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.
You can also view the video on youtube here.
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