Ved Rasic's SaaS Startup Lessons: Fold, Sold, & Gold

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Today on the pod, we got Ved Rasic.

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Ved is a serial entrepreneur.

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We go through the highs of selling your first software as a service

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business, the lows of identifying when things aren't necessarily working out

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and it's time to ditch the idea to the highs again of identifying a new

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opportunity as Ved has done with his new company, Lead Delta, and hopefully

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you can take some takeaways from that.

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when you're starting to build your next software as a service platform.

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So enjoy my conversation with Ved Rasic.

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Nine, eight, seven,

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one.

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Ved, appreciate you taking the time to be here today.

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Where are you coming from and how, how are things going on your end today?

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Where I'm coming from is a, is a, is a difficult question

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to answer, but that where I am right now, I'm in Ottawa, Canada.

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Awesome.

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years ago with a product called lead Delta that I use as a add on to help

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facilitate my networking within LinkedIn.

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And we'll talk some more about that a little bit later on.

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But can you kind of give us a little bit of your origin story of how

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you've got to where you are right now?

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Sure.

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Yeah.

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So I think it's kind of useful to, to talk how I got into tech.

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Well, you know, even since the university days way back when, like, I started, like,

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doing a little bit You know, digital work like Facebook ads just started coming out.

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You know, Google ads and all that.

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So basically started helping traditional businesses you know,

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traditional consulting businesses, management businesses to actually

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become digital to transition.

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And that was pretty cool.

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Like, you know, I, I got to hire a few of my friends, you know, we

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would build websites, blogs, organize their events live events, and, you

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know run ads and things like that.

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So that was, that was my intro into tech.

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And, you know, I distinctly remember when I was in, in Austria, in Europe

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you know, I was, I had a really good job, you know, spearheading an

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organization with like 100 plus people.

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And it's just, I was very lucky to be in that, in that position.

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And so, you know, I would negotiate like with Cisco systems, GM, like Samsung,

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like, you know, big, really big names.

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companies, yeah, for

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yeah.

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Like you know, super young dude, like in a suit, like in all that.

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Like, yeah.

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But anyways, you know, they liked me and I had a really good offer for them.

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So, so it was, it was it was all good, but I remember distinctly a bank

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that would start their accelerator program for startups would offer a

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job for me to basically, you know, work with startups and select startups

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for funding and this and that.

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And I was like, how the hell am I going to do that?

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I've never done it before.

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I never started a startup like, you know, it's just.

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It's not a thing I would do.

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And so but it was also very clear to me that one day I'd want to have my

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own product and you know, I have no background, like no, you know, rich mom

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and dad, like, you know, I had to do everything myself, so it was hard to just

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jump right into it and start a product.

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And again, working for, for a bank, like wasn't really like a, it was an

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easy choice for me, but I said, no, I went the B option and the B option was

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you know, to start a software shop.

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With a few other guys in, in Belgrade Serbia.

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And this is, this is how we started, you know, to, to start that you just

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have to trade your time, find business and, you know, find engineers to

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fulfill the, the needs and that's it.

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Like that's, that's the business model.

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So it's the easiest thing to, to start.

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Right.

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And yeah, I did that for a couple of years.

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We were very successful.

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Got some governmental contracts in the U S.

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Work with some larger businesses, larger startups.

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That was great.

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But after four years, I was like now is the time.

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You know, I have some money.

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Now it's time to build my own products which, you know, brings me to Canada.

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The first startup was a marketplace startup for vehicle

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owners and repair shops.

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It was beautifully designed app.

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Well, actually four apps in one.

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You know, Uber drivers loved it.

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It was all over Toronto.

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It was amazing, but shops won't pay for it.

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And that's where the business model was.

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And so, so, you know, eight months in after very long, very long, process

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where we developed the best possible app, which is still relevant today.

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You know, actually we didn't have enough paying users and we had to shut it down,

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which was the first big lesson for me, you know thankfully I didn't invest as

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much of money as much as sweat equity, but you know, it was the first lesson.

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So ever since then, you know, I really blame myself too hard for

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that because, you know, I was like, you know, you've got one shot, like

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you, you know, you know how it goes,

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my baby!

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It's my baby!

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We got it!

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We're gonna make it!

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We're gonna

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gotta make it.

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Yeah, we're gonna make it.

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And then a few years back, you look like, oh, man, like, so inexperienced, right?

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But you learn a lesson, right?

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And that's that's the lesson I implemented later on with Lee Delta.

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But before Lee Delta, I You know one of my friends, he started

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a company called Autoclose.

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And then later on, the three of us co founders joined.

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And that was, that was a success.

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We bootstrapped the business, you know, it was, you know, a

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proper split of responsibilities fully bootstrap email automation

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service competing with outreach.

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Yes.

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We're,

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found out I had an account for that, actually.

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That you must have did an app sumo for that back in the day, possibly.

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in the day, possibly.

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this morning.

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I was like, Hold up.

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I do have, I have an auto close account

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That's a great

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works.

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It still works.

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It's a great product.

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We got acquired in like 2020.

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So that was so completely bootstrap.

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We got acquired spend a year there and, and, and in a new company,

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basically leading marketing for both brands, vanilla soft and auto clothes.

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And that's when I, when I figured out the kind of new way

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where the industry is headed.

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And I was like, I want to test this model.

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So I acquired a couple of startups well, startups, tiny code bases basically

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to, to kind of start something new.

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And, and one of those things was, became Lead Delta.

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So that's, that's a kind of short genesis the past decade.

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yeah, and there's a lot to unpack there.

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So I'm kind of curious going back before we get into the current stuff.

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When you were talking about being a co founder and some of that other experience,

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were you actually like a software programmer or in the, when you were in

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the co in those co founder roles, were you more of the, the business facing

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side, you know, chasing down some of those other opportunities or helping with user

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experiences or things of that nature?

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What was, what was kind of your predefined role in there?

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100%.

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So, so basically how I think of startups, you either build or build or you sell.

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And so I was on the sales side, but mostly but the thing is you know somebody

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also has to, unless, unless you have engineers that have been in the space,

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worked in the space, somebody also needs to prioritize for them what to work

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on next and prioritize that roadmap.

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So, so that, that used to be like.

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You know, anywhere between like customer experience, sales, and the

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product that, that was the kind of Venn diagram, the intersection of,

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you know, where my skillset was at the time official title was CRO.

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But like, you know, honestly in startups, like like if you care about

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a title, you shouldn't be in a startup, like, like literally that's right.

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That's right.

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so going, so if you have, if you were getting success with, with

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the auto close platform, what was, what prompted you to go, Hey, now's

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the time to sell and exit this?

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Was it a good enough payday?

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Or was it like, maybe this is, you know, this is as far as we can take this

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particular product and we've got some other ideas we kind of want to work on.

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It's thank you for a great intro.

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Like it's all of these things combined.

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And I can speak for myself.

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For me personally, it was I think Warren Buffett said that like how I

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got rich is like taking some chips off the table early on in the game, right?

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Like, and that's, I think this is, there's plenty of problems in the world.

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There's, there's, then there's plenty of ideas.

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And as long as we have humans, like, you know, we'll, we'll have problems to solve.

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So as an entrepreneur, you know, I keep calling myself like a software

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entrepreneur, but But honestly, like as I evolve as a, as a, as a creator as well,

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you know, I kind of figure out like, it doesn't matter what you're building,

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like it's you're solving problems.

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That's the, that's the definition of an entrepreneur.

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It doesn't matter how small or big it is.

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Right.

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And so, so for me, that was that it was an opportunity to

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To do something else as well.

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Right.

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And it was a great opportunity, great company to be

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perfectly honest at the time.

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I wasn't even thinking like, Oh, I'm going to build this next thing.

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I had ideas, like million ideas, but I was really focused on growing

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the company that acquired us.

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Like that was my number one thing.

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And, and interestingly enough, you know, six months in, like,

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you know, things changed for me.

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And, and, and I was like, you know, definitely not good.

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Like in, you know, two or 300 people companies, like I, I gotta, gotta

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itch, the itch, the itch started.

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Exactly.

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They started, you know, I announced that like six months before my contract.

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So everybody got, you know, was ready and all that.

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I think pretty, pretty fair proposition.

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But then you know, I also saw like, this is, this is what I like to

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talk about because there's there's three types of people, right?

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As, as, as a founder of LinkedIn says, right?

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There's like, you know, Navy SEALs, you know, who just, you know, break the

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barriers with the island, et cetera.

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Then you have an army to torn down the walls and then you

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have police to keep peace.

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And there's no right or wrong, like you just need to figure out,

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like, how do you win the game?

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Are you number one?

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You know, type A personality, type B, type C, right?

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And so I figured out, you know, some of my guys, you know, they weren't

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contractually buying to, to a new company.

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But like, you can see that they're, you know, in a way unhappy, you know, and,

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and, you know, they have that itch.

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You know, I have better salary, better terms and conditions, like in a, in a

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new place, like better contracts, all that, but they're still unhappy and I'm

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like, holy, you know, cow, like these guys are, these guys are type A, right?

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And, and so they want to build something else.

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And so, you know, all these pieces came together.

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Interestingly enough a year or two later Vanilla Soft, it got

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got acquired by a PE fund that's all obviously public information.

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So they also did well for themselves.

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So like overall, it was, the whole thing was a success in my honest opinion.

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And and I think we, we made the right move.

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No, that's, that's awesome.

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So after you, as your contract's up, you've made it known that you're ready to,

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to, to leave auto close and vanilla soft.

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What was the spark for Lee Delta?

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What was that idea that, what, how did you go through a testing phase process where

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you went, ha, we may have something here,

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right.

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So first there was a thesis and the thesis was even like, you know

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before right after auto close.

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So like 20, 2018, maybe something like that.

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I literally have a, I have a slides documented, which says

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like ideas are worth nothing.

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That's the name of the slide.

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And then, and then it's me like ranting about like CRMs and how cumbersome

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they are, how you know There's too great of a cost, both for the producer

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or the company and the end user.

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So when, like, I'll use Salesforce, a great company by all accounts

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great software and all that, right?

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Like, but when you really look at Salesforce, extremely complex,

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it's a beast on the engineer side.

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And I actually have insider information.

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Like I know people who led.

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You know, engineering teams like executive vice presidents.

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I know people who let AI at salesforce, et cetera.

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So it's, it's a beast, right?

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Like, it's hard to comprehend even how difficult the platform is.

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Now, on the other end, the users also have their share of costs.

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On, on Salesforce, like in order for you to acquire Salesforce to implement

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that you like, you need to, you need to what, like invest 100, 000 in a,

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in a consultant to actually set some things up and this is just to begin.

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Right?

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So, and, and how's that called?

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Like, there's a theory in software engineering.

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That's that that has that theory that as software develops,

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like the cost becomes so great.

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But you know, somebody needs to bear it.

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Like somebody needs to, you know, take care of that cost.

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And in Salesforce case, like it's a, it's a proper split between

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the company and, and the end user.

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So I was like, you know, something has to give, like, you know,

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AI was started being developed.

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And I knew even though I'm not an engineer, I worked at engineers for

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10 years, like I knew that like this architecture is not good And, and, you

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know, it's, it's not good to be AI first.

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It's not built.

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It's not meant to be AI first.

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And for them to redo it, much like with LinkedIn, like for them to

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redo the whole damn thing, like, it's like next to impossible.

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Like, no board will sign that proposition.

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And so it's an opportunity, right?

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So, so, okay.

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So that's, that's one side.

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The second side to it, like, I was like, You know, CRMs are comprised

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of relationships and people like, and so why don't we lead with that?

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Like, why do I have to buy a CRM and then it comes in empty?

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When I have like, whatever, 10, 20, 30 years of experience in relationships

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and people I went to school with, people I went, you know, had been

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to the same company with, et cetera.

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And so I was like, okay, so how do I tackle that problem?

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And, you know I was like, well, LinkedIn seems to be a place to be.

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And I immediately said, like, we're not going to do any automation.

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We're not going to do any auto messaging or requests, but we want

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to just facilitate the relationships and provide a bit better interface.

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That's enough for me to be a proof of concept to see if this is going to.

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This is going to roll, never planned to fundraise for it.

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Never planned to do anything.

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And that was the start.

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I mean, there's, there's a whole bunch to unpack into to dig deep, deeper, but like

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that's, that's basically the, the initial

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When you go through that initial spec process and we talk about you're

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developing that MVP or validating the idea, even before you build an MVP,

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what did you do to validate that idea ahead of time before going, man, we're

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going to, whether it's sweat equity or you're hitting up your buddies to

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come actually, you know, build, build an MVP or minimum viable product?

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How do you validate that idea first?

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Or did you, or did you go, eh, let's see what happens.

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Well, yeah.

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Great question.

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Well, so I'm validated by talking to a whole bunch of industry experts.

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So I have the deck built out, like, you know.

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Like nothing fancy, just ideas on a blank Google slide.

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That's it.

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And so I started talking to people who are relevant, who could be potential

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users from various different industries.

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And everybody's like, Oh yeah, I wish I can have that.

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Right.

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The whole idea is like signals instead of data.

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Like, why do I care what your email is?

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Like, I don't care about your email.

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I care to reach out to you.

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So you, and you've, for you to answer, right?

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Like.

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And so, I mean, yeah, but then you need to find an email and all that, fine.

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But like, also like you need to find the right signal.

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When is the right time to, to, to, you know, get in touch with you?

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Like, you know, what are your objectives?

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The whole thing should reduce spam in the industry.

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And my, my, my assessment is that there is enough information on the web about

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all of us pretty much in our companies, organizations, et cetera, so that you

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don't have to spam a single person, right?

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Like you can literally matchmake

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I,

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companies and people, right?

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I laugh because of the spam that I get through LinkedIn that actually

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is trying to sell me the thing that I do, which is the ones that make

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me laugh or the sort of, Hey, you need this certification, dude, I've

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got this certification for 14 years.

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What are you talking about

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Thank you so much.

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Thank you so much.

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Yeah.

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Thank you.

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I thank you for reaching out.

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No, but listen.

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no, it's more like delete, delete, delete.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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, no, it's, it's, it's difficult out there, right?

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Like on, on both sides and, and there, there are no bad players, right?

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Like in, in, in both your, and, and, and yours.

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In my case, it's, it's the same, right?

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Like sometimes we are the guy like, you know, bugging somebody else

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trying to reach out and, and you don't feel comfortable doing that.

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So all of that made me think like, oh, is the right time.

Speaker: 00:15:01

And then I talked to, to a lot of people and, and you know, everybody's

Speaker: 00:15:04

like, yeah, I need that right?

Speaker: 00:15:05

When I say a lot, like I probably talked to like 50 people, like from,

Speaker: 00:15:08

from the industry and this is like, you know, I have a benefit of a network.

Speaker: 00:15:11

So like I started with my own network.

Speaker: 00:15:13

So that's like, that was also, that's one of the benefits we offer with Lead Delta.

Speaker: 00:15:16

And so, yeah.

Speaker: 00:15:18

So how did we go about the first product?

Speaker: 00:15:20

Well luckily enough, like I found a project that fits the

Speaker: 00:15:24

bill that I paid, you know, a couple of thousand dollars for.

Speaker: 00:15:27

And I just acquired a project that was like a back end you know infrastructure

Speaker: 00:15:32

well, not even back end infrastructure.

Speaker: 00:15:34

It's just like a, like a tiny code set that, you know, we could

Speaker: 00:15:37

potentially use for something.

Speaker: 00:15:39

And I was like, let's just build on top of that and launch it in a month.

Speaker: 00:15:43

And that's what we did before.

Speaker: 00:15:44

So in 30 days, I had I had a landing page I was driving my traffic to.

Speaker: 00:15:49

And, you know, people started signing up the whole copy was around

Speaker: 00:15:52

CEOs and, you know, people who are power networkers and whatnot.

Speaker: 00:15:56

Honestly, this was the first time in my career where people actually

Speaker: 00:15:59

reacted to a copy copywriting like this, you know, they were converting.

Speaker: 00:16:02

I don't know the rate, but I just saw like some really big names.

Speaker: 00:16:06

And I was like, holy cow, it was like, this makes sense, right?

Speaker: 00:16:10

And so, so there was the second point, the third point when we released

Speaker: 00:16:13

it, people started testing, writing messages, you know adding to a

Speaker: 00:16:16

roadmap that was public from day one.

Speaker: 00:16:19

And I was like, we have something here.

Speaker: 00:16:20

So I hired a few people full time, invested more money in, and basically,

Speaker: 00:16:26

and basically we rebuild the platform.

Speaker: 00:16:28

So that the initial code was just useful because it propelled

Speaker: 00:16:32

us to launch within a month.

Speaker: 00:16:34

So you had, so with that, what you had purchased, you already had kind of a

Speaker: 00:16:38

rudimentary thing to base it off of.

Speaker: 00:16:41

You weren't sitting there.

Speaker: 00:16:42

Nobody on your team was standing at a blank page going, all right, what's

Speaker: 00:16:45

the first line of code going to be?

Speaker: 00:16:47

John, you see, like, this is like, I'm not sure if anybody would understand,

Speaker: 00:16:51

but what you just said is so important.

Speaker: 00:16:53

You know, because how do you even call that?

Speaker: 00:16:55

I guess I think zero start or whatever.

Speaker: 00:16:57

Like, so, so when you have like blank sheet of paper as a writer, as a

Speaker: 00:17:00

developer, it's kind of hard to start when you give people like, like, this is

Speaker: 00:17:04

how the tech works, like, you know, let's try and build around it, like launch as

Speaker: 00:17:07

soon as possible, it's much easier, right?

Speaker: 00:17:09

Like, and that's, that's what we did.

Speaker: 00:17:10

And people keep getting the wrong part of it.

Speaker: 00:17:12

Like people, like when I, when I say this and I just going to keep saying

Speaker: 00:17:15

this publicly, because it's the fact but like people are like, Oh, so the whole

Speaker: 00:17:18

thing is built off of some code base.

Speaker: 00:17:20

I'm like, dude, no.

Speaker: 00:17:21

Like we have, you know, too many hundreds of thousands of lines of code.

Speaker: 00:17:26

Like this code is insignificant, but it was super significant in the beginning.

Speaker: 00:17:30

So like people keep getting the wrong end of the message, but yeah,

Speaker: 00:17:34

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:17:34

When I write, you know, it's like, don't stare at the blank page.

Speaker: 00:17:37

Just put an outline.

Speaker: 00:17:38

What's the, what's kind of some bullet points.

Speaker: 00:17:39

Then start filling, then you just can fill it in.

Speaker: 00:17:41

You fill it in and change it.

Speaker: 00:17:42

When did you know that you had enough of something to actually

Speaker: 00:17:47

release to start charging for?

Speaker: 00:17:49

Oh, that's a great question.

Speaker: 00:17:50

So now we go back to my first experience with with the company

Speaker: 00:17:54

with the marketplace, right?

Speaker: 00:17:55

Where we spent 300, 000 like time, money, like all that into nothing.

Speaker: 00:18:01

I was like, it has to go out a month and we start charging.

Speaker: 00:18:06

And quite honestly, like it was super rudimentary.

Speaker: 00:18:09

Like we would just provide a better interface for our connections.

Speaker: 00:18:12

You have, you can put notes, tags, that's it.

Speaker: 00:18:15

We started charging we started charging, I think, 10 bucks a month.

Speaker: 00:18:19

And the first person to have signed was chief information

Speaker: 00:18:23

officer back then at Visa.

Speaker: 00:18:25

And now S& P 500 Global.

Speaker: 00:18:27

And I was like,

Speaker: 00:18:28

wow.

Speaker: 00:18:29

And I was like, and the email is sound like whatever, one,

Speaker: 00:18:32

two, three, you know, at gmail.

Speaker: 00:18:33

com.

Speaker: 00:18:34

And I'm like, ah, it's some, some, you know, spammer like

Speaker: 00:18:36

wants to just rip us off.

Speaker: 00:18:38

And then I go and check his LinkedIn and I'm like, wow.

Speaker: 00:18:43

So.

Speaker: 00:18:44

I'm assuming you reached out and said, so what do you think?

Speaker: 00:18:47

Yes.

Speaker: 00:18:47

That's a, that's a great story too.

Speaker: 00:18:49

So then we're like, you know, do we race for this?

Speaker: 00:18:51

I'm like, it's too early.

Speaker: 00:18:52

Like, you know, by the way, like I have a grandiose vision.

Speaker: 00:18:56

Truly like big, big vision.

Speaker: 00:18:57

And I'm like, I talk about it because like, you know, if I

Speaker: 00:19:00

don't, if I don't manage to execute someone else, well who cares?

Speaker: 00:19:03

Right?

Speaker: 00:19:03

Like, but but what we had, like, was a, like, like a tiny project.

Speaker: 00:19:07

Right?

Speaker: 00:19:07

And so, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't willing to kind of fundraise

Speaker: 00:19:11

and, and, and during that, I just wanted to build and sell.

Speaker: 00:19:14

Like that, that was the whole thing.

Speaker: 00:19:15

And we were like, maybe it's the right time to go to AppSumo, just

Speaker: 00:19:18

collect a whole bunch of users and get feedback and whatnot.

Speaker: 00:19:21

And that's what we did.

Speaker: 00:19:22

So I reached out to AppSumo, like thinking, you know, we're friends, like

Speaker: 00:19:26

I already made them a ton of money, you know, and they said, no, like

Speaker: 00:19:30

it's, it's too basic for right now.

Speaker: 00:19:31

Like we just increased our standards.

Speaker: 00:19:33

Like this.

Speaker: 00:19:33

And I'm like, what, I'm like, you know, can, can, can at

Speaker: 00:19:37

least something be easy, right.

Speaker: 00:19:38

For me, because I have experience in this.

Speaker: 00:19:41

And and the answer is no, you just have to endure.

Speaker: 00:19:44

And, and so what I did, I found their principal affiliate that

Speaker: 00:19:48

sells like the most on, on Facebook.

Speaker: 00:19:50

And I was like, dude, let's make a deal before AppSumo.

Speaker: 00:19:52

I'll give you a better deal for your, for your users or your community.

Speaker: 00:19:56

You do it for like a month and then we see, and he's like, perfect.

Speaker: 00:19:59

Let's do it.

Speaker: 00:19:59

I never did this before.

Speaker: 00:20:00

Let's, let's do it.

Speaker: 00:20:01

And we launched in a, in a Facebook group, like it's a huge success.

Speaker: 00:20:05

And I record like a minute video of Stripe purchases.

Speaker: 00:20:09

And I send that to AppSumo folks and I'm like, guys, you think it's too early?

Speaker: 00:20:14

And they're like, sure, let's launch it.

Speaker: 00:20:15

And we launched it, like, I don't even know when.

Speaker: 00:20:17

And so for three months, you know, we made you know, a nice chunk of change.

Speaker: 00:20:22

was that that zero to 300k in the three month time period?

Speaker: 00:20:25

Was that

Speaker: 00:20:25

that was, that's it.

Speaker: 00:20:26

That's basically it.

Speaker: 00:20:27

Yeah, that's

Speaker: 00:20:28

I want to, I'm glad that tied in because you hit a couple of things I want to ask.

Speaker: 00:20:31

So I am a collector of software startups from AppSumo.

Speaker: 00:20:35

I have a document of lists of software that I've tried.

Speaker: 00:20:38

Some are great.

Speaker: 00:20:40

Some are out of, you know, they don't exist anymore.

Speaker: 00:20:43

And some have completely changed what they do and what I bought it as.

Speaker: 00:20:46

They don't do that

Speaker: 00:20:47

Right.

Speaker: 00:20:48

Fair enough.

Speaker: 00:20:48

Actually make an email.

Speaker: 00:20:49

So that's fine.

Speaker: 00:20:50

I know what I'm, I know what I'm getting into, but for anybody not

Speaker: 00:20:53

familiar with AppSumo, I've had the opportunity to to have lunch with Noah.

Speaker: 00:20:57

I met him at an event in Boston.

Speaker: 00:20:59

It was totally random.

Speaker: 00:21:00

I'm like, Hey, what's up, man?

Speaker: 00:21:02

And I helped him with his book launch that just came out, Million Dollar Weekend.

Speaker: 00:21:05

I was on I hope that was chapter two, if anybody cares.

Speaker: 00:21:08

There you go.

Speaker: 00:21:09

That's

Speaker: 00:21:09

but

Speaker: 00:21:09

man.

Speaker: 00:21:10

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:21:11

So good time, but for anybody not familiar with, if they're, if they're

Speaker: 00:21:14

looking to build their own software, what is apps, what is AppSumo and

Speaker: 00:21:17

how, and how, how much did you make?

Speaker: 00:21:20

Cause those are lifetime deals.

Speaker: 00:21:21

Right.

Speaker: 00:21:22

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:21:22

So it's very simple in a way, right?

Speaker: 00:21:25

Like, so it's a marketplace where, you know, people, you know, buy and sell.

Speaker: 00:21:28

And so in this particular marketplace, it's, it's pretty much all about software.

Speaker: 00:21:31

So software companies would list their listings for like a month or

Speaker: 00:21:34

three early in their life cycle.

Speaker: 00:21:37

99 percent of cases like they just, they just started basically much like us.

Speaker: 00:21:42

And you know, it's a bargain.

Speaker: 00:21:44

Like as a, as an end user, you can come in and purchase these tools for

Speaker: 00:21:48

like 50 bucks forever, lifetime for as long as they're in the business, like

Speaker: 00:21:52

however you want to translate that.

Speaker: 00:21:54

So, so the, the whole premise is like you support the, the The, the, the

Speaker: 00:21:58

builder, the producer and you also get to keep the software, which, you know,

Speaker: 00:22:02

I would say like two or three times out of 10 will be something that's

Speaker: 00:22:06

useful over like many, many years.

Speaker: 00:22:09

And so, so one thing I think I'd like to like reflect on is, is a theory behind it.

Speaker: 00:22:15

And, and in my honest opinion when you build a software or pretty

Speaker: 00:22:18

much any, any digital product, like you have your early adopters and.

Speaker: 00:22:24

Those early adopters, it's very interesting.

Speaker: 00:22:26

They might be billionaires and I have some billionaires like who, who

Speaker: 00:22:30

bought Lee Delta on a lifetime deal.

Speaker: 00:22:32

And I thought, I thought I was thinking, okay, so minus one, minus

Speaker: 00:22:40

yeah, it might, it might be a scratch.

Speaker: 00:22:42

I'm sorry to disappoint.

Speaker: 00:22:45

Oh, hold up.

Speaker: 00:22:45

I can say not yet.

Speaker: 00:22:46

Not yet.

Speaker: 00:22:47

Not yet.

Speaker: 00:22:47

Exactly.

Speaker: 00:22:48

So, so listen, I, you know, and what I'm trying to say is like, you know,

Speaker: 00:22:52

these folks, they like to invest time.

Speaker: 00:22:55

And they like to do it just for kicks because it doesn't matter their attribute

Speaker: 00:23:01

is that they're early adopters and they like to, you know, be the first

Speaker: 00:23:04

among their friends to, to spot a new technology, a new trend, et cetera.

Speaker: 00:23:09

And so you'll find them a product hunt.

Speaker: 00:23:10

You'll find them an app Sumo.

Speaker: 00:23:12

It doesn't matter.

Speaker: 00:23:13

You know, like they, they can be from you know, Brazil, U S you know, Serbia,

Speaker: 00:23:18

India, Japan, like doesn't really matter.

Speaker: 00:23:19

They come from all geolocations.

Speaker: 00:23:21

They come from all.

Speaker: 00:23:22

And, and so this is an important thing for people who are trying to build

Speaker: 00:23:25

their software to, to have in mind.

Speaker: 00:23:27

And so, okay, so, and why would you go to AppSumo and why wouldn't you?

Speaker: 00:23:31

Well, if your software does not have costs that increase with usage and over

Speaker: 00:23:38

time it probably pays for you to launch an AppSumo and get that early traction.

Speaker: 00:23:43

Okay.

Speaker: 00:23:43

Because what we're talking about is we're talking about going from like,

Speaker: 00:23:47

you know, 300 users, you know, friends and family to like 10, 000 users or 5,

Speaker: 00:23:52

000 users, right, which is, you know, which can be huge for most businesses,

Speaker: 00:23:57

especially, especially if you don't have a good distribution yourself.

Speaker: 00:24:01

So let's say you're just starting out and you're building like technology and, you

Speaker: 00:24:05

know, you don't have Twitter followers, you don't have LinkedIn connections.

Speaker: 00:24:07

Like you just don't have digitally.

Speaker: 00:24:10

Much of a distribution that you can lean on.

Speaker: 00:24:13

It's just it's, it's useful.

Speaker: 00:24:14

Why it's not useful.

Speaker: 00:24:15

Well, you know, like, you know, some AppSumo guys like tend to be like

Speaker: 00:24:18

difficult, you know, on your support, because again, they, they don't like to

Speaker: 00:24:22

spend money, but they like to spend time.

Speaker: 00:24:24

I mean, listen, I, I buy a lot, like on AppSumo, right?

Speaker: 00:24:26

So I'm also talking about myself.

Speaker: 00:24:28

Like, you know, if I really like some technology, like I'll spend

Speaker: 00:24:30

time, I'll give feedback, et cetera.

Speaker: 00:24:32

And even if I don't need it, I'll sometimes purchase it to

Speaker: 00:24:34

support, et cetera, so very, very different attributes, right?

Speaker: 00:24:38

Yeah, I've done that, been there, done that, but very different attributes.

Speaker: 00:24:41

So anyways, like that's, that's, that's, we were dealing

Speaker: 00:24:44

with but again, very useful.

Speaker: 00:24:45

You collect reviews, you collect a whole bunch of traffic, Google notices that

Speaker: 00:24:49

and in our case, we were on a Chrome web store initially and still are in two

Speaker: 00:24:54

or three months from now, we're going to stand to have a standalone web app

Speaker: 00:24:56

and, and, and, and go away from that.

Speaker: 00:24:59

However, we're still there reaping the benefits.

Speaker: 00:25:01

We're top three when it comes to LinkedIn tech, we're top

Speaker: 00:25:04

three when it comes to CRMs.

Speaker: 00:25:05

We are by far the number one CRM on Chrome web store and Chrome picks it up

Speaker: 00:25:12

when they see there's a ton of usage.

Speaker: 00:25:14

When they see there's a ton of ongoing usage and active users, like obviously

Speaker: 00:25:18

they, they bump up your listing.

Speaker: 00:25:20

And so.

Speaker: 00:25:21

All of these things are pro AppSumo and yeah, shout out to

Speaker: 00:25:24

Noah and the the AppSumo team.

Speaker: 00:25:26

Yeah, no for sure and I assumed it was a big deal for taking in, building

Speaker: 00:25:31

that roadmap out for those things.

Speaker: 00:25:32

So what you're going, okay, now you start and do pattern recognition,

Speaker: 00:25:35

man, you know, 90 percent of people are saying we really need to do this.

Speaker: 00:25:39

It's really missing.

Speaker: 00:25:40

Or, or something the again, or they're inverse man.

Speaker: 00:25:44

We thought this was important and nobody actually gives a

Speaker: 00:25:46

crap, you know, type of thing.

Speaker: 00:25:47

So why are we going to waste energy on that?

Speaker: 00:25:49

When this is kind of where it needs to go?

Speaker: 00:25:50

Now that's, that's interesting.

Speaker: 00:25:52

Now that's very interesting.

Speaker: 00:25:53

I, I wholeheartedly agree.

Speaker: 00:25:55

We did have also like you know Different ways of handling that in house

Speaker: 00:25:59

because, you know, what people ask us to do is just build more automation.

Speaker: 00:26:04

And if you remember the beginning of a chat, like we were like,

Speaker: 00:26:06

that's not what we want to do.

Speaker: 00:26:07

Like, this is just a proof of concept for us, right.

Speaker: 00:26:10

Like to go to the next stage, like, you know, going from scooter to

Speaker: 00:26:13

motor to like SUV to like a truck.

Speaker: 00:26:16

You know, like completely rebuilding the product and the back end and

Speaker: 00:26:19

everything every, every few years.

Speaker: 00:26:20

So we can get closer to our vision.

Speaker: 00:26:22

And so, you know, again, users want to have a faster horse, like

Speaker: 00:26:26

improving on things that already exist.

Speaker: 00:26:28

And we're building things that don't even exist.

Speaker: 00:26:29

They don't even touch the imagination of a user right now.

Speaker: 00:26:32

And so anyways, like, so, so that that's a little bit of a kind of contrarian

Speaker: 00:26:37

thinking, but you know, it really helped us a lot to really stay on our path.

Speaker: 00:26:41

And, and, and honestly, like we left a lot of dollars on the table.

Speaker: 00:26:44

But like we weren't interested in that, in that pathway for better or worse,

Speaker: 00:26:49

we'll, it's still yet to be seen.

Speaker: 00:26:51

Get kicked.

Speaker: 00:26:53

I want to circle back to this on the, I got a larger development question on

Speaker: 00:26:57

the, on the back end of this, but what, what exactly can you, I guess, succinctly

Speaker: 00:27:03

describe the problem that link that lead Delta helps solve what, how you're solving

Speaker: 00:27:08

it currently and what, then you're trying to transition to down the road, as much

Speaker: 00:27:13

as you're willing to disclose, of course, because I know some people like to keep

Speaker: 00:27:16

things under wraps until specific times.

Speaker: 00:27:18

100%.

Speaker: 00:27:19

Like, well, listen, like two things right now.

Speaker: 00:27:22

So right now the Delta is basically like a productivity layer on top of LinkedIn.

Speaker: 00:27:26

You know, so it gives you a better overview of your connections.

Speaker: 00:27:29

We, with our external database, we, we allow you to basically.

Speaker: 00:27:33

Almost for free, but like baked in a price, unlock the data

Speaker: 00:27:37

off of certain first, second degree kind of data connections.

Speaker: 00:27:41

Now the second thing is like inbox.

Speaker: 00:27:43

So you, you get like a whole bunch more things to do with our inbox.

Speaker: 00:27:46

Like there's more real estate on the screen.

Speaker: 00:27:48

You can pin, you can tag, you can leave notes, you can leave

Speaker: 00:27:51

tasks and reminders for yourself.

Speaker: 00:27:53

And that those information.

Speaker: 00:27:54

That, that follows you like wherever you go, right?

Speaker: 00:27:56

Like where, wherever you are on LinkedIn or whatever, like it follows you.

Speaker: 00:27:59

So that's, that's kind of the individual use case.

Speaker: 00:28:01

Now, the team use case is very interesting.

Speaker: 00:28:04

So we started getting companies from two to 25 people, and also like

Speaker: 00:28:08

some publicly traded companies, two to be exact who actually wanted to

Speaker: 00:28:13

flip their, you know, CRM script from, from deals to relationships.

Speaker: 00:28:17

So they wanna, you know, bring their entire network in one spot.

Speaker: 00:28:21

So we can see, well, who is the best person we know at Google, right?

Speaker: 00:28:25

And so this is where our, like our further development will go more into

Speaker: 00:28:30

kind of B to C to B type of relationship.

Speaker: 00:28:33

So we're, we're selling more into companies now.

Speaker: 00:28:34

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:28:35

So, so just make sure I understood that right.

Speaker: 00:28:37

So if they aggregate, you're aggregating all of those connections.

Speaker: 00:28:40

So that way you're not just limited to maybe the salesperson, the CEO, the COO,

Speaker: 00:28:45

where you've got a Tommy in the mail room over there, that's, you know, the admin

Speaker: 00:28:50

assistant, man, he's got his uncle works for, you know, something like that, that,

Speaker: 00:28:54

that brings them into that conversation

Speaker: 00:28:57

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:28:57

And the use case is a hundred percent and use cases are, for example, one

Speaker: 00:29:00

of the, one of the principal use cases we keep having is like a CEO

Speaker: 00:29:04

would send their a principal assistant and, and like two or three people

Speaker: 00:29:07

who were just like, you know, they're not managing their LinkedIn profiles.

Speaker: 00:29:10

Like, come on, like, you know, let's just be real.

Speaker: 00:29:13

So, so what happens there is like, Yeah, so what happens there is like sometimes

Speaker: 00:29:18

you know, a CEO might know a person and they just want to get food in the door.

Speaker: 00:29:22

And honestly, like more and more people are starting to sell like that.

Speaker: 00:29:25

It's just, it's, we're seeing those patterns.

Speaker: 00:29:27

So, so basically what we want to do is like bring the entire team.

Speaker: 00:29:30

So exactly what you said, you know, we might know that somebody else's

Speaker: 00:29:33

uncle works at the next company.

Speaker: 00:29:35

You know, can you make an intro?

Speaker: 00:29:36

If not an intro, can you give us more information about the company, et cetera?

Speaker: 00:29:40

Like, it's way more powerful because and then we, there's a, there's

Speaker: 00:29:44

a great, great deal of privacy and all that that goes in it.

Speaker: 00:29:47

So, so we're very specific on, on, you know, what's a personal information

Speaker: 00:29:52

and you, you have, you have to have the right to disclose or not to disclose

Speaker: 00:29:55

it because let's be honest, like, you know, 100 plus people companies, like,

Speaker: 00:30:00

you know, people get poked all the time.

Speaker: 00:30:02

Like, you know, sometimes they might be pondering like jump,

Speaker: 00:30:04

jump shipping, like, and all that.

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So you don't want your boss to see that.

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So there's, there's a lot of talk, like a lot of thinking that went into

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it and a lot of testing on the market.

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So we're very slow in particular to develop that, that side of the business,

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but it's slowly but surely picking up and, and, and, and it's, it's important.

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No, I've got like a cool thing and then kind of a downside

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because I have a downside thing happened to me a few years ago.

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Cool thing is.

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I think this allows everybody to kind of understand get a seat at the table

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Oh yeah.

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You know, it's more than just that day to day job.

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Everybody gets that opportunity to potentially contribute to the

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growth of the company that they're in, particularly if they're, you

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know, invested in what it is.

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The downside, and this is something that I had experienced, was you

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Potentially getting quantified by the relationships that you have or don't have.

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Because I would have, I had a situation a few years ago where it was, it was

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sitting there going, I was unsure about the environment and then people

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could see who, you know, maybe I was connected to or who I knew and

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it's like, why don't you do this?

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And I'm like, And I was kind of like, I don't know right yet.

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You know, I don't have the warm and fuzzies with this and then getting that

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kind of pushed into that kind of getting seen as the value of the network that

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you had in some of those institutions.

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So I, I, I see it absolutely being, absolutely being that benefit because

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not, not just for the company that, but that person that may be trying to elevate

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themselves, like this is a way that they can do that and do it and not in a

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sleazy way or something along that line.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Like, listen, like, it, it now, now that, that's very interesting and, you know,

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we'll see if the tech can solve this.

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Actually, I, I took note of this.

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But it, it is what we're trying to do.

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Like if you think about any new modern software, like you can

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collaborate, like you can do things

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right.

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Yes.

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like in, and when you look at CRMs, like, you know, you have to refresh, you have to

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Like there's, it's, there's, there's, it's an imperfect flow of information.

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And, and, and plus you're measured by like, you know, you know, spam basically.

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Like, you know, if you look at leading indicators, like it's, it's primarily like

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how much, how much did you send, right.

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In most businesses, right.

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They're trying to do the numbers game.

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Numbers game.

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It's a numbers game.

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So that's what we're trying to solve.

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I think it's pretty valuable.

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Not moving away from, from SAS for, you know, for the next little while,

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until we, until we fix that problem.

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And so, yeah, like we keep improving the team.

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We keep improving the technology and we're slowly marching towards vision.

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That's, that's, that's

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any just general philosophies around, we're, we're in this environment

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where pretty much everything is a rental ship, as it were.

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Nobody owns anything anymore.

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And of course, for a business, having a software as a service, predictable

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revenue streams, you can sit there and identify what's your churn rate.

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You get different points to sit there and try to improve upon things, but

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the other side for the end user, you're just constantly paying for stuff.

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I mean, I'm old enough where I would buy a license on Microsoft Office that would

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come on floppy disks that were like 50 deep, but I owned, you know, I owned it.

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And of course, you know, you weren't necessarily getting.

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Pushed out.

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That was early stages of the internet.

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I'm dating myself now, of course things of that nature.

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But do you see the market space just continuing to double down on software

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as a service and subscription models versus maybe I'm licensing version

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one that doesn't include version two and you can have version one forever.

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right.

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I could like, you know, market is going to be a market like, and, and, and, and,

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and I know my friend he started he started developing a software like super cheap,

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like, you know, for large companies.

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Like if you want to do it in the cloud, like, you know, it's like,

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whatever you pay a hundred bucks.

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And I don't care if you have a million employees or like one, right?

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Like it's so that that was his business model.

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So he managed to, he managed to acquire a whole bunch of users.

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And he was selling into enterprise companies on prem, exactly what

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you're saying, like basically buy on version and, and, you know, we'll,

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we'll charge the hell out of it, but But you know, you can do that.

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And it was very popular with banks, with large institutions and whatnot.

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So nothing, nothing wrong about that.

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Now I also know that 37signal's folks, like, which I admire a lot, like in how

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they build the companies, like they're now starting like, you know, campfire once.

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com, et cetera, like, listen it's, it's cool.

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As long as you can justify that, because you have to justify it.

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Like if you can't do it and, and, and there's always going to be a path, right?

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Like.

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Yes, you, you own version one, but like one year from now,

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version one is worth nothing.

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So yeah, you own version one.

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Good for you, right?

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Because, you know, like that, that's how I think about it.

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So on the other end, like, yes, if you want to buy version one and you want to

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develop your own thing on top of it, fine.

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Like, you know, I'm okay with that too, but then you have to pay ongoing

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subscription costs to your people to maintain, like, you know, And

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it's, it's pros and cons, right?

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Like you, you, you, you still have to pay like it's either you pay

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my people or you pay your people, like whatever you prefer, right?

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Like that's, yeah,

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had a look at this is, you know, text.

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Always.

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It's got that circle of life that life cycle thing.

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So my first thing back in the day was I worked on a Unisys mainframe,

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so everything was a dumb terminal.

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So imagine just essentially, you know, your green and white

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screen back then are green

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Yeah.

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screen back then,

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Pretty much pretty much

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But it functioned as the, the cloud for the company.

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You know, nobody had a computing device.

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Then you get to distributed networks, individual computing devices.

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Oh, guess what?

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Now we've swung back around, we've got the cloud except the mainframe

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using that term, it's just stuck in somebody else's warehouse doing

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the computing power for that stuff.

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So I kept wondering if some of the stuff when it comes to the business model is

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going to swing back around to be buying Windows 2001 time and running it for

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six years, you know, type of situation.

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I think the problem is what I think a lot of people are thinking and rightfully so.

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You know, they're saying, well, you know, there's, there's Google, there's Amazon,

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there's Microsoft and that's about it.

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Right?

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Like you don't have.

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Any other player, like it's, it's almost like a monopoly or all of our

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here, however you want to call it.

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Right.

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And, but listen, the cool thing about capitalism and especially in

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the States, like, you know, at one point you get regulated and, and

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we all like want to be small and we want to keep our like tiny businesses

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and then like have massive impact.

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Like, you know, that's pretty much the mantra mantra of,

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Sure.

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well, I wouldn't say 37 signals, but like, you know, small team moving

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mountains kind of type of thing.

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Right.

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This is how I would phrase it.

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But then eventually you might become so big that you have to be, get

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regulated like, you know, what happened with Rockefeller and like, you know

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all the giants of, of that era.

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You know, they all have to get regulated at one point, so you get a

Speaker: 00:36:36

whole bunch of smaller companies and then you get the innovation back up.

Speaker: 00:36:40

So it's a beautiful cycle, right?

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that is a great transition into how I want to kind of, as we're getting into

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the end in the time here of what's going on, like with Apple and those

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things, when you're building that software product that is so dependent

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on one other provider, you know, Apple just recently got the federal lawsuit.

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They've got that ecosystem set up that they get 30 percent off the top.

Speaker: 00:37:01

I heard a great, great podcast with Scott Galloway, Professor

Speaker: 00:37:05

I knew, I knew you were going

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hear the one

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Of course, I knew you

Speaker: 00:37:09

the, the.

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Yeah, it was great because he talked about, he goes, they're essentially

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acting like Visa and MasterCard who take two or three percent.

Speaker: 00:37:15

But Apple has got it in such a way because the tech, you know, the, if

Speaker: 00:37:20

you've ever watched some congressional hearing about tech, it's awful.

Speaker: 00:37:22

And they have no clue what the hell they're talking about, but he goes,

Speaker: 00:37:25

but Apple is taking a 30 percent chunk of this and they've got, and

Speaker: 00:37:29

they're dictating the rules to you.

Speaker: 00:37:31

So how do you view risk when it comes to building a software that is so reliant?

Speaker: 00:37:38

On another piece that, that changed the rules at the whim.

Speaker: 00:37:42

A great example of this, I think this was last year with Reddit.

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Obviously they just had their IPO this week or last week is recording this.

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And you know, they so dramatically increased the price of their API.

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All of these developers that had better tools, if you go to the user base, they

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couldn't afford it anymore and they had to shut down, which I think was in

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prelude into their going to their IPO.

Speaker: 00:38:03

So they would eliminate all that stuff.

Speaker: 00:38:05

But how do you view somebody going, I see an idea that, that there's an idea

Speaker: 00:38:10

in the market space that needs to be solved, but it is so reliant on that

Speaker: 00:38:13

third party, not changing the rules mid game or going, huh, Oh, good idea.

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I want to change the rules.

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You can't do it anymore, but we got it.

Speaker: 00:38:22

Listen, so, so going back to Reddit for a sec you know, who started that first?

Speaker: 00:38:27

Elon Musk and Twitter.

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Oh yes.

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Yes.

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So they were like, you know, pay 50 grand a month or 100

Speaker: 00:38:37

grand a month and you're good.

Speaker: 00:38:38

Like you can do automation.

Speaker: 00:38:39

You can do like scheduling posts, like do whatever you want.

Speaker: 00:38:43

And, you know, everybody else get away from, you know, from Twitter, like,

Speaker: 00:38:46

you know F off to, to, to, to be mild.

Speaker: 00:38:49

So, and, and that's, that's what happens.

Speaker: 00:38:51

Like, honestly even me building lead Delta on top of LinkedIn, like

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initially I was like, you know, we want to be friends with LinkedIn.

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Like, you know, I want to build a great product.

Speaker: 00:38:59

Like, you know, and, and we really, like, I have proof to, to, to,

Speaker: 00:39:03

to, you know, how do you say it?

Speaker: 00:39:04

Like to back this up.

Speaker: 00:39:05

Right.

Speaker: 00:39:06

At the end of the day it's, it's, it's a beast of interest, right?

Speaker: 00:39:11

Like, you know, lower level management, middle level, top level, you know,

Speaker: 00:39:16

it's, it's just the mechanism.

Speaker: 00:39:18

It's nothing personal, right?

Speaker: 00:39:19

Like it's, it's an organization comprised of systems, process,

Speaker: 00:39:22

people, whatever, right?

Speaker: 00:39:23

Like an interest and and so ultimately, like, as long as they have an

Speaker: 00:39:28

interest to keep us on, they will and and and and opposite the opposite.

Speaker: 00:39:31

Right?

Speaker: 00:39:32

So that's how I think of it.

Speaker: 00:39:33

Like, it's, it's very, you know, I think realistic in my, in my case.

Speaker: 00:39:37

The great thing when you, when you get, when you're a young startup and

Speaker: 00:39:40

you're building on top of something else, like you have an example

Speaker: 00:39:43

of Facebook and Zynga, like you have, you have many, many examples.

Speaker: 00:39:46

And that one I think is a successful because they managed to pivot.

Speaker: 00:39:49

So a great benefit for you as a, as a young founder starting is that you

Speaker: 00:39:53

can lean onto these platforms and you can, you can get the scale distribution

Speaker: 00:39:58

benefits, but you don't, don't delude yourself that they're your friends

Speaker: 00:40:02

and that you can build a perfect.

Speaker: 00:40:04

Perfect kind of friendship and, and, you know, everybody

Speaker: 00:40:07

gets their piece of the cake.

Speaker: 00:40:08

No, like, you know the bigger the company is, the more they're

Speaker: 00:40:11

trying to be protective of what they have and that's it.

Speaker: 00:40:14

Like, you know, and so you have to jump ship, like, you know, and as I

Speaker: 00:40:17

said, like we use this as a proof of concept and, you know, and over the

Speaker: 00:40:21

next two months, three months will be, will be completely off or at least 99.

Speaker: 00:40:25

9 percent off from, from the platform.

Speaker: 00:40:28

So, so yeah.

Speaker: 00:40:29

And I think if we do that, we execute it perfectly and that

Speaker: 00:40:32

can be used as an example.

Speaker: 00:40:33

Right.

Speaker: 00:40:33

So

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Awesome.

Speaker: 00:40:35

Well, I appreciate, I know you're going to have to jump here in just a couple

Speaker: 00:40:37

of minutes where, where anybody want to reach out best way to reach out to you.

Speaker: 00:40:41

Yeah, definitely find me on Twitter.

Speaker: 00:40:43

I've been start, I started using Twitter a lot more.

Speaker: 00:40:45

You can also find me an email that at leedelta.

Speaker: 00:40:47

com.

Speaker: 00:40:48

So, you know, easy.

Speaker: 00:40:49

If you guys want to shoot me a message, I typically respond within, within a week.

Speaker: 00:40:53

Let's be realistic.

Speaker: 00:40:56

good.

Speaker: 00:40:56

That's the

Speaker: 00:40:57

I suggest.

Speaker: 00:40:58

Beautiful.