be done. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yes. So it's a it's a challenge because because a phone answering service is debatable whether or not that's super critical you have to talk to someone versus not. So we're we're on the edge. It's relatively critical like it's interacting with your end customers so you care a lot about it. So it puts up a bunch of question marks around like, is that possible?
Jordan Gal:What what does it mean? Does that mean a 100 people sign up in a day and 100 people launch on their own without talking to us? Or a 100 people create accounts, get set up, and then the 20 that makes sense that have gone all the way through, then they get launched with us? It brings up a lot of questions, but
Brian Casel:I'm curious why why are you thinking so much about self serve? Like, why why do you value that so highly?
Jordan Gal:Okay. Man, look at look at you and I, we're good at this. That's a perfect transition to the Jenny AI
Brian Casel:Okay. Post.
Jordan Gal:So, David Park. So Jenny AI has been a phenomenon. They went from zero to 5,000,000 ARR in like I mean, what is this graph show? It's like, you know, two years.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So super growth. And you can look at that and pretty easily convince yourself that, oh, it's the AI content boom good for them. You read this post and realize that was not a mistake and it was not an accident. Our friend David Park knows exactly what he's doing, and he lays out how they've done their marketing in a very twenty twenty four way, specifically around leveraging social platforms, social algorithms, and short form video, and how to do that efficiently, how to recycle videos, how to make content, how to experiment, how to then leverage influencers, and how to do it very efficiently at scale. Very, very impressive stuff.
Jordan Gal:Phenomenal post that we should post in the notes, and I think I retweeted it.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I I may not have retweeted it because I didn't even wanna show people it. Right. When I read this post beginning to end, I then shared with my team, and I thought to myself, how do I hire someone to do this for us? Okay. Now how that relates to onboarding?
Jordan Gal:When I saw this post and the way I brought it back to my team was this is the right version of the dream. Software was always meant to be very high in leverage. Build it once, sell it a million times. That has been complicated because we sell b to b and sometimes these things are critical and sometimes you can never talk to customers and sometimes you have to talk to every customer. It's just a blend and we generally don't go into it saying, I refuse to talk to people And that's how I'm building.
Jordan Gal:Some people do that, you know, God bless them. I don't do that. I just think about what's the most valuable thing we can build. Mhmm. But in today's environment, with social platforms, with AI, with these like booming search volume in these in these different sectors, I think what Jenny AI is doing in this very self serve $0 tier and $20 a month tier, I think that is the right version of the dream.
Jordan Gal:So you ever seen Blow? The movie? Oh,
Brennan Dunn:yeah. Great.
Brian Casel:Great movie.
Jordan Gal:Alright. So there's a scene. Is it Johnny Depp? Is that who's it?
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yeah. Because Johnny Depp goes to jail Mhmm. And he meets his cellmate.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:And and Johnny Depp was a big shot, you know, pot dealer, and then his cellmate is a cocaine dealer. Right. And he goes, Johnny, you just had the wrong dream. You're selling the wrong thing,
Brian Casel:my man. Oh, man. Now, I gotta rewatch this movie. That was a Yeah. Good
Jordan Gal:Phenomenal movie. Penelope Cruz. Right?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'll be
Jordan Gal:here by then. Great movie. So, I think this version of things we should insist on because in today's environment, looking at where we're looking at, looking at the size of the market of small businesses and how ancient their phone systems are and the potential for the search volume boom that's gonna happen over the next two years, I insist we we need to build in such a way that we can take on a 100 new sign ups a day. If we're not doing that, we're we're we have the wrong dream. We're we're trying to sell the wrong thing in the market and and that's that's my that's my approach to it.
Jordan Gal:So this Jenny AI post really helped me in making that argument to myself and to and to the team.
Brian Casel:I'd wanna read the post for sure. I mean, and Yep. I I just still question the selling to consumers versus selling to businesses. It just looking at their Jenny's website and the pricing and everything, it just seems like students. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It seems like I could totally see how this is going gangbusters with, like, college students and just individuals who will pay $20 a month to write all their papers or or get it for free. I see below that they've got like team pricing inquire below. So that's probably the pathway to talking to, you know, larger teams and charging more. Yes. That's self serve.
Brian Casel:That's inquire now. Sure.
Jordan Gal:I assume look when when a low when a company that has 50 locations comes to us, they're gonna wanna talk to us. Fine. Well, we're we're not above talking to people for money. Cool.
Brian Casel:So you're saying like the the one location super small shop should be able to Google it, land on it, sign up, install it and start using it without talking to your team.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And and focusing there for just a second, think it's worth kind of articulating this problem that we've encountered when we're thinking about that. The the way I've been thinking about the experience of someone literally watching pest control influencer, because those exist
Nathan Barry:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:On TikTok, talking about our product, going to the landing page, signing up, and then getting them into the product. When I think about that experience from their point of view, what I'm starting to realize is when we sell to other biz when we sell to other highly technical businesses that understand software, understand accounts, understand this whole process, It feels okay to have this very large hurdle where on one side you're in the marketing experience. You're on the website, you're reading about the features, you're looking at the pricing, you're on one side of that hurdle, and then you decide, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna jump to the other side. I'm gonna go to the signup page.
Jordan Gal:I'm gonna create an email and a login and I'm gonna hit password. I'm gonna create my account and now I'm on the other side.
Nathan Barry:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:I go from before I have an account to after I have an account. It's a very like black and white experience. Yeah. And what I can't help but want to do is I wanna drag the account creation process
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah.
Jordan Gal:Into the marketing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Guess what say like claim your AI assistant, put your URL in, hit go, we go read your website, we scrape all the information that we need for our model. You have not created an account yet. You come in, you put your inform you put your like maybe your Yelp listing, then you can listen to our agent with an amazing voice. You can call them and interact with them as if it's your business, and then you create an account. It's like it's like I wanna smooth out that hurdle of an experience
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So that it's it's the product and the onboarding is much closer to like to the marketing.
Brian Casel:I I love it, man. I mean, I I think it's technically possible to do that. You can there there's there's plenty of like design and UI and onboarding choices and tech that you can put in place to make a super smooth onboarding experience. And I still just struggle with the concept of a small business owner, but like I but it's totally possible that I'm just out of touch with the modern day 2024 small business owner. I think that I think probably the reality is like business owners today are actually more technical, you know, more tech savvy than than we give them credit for, to be honest.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, I just think that they're like, if I think of today, '24 compared to 2012, which was when I was selling to restaurants entirely. I mean, completely different universe. Like like online ordering systems and even just like POS stuff was just coming into existence back then. I remember with Restaurant Engine, was a new competitor that popped up.
Brian Casel:It was some big company. It might have been even a thing from Google, if I remember correctly, but it was something huge that popped up. It was specifically aimed at restaurants, and it was like, put in like your Yelp listing and we will generate a website for you and it's free.
Nathan Barry:Like Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Obviously wasn't AI back then. But it was just like scraping your Yelp thing and and turning it into a nicely designed website.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And I was like, this thing is gonna kill us
Jordan Gal:and Yeah. Jeez.
Brian Casel:You know, but like, it didn't. And there were still plenty of restaurant owners who wanted to sign up. But the thing that I learned was like, every one of them wanted to get on a phone call. So so then I just hired somebody to do the phone Sure. That's what I, you know.
Brian Casel:But I think what you're talking about like, there there could still be a middle ground. Like, I I I love the the idea of like, shift to the front of the funnel, the the account sign up. Like, super high volume on that front. Like Yes. Claim I love the idea of of like, claim your AI calling assistant or claim your AI receptionist, like
Jordan Gal:Right. Not create an account. Like, claim that that Yeah.
Brian Casel:That Yeah. You quit. Yeah. Yeah. But, like, I still think that there's my guess would be there's gonna be a lot of farming of those leads in your in who are already in your system.
Brian Casel:Like, alright. Alright. Now now we have a lot of like emails in our database. Let's see which ones are the most likely to actually use it if if they were to receive a call from us or from our AI. Right?
Brian Casel:So that's that's interesting.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So that's we'll we'll we'll see how that goes. The the real thing I told asked of the tech team is to make sure we have a lot of flexibility in the onboarding, account creation, and billing.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Because I I have definitely been in a position before where I wanna experiment with something on the front end and it is more complicated than it's worth. So because of where the Stripe thing comes in and what needs to happen before this other thing, it's not worth changing everything around for the account creation, and I I want maximum flexibility on on that part.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Are you so there are competitors do doing this. Right? Like the AI driven so can you see how they're doing how they're handling their funnels? Yes.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I don't like how they're handling their funnels. I don't like how they are. We haven't I have not come across a competitor yet that I have you know, all those all those bad feelings about, oh, man. They're so much better.
Jordan Gal:They're so good. How are gonna catch? I just have not really I've come across one competitor I think is doing a good job. Mhmm. And and then almost everyone else is either enterprise, and one of them seems to be doing really well.
Jordan Gal:They just raised a $50,000,000 series c. Mhmm. But they're enterprise. And then the other ones that are aimed at the similar part of the market, they are just obsessed with the tech. And you get into their product and it's like which LLM do you want to choose?
Jordan Gal:And in my opinion Yeah.
Brian Casel:What's an LLM?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Exactly. What what are you talking about here? Yep. So that that definitely makes us really excited to get to market because we feel like people are not positioned
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Properly. I like that. That sounds good.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So that's it. Jenny AI, highly recommend that post.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We're gonna we're gonna get that linked up.
Jordan Gal:Wants to run that playbook for us, please get in touch.
Brian Casel:Not not joking at all. Nice.
Jordan Gal:How many thousands of dollars do I need to pay someone to just run this playbook for us?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I ask that every day for for all the shit that I don't wanna do. Right? And it's so rare that, like, I could find someone to just, like, throw money at at a problem and it truly gets done or effective. But Yes.
Brian Casel:That's the dream. Alright. I'm my goal for this weekend is to not do anything super taxing on my back cause I've been trying to trying to get rid of these back issues. I like last weekend I was like cutting down a tree and moving it out of my backyard and then there was like a road trip like I I just need to chill. That's that's my goal for
Jordan Gal:this Okay. Similar on my end well, it's not gonna be that chill, but I my goal is to take a little break from Twitter. It's been very difficult the last few days emotionally with all the stuff happening around hostages in Israel. And I'm going to what's called adventure guides, which is a daddy daughter camp off at a YMCA that we do twice a year with, like, the local school.
Brian Casel:Oh, okay.
Jordan Gal:It's, like, in Wisconsin. It's, an hour and a half away, and it's, a YMCA camp. So it's, like, these, like, bunks, you know, like, fugly, very basic kids.
Brian Casel:It's fun.
Jordan Gal:So it's just bunch of dads and all of their girls. And my girls are old enough now that they would basically get there and they like give me a high five and I see them like six hours later.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Hang out with the with the
Jordan Gal:other fellas. See them for like the s'mores ceremony with like this like dad daughter ceremony thing and then I don't see them again.
Brian Casel:Oh, that's fun. Actually, Sunday is our daddy daughter dance for for the girls. I'm I'm going with my with my two dates. Cool. We're all getting dressed up.
Brian Casel:It's gonna be a good time. I'm pretty psyched.
Jordan Gal:That's the best.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Thanks, everyone. See you. Alright. Later.
