This podcast episode features an in-depth conversation with Ved Rasic and his SaaS Startup lessons. Ved is a a serial entrepreneur who shares his journey from starting in tech, developing and selling software services, to facing the challenges of shutting down a startup due to a failing business model. Ved then discusses his success with Autoklose, a bootstrapped, acquired email automation service, and the inception of his new venture, Lead Delta, a company enhancing networking through LinkedIn. The conversation delves into the importance of feedback, adapting to market needs, and Ved's vision for Lead Delta's transition towards servicing team and enterprise needs by focusing on relationship-driven CRMs. Ved also touches upon the dynamics of building software reliant on third-party platforms, sharing insights into navigating partnerships and growth in the digital product space.

https://leaddelta.com/

https://twitter.com/VedranRasic

00:00 Meet Ved Rasic: A Serial Entrepreneur's Journey

01:17 The Origin Story: From Tech Beginnings to Entrepreneurial Ventures

02:57 The Leap into Entrepreneurship: Building a Software Shop

03:41 First Startup Challenges and Lessons Learned

04:40 Success with Autoklose: A Bootstrapped Journey

10:06 The Genesis of Lead Delta: Innovating CRM Solutions

12:55 Validating the Idea: From Concept to MVP

15:44 Launching Lead Delta: Early Success and User Feedback

18:49 Navigating Challenges and Planning for the Future

19:44 Unlocking Success with Strategic Partnerships

20:09 The AppSumo Launch: A Game-Changer

20:31 Reflections on Software Startups and Market Dynamics

21:11 Exploring the AppSumo Ecosystem and Its Impact

22:09 The Philosophy Behind Building and Scaling Software

25:32 Navigating the Challenges of Software Development and User Feedback

26:53 Innovating CRM with Lead Delta: Current Solutions and Future Directions

30:20 The Power and Pitfalls of Network-Based Business Models

32:31 The Evolution of Software Business Models and the Future of SaaS

36:42 Navigating Dependencies in Software Development: Risks and Strategies

40:35 Closing Thoughts and How to Connect

Today on the pod, we got Ved Rasic.

Ved is a serial entrepreneur.

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

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

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

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

you can take some takeaways from that.

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

So enjoy my conversation with Ved Rasic.

Nine, eight, seven,

one.

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

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

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

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

Awesome.

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

facilitate my networking within LinkedIn.

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

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

you've got to where you are right now?

Sure.

Yeah.

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

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

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

You know, Google ads and all that.

So basically started helping traditional businesses you know,

traditional consulting businesses, management businesses to actually

become digital to transition.

And that was pretty cool.

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

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

know run ads and things like that.

So that was, that was my intro into tech.

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

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

organization with like 100 plus people.

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

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

like, you know, big, really big names.

companies, yeah, for

yeah.

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

Like, yeah.

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

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

that would start their accelerator program for startups would offer a

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

for funding and this and that.

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

I've never done it before.

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

It's not a thing I would do.

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

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

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

jump right into it and start a product.

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

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

you know, to start a software shop.

With a few other guys in, in Belgrade Serbia.

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

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

fulfill the, the needs and that's it.

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

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

Right.

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

We were very successful.

Got some governmental contracts in the U S.

Work with some larger businesses, larger startups.

That was great.

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

You know, I have some money.

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

The first startup was a marketplace startup for vehicle

owners and repair shops.

It was beautifully designed app.

Well, actually four apps in one.

You know, Uber drivers loved it.

It was all over Toronto.

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

And that's where the business model was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

you, you know, you know how it goes,

my baby!

It's my baby!

We got it!

We're gonna make it!

We're gonna

gotta make it.

Yeah, we're gonna make it.

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

But you learn a lesson, right?

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

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

a company called Autoclose.

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

And that was, that was a success.

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

proper split of responsibilities fully bootstrap email automation

service competing with outreach.

Yes.

We're,

found out I had an account for that, actually.

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

in the day, possibly.

this morning.

I was like, Hold up.

I do have, I have an auto close account

That's a great

works.

It still works.

It's a great product.

We got acquired in like 2020.

So that was so completely bootstrap.

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

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

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

where the industry is headed.

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

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

to, to kind of start something new.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

experiences or things of that nature?

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

100%.

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

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

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

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

on next and prioritize that roadmap.

So, so that, that used to be like.

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

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

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

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

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

That's right.

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

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

the time to sell and exit this?

Was it a good enough payday?

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

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

It's thank you for a great intro.

Like it's all of these things combined.

And I can speak for myself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

like it's you're solving problems.

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

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

Right.

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

To do something else as well.

Right.

And it was a great opportunity, great company to be

perfectly honest at the time.

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

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

the company that acquired us.

Like that was my number one thing.

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

you know, things changed for me.

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

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

itch, the itch, the itch started.

Exactly.

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

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

I think pretty, pretty fair proposition.

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

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

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

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

barriers with the island, et cetera.

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

have police to keep peace.

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

like, how do you win the game?

Are you number one?

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

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

contractually buying to, to a new company.

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

and, you know, they have that itch.

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

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

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

And, and so they want to build something else.

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

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

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

So they also did well for themselves.

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

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

No, that's, that's awesome.

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

to, to leave auto close and vanilla soft.

What was the spark for Lee Delta?

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

you went, ha, we may have something here,

right.

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

before right after auto close.

So like 20, 2018, maybe something like that.

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

like ideas are worth nothing.

That's the name of the slide.

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

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

or the company and the end user.

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

great software and all that, right?

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

it's a beast on the engineer side.

And I actually have insider information.

Like I know people who led.

You know, engineering teams like executive vice presidents.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right?

So, and, and how's that called?

Like, there's a theory in software engineering.

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

like the cost becomes so great.

But you know, somebody needs to bear it.

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

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

the company and, and the end user.

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

AI was started being developed.

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

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

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

It's not built.

It's not meant to be AI first.

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

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

Like, no board will sign that proposition.

And so it's an opportunity, right?

So, so, okay.

So that's, that's one side.

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

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

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

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

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

to the same company with, et cetera.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never planned to do anything.

And that was the start.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do you validate that idea first?

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

Well, yeah.

Great question.

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

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

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

That's it.

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

users from various different industries.

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

Right.

The whole idea is like signals instead of data.

Like, why do I care what your email is?

Like, I don't care about your email.

I care to reach out to you.

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

Like.

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

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

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

Like, you know, what are your objectives?

The whole thing should reduce spam in the industry.

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

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

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

Like you can literally matchmake

I,

companies and people, right?

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

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

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

got this certification for 14 years.

What are you talking about

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I thank you for reaching out.

No, but listen.

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

Yeah.

Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

like, yeah, I need that right?

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

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

So like I started with my own network.

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

And so, yeah.

So how did we go about the first product?

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

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

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

well, not even back end infrastructure.

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

potentially use for something.

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

And that's what we did before.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

roadmap that was public from day one.

And I was like, we have something here.

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

and basically we rebuild the platform.

So that the initial code was just useful because it propelled

us to launch within a month.

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

rudimentary thing to base it off of.

You weren't sitting there.

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

the first line of code going to be?

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

but what you just said is so important.

You know, because how do you even call that?

I guess I think zero start or whatever.

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

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

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

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

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

And people keep getting the wrong part of it.

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

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

thing is built off of some code base.

I'm like, dude, no.

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

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

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

Yeah.

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

Just put an outline.

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

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

You fill it in and change it.

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

release to start charging for?

Oh, that's a great question.

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

with the marketplace, right?

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

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

And quite honestly, like it was super rudimentary.

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

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

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

And the first person to have signed was chief information

officer back then at Visa.

And now S& P 500 Global.

And I was like,

wow.

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

two, three, you know, at gmail.

com.

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

wants to just rip us off.

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

So.

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

Yes.

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

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

I'm like, it's too early.

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

Truly like big, big vision.

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

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

Right?

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

Right?

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

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

Like that, that was the whole thing.

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

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

And that's what we did.

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

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

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

Like we just increased our standards.

Like this.

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

least something be easy, right.

For me, because I have experience in this.

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

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

sells like the most on, on Facebook.

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

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

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

Let's do it.

I never did this before.

Let's, let's do it.

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

And I record like a minute video of Stripe purchases.

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

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

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

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

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

Was that

that was, that's it.

That's basically it.

Yeah, that's

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

So I am a collector of software startups from AppSumo.

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

Some are great.

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

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

They don't do that

Right.

Fair enough.

Actually make an email.

So that's fine.

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

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

I met him at an event in Boston.

It was totally random.

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

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

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

There you go.

That's

but

man.

Yeah.

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

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

how, and how, how much did you make?

Cause those are lifetime deals.

Right.

Yeah.

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

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

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

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

three early in their life cycle.

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

And you know, it's a bargain.

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

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

however you want to translate that.

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

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

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

useful over like many, many years.

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

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

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

Those early adopters, it's very interesting.

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

bought Lee Delta on a lifetime deal.

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

yeah, it might, it might be a scratch.

I'm sorry to disappoint.

Oh, hold up.

I can say not yet.

Not yet.

Not yet.

Exactly.

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

these folks, they like to invest time.

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

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

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

And so you'll find them a product hunt.

You'll find them an app Sumo.

It doesn't matter.

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

India, Japan, like doesn't really matter.

They come from all geolocations.

They come from all.

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

their software to, to have in mind.

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

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

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

Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like you just don't have digitally.

Much of a distribution that you can lean on.

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

Why it's not useful.

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

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

spend money, but they like to spend time.

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

So I'm also talking about myself.

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

time, I'll give feedback, et cetera.

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

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

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

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

with but again, very useful.

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

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

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

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

However, we're still there reaping the benefits.

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

three when it comes to CRMs.

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

when they see there's a ton of usage.

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

they, they bump up your listing.

And so.

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

Noah and the the AppSumo team.

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

that roadmap out for those things.

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

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

It's really missing.

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

We thought this was important and nobody actually gives a

crap, you know, type of thing.

So why are we going to waste energy on that?

When this is kind of where it needs to go?

Now that's, that's interesting.

Now that's very interesting.

I, I wholeheartedly agree.

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

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

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

that's not what we want to do.

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

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

motor to like SUV to like a truck.

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

everything every, every few years.

So we can get closer to our vision.

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

improving on things that already exist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get kicked.

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

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

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

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

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

things under wraps until specific times.

100%.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now the second thing is like inbox.

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

Like there's more real estate on the screen.

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

tasks and reminders for yourself.

And that those information.

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

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

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

Now, the team use case is very interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

kind of B to C to B type of relationship.

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

Yeah.

So, so just make sure I understood that right.

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

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

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

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

that brings them into that conversation

Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

uncle works at the next company.

You know, can you make an intro?

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

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

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

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

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

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

you know, people get poked all the time.

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

jump shipping, like, and all that.

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

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

it and a lot of testing on the market.

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

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

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

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

Cool thing is.

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

Oh yeah.

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

Everybody gets that opportunity to potentially contribute to the

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

know, invested in what it is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

you had in some of those institutions.

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

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

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

sleazy way or something along that line.

Yeah, exactly.

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

we'll see if the tech can solve this.

Actually, I, I took note of this.

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

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

collaborate, like you can do things

right.

Yes.

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

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

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

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

how much, how much did you send, right.

In most businesses, right.

They're trying to do the numbers game.

Numbers game.

It's a numbers game.

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

I think it's pretty valuable.

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

until we, until we fix that problem.

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

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

That's, that's, that's

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

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

Nobody owns anything anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pushed out.

That was early stages of the internet.

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

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

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

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

right.

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

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

like, you know, for large companies.

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

whatever you pay a hundred bucks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So nothing, nothing wrong about that.

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

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

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

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

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

Like.

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

version one is worth nothing.

So yeah, you own version one.

Good for you, right?

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

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

develop your own thing on top of it, fine.

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

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

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

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

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

Like that's, yeah,

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

Always.

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

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

so everything was a dumb terminal.

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

screen back then are green

Yeah.

screen back then,

Pretty much pretty much

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

You know, nobody had a computing device.

Then you get to distributed networks, individual computing devices.

Oh, guess what?

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

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

the computing power for that stuff.

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

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

six years, you know, type of situation.

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

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

there's Microsoft and that's about it.

Right?

Like you don't have.

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

here, however you want to call it.

Right.

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

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

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

and then like have massive impact.

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

Sure.

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

mountains kind of type of thing.

Right.

This is how I would phrase it.

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

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

all the giants of, of that era.

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

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

So it's a beautiful cycle, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

I knew, I knew you were going

hear the one

Of course, I knew you

the, the.

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

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

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

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

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

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

they're dictating the rules to you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

prelude into their going to their IPO.

So they would eliminate all that stuff.

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

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

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

I want to change the rules.

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

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

Elon Musk and Twitter.

Oh yes.

Yes.

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

grand a month and you're good.

Like you can do automation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

to, you know, how do you say it?

Like to back this up.

Right.

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

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

it's, it's just the mechanism.

It's nothing personal, right?

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

people, whatever, right?

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

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

Right?

So that's how I think of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and that you can build a perfect.

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

gets their piece of the cake.

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

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

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

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

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

9 percent off from, from the platform.

So, so yeah.

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

can be used as an example.

Right.

So

Awesome.

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

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

Yeah, definitely find me on Twitter.

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

You can also find me an email that at leedelta.

com.

So, you know, easy.

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

Let's be realistic.

good.

That's the

I suggest.

Beautiful.