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How word of mouth took us to 50k paying users with our bottom-up product-led model
Episode 2215th December 2022 • B2B SaaS Podcast • Upendra Varma
00:00:00 00:25:07

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Dan Barak, Co-Founder & CEO of  Text Blaze talks about how they broke through 50k paid users primarily using word of mouth for their productivity-focused chrome extension.

  • How TextBlaze (chrome extension) helps users become more productive using snippets
  • How they are a product-led bottom-up company with around 200K total users, among which 50K are on a paying plan
  • How they’ve grown to 7-figure revenue, primarily doubling over the past 12 months
  • How a vast majority of the new users come from word-of-mouth & few referrals
  • What drives a satisfied user to spread the word about the product & how word of mouth works
  • What are they specifically doing to make this word-of-mouth channel successful
  • How are they going to focus on top-down enterprise sales along with the bottoms-up model they currently use
  • Team, funding status & future vision for the company

You can also view the video on youtube here.

Transcripts

Dan Barak:

the single, uh, most important channel is word of mouth.

Dan Barak:

Ok.

Dan Barak:

Uh, these are.

Dan Barak:

People And, and there's a lot that can be said about word of mouth.

Dan Barak:

People tend to, people tend to dismiss it because it's not very easy to measure.

Dan Barak:

Um, but it's either people that discover text place love it.

Dan Barak:

They're like, where was this all my life?

Dan Barak:

This is amazing.

Dan Barak:

And they can help themselves from telling.

Dan Barak:

Colleagues or friends or you know, their, their community in on social media.

Dan Barak:

Um, so that is by far our biggest driver.

Upendra Varma:

Hello everyone.

Upendra Varma:

Welcome to the SaaS podcast.

Upendra Varma:

Today we have Dan Barrack with us.

Upendra Varma:

Dan here runs a company called Blaze.

Upendra Varma:

Hey, Dan, welcome to the show.

Dan Barak:

Thanks, uh, thanks for

Upendra Varma:

having me.

Upendra Varma:

Alright, Dan, so let's start, uh, with your company and product first.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

So what does your product do and why do customers pay you money?

Dan Barak:

Yeah, so text plays, uh, it's a Chrome extension.

Dan Barak:

It's free, and the goal is to allow users to eliminate low value.

Dan Barak:

Starting with typing.

Dan Barak:

So at, at the simplest form, users save text snippets of of things.

Dan Barak:

They type over and over again and insert them anywhere using keyboard

Dan Barak:

shortcuts, and they save hours of repetitive typing very, very quickly.

Dan Barak:

It's free forever.

Dan Barak:

It's very intuitive and easy to start using and users love it.

Dan Barak:

We have a perfect five star rating in the Chrome Web store.

Dan Barak:

Uh, and all the reviews are always, where was this All my life and so on.

Dan Barak:

From there, from the, the simple powerful beginning users can start automating

Dan Barak:

larger portions of the workflows and really turn those snippets into mini

Dan Barak:

productivity apps that are available for them anywhere that they do work.

Dan Barak:

Uh, still live, you know, leave them in control, but allow them to automate

Dan Barak:

the low value portions of the work.

Dan Barak:

All right.

Dan Barak:

And

Upendra Varma:

who are you primarily selling it to?

Upendra Varma:

Are these end, end user?

Upendra Varma:

I'm, I'm trying to understand your end users.

Upendra Varma:

Are these, you know, uh, are they using your product for personal use

Upendra Varma:

or are these business customers?

Upendra Varma:

Who are these?

Upendra Varma:

Talk a bit about your customers.

Dan Barak:

Mostly people that, uh, use TechSpace for work.

Dan Barak:

Very wide range of types of users, kind of frontline users.

Dan Barak:

Uh, support is a, a big vertical for us.

Dan Barak:

Sales, recruiting.

Dan Barak:

Admins and, and operation.

Dan Barak:

But also we have a lot of people outside of the corporate world, uh,

Dan Barak:

you know, so we have a lot of teachers.

Dan Barak:

They use tax plays and, and people in education in, in general.

Dan Barak:

A lot of, uh, people in healthcare, they use tax plays, uh, and so on.

Upendra Varma:

And would you consider yourself as somebody

Upendra Varma:

who's selling to businesses?

Upendra Varma:

Is that your business model?

Upendra Varma:

Is

Dan Barak:

it b2b?

Dan Barak:

Yes.

Dan Barak:

So very much, uh, product led bottoms up.

Dan Barak:

Acquired the individual user.

Dan Barak:

Um, but, and then there's a pro plan for individuals, but most of our

Dan Barak:

revenue comes from the business plan, which is for teams and, and companies.

Upendra Varma:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

Alright, we'll, we'll come back to your, uh, growth story in a while.

Upendra Varma:

So let me, I just wanna get a sense of your customer basis of today.

Upendra Varma:

So just you can give me approximate numbers.

Upendra Varma:

So how many customers are, do you have on your platform as that today?

Upendra Varma:

And how many of them are paying.

Dan Barak:

Sure.

Dan Barak:

So, um, you know, one, one way to look at the number of users that we have, uh,

Dan Barak:

is you can look at the Chrome Web store.

Dan Barak:

They reported number.

Dan Barak:

So we, uh, just um, very recently exceeded 200,000, uh,

Dan Barak:

users on the Chrome Web Store.

Dan Barak:

Um, out of those, you know, a portion are, are active, um, and from the ones

Dan Barak:

that are active, About a quarter of our users are on a, on a paid plan.

Upendra Varma:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

That's around 50,000 roughly.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

That, that's pretty great, I would say.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

And, uh, can I ask your approximate revenue?

Dan Barak:

So, um, we are in a r we are in the low, uh, single digit.

Upendra Varma:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

That's, that's, that's, uh, that's a valid answer.

Upendra Varma:

That's all I wanted to know.

Upendra Varma:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

And just to understand your growth, how well are you growing?

Upendra Varma:

So where were you, let's say 12 months before

Dan Barak:

today?

Dan Barak:

So, yeah.

Dan Barak:

So, um, uh, we roughly double your, a little more than double year of a year

Dan Barak:

from the number of users perspective revenue grows, uh, slightly faster.

Upendra Varma:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

That's, that's pretty much it.

Upendra Varma:

So that, now I got the context right.

Upendra Varma:

So, yeah.

Upendra Varma:

Now help me understand, right, so where, where you're getting

Upendra Varma:

all of these customers, right?

Upendra Varma:

So where are you discovering all of these new customers?

Upendra Varma:

So, I wanna understand your top of funnel first before we dive, dive into

Upendra Varma:

your conversion and all of that stuff.

Dan Barak:

Absolutely.

Dan Barak:

So, I, I can, uh, I wanna talk about two things very quickly.

Dan Barak:

The, the vast, vast majority of our users come from word of.

Dan Barak:

Uh, and I can say a lot about word of mouth.

Dan Barak:

Uh, let me know how much you want me to expand on it.

Dan Barak:

Uh, word of mouth is often, uh, lumped in with referrals.

Dan Barak:

Uh, we also do referrals, but those are very two different

Dan Barak:

things with very different drivers.

Dan Barak:

Um, other than that, um, you know, and word of not include, people mentioning us

Dan Barak:

on social media and so on also includes c.

Dan Barak:

That, you know, instruct all new employees in, in specific

Dan Barak:

roles to install text plays.

Dan Barak:

Uh, and then we also do seo.

Dan Barak:

Um, And, you know, some other related initiatives.

Upendra Varma:

All right.

Upendra Varma:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

So it's not, you know, that simple, right?

Upendra Varma:

So you do a C NT for the coming too.

Upendra Varma:

I, I wanna deep dive into this as well, right?

Upendra Varma:

So for example, you mentioned you, you're growing around

Upendra Varma:

two x an year approximately.

Upendra Varma:

That means you've got like approximately a little faster than that.

Upendra Varma:

That's okay.

Upendra Varma:

We, we, we'll work with approximate numbers.

Upendra Varma:

That's totally okay.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

So, so you've got around, uh, around 100,000 new users over the past one year.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

So, can you quantify where, where, what are, what is that single biggest

Upendra Varma:

channel that that really brought you these, you know, 100,000 folks?

Dan Barak:

So by far the single, uh, most important channel is word of mouth.

Dan Barak:

Ok.

Dan Barak:

Uh, these are.

Dan Barak:

People And, and there's a lot that can be said about word of mouth.

Dan Barak:

People tend to, people tend to dismiss it because it's not very easy to measure.

Dan Barak:

Um, but it's either people that discover text place love it.

Dan Barak:

They're like, where was this all my life?

Dan Barak:

This is amazing.

Dan Barak:

And they can help themselves from telling.

Dan Barak:

Colleagues or friends or you know, their, their community in on social media.

Dan Barak:

Um, so that is by far our biggest driver and.

Dan Barak:

There's a lot to be said about that because, you know, our ideal user

Dan Barak:

is the one that moves beyond the free version and become a paying

Dan Barak:

customers and we, uh, paying customer.

Dan Barak:

And we can talk more about that.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

So let, let's do that actually.

Upendra Varma:

So I wanna sort of since, so, sort of wanna understand first, right?

Upendra Varma:

So when you say word of mouth, I know there are multiple ways that

Upendra Varma:

people can sort of, you know, listen about your project, right?

Upendra Varma:

So, but, But how are you, right.

Upendra Varma:

So sort of, uh, controlling that aspect.

Upendra Varma:

I mean, you've gotta be doing something right.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So what's, what's what, what, what is it that you're consciously doing there?

Dan Barak:

So, and okay, so that's important.

Dan Barak:

So what are we doing?

Dan Barak:

I'll start simple and I'll expand.

Dan Barak:

We're creating the best product possible.

Dan Barak:

Sure.

Dan Barak:

Um, and, and we're creating the best product possible for the user that first

Dan Barak:

signs up and just wants to get the value.

Dan Barak:

And not worry about us too much.

Dan Barak:

Mm-hmm.

Dan Barak:

, uh, and, and so I'll, you know, and, and that is important because there's

Dan Barak:

a difference between our top users and the users that just share and, and

Dan Barak:

contribute to our, to the word of mouth.

Dan Barak:

Of course, our top users are the most excited and, and they contribute a lot

Dan Barak:

to our word of mouth, but it's the.

Dan Barak:

No, the everyday users that are not very sophisticated that

Dan Barak:

drive word of mouth, uh, as well.

Dan Barak:

And that, and it's important because there's a trade off between that

Dan Barak:

sometimes and encouraging other growth channels that can be easier to measure.

Dan Barak:

So for example, I can have a referral program and we do,

Dan Barak:

can have a referral program.

Dan Barak:

I can send emails, I can create incentive.

Dan Barak:

To get them to become paying customers and so on.

Dan Barak:

All of those can somewhat hurt the user experience of the casual user.

Dan Barak:

Mm-hmm.

Dan Barak:

. And so we're investing a lot of time and effort and thought into how do we

Dan Barak:

keep the casual user experience great.

Dan Barak:

So it doesn't.

Dan Barak:

The word of mouth and we sometimes.

Dan Barak:

Yeah, so I, I get that you're,

Upendra Varma:

you're nailing your value proposition and your, your

Upendra Varma:

users are absolutely loving it.

Upendra Varma:

That's okay.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

But it just, I'm trying to understand what's that incentive, right?

Upendra Varma:

So for example, if I'm a user and I love your product, I'm using

Upendra Varma:

it on a regular basis, but why would I go and spread the word?

Upendra Varma:

You've gotta be incentivizing me somehow.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

Or maybe you are doing something.

Upendra Varma:

No, but,

Dan Barak:

but that is the key.

Dan Barak:

That, and that is the difference between word of mouth and referral, right?

Dan Barak:

Like referral.

Dan Barak:

And we have a referral program.

Dan Barak:

We provide an I.

Dan Barak:

the word, the incentive to do word of mouth for the most part is

Dan Barak:

because you can't believe that your colleagues are not using this app.

Dan Barak:

Like they should just use it because it's great and it's

Dan Barak:

free and it adds so much value.

Dan Barak:

Mm-hmm.

Dan Barak:

, and that is what I think a lot of people get wrong, because if I

Dan Barak:

incentivize you, then some people.

Dan Barak:

That would otherwise refer me or, you know, through word

Dan Barak:

of mouth, will not do it.

Dan Barak:

Sure.

Dan Barak:

Because there's an incentive program, because I tell them, please do it.

Dan Barak:

I'll pay you.

Dan Barak:

They will not do it.

Dan Barak:

Yeah.

Dan Barak:

Uh, and so that is, and, and so that is, that is key.

Dan Barak:

Most of our growth comes from users that are not incentivized to drive it.

Upendra Varma:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

So you are saying, apart from building an amazing product, you are literally doing

Upendra Varma:

nothing to sort of, uh, you know, make that, I'm doing a lot, I'm doing a lot.

Upendra Varma:

What, what is, what is it that you're doing?

Dan Barak:

But I'm also always trading it off against the initial user experience

Dan Barak:

and the value proposition and how.

Dan Barak:

Extra, uh, growth channel can hurt that initial thing.

Dan Barak:

No, no, no.

Upendra Varma:

I understand.

Upendra Varma:

I'm not talking about your other growth channels.

Upendra Varma:

I'm talking about your, your word of mouth success that you've been experiencing

Upendra Varma:

so far, which almost drive 50% of your, you know, it, it, it's driving a lot.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

So now the question is, apart from building an Amma amazing product,

Upendra Varma:

is there anything that you're consciously doing apart from obviously

Upendra Varma:

not doing, not investing in other growth channels that is, you know,

Upendra Varma:

sort of giving you this huge.

Dan Barak:

Yeah, so, you know, there is a, you know, so after I made that

Dan Barak:

point, there's some, you know, so the, the multiplayer of course is,

Dan Barak:

uh, a big driver of that as well.

Dan Barak:

Um, we, you know, takes place by definition is very personal.

Dan Barak:

Like it allows you to automate your work.

Dan Barak:

Multiplayer is not that natural of an expansion, but we do

Dan Barak:

allow, um, snippets to be shared.

Dan Barak:

You can turn them into like shared documents where multiple people can

Dan Barak:

collaborate on the same snippets, and that really helps because that allows teams.

Dan Barak:

To align and that, and we

Upendra Varma:

allow to, and do, do you have any powered by something like that?

Upendra Varma:

On, on, on

Dan Barak:

that plan?

Dan Barak:

No.

Dan Barak:

No, because snippets, we try that, uh, you know, we, we wanna create

Dan Barak:

as much virality as possible.

Dan Barak:

But again, like people can use snippets, not, you know, for example,

Dan Barak:

to send full emails or full messages.

Dan Barak:

Sometimes it's just a sentence within an email.

Dan Barak:

So we can't, uh, inject power by text place anywhere.

Dan Barak:

Uh, we, we looked into, Um, but we do allow, uh, multiplayer where you

Dan Barak:

can collaborate on shared snippets.

Dan Barak:

So that really allows teams.

Dan Barak:

To use text place as kind of the database of how, sorry, the database

Dan Barak:

of how they communicate with customers.

Dan Barak:

But, but is, is

Upendra Varma:

that the primary driver or is it just working as a secondary one?

Upendra Varma:

It does

Dan Barak:

drive it and so it does drive, um, uh, word of mouth.

Dan Barak:

It also helps.

Dan Barak:

People adopt the business plan because that's a huge value proposition for teams

Dan Barak:

and companies being able to align on shared language, being able to help new,

Dan Barak:

uh, members of the team onboard faster.

Dan Barak:

Yeah, so it does drive growth.

Dan Barak:

Uh, but it, but admittedly, It's not the main driver.

Dan Barak:

The main driver is just, this is great.

Dan Barak:

I'm gonna share

Upendra Varma:

it with you so there's no secret here.

Upendra Varma:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

No.

Upendra Varma:

So before, before we, no,

Dan Barak:

I think that that's the secret,

Upendra Varma:

but yeah.

Upendra Varma:

. Alright, so before we close the stop of final discussion, I just wanted

Upendra Varma:

to understand one thing, right?

Upendra Varma:

So when you say word of mouth, right?

Upendra Varma:

So what are those primary distribution channels that people

Upendra Varma:

use to sort of spread the word?

Upendra Varma:

Do you know about?

Dan Barak:

So it's, it's mostly people within work.

Dan Barak:

Uh, they just turn around and tell their colleagues.

Dan Barak:

And again, like I think the, a big one is when, and that happens regularly, is when

Dan Barak:

it comes to become one of the standard tools that a team use within the company.

Dan Barak:

So anyone that joins the team, um, immediately, uh, gets onboarded.

Dan Barak:

And then when someone.

Dan Barak:

Leaves the team, you know, it goes to another company they're

Dan Barak:

already used to take place.

Dan Barak:

They, they get that team to adopt it.

Dan Barak:

Um, I also, so another top of channel, uh, uh, top of final channel is s e o.

Dan Barak:

Um, and I'm happy to share some of my,

Upendra Varma:

uh, so I, I actually, so in the light of time, I wanna kind of move on

Upendra Varma:

to, you know, your conversion part and how you're sort of selling it to teams, right?

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

So, so one question here.

Upendra Varma:

So you mentioned you got around 50,000 paying users on your platform, right?

Upendra Varma:

How many Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

Approximately.

Upendra Varma:

And how many teams do you have?

Upendra Varma:

How many unique businesses?

Dan Barak:

Um, in the thousand.

Upendra Varma:

in the thousands.

Upendra Varma:

Alright, so, so help me understand, so as of today, what's your primary focus?

Upendra Varma:

Is it, uh, is it sort of growing, growing those businesses, right.

Upendra Varma:

Are, or are you just looking to sort of bring in more users or, I mean,

Upendra Varma:

my question is, is it a self-serve model or do you have sales reps in

Upendra Varma:

your team who are constantly chasing all of these free use users in your

Upendra Varma:

free plan and then our use sort of landing and expanding within a company.

Upendra Varma:

How's that whole, uh, funnel looking?

Dan Barak:

So currently we're still very much product focused and driving the top

Dan Barak:

of the funnel, acquiring the users because we know and we see from experience that

Dan Barak:

we monetize pretty well and like the self signup from companies work pretty well.

Dan Barak:

We are, you know, as we grow and evolve, we.

Dan Barak:

Are starting and we will start investing more in the sales, uh, effort,

Dan Barak:

the enterprise sales, uh, effort.

Dan Barak:

But our main focus is just, uh, user growth, uh, and growing the, that funnel.

Dan Barak:

Mm-hmm.

Dan Barak:

, because, uh, you know, we'll talk more about it.

Dan Barak:

We convert, we convert pretty well.

Dan Barak:

Sure.

Dan Barak:

We'll

Upendra Varma:

come into that.

Upendra Varma:

And so, uh, do you have any sales reps on your team as of today

Upendra Varma:

who are chasing this interview?

Upendra Varma:

No, I'm

Dan Barak:

the one, I'm the one doing most of the work.

Dan Barak:

Alright, alright, that makes sense.

Dan Barak:

I'll probably change in the next few months, but, uh, but

Upendra Varma:

it's, sure, sure.

Upendra Varma:

Alright, so to talk about conversion, right?

Upendra Varma:

So once somebody discuss your product somehow magically, right?

Upendra Varma:

What happens after that?

Upendra Varma:

How, how does your conversion look like?

Upendra Varma:

So let's talk

Dan Barak:

about what does convert.

Dan Barak:

So text space is free forever.

Dan Barak:

Sure.

Dan Barak:

Uh, the free and, and we have companies with thousands of users

Dan Barak:

that are all on the free plan.

Dan Barak:

So that exists as well.

Dan Barak:

Um, what the free version is somewhat limited in, in functionality, uh, but

Dan Barak:

what typically happens is, You know, you have an individual user for a company

Dan Barak:

that starts using it, and then they, through one of us, tell their team.

Dan Barak:

And then you have, uh, a situation where a team uses text place as the database

Dan Barak:

of how, as the database of how they co We have also have a product called database.

Dan Barak:

That's why I get as the database of how they communicate with customers.

Dan Barak:

And then managers become in.

Dan Barak:

Why do they become interested?

Dan Barak:

They want one to unlock the more advanced functionality and unlock more productivity

Dan Barak:

and consistency in language and so on.

Dan Barak:

So that's important for them, and that a lot of it is facilitated by

Dan Barak:

the pro plan or the business plan.

Dan Barak:

The other reason is that managers want to have some oversight and control.

Dan Barak:

So in many instances, they want to control some of the communication central.

Dan Barak:

Uh, and understand how the team communicates and be able to kind

Dan Barak:

of, uh, adopt best practices.

Dan Barak:

And that is all facilitated by the business plan, you know,

Dan Barak:

including central team management and central billing and so on.

Dan Barak:

And so that's why they will upgrade to the, to the business plan.

Dan Barak:

So it's the additional features, but it's also kind of centralizing

Dan Barak:

the team communications and ensuring consistency and

Upendra Varma:

accuracy.

Upendra Varma:

Sure.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, and.

Upendra Varma:

So in terms of onboarding, right?

Upendra Varma:

So once somebody starts with, starts a, you know, free plan with you, right?

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

And once a bunch of people in a, in their own team sort of starts using it, is there

Upendra Varma:

something that you do to sort of move that entire team or company to a paying plan?

Upendra Varma:

Or does that again happen naturally as of today?

Dan Barak:

So we focus, um, so we do a little.

Dan Barak:

on the team level, but we focus a lot on the individual level.

Dan Barak:

So when they first sign up, there are multiple touch points that help

Dan Barak:

them discover the full value of text place and how to unlock it.

Dan Barak:

Mm-hmm.

Dan Barak:

. Um, as part of that, we also show them the benefits of the company.

Dan Barak:

So that includes in-app notifications about kind of more

Dan Barak:

advanced features, including collaboration and things like that.

Dan Barak:

Emails that include the same.

Dan Barak:

We have guides on the page, but we also have a gallery, uh, and the, that

Dan Barak:

gallery for, you know, we focus on specific verticals on specific ways.

Dan Barak:

Use people use text space and we show them examples.

Dan Barak:

Of how TechSpace is being used, including kind of user stories of

Dan Barak:

companies that are using it and so on.

Dan Barak:

So it's, um, different touchpoints.

Dan Barak:

Some are more pushed, some are more poor, but they're all designed to help

Dan Barak:

them understand the full value that

Upendra Varma:

Sure.

Upendra Varma:

So, but, but all, what all of these initiatives do is eventually help

Upendra Varma:

your user gain value from your product that I think you're doing, but.

Upendra Varma:

The reason that they would move to a paid land is because of all of

Upendra Varma:

these features you mentioned, right?

Upendra Varma:

That they, a manager wants to control in a centralized fashion, all of those things.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

And that can happen only if you are sort of somehow talking to that manager and

Upendra Varma:

showing him the value as opposed to, you know, teams or individual members.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So is there something that you

Dan Barak:

do there?

Dan Barak:

No.

Dan Barak:

So, and that's, that's a challenge with product led companies.

Dan Barak:

We, we don't, you know, we're starting to explore more ways to do more of that.

Dan Barak:

Mm-hmm.

Dan Barak:

, uh, but, but that's the thing.

Dan Barak:

Like we have our user is the in is like the, the rep.

Dan Barak:

Right.

Dan Barak:

And they get a lot of value.

Dan Barak:

We don't have a relationship with the manager.

Dan Barak:

We don't know who the manager.

Dan Barak:

And until you start doing enterprise sales and kind of trying to navigate your way

Dan Barak:

around the company, um, that is difficult.

Dan Barak:

So what we do is we go to the individual rep, to our user.

Dan Barak:

We, uh, show them the value of the business plan with the hope.

Dan Barak:

That they will reach out to their manager and share it with them, but

Dan Barak:

we don't target them unless the, the manager is a user user as well.

Dan Barak:

We don't target them, uh, specifically.

Upendra Varma:

So, uh, so Dan, so what next, right?

Upendra Varma:

How are you gonna go from, you know, lower, you know, a million range

Upendra Varma:

of a r r to let's say, you know, how are you gonna 10 x your sort

Upendra Varma:

of overall a r r looks like you.

Upendra Varma:

Closing this big deal, CCR next is your only way forward to sort

Upendra Varma:

of grow, you know, Nutanix, right?

Upendra Varma:

So, so how are you gonna do that

Dan Barak:

and what's your, um, so, you know, to, to get to a hundred million a r

Dan Barak:

you need to start doing enterprise sales.

Dan Barak:

But there's a lot that, uh, you can do in the bottoms up, uh, as well.

Dan Barak:

So, alright, so what are, what are next steps for me?

Dan Barak:

We're going to do both.

Dan Barak:

One is invest more in the top of the funnel, the user, and acquiring

Dan Barak:

more users and accelerating.

Dan Barak:

that is mostly focused on the product and adding more of those building

Dan Barak:

blocks that people can use to mm-hmm.

Dan Barak:

stitch together and create their own mini productivity apps.

Dan Barak:

So just increase the value that people are getting from TechSpace and then we're

Dan Barak:

going to start doing more of the kind of top down enterprise sales, uh, effort.

Upendra Varma:

It, it's similar to how Slack ended up doing it.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So, so

Dan Barak:

I think every product led led growth company.

Dan Barak:

Uh, when done well, they all start with kind of just the, the individual

Dan Barak:

users and converting them through self signup, and then eventually

Dan Barak:

you start doing enterprise.

Dan Barak:

So, so

Upendra Varma:

have you, have you started these initiatives already?

Upendra Varma:

Do you have any initiatives?

Upendra Varma:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Upendra Varma:

So how, how, how, how's, how's it been working so

Dan Barak:

far?

Dan Barak:

No, it's working great.

Dan Barak:

Uh, the main bottleneck is, as I mentioned before, just finding the right decision.

Dan Barak:

And getting in touch with them.

Dan Barak:

Uh, once, uh, you do that, it's not a difficult sell.

Dan Barak:

The team is already using taxpayer.

Dan Barak:

They already see the value.

Dan Barak:

There's not, uh, long onboarding process that needs to, they need to go through.

Dan Barak:

Sure.

Dan Barak:

It's just telling them, Hey, you can do more.

Dan Barak:

The way we typically do it is we give them a fee trial, a

Dan Barak:

free pilot of the business plan.

Dan Barak:

We help them onboard.

Dan Barak:

We, you know, make sure that they're getting the as much value as possible for

Dan Barak:

a month or so, and then, uh, sell the, the actual, um, um, sell becomes very natural.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

So, alright, so that, that makes a lot of sense.

Upendra Varma:

So let's, let's wrap this up.

Upendra Varma:

Alright, so let's talk about, about your company, right?

Upendra Varma:

How many folks on your team as of today?

Dan Barak:

So about 10 people fully remote, uh, All over the world really.

Dan Barak:

So we work very much asynchronously.

Dan Barak:

That's why we want to stay kind of as small as focus and, and nimble for

Dan Barak:

as long as possible because growing a remote team has, uh, its own challenges.

Upendra Varma:

And how many

Dan Barak:

on the founding team?

Dan Barak:

So, you know, the Scott and I, uh, are the co-founder, co-founders of the company.

Dan Barak:

Uh, and we consider everyone out of the 10 that are part of the team

Upendra Varma:

today.

Upendra Varma:

You do.

Upendra Varma:

You do.

Upendra Varma:

And when did you start the company?

Upendra Varma:

What's that?

Upendra Varma:

When did you start the company?

Upendra Varma:

So the,

Dan Barak:

that's the origin story is very interesting.

Dan Barak:

Scott actually started the company.

Dan Barak:

Scott is my co-founder and cto.

Dan Barak:

We worked together at Google.

Dan Barak:

Uh, he's an engineering manager.

Dan Barak:

I was a product manager.

Dan Barak:

, he studied TechSpace as kind of as a side project.

Dan Barak:

Mm-hmm.

Dan Barak:

, um, oh, four years ago.

Dan Barak:

Uh, and, and just, you know, grew it as a side project.

Dan Barak:

I was advising him while I was still working at Google.

Dan Barak:

And then, um, almost two years ago, uh, I left Google and joined him full-time.

Dan Barak:

And then we went through Y Combinator and raised our, our seed round and so

Upendra Varma:

on.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

And okay.

Upendra Varma:

That, that talks about your funding.

Upendra Varma:

And so going forward, what's, what's your, so are you gonna raise any

Upendra Varma:

venture based funding or how you wanna scale this company going forward?

Upendra Varma:

What's your vision?

Dan Barak:

So, uh, we will raise our, our next round,

Dan Barak:

probably in the next year or so.

Dan Barak:

And that will be, Invested in, in three ways.

Dan Barak:

Uh, you know, first of all, accelerating our product roadmap.

Dan Barak:

There's a lot that we wanna do.

Dan Barak:

We don't have time to discuss it, but like, again, it's adding more

Dan Barak:

and more of those building blocks.

Dan Barak:

The other one is more enterprise sales, as we discussed and, and related efforts.

Dan Barak:

The, the nice thing is once you have enterprise sales and you close

Dan Barak:

those bigger deals, the average L t V of a user grows with it.

Dan Barak:

Yes.

Dan Barak:

And then that opens up the door for like paid marketing, which is

Dan Barak:

something that we're not doing today.

Dan Barak:

And you don't, you don't really have

Upendra Varma:

to.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

I mean, you've got all of those leads just sitting out there.

Upendra Varma:

You just gotta pick the right person and they just close the deal, right?

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

Okay.

Upendra Varma:

Maybe you don't really need paid marketing to.

Upendra Varma:

For those, for that type of funnel lead generation anyways,

Dan Barak:

you don't need it.

Dan Barak:

But it, it is a way to accelerate growth.

Dan Barak:

Uh, we don't do it today because again, like the l t V of a random user that

Dan Barak:

signs up to the free plan is pretty low.

Dan Barak:

Yeah.

Dan Barak:

Uh, but if you convert more of them in larger deals, then uh, you can accelerate.

Dan Barak:

The user growth through fairly marketing.

Dan Barak:

Alright,

Upendra Varma:

Dan, that's, that's pretty amazing.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, it, it was nice talking to you.

Upendra Varma:

Hope you scaled, takes place to much, much greater heights.

Dan Barak:

Uh, I hope so too.

Dan Barak:

I appreciate

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