Dan Martell - February 25, 2021


Master Enterprise-Level SaaS Growth with Justin Shimoon @ AffinityClick - Escape Velocity Show #48


Episode Stats


Length

47 minutes

Words per minute

183.74768

Word count

8,692

Sentence count

761

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I sit down with the CEO of Hushed, a mobile telephony company that is changing the way we talk to each other on the phone. We talk about his background in the telephony space, how he got into the business, and how he thinks about the future of the industry.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 If you're more open with the business,
00:00:02.440 I think people will respect you more,
00:00:04.360 and I think they're going to believe in what
00:00:06.240 it is you're trying to do.
00:00:07.320 Ignition sequence start.
00:00:09.480 Three, two, one.
00:00:20.640 Justin, thanks for coming on the show.
00:00:22.120 Hey, my pleasure.
00:00:22.920 Dude, I'm pumped to have you here.
00:00:24.120 I mean, nobody, I don't think anybody's ever interviewed.
00:00:28.360 I went on YouTube.
00:00:29.120 I can find another video.
00:00:30.700 Yeah, I like to keep a bit of a low profile.
00:00:32.460 This is great.
00:00:33.080 So do I have an exclusive then?
00:00:34.400 This is an exclusive.
00:00:35.920 There's an embargo on it right now.
00:00:37.340 Yes.
00:00:38.900 So for those that aren't familiar with your background
00:00:41.720 company, I know you have Hushed, but also Affinity Click.
00:00:45.140 Yeah, so Affinity Click is the company.
00:00:47.580 And Hushed is a mobile product that we built
00:00:50.600 probably about seven years ago.
00:00:52.300 It's in the mobile telephony space.
00:00:54.040 So a lot of people would use the term OTT, over the top.
00:00:57.700 Over the top.
00:00:58.780 So this would be a technology that sits on top of the data layer on your cell phone.
00:01:03.020 So effectively, with our platform, you're able to act and feel like a mobile phone.
00:01:09.260 Oh, got it.
00:01:09.920 And we're actually leveraging the data connection of the carrier and not our solution.
00:01:15.160 OK, so you don't have to have your own cell.
00:01:17.900 You don't use the voice component.
00:01:20.700 Who are there other examples of OTT out there?
00:01:23.600 So like Google Voice would be a good example.
00:01:26.120 WhatsApp?
00:01:27.160 WhatsApp would be an OTT-type solution as well.
00:01:29.700 OK, perfect.
00:01:30.100 Because you've now got a VoIP connection between two peers.
00:01:34.980 Yeah.
00:01:35.300 And you've got codecs in between in terms of ensuring
00:01:39.600 that the call quality is good.
00:01:42.360 And I mean, VoIP's been around for a long time.
00:01:45.340 So what this is essentially is, think
00:01:48.200 of a traditional PBX phone.
00:01:50.860 Yeah.
00:01:51.100 Or you have a PBX in your office, which
00:01:54.580 is a big system where, you know, essentially you would go and buy, you know, hardware and you'd
00:02:00.420 buy lines from Bell or Rogers. That's how we used to do it. Yeah. Some of these young kids today
00:02:03.920 are born in 2001 and have no clue. Exactly. So, you know, you, you ultimately, um, you're kind of
00:02:10.560 getting rid of all of that infrastructure. And the first step was you had fixed line, which was
00:02:16.240 basically, you know, copper wires going into a PBX. Yeah. And then kind of 20 years ago, VoIP came,
00:02:21.820 or I don't know when the actual protocol came out,
00:02:24.260 but it's been a long time.
00:02:26.060 And you could go to different companies
00:02:28.280 and get a VoIP hardware phone, which
00:02:31.140 where you'd plug into your desk.
00:02:32.800 Cisco had those.
00:02:33.580 Cisco.
00:02:34.320 And they still exist today.
00:02:35.660 In fact, if you go to a bank, most companies
00:02:38.040 are probably VoIP because it's going to be cheaper.
00:02:41.220 And configurable and all that stuff.
00:02:42.820 Exactly.
00:02:43.460 You can set up, you know.
00:02:44.820 Change numbers on people.
00:02:46.400 Yeah, fairly easily.
00:02:47.680 But that's like a $40 to $50 a month solution.
00:02:50.220 Wow.
00:02:50.500 And it can be expensive if you're a big,
00:02:53.040 I've been talking to a few different types of companies
00:02:55.560 like car dealerships.
00:02:56.920 And they're using different solutions
00:02:58.700 from Bell, Rogers, or T-Mobile.
00:03:01.060 And those companies essentially are VoIP,
00:03:03.500 but they're still paying $30 to $40 a month.
00:03:06.040 Our solution basically allows you
00:03:07.900 to offer the same call quality, but in a mobile product.
00:03:11.560 So it's bring your own device.
00:03:13.100 You can bring it to work.
00:03:14.460 You can install the app.
00:03:15.460 Is that still called Hushed?
00:03:16.880 That's Hushed.
00:03:17.800 Why is it called Hushed?
00:03:19.380 It's, you know what, it's a name that I-
00:03:22.120 Sounds like a-
00:03:23.900 You know, it's a, I call it a bit of an edgy name.
00:03:27.580 It is edgy.
00:03:28.700 Is there a story behind it?
00:03:30.420 No, not really.
00:03:31.440 Was it a certain type of use case that came out of it?
00:03:34.340 You know, I think, so the bit of the background or history with Hushed, so-
00:03:38.520 And for context, are you open with your numbers?
00:03:40.880 Do you share kind of like how many people have signed up for it?
00:03:43.640 I know it's in the millions.
00:03:44.560 I just, you know, I don't-
00:03:45.520 Yeah.
00:03:45.880 I know the numbers, but I'm not going to throw them out there if you don't.
00:03:48.240 Yeah, I mean, we can talk a little bit about the size.
00:03:51.420 But you've been doing this for a while.
00:03:52.800 Incredibly successful.
00:03:54.740 Yeah, I mean, I would say successful to some degree.
00:03:57.900 Entrepreneurs always feel like they're behind.
00:03:59.660 That's normal.
00:04:00.300 But just know I know the numbers.
00:04:03.600 You've built an incredible business.
00:04:04.980 I appreciate it.
00:04:06.540 So I'll give you a bit of history.
00:04:07.960 So Affinity Click was actually going
00:04:11.340 to be in the ad tech space.
00:04:13.520 And we kind of pivoted when we almost ran out of money.
00:04:16.800 And we kind of invested about $800,000 or $900,000.
00:04:20.620 Did you raise capital for that?
00:04:21.720 Just private investors, friends and families, myself.
00:04:24.860 And the funny story is I brought my CTO from Germany.
00:04:30.000 And we launched a V1 of AffinityClick,
00:04:34.540 which is basically a blogging platform that would enable you
00:04:37.320 to basically insert ads.
00:04:40.080 Let's say you write a blog post about your SLR camera.
00:04:43.680 we actually built this technology that would find the word SLR
00:04:47.160 and overlay, you know those double-underlined links?
00:04:50.580 You'd hover over, you'd see a carousel ad.
00:04:52.800 So we built that like eight or nine years ago.
00:04:55.260 Oh, now it makes sense.
00:04:55.920 Affinity Click.
00:04:56.520 Yeah.
00:04:57.300 And then we just basically said, look, the-
00:05:00.180 Were you a blogging platform, or you just
00:05:01.700 enabled the script to do the-
00:05:03.380 Exactly.
00:05:04.660 It was more of a, call it personalization using
00:05:06.960 shopping feeds.
00:05:08.520 Yep.
00:05:09.260 And that business has turned out to be a very big, not us,
00:05:12.420 No, I know a woman out of the UK. 1.00
00:05:15.180 She built, I forget what it was called.
00:05:16.660 But there's a few people that built.
00:05:18.360 I think there was two big ones.
00:05:19.740 Yeah, like one big one was Criteo.
00:05:21.280 Yeah.
00:05:22.440 But long story short, the amount of dollars
00:05:25.300 needed to basically build such an infrastructure
00:05:28.940 basically was going to be very, very challenging.
00:05:31.060 And at the time, VoIP was being broken down
00:05:36.560 in more simplistic forms.
00:05:38.320 So Twilio, you know.
00:05:40.140 Well, what's the virtual PBX?
00:05:43.040 I actually coded on it back in the day.
00:05:47.320 I think Twilio was built on it.
00:05:49.200 Yeah, it's, I'm mad at myself for not knowing this.
00:05:52.900 It's the open source.
00:05:54.960 Everybody uses it.
00:05:57.140 We literally just talked about this last week.
00:05:59.100 Anyways, if it comes to me, I'll mention it.
00:06:00.900 But it's cool, because that allowed programmers
00:06:04.720 to build voice apps.
00:06:06.780 Yeah, so Twilio basically launched this platform.
00:06:09.920 And I came into the office one day and said, you know, this ad tech thing is going to be a bit of a challenge.
00:06:13.980 And I was looking at kind of doing a bit of research and saying, hey, there's it looks like there's an opportunity with Twilio where we may be able to launch something fairly quickly and not know anything about the kind of plain old telephone switch.
00:06:26.020 So the traditional kind of switch layer.
00:06:28.960 And, you know, we basically looked at Twilio, you know, looked at a few different players.
00:06:34.000 But Twilio was kind of had the most breadth at the time.
00:06:37.300 Yeah.
00:06:37.540 And this was like seven or eight years ago.
00:06:39.280 I think in 2009, they launched.
00:06:42.180 Yeah, and we basically launched an Android version of our product.
00:06:48.420 And there was one other company in the space.
00:06:50.820 Was that called Hushed then?
00:06:52.380 We launched Android Hushed.
00:06:54.940 Yeah.
00:06:55.460 Was it built on top of Twilio then or not?
00:06:57.660 At the time, parts of it were built on the Twilio client,
00:07:01.500 as well as we were doing termination,
00:07:04.020 which means the actual call routing was done through Twilio.
00:07:08.180 And about three months later, we then launched the iPhone version.
00:07:12.480 So in six months, we actually launched this OTT solution.
00:07:16.920 And to be honest, we were probably one of the first ones.
00:07:19.700 There were a few people that tried it.
00:07:22.200 We got tech crunched, if you will, when we launched Android.
00:07:27.660 And we essentially started building the business.
00:07:29.980 Asterix.
00:07:31.120 Asterix, yes.
00:07:31.800 I couldn't let it go.
00:07:33.480 Sorry, asterix.org if you guys want to check it out.
00:07:35.560 It's pretty cool.
00:07:36.740 Or just use Twilio today.
00:07:38.920 Well, and so Asterix, open source platform,
00:07:42.300 I think Twilio definitely built on that.
00:07:44.080 And their underlying core is probably
00:07:45.880 still some Asterix component.
00:07:48.080 And we looked at Asterix later on if we wanted
00:07:52.040 to build this on our own and own more of the platform.
00:07:56.580 So you guys were one of the first Android apps
00:07:58.640 to do the OTT?
00:07:59.760 Yeah.
00:08:00.180 Oh, cool.
00:08:00.920 In what I call disposable numbers, short-term numbers,
00:08:04.980 There might have been a few solutions at the time.
00:08:07.440 What was the use case for that?
00:08:08.500 Like, what kind of companies or people are using that?
00:08:10.300 You know, online dating, classifieds, personal.
00:08:14.760 Like Craigslist or Kijiji, I don't want to put my cell number.
00:08:18.220 Oh, I guess they would take care of the form submit.
00:08:20.000 But like any, yeah, so interesting.
00:08:22.660 You would just route, you put a number, it would go, oh,
00:08:25.720 through the phone, through the app.
00:08:26.940 So what you do is when you download the app,
00:08:31.040 you create an account.
00:08:32.800 And you'll be able to choose.
00:08:36.200 You'll get a free number by default.
00:08:38.020 So you'll be able to choose a number in the US or Canada.
00:08:40.480 And you'll get it for three days.
00:08:42.200 And that will give you full three days.
00:08:44.240 Well, yeah, it'll give you a full.
00:08:45.300 That's the freemium free trial.
00:08:46.760 Right.
00:08:47.000 It gives you the full kind of voice SMS capability.
00:08:51.820 And then if you really like it, you'll convert into a paying customer.
00:08:56.140 Now, you may convert into a seven-day customer, which is basically $2.
00:09:00.960 So if you think about it, we're giving you a phone number that you can use for seven days, and then you can discard it.
00:09:09.040 And then we ran that business probably for three or four years, and then, you know, subscriptions kind of came.
00:09:15.220 I mean, if you think about it, when we launched this product, the App Store was in its infancy, right?
00:09:21.480 You know, the App Store is not that old.
00:09:23.680 No.
00:09:24.000 Right?
00:09:24.580 And we've been a top-grossing app in the App Store.
00:09:27.260 App Store and Apple would probably be, what, 2012 or 11?
00:09:30.260 11?
00:09:31.760 Yeah, let's say it's about 10 years old, right?
00:09:34.640 It was only a couple years old.
00:09:35.700 There was about a million applications in there.
00:09:37.540 Oh, you're right.
00:09:37.940 The iPhone came out in probably 2007.
00:09:40.500 Yeah, and then it was a couple years later,
00:09:42.140 which would be more like now, yeah.
00:09:44.480 So when we launched the product, we
00:09:48.140 quickly became a top-grossing app in our category.
00:09:51.220 So utilities, we're number one.
00:09:53.480 We're number one in the US, Canada,
00:09:54.920 in multiple markets for Android and iPhone?
00:09:57.620 Android and iPhone.
00:09:59.500 Android, a little bit lagging behind,
00:10:02.020 but like number one, two, three position for years.
00:10:05.720 And then Apple kind of changed their algorithms
00:10:08.560 where they basically, there was a time
00:10:10.460 where you could look at the top grossing apps in the store.
00:10:13.720 It's gone.
00:10:14.380 They removed that because it was basically,
00:10:17.000 I don't want to say giving an unfair advantage,
00:10:18.500 but you would just keep doing it.
00:10:20.520 You're going to keep being the top.
00:10:21.860 Yeah, exactly.
00:10:23.260 So we are now in the app store, averaging top 10, right?
00:10:27.200 Now, the app store is 15 times bigger, so you know.
00:10:30.740 But still, man, it's huge.
00:10:31.760 Yeah, I mean, in terms of the revenue
00:10:33.880 we were making eight years ago versus today,
00:10:36.180 I mean, it's orders of magnitude.
00:10:37.960 And our rank is down slightly, but there's a couple.
00:10:42.500 So that's interesting.
00:10:43.940 And as we've evolved this platform.
00:10:47.300 Do you still have the CTO that you brought over from Germany?
00:10:49.580 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:10:50.120 Is he a co-founder, I guess?
00:10:51.500 Yeah, he's the co-founder, and he's
00:10:55.160 He's a permanent resident now in Canada,
00:10:57.240 although doing Canadian immigration
00:10:58.920 was a bit of a challenge.
00:11:00.200 It always is.
00:11:01.220 But it was worth it.
00:11:02.780 And their family's here, so they love it.
00:11:04.940 He's actually half German, half Finnish,
00:11:06.820 so he kind of really enjoys the cold weather.
00:11:08.920 Yeah, he's used to it.
00:11:10.520 Yeah, exactly.
00:11:11.260 So over the years, we've been kind of building the platform.
00:11:16.860 And we got to a point where we became big enough
00:11:19.920 that we could go directly to the carriers.
00:11:22.200 So we would go to carriers now, and we can buy.
00:11:25.300 We'll basically rent these phone numbers
00:11:27.740 at fractions of the cost that we did when we started.
00:11:30.400 Right?
00:11:30.900 Really?
00:11:31.360 Before you had to pay whoever's broker?
00:11:34.200 Well, yeah, like so Twilio.
00:11:35.580 What do you buy from Twilio?
00:11:37.260 Twilio was always selling them.
00:11:38.580 Yeah.
00:11:39.780 You know, and they would, you know,
00:11:40.820 I think their rack rate's like a buck.
00:11:42.580 Yeah.
00:11:43.080 But as you get mass, you get more volume.
00:11:45.960 And I think, if I remember, we were top 15 customer
00:11:50.540 with Twilio.
00:11:51.120 Like, we were a big customer for them.
00:11:52.500 Whoa, that's cool.
00:11:53.660 When they launched.
00:11:54.960 I actually brought my, I have a high-end group
00:11:57.320 for 10 million plus AR SaaS companies.
00:11:59.800 We went, Jeff's an old friend of mine, and we went.
00:12:02.980 So I met Jeff 2008.
00:12:05.920 Yep.
00:12:06.340 And it was like, you know, because I knew about Asterix.
00:12:09.540 I worked on it.
00:12:10.660 I was like, oh, that's a really cool idea to see him build,
00:12:12.900 I think, you know, $10 billion market cap.
00:12:15.500 Yeah, unbelievable.
00:12:16.220 In 10 years.
00:12:17.440 It's unbelievable.
00:12:18.180 And I always kick myself for not getting some pre-IPO stock.
00:12:22.600 Especially if you're such a big customer.
00:12:24.300 I should have leveraged my invoices.
00:12:26.640 Yeah, you're like, hey, let's get some pre-IPOs.
00:12:29.620 So in terms of the technology, great company.
00:12:33.120 You know, really strong vision.
00:12:34.900 They're now moving into kind of the enterprise.
00:12:38.820 They've got a call center, I think.
00:12:40.180 Yeah, this is new call cloud.
00:12:42.420 Yeah, like they're now going into big Fortune 500 companies.
00:12:46.980 and their basic solutions, not just...
00:12:48.900 Well, a solution that's fully customizable very quickly.
00:12:51.620 I think Shopify has actually built...
00:12:53.300 Oh, no doubt.
00:12:53.920 I mean, people forget, like, I think one of the main growth drivers
00:12:58.200 was the app economy and then, like, Uber notifications, Airbnb.
00:13:02.640 Like, all these apps needed, you know, SMS or phone capabilities,
00:13:07.820 and that's Twilio.
00:13:09.320 I mean, yeah.
00:13:10.380 So, like, a lot of startups owe some hard plumbing.
00:13:15.000 Yeah, and so we have done a pretty good job
00:13:20.540 building that business and acquiring customers.
00:13:23.640 We've never had a month that was less revenue
00:13:25.420 than previous month.
00:13:26.580 Every month is a record.
00:13:27.940 Yeah, every month we've started.
00:13:29.640 And it's a very linear business.
00:13:31.200 It's a very slow growth.
00:13:34.220 How do you negotiate with the telcos?
00:13:36.280 That sounds like a lot of...
00:13:38.360 Yeah, so the challenge with the telcos,
00:13:40.840 so a couple of things we want.
00:13:42.740 So good question.
00:13:44.380 The only leverage you really have is your rates, like your volume, right?
00:13:47.580 How much volume you can bring.
00:13:48.460 You've got to wait until you have enough volume.
00:13:49.560 Yeah.
00:13:50.000 And so one of the things that we did, so if you think about our business, the way it works is you go to a Twilio or you go to a bandwidth or you go to one of these companies and they basically allow you to rent phone numbers from them.
00:14:02.880 Okay.
00:14:04.800 In the case of Twilio, they'll also have a Twilio client, which that client is basically PJ SIP.
00:14:09.620 Like, it's a VoIP client that enables
00:14:12.460 their communication from their cloud-based technology
00:14:16.580 to the outside world.
00:14:18.300 So you integrate the client.
00:14:20.000 It's like a VPN type of tunneling or something like that?
00:14:22.580 I mean, their client probably connects vis-a-vis the VPN.
00:14:25.720 But that's how it has to work.
00:14:27.160 And you said PG.
00:14:28.260 Like, if you want to use VoIP with Twilio,
00:14:31.400 you've got to use your client.
00:14:33.140 They're opening that up in the future.
00:14:34.900 We built Clarity on top of, I didn't code it,
00:14:37.060 because I'm a horrible programmer, it turns out.
00:14:39.600 Um, but that's, and that's it, they had their client that
00:14:44.360 was the API level that connected.
00:14:46.140 Yeah, and you probably built the Clarity using that client.
00:14:48.360 100%.
00:14:48.860 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:14:49.440 My developers did it, anyways.
00:14:50.440 Yeah, and a great, you know, great product.
00:14:52.320 And, um, but, and we didn't really know anything about,
00:14:55.520 I mean, by fluke, I have an electrical engineering degree
00:14:58.720 with a minor in telecom.
00:15:00.140 So I have, I worked at Nortel, and I kind of designed,
00:15:03.520 I was part of the team that designed the Sonnet networks,
00:15:06.060 the optical networks for, you know, a bunch of companies
00:15:09.420 that you wouldn't remember, but they all went bankrupt by now.
00:15:14.540 So I had this telecom background.
00:15:16.000 I always had this affinity for VoIP and telecom and communication.
00:15:22.380 So that was kind of an interesting,
00:15:25.180 I kind of lost my train of thought there.
00:15:27.100 With the telcos, how do you negotiate with telcos?
00:15:29.120 Oh, so as part of, so you rent your numbers,
00:15:33.160 and then when you want to make a phone call,
00:15:35.040 you actually have to decide where you're going to route it.
00:15:38.220 It's actually complex, like all these Roman agreements.
00:15:41.440 Because are they all running on top of each other?
00:15:43.000 Well, if you think of, let's say, Bell.
00:15:44.460 Like, you're a Bell customer.
00:15:45.800 You have a Bell cell phone.
00:15:47.420 You call someone in Amsterdam, as an example.
00:15:51.480 Well, they have rates that they've negotiated with the carrier in Amsterdam, right?
00:15:56.120 And Bell has a rate that they negotiate with the carrier that's different than Rogers would have with that carrier.
00:16:00.980 Right.
00:16:01.540 OK.
00:16:01.940 And they would have a rate negotiated with you, as an example.
00:16:05.160 Based on my plan.
00:16:05.880 Right.
00:16:06.120 So you would then make your call to Amsterdam,
00:16:09.360 and it would go to the switch.
00:16:10.740 And when it gets to the switch in Amsterdam,
00:16:12.660 the billing starts for that call for Bell.
00:16:16.920 And Bell will charge.
00:16:18.420 That carrier will charge Bell.
00:16:19.740 Bell will charge you.
00:16:20.980 And they have these roaming agreements around the world.
00:16:23.100 In the case of VoIP, it's very similar.
00:16:25.420 Is it termination?
00:16:26.320 Is that why?
00:16:26.820 It's called termination, right?
00:16:28.640 And in the case of Clarity, when you're setting up calls,
00:16:31.220 and maybe there's a phone cost, right?
00:16:33.920 Yeah.
00:16:34.720 So we quickly, that became very cost prohibitive for us.
00:16:39.380 Because you were doing free.
00:16:40.500 Well, we were doing some free, but our volumes were really
00:16:43.180 high, and so we had some leverage.
00:16:45.200 And so about three years, four years ago,
00:16:47.180 we built an LCR, which is a least cost routing table.
00:16:51.440 And essentially, what that means is we can then
00:16:53.980 go and get void termination.
00:16:54.760 You built that for yourself?
00:16:56.580 Yeah, we built it ourselves.
00:16:57.660 You negotiated those.
00:16:59.800 Well, we built this, call it routing table,
00:17:02.920 And then we basically got all these different wholesalers
00:17:06.400 that have termination rates.
00:17:08.380 We ingest them into our system.
00:17:10.420 And then when you make a call, and let's say you
00:17:12.580 buy an international number with us,
00:17:14.860 or you want to make an international call,
00:17:16.400 we will decide which carrier is the cheapest
00:17:19.720 so we minimize the cost.
00:17:22.720 We're getting nerdy, but who cares?
00:17:24.420 I love this.
00:17:27.460 Is there an underlying protocol that's
00:17:30.100 not connected to the phone number?
00:17:32.460 How does it do that termination, regardless of the number?
00:17:35.300 Like, if the carrier doesn't own the number,
00:17:37.780 then is it like, is there a different endpoint?
00:17:40.340 Yeah, it's using SIP.
00:17:42.020 And SIP, is it like an IP concept, or?
00:17:44.740 Yeah, SIP is how you're going to communicate with,
00:17:48.220 let's say, that third party.
00:17:49.600 So that wholesaler has a SIP?
00:17:51.840 He has a SIP infrastructure.
00:17:53.320 Got it.
00:17:53.880 And you're basically going to SIP in and SIP out.
00:17:55.860 And everybody agrees that this is how we do it,
00:17:58.400 regardless of where the number comes from.
00:17:59.820 Yeah, and you know.
00:18:00.760 The number is like the domain.
00:18:03.460 Well, the number is, say, owned by Twilio or Bandwidth
00:18:07.300 or whoever.
00:18:07.900 You rent it.
00:18:08.560 You rent it from them.
00:18:10.060 And then if you want to do term or termination,
00:18:12.700 you can then sip out.
00:18:14.860 Using SIP, you will then essentially
00:18:17.520 sip out to the infrastructure.
00:18:18.700 Got it.
00:18:19.200 You'll pay Twilio a sip out fee.
00:18:20.860 Yeah.
00:18:21.460 And you'll pay, you know, there's fees.
00:18:23.500 Like, there's nothing for free because now you're
00:18:26.480 reducing your cost rate by going outside of, let's say,
00:18:30.040 the Twilio cloud.
00:18:31.000 Got it.
00:18:31.540 Right.
00:18:32.040 Interesting.
00:18:32.620 So you renegotiate.
00:18:34.800 I mean, is there a big cost saving?
00:18:37.600 I mean, our VoIP costs are in the millions.
00:18:41.560 Yeah.
00:18:41.720 So I mean, it's at a point where we
00:18:43.960 But when you do it yourself versus using Twilio,
00:18:46.540 are we talking 30% cheaper, half?
00:18:50.540 I mean, I think it will really depend on the volume.
00:18:55.040 And the situation.
00:18:55.700 And the situation.
00:18:56.680 In fact, we use Twilio for a certain part of our products
00:18:59.380 That still makes sense, yeah.
00:19:00.880 You know, we actually use their client.
00:19:02.700 It's quite good.
00:19:03.940 It's very strong.
00:19:04.880 We're happy to use it.
00:19:06.280 And we use some, you know, we sometimes get numbers from them.
00:19:09.520 But we also have now infrastructure.
00:19:11.560 Like, we work directly with a carrier in the UK.
00:19:14.600 You know, I talk to the CEO directly.
00:19:17.020 And he gives us, allocates numbers in the UK.
00:19:19.320 So we can now offer, you know, unlimited UK mobile numbers.
00:19:22.360 I just find it fascinating because, like,
00:19:23.580 I was listening to Rework podcast, 37 Signals.
00:19:27.800 And they were talking about their infrastructure costs.
00:19:30.420 And I think that's happening more and more today
00:19:32.160 where founders are paying for the Amazon web services
00:19:35.420 or whatever.
00:19:36.040 And it's like they don't ever think of just looking at it.
00:19:39.500 And I think in 37 Signals case, they 0.99
00:19:42.120 talked about it was like a $2 million a year, maybe $6 million.
00:19:45.860 It was millions.
00:19:46.700 And they saved 20% by just analyzing it
00:19:51.780 and restructuring different parts of their code
00:19:54.200 and all this stuff.
00:19:55.760 And I just find that fascinating that that's free money.
00:19:59.760 Yeah, like if I give you a hard number,
00:20:01.460 it's probably between 25% and 30% that we would save.
00:20:05.000 You can just get back, hit the bottom line.
00:20:06.920 Yeah, and in our case, we're growing,
00:20:10.960 so we get the savings, but our bill kind of stays the same
00:20:14.960 because it's growing every month.
00:20:16.940 So they're happy, right?
00:20:17.820 And so fast forward, we built this product.
00:20:22.940 We've got a ton of users on the platform.
00:20:25.580 I mean, I think we're close to about 400,000 monthly active users, of which 65% of them are paying customers.
00:20:31.800 In our business, you can, you know, log out, log back into the application.
00:20:36.560 You can delete it, come back in.
00:20:37.880 So we have lots of customers that basically have it, install it, reinstall it whenever they need it.
00:20:43.900 You know, so that's, you know, that's cool.
00:20:46.620 When we, you know, in terms of, you know, we should talk about pay-per-click a little bit about Apple and Google and how that works in our world.
00:20:55.580 So, you know, Google's done a very good job.
00:20:59.000 They've moved away from, you know, from mobile products.
00:21:02.380 You can no longer do keyword buys.
00:21:04.500 You can only do it on desktop.
00:21:06.220 Really?
00:21:06.600 They don't allow you to do it in the app store for mobile searches?
00:21:09.380 You can't select keywords anymore unless you're driving traffic to a desktop page.
00:21:15.160 What they have is something called universal ad campaigns.
00:21:17.940 Okay.
00:21:18.240 And essentially, you know, you give them a budget and you upload some creative.
00:21:22.220 And then their data algorithms optimize the spend.
00:21:27.220 And they will go out and try to find customers.
00:21:30.860 Now, what's interesting about Google is
00:21:33.080 Do you give them like a conversion pixel
00:21:34.820 to go pattern match against?
00:21:36.220 Like, how do they know what a good customer looks like?
00:21:38.600 We don't trust any of the advertisers.
00:21:43.120 So we use a third party attribution tool,
00:21:46.400 which basically we use Adjust.
00:21:48.500 And Adjust lets us, they've got a very good technology
00:21:51.440 that uses some kind of machine learning that essentially
00:21:54.860 determines.
00:21:55.400 There's a lot of fraud, man, in clicks.
00:21:57.740 There's a lot of fraud, for sure.
00:21:59.200 And I think in the case of, I would say,
00:22:02.240 probably less so when it relates to app store, like apps.
00:22:06.680 Yeah, definitely on display.
00:22:08.380 In display, yeah, I would say it's.
00:22:10.220 My buddy Matt said that it could be like 20% to 30%.
00:22:13.340 Yeah. 0.97
00:22:13.760 And Google doesn't give a crap because they're just 0.97
00:22:15.620 passing that along to you, like bots just. 0.89
00:22:18.440 Yeah, like it is definitely a bit of a problem, you know,
00:22:23.240 and with universal ad campaigns, you're picking keywords.
00:22:27.160 Actually, sorry, you're not picking keywords.
00:22:29.080 Just creative.
00:22:30.380 Creative budget.
00:22:31.300 Find me some customers.
00:22:32.080 Find me some customers.
00:22:33.160 Heat seeker. 0.72
00:22:33.740 Yeah, and the way we look at our business is we look at kind of ROAS, right?
00:22:38.060 Return on ad spend.
00:22:39.560 As you should.
00:22:40.180 If people don't use ROAS, I don't understand how you guys are running marketing campaigns.
00:22:44.100 Yeah, so we look at, so this attribution platform has enabled us to pull, you know, we look cohort by cohort.
00:22:50.820 We look at ROAS, and if we can get to 30% in like the first week, meaning for every dollar we spend, we get 30 cents back.
00:22:58.260 That's fair.
00:22:58.800 We're going to break even on that cohort within five months.
00:23:01.640 Yeah.
00:23:02.180 And it's been, you know.
00:23:03.680 So you know how the LTV play outs over time, so you look at that 30% in the first week.
00:23:08.160 Yeah, except the challenge, as I mentioned to you, you have lots of customers who delete the app.
00:23:13.200 Yeah.
00:23:13.700 So it's very difficult to kind of re-sync those users.
00:23:18.140 So we actually think what we're reporting
00:23:20.220 is lower than probably what it is.
00:23:22.460 So we break even, let's say, in six months on our spend.
00:23:26.000 But it's probably even less, right?
00:23:27.820 Because we can't track those people who uninstall.
00:23:30.420 This is where people, I think it was Uber,
00:23:32.680 got in trouble with using the device identifier
00:23:37.000 to try to be sneaky about this.
00:23:38.380 Yeah.
00:23:38.880 It's essentially identifying who the person is,
00:23:41.300 even if they reinstall the app.
00:23:42.560 I think there was like a way to, not that you guys do this,
00:23:45.200 but I know some people, like, I think
00:23:47.040 a lot of the analytics companies are like, OK,
00:23:48.800 well, if it's this Wi-Fi connection and this UUID
00:23:52.800 of the device, then we can assume it's the same person
00:23:55.200 because we've seen this person before kind of thing.
00:23:57.260 It's interesting.
00:23:58.140 I think Adjust.
00:23:58.760 It's against terms of service, I think.
00:24:00.420 Yeah, I don't know how Adjust does it.
00:24:02.640 Yeah.
00:24:02.900 But they've been around.
00:24:04.620 Like, there's a couple of big ones.
00:24:05.800 Like, I think it's AppsFlyer and Adjust.
00:24:07.700 Yeah.
00:24:08.120 And they have their kind of secret sauce.
00:24:11.400 And we think it's generally accurate to like 80%.
00:24:15.060 Perfect.
00:24:15.700 But it's good enough.
00:24:16.880 So then you use that to make sure that your campaigns are.
00:24:20.720 So with Google, you literally say, I want to spend $1,000 a day.
00:24:25.220 Yeah.
00:24:25.580 And you just go.
00:24:26.860 And then you need to watch it over time to see if that 1,000 from three weeks ago produced the kind of yield.
00:24:32.200 Yeah, and Google only deprecated search for mobile,
00:24:40.400 I think, a year ago.
00:24:41.640 OK.
00:24:42.020 So this is fairly new.
00:24:43.440 And their algorithms are getting better.
00:24:45.200 So we're seeing a more improved ROAS every single.
00:24:50.500 Letting the algorithms do their job.
00:24:52.100 Yeah.
00:24:52.600 That's awesome.
00:24:53.140 And they have a lot of data.
00:24:53.880 So remember, they also have all the apps.
00:24:56.080 So they can determine.
00:24:57.040 They know.
00:24:57.360 What do you look like?
00:24:58.100 They can actually determine.
00:24:59.700 Like if somebody downloads a competitor application
00:25:02.760 and purchases something, they know who that person is.
00:25:05.940 They can retarget to that person.
00:25:07.380 They can say, OK, this person also did these searches.
00:25:10.160 I get a lot of, like on my, you know,
00:25:12.220 I'm currently running a Pixel 4.
00:25:15.760 So I moved away from Apple just because, you know,
00:25:20.180 they haven't evolved their platform, a bunch of reasons.
00:25:22.280 But Google, in my opinion, is a far superior platform right now.
00:25:25.640 Hardware or software?
00:25:27.300 Software.
00:25:28.020 OK, wow.
00:25:28.860 Yeah, in my opinion.
00:25:30.080 OK, that's good.
00:25:31.380 So I've been using our app in the App Store,
00:25:34.800 and I see lots of other competing applications
00:25:39.480 that I've never downloaded, but they just know.
00:25:43.440 And so that's cool.
00:25:45.460 How critical was it to get your paid acquisition right
00:25:49.200 for you to scale?
00:25:51.600 We did it later on.
00:25:53.340 But I mean, because I think you guys got your first.
00:25:56.100 You had good reviews.
00:25:56.980 you're ranking well in the App Store,
00:25:58.900 so it was less important at first.
00:26:00.240 But then, yeah, we didn't actually do any ad buys
00:26:03.740 until Apple forced us to do ad buys.
00:26:07.000 Talk about that.
00:26:07.780 And the way they forced us to do ad buys
00:26:09.280 is they opened up their ad platform.
00:26:10.960 And so we had no choice to start running ads.
00:26:13.900 And we would have to run.
00:26:14.560 Is that why they delisted that gross revenue leaderboard,
00:26:19.600 do you think?
00:26:20.180 I don't know.
00:26:21.280 I mean, they offered.
00:26:22.320 When you say force, why was it forced?
00:26:24.400 Well, not forced.
00:26:25.300 I mean, that's a strong word.
00:26:26.680 But if other people are using it and you're not.
00:26:28.060 Basically, imagine you're in this ecosystem.
00:26:31.100 It's very closed.
00:26:32.560 You are ranking well.
00:26:33.940 And then all of a sudden, your competitors
00:26:35.620 can now buy keywords.
00:26:36.760 Yeah, I got it.
00:26:37.400 Now, back at the time, we were able to enforce
00:26:41.300 our own trademarks.
00:26:42.360 OK.
00:26:42.860 Not anymore.
00:26:43.680 So they'll let their competitor run ads against your name.
00:26:47.060 Yeah.
00:26:47.560 So back in the day, when you would upload your app
00:26:52.700 to the app store, you could select a bunch of keywords.
00:26:55.960 And those keywords would rank.
00:26:57.120 So if I typed in a specific keyword,
00:26:59.080 and our competitors would type in Hushed.
00:27:00.940 So I would just go to the App Store, type in Hushed,
00:27:03.040 and I'd see all the competing apps.
00:27:04.820 And then I would write, file a complaint,
00:27:07.020 and Apple would turn these guys off.
00:27:10.580 They would force them to remove the trademark
00:27:12.500 because it's our brand.
00:27:14.960 And that was awesome, right, where they were enforcing that.
00:27:18.140 And now once they've opened the App Store, they've said no.
00:27:21.900 You know, you can't, of course,
00:27:23.800 you can't have the word Hushed in your creative,
00:27:25.960 but you can now buy keywords against it.
00:27:28.240 So we have to now spend, I don't know,
00:27:31.480 thousands of dollars a month protecting our brand, right?
00:27:34.900 So we're buying keywords, just hush branded keywords
00:27:37.780 in the app store.
00:27:38.720 Does Apple or does Google let you fight against people using?
00:27:44.140 Google, you can't buy keywords.
00:27:47.380 OK.
00:27:47.680 So, you know, it's-
00:27:49.280 They don't let you do keywords even for desktop?
00:27:51.040 For desktop, you can.
00:27:52.200 OK.
00:27:52.700 Can somebody, but yeah, people run ads
00:27:55.300 against competitor names all the time.
00:27:56.980 Yeah, I mean, for sure.
00:27:58.180 High intent.
00:27:59.120 Yeah.
00:28:00.020 So you can't protect against that.
00:28:01.860 You know, it is kind of like this.
00:28:04.060 Who wants to pay more? 1.00
00:28:05.560 Well, we're all bidding against ourselves, right?
00:28:07.920 To keep, especially if you build a brand.
00:28:10.280 So Hushed is now a known brand.
00:28:12.960 People Google it.
00:28:14.060 If you type in, we have a really good SEO strategy.
00:28:16.620 So if you Google like, hide my number,
00:28:18.940 you'll find that we're probably ranked in the top.
00:28:20.960 When did that priority come into play for you?
00:28:23.260 For SEO or SEO.
00:28:26.280 Was it before paid?
00:28:27.380 No.
00:28:27.900 SEO came in more aggressively probably two years ago.
00:28:31.900 OK.
00:28:32.160 So once you realize it's like we're spending a lot of money
00:28:34.180 for these keywords or these kind of terms-ish,
00:28:37.760 maybe if we invest the time on SEO,
00:28:39.880 then we can transitional kind of.
00:28:42.800 Yeah.
00:28:43.220 And SEO has been a great, it's been amazing for us.
00:28:46.940 Yeah.
00:28:47.160 And Google really loves us that way.
00:28:49.660 Yeah.
00:28:49.880 And a part of that is lots of backlinks,
00:28:51.620 been around for a long time.
00:28:52.800 Yeah, you've got domain, you know, we've got there's there's some credibility there.
00:28:56.880 Yeah.
00:28:57.280 And they for sure will start looking at rankings and all that other stuff, you know, in their algorithms.
00:29:03.280 So, you know, fast forward, we start advertising and, you know, it's it's not a huge I mean, it's a decent size spend.
00:29:11.360 But our you know, we've been fortunate that we built this good brand.
00:29:15.520 But what we're doing that's working really well is we're working with partners.
00:29:18.720 So partners where we offer like a lifetime number.
00:29:22.800 So if you want, if you go to Groupon, you can buy a hushed number, and it's a lifetime number.
00:29:28.400 And, you know, essentially you'll get, this number will never expire as long as you use it once every six months.
00:29:35.220 And you're saying partner is in Groupon sells it for you?
00:29:39.300 Yeah, like it's internally, or how does, when you say partner, somebody else is selling these numbers for you?
00:29:44.360 Yeah, like we built a system where if you wanted to offer, if Groupon is actually reselling our numbers on their store.
00:29:51.420 Okay.
00:29:51.780 OK, so behind the scenes for their merchants that
00:29:54.060 want to do a Groupon that need a number,
00:29:55.840 they may not want to use their primary number.
00:29:58.720 Just think of it as like we have the brand,
00:30:01.380 people type in hushed coupon, and they may find Groupon.
00:30:05.500 Got it.
00:30:06.360 And they can redeem.
00:30:08.160 And then obviously, they have their own infrastructure
00:30:10.260 and way of advertising that promotion because they make money.
00:30:13.380 OK, so it's just normal Groupon, but it's for your product.
00:30:15.780 What other partners would you like?
00:30:17.540 How does the partner strategy work in your?
00:30:19.680 So we're trying to go after kind of tech-related blogs.
00:30:22.920 And essentially, we have different creative.
00:30:25.680 But the one that seems to be working well
00:30:27.360 is this concept of a lifetime number.
00:30:29.700 And that lifetime number, you can get usage.
00:30:32.260 You can keep it as long as you use it.
00:30:33.720 So when you say a partner, they become like an affiliate for you?
00:30:35.860 Affiliate, yeah.
00:30:36.720 Yeah, that's powerful.
00:30:38.400 It can be, yeah.
00:30:39.660 And we've got some good relationships,
00:30:42.540 and ZDNet, and some big publishers.
00:30:45.420 ZDNet, man, that's awesome.
00:30:46.560 Yeah, they're still around.
00:30:47.540 Yeah.
00:30:48.200 So there's a whole strategy, and we
00:30:50.500 want to build out that even further.
00:30:52.720 So where we are right now as a business
00:30:54.660 is we've built this very strong consumer product.
00:30:59.380 We have lots of consumers on it, but we also
00:31:02.060 have small business.
00:31:04.020 So we're in kind of end of Q1, we'll
00:31:06.860 be launching kind of an IVR-capable solution
00:31:11.000 in the product, which enables us, you know.
00:31:14.820 IVR is a voice.
00:31:16.540 It's interactive voice response, which is a really bad.
00:31:19.420 We're trying to not use those words.
00:31:21.160 In fact, I should recalibrate and say,
00:31:24.520 we're building a system that will allow for people who wish
00:31:28.000 to set up teams and invite other users to Hushed
00:31:31.000 in their organization, where they can essentially
00:31:34.320 manage a single billing, manage their number,
00:31:37.700 do call forwarding.
00:31:40.000 Normal phone needs of a small business.
00:31:42.940 Exactly.
00:31:43.720 Everybody could bring their own device.
00:31:45.460 They install your app, but then all of a sudden,
00:31:47.480 there's extensions that one primary number they call,
00:31:51.280 and then you can route it to your different.
00:31:52.820 Yeah, and then we're rolling in those capabilities.
00:31:55.400 And then we'll be launching a new brand that
00:31:58.700 will be solely focused.
00:31:59.780 For the business, the SMB space.
00:32:01.740 Exactly.
00:32:02.400 Yeah.
00:32:03.900 And I think if you look at the size of our category,
00:32:07.660 I don't know what the number is in the US.
00:32:09.920 Let's say it's a couple hundred million dollars
00:32:12.340 in terms of privacy.
00:32:13.240 Now, I think that is on the come.
00:32:14.680 Like, it seems to be growing significantly.
00:32:18.400 But if you look at, call it the SMB, kind of virtual phone.
00:32:22.660 Oh, this is the grasshopper space.
00:32:24.400 Exactly.
00:32:25.240 And they do such a, those guys do such a horrible job.
00:32:30.340 They're not coming from a mobile side of things.
00:32:33.520 You know, a lot of those guys traditionally built a website.
00:32:37.300 And we're actually launching a mobile first product, right?
00:32:42.040 So if you want to set up your organization
00:32:43.500 from your cell phone, you can do that very quickly.
00:32:45.640 Wow.
00:32:46.140 You install the app and you can get it all done from your mobile?
00:32:48.580 Yeah.
00:32:49.080 No desktop.
00:32:49.980 No desktop.
00:32:50.680 And we'll have a desktop client where you can at least send
00:32:54.580 and receive text messages and make phone calls.
00:32:57.060 But for the most part, but we're really
00:32:59.000 taking kind of a mobile-first approach.
00:33:02.380 Because I think that's obviously the future.
00:33:04.240 And as it relates, and we'll be able to kind of lower
00:33:08.200 those traditional VoIP costs by probably 50%.
00:33:13.680 What, when you look at the history of the business,
00:33:18.000 what are some of those moments of company killing
00:33:23.320 that almost took you out?
00:33:25.840 What are some of the hardest times, Justin,
00:33:27.880 when you look at that you obviously share?
00:33:30.960 Yeah, I mean, the hardest time for the company
00:33:34.760 was at the beginning, where we basically were in a pivot.
00:33:39.200 We had to pivot.
00:33:40.160 And we didn't just like, I don't even
00:33:42.320 know if the term pivot is the right term.
00:33:43.880 We had to basically restart.
00:33:46.200 And that was spending $900,000.
00:33:49.000 Yeah, after spending most of our money.
00:33:51.200 And basically, I remember saying to my CTO, I said, look,
00:33:55.300 if we don't actually figure out a product where
00:33:58.000 we can make money, I can't even afford to send you
00:34:00.800 back to Germany, you know what I mean? 0.96
00:34:03.920 So it was like, it was, it was, it was, it was, you know, a really trying time.
00:34:10.840 And it was actually probably pretty unhealthy too, because I mean, it was fun, but it was
00:34:15.860 stressful and fairly unhealthy.
00:34:18.660 How'd you get through that?
00:34:20.880 You know, we basically fear, right?
00:34:23.520 We basically had to hunker down.
00:34:25.200 We came up with this, this idea and we'd launched now if I, we kind of joke about this today.
00:34:30.980 if I wanted to launch another version of our product,
00:34:34.020 there's like my CTO launched this essentially
00:34:37.460 with one other developer in three months.
00:34:40.600 If I put him in a room today and say, do this,
00:34:43.680 there's no way he could have done it.
00:34:45.460 So at the time we launched, it was an OK product.
00:34:49.480 But I remember for probably two years straight
00:34:52.780 after launching the iOS version, we basically
00:34:55.860 just pushed release after release after release.
00:34:57.780 Trying to fix stuff?
00:34:59.480 Fix stuff, improve stuff, improve stuff.
00:35:02.240 Like every month, if you go to like App Annie and look at releases,
00:35:07.500 you'll see that the first three years, there were like releases, release, release, release.
00:35:12.000 And now we do, you know, probably one major release a year.
00:35:15.880 And we kind of talk about it in the office.
00:35:18.220 And it's like, how do we kind of accelerate the velocity of, you know, how quickly we can ship product?
00:35:23.720 And we are even now going through a multi-month, almost a year refactor of all this code that we did six, seven years ago.
00:35:35.340 Paying down some code debt.
00:35:36.300 So yeah, this year we've been paying down the code debt and basically getting the platform ready for kind of the next iteration.
00:35:45.080 And so that was a very hard time in our lives, for sure.
00:35:50.280 And luckily, what was interesting about this business
00:35:53.360 is when we launched it, we were making money the first day.
00:35:57.340 And it's like, oh, this is cool.
00:35:58.780 We made a couple thousand bucks.
00:35:59.660 Wow, this is cool, yeah, making money.
00:36:01.280 And then every day was kind of going up a little bit.
00:36:04.240 And every month, we basically just beat the previous month, right?
00:36:07.880 And we had first mover advantage.
00:36:11.720 We were lucky because we were one of the first guys out there.
00:36:15.460 We were in the hands.
00:36:16.520 And then we just kept on building and iterating off
00:36:19.460 of that platform over the last year, last years.
00:36:23.240 Now we're at a stage where we're like, OK, refactoring
00:36:26.840 and re-optimize all the spend.
00:36:28.860 So we've spent the last year, year and a half,
00:36:31.880 looking at our costs and looking at,
00:36:35.000 and we didn't care about that at the time.
00:36:36.680 We were looking at growth, market share.
00:36:40.080 Now we're looking at the cost.
00:36:41.300 We've gone through this whole refactoring aspect, which is
00:36:44.580 good because now this platform is really in a position
00:36:49.860 where I think we're going to be able to ship a lot more
00:36:51.720 product.
00:36:52.180 So we'll probably go from one major release to maybe two,
00:36:56.040 maybe even possibly three releases a year.
00:37:00.120 And we are kind of moving into some new areas
00:37:04.020 for that product.
00:37:05.760 Can't really get into detail, but one of the areas
00:37:08.760 that we're moving into is an area that I think when you see it,
00:37:15.420 you'll be like, oh, this makes a lot of sense.
00:37:17.460 And it's a new up and coming area in the kind of cell phone
00:37:21.720 data space that I think will be very interesting for Hushed.
00:37:26.700 And we will be looking to launch a SMB product as well.
00:37:32.540 Can't really get into the specifics and timing,
00:37:34.500 but we've been working on it.
00:37:36.600 And then part of this refactoring
00:37:38.160 is we're going to use this platform that we built.
00:37:40.360 And we're still using Twilio.
00:37:44.020 They've been a great partner.
00:37:45.300 And they've been very good to us.
00:37:48.840 But we've now learned a lot.
00:37:50.260 We've got multiple carriers.
00:37:51.840 We've got our routing tables.
00:37:53.400 Was this your first, is Finity Click the first business?
00:37:57.840 Because I know you worked at Nortel.
00:38:01.200 Was this the first business business?
00:38:03.120 No.
00:38:04.260 So I graduated from Nortel.
00:38:06.240 I worked there all through high school and university.
00:38:09.660 I worked at Nortel in kind of the physics department.
00:38:13.240 And it was kind of crazy times.
00:38:15.900 And then when I graduated from engineering,
00:38:17.640 I worked there for about a year and a half.
00:38:19.600 And then I quit to start a company.
00:38:23.400 And that company basically was a company called SiteBrand.
00:38:27.240 And you may or may not have ever heard of it,
00:38:29.220 but I grew that probably to about 45 people.
00:38:33.000 We took it public in 2008.
00:38:35.480 Wow.
00:38:35.920 In 2007, somewhere in that range.
00:38:38.180 And we took it public because we couldn't actually.
00:38:40.220 Like in Toronto Stock Exchange?
00:38:41.700 Yeah, on the TSX.
00:38:43.180 We took it public.
00:38:45.000 In hindsight, it was a mistake, but we couldn't get access to capital.
00:38:49.040 It was Canada.
00:38:49.600 Yeah, it was a very tough market.
00:38:53.060 And that platform was a web personalization platform.
00:38:56.800 So basically, we had companies like Roots.
00:39:01.380 We had companies like, I can't even remember the names, but we had some.
00:39:04.580 So what would it do?
00:39:05.120 it just like allowed you to like save like shopping cart?
00:39:07.780 No, no.
00:39:08.440 So what, so Roots, you'd install this kind of JavaScript on their website.
00:39:12.060 This is before mobile.
00:39:13.460 And we would identify, hey, this person's from the US.
00:39:16.160 So we're going to swap out content and target that website for US visitors only.
00:39:22.000 Got it.
00:39:22.180 So we can A-B test and you can figure out what the lift is when you're presenting.
00:39:25.960 So it's a personalization platform that was built in 2000.
00:39:29.140 And frankly, if you look at our competitors were Omniture, Website Story.
00:39:33.680 I mean, I don't know if you remember these companies.
00:39:34.980 Yeah, yeah.
00:39:35.820 And they were big, big organizations.
00:39:38.920 And it was a good business.
00:39:41.880 We ended up, because it was public,
00:39:43.740 we ended up selling the asset to a local company.
00:39:48.960 And then we sold the public shell,
00:39:51.860 because we essentially, the business
00:39:54.240 didn't make sense anymore.
00:39:55.840 Back in 2008, it was very interesting times.
00:39:59.160 Our customer was the marketer.
00:40:01.420 And we would call our customers, and they wouldn't even
00:40:04.140 be there.
00:40:04.640 No.
00:40:05.060 They would be like, I lost my job.
00:40:07.680 I don't know who's going to pay this bill.
00:40:09.020 Yeah.
00:40:09.700 So we kind of ran it for a couple more years.
00:40:13.380 I was not, I kind of left at that time.
00:40:15.580 But you got experience in dealing with chaos.
00:40:20.820 Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:40:22.260 So by the time I was like 28, I had taken this thing public,
00:40:26.040 probably raised like $10 million.
00:40:27.760 That's cool.
00:40:28.060 And I said, OK, I don't want to do any of that stuff.
00:40:30.300 In this next business, I'm not doing any of that.
00:40:33.300 Because you guys have been revenue generating.
00:40:34.680 Have you raised capital so far?
00:40:36.240 No.
00:40:36.780 OK, so you still control, don't have to deal.
00:40:39.120 Do you have a board?
00:40:40.740 Yeah, I mean, we've got a few people on the board.
00:40:42.600 OK, but not like.
00:40:43.660 Yeah, like it's not.
00:40:44.620 It's not formal.
00:40:45.480 We don't have.
00:40:46.980 Yeah, it's not like running a public company, that's for sure.
00:40:51.300 And so for me, that enables us to just focus
00:40:53.880 on building the business, right?
00:40:55.640 That's what I want to do.
00:40:56.880 And I find that when you're a small startup
00:40:58.820 and you take venture capital, you
00:41:02.380 spend a lot of time dealing with the VCs and not enough time.
00:41:06.060 Just board management, just investment management.
00:41:08.440 And so it's good if you have the right people.
00:41:10.820 And we had great people, but it was like they're only
00:41:16.180 involved every quarter.
00:41:18.140 You're involved every day.
00:41:19.880 And when you're at the infancy of trying to build this thing
00:41:23.940 and it's going sideways, it's tough
00:41:25.700 to get input from people who aren't really
00:41:27.440 running your business.
00:41:29.120 Justin, when you look at last decade of entrepreneurship
00:41:33.120 for you, anything on a personal level,
00:41:36.680 like from a character point of view,
00:41:38.100 who have you had to become to continue leading the company
00:41:41.200 today and going forward?
00:41:43.740 I think when I had started, I had people working for me
00:41:47.340 that were twice my age.
00:41:49.000 And I think I probably was a bit more cocky, edgy.
00:41:53.700 And I think as I have grown, one of the things
00:41:57.300 that I had to change was essentially empathy,
00:42:01.800 understanding your people.
00:42:03.440 And these are the core assets of your business
00:42:06.840 is the people that work for you.
00:42:08.160 Why was that important?
00:42:09.660 Well, I think it's important because if you
00:42:11.400 want people to kind of believe in the dream,
00:42:13.380 you have to respect their ideas.
00:42:15.360 Like I'm human like the rest of them.
00:42:18.300 I can't always be right.
00:42:19.780 In fact, I would prefer not to make the decision.
00:42:21.880 I'd like to make the decision as a group.
00:42:23.840 These are things that I kind of employed over the years
00:42:26.400 because I think it's very challenging.
00:42:27.900 Sometimes if I have to make the final decision, I'll make it.
00:42:30.620 But I'd like to try to include more people.
00:42:33.060 Scales.
00:42:33.700 It scales, yeah.
00:42:34.980 I mean, it's less work.
00:42:36.280 It's funny.
00:42:36.920 In the early days, we don't mind working the 16-hour days
00:42:39.980 and being the person that calls the shots.
00:42:42.460 And at scale, it's like, oh, that's a lot of work.
00:42:45.140 It's tiring.
00:42:46.340 Super tiring.
00:42:47.380 And when you go home, you still think about it, right?
00:42:51.640 And the idea is if you can get more of your people to think about it,
00:42:54.880 you know you can take less of that risk you know that risk off the table because you've got more
00:43:00.920 people worried about the same issues so in in keeping them and so the other thing is we're
00:43:05.560 very transparent with our like you know we do monthly meetings and we're very transparent on
00:43:10.800 the business so everybody knows what's up yeah whereas probably in my previous business we'll
00:43:15.820 keep things close to the chest yeah we just keep things close and and you know for what reason i
00:43:19.760 don't know so having a bit more being more public with the team and understand hey this is what
00:43:24.660 we're doing.
00:43:25.160 What have you learned?
00:43:26.420 What's the benefit of doing that?
00:43:28.900 You get, you learn, you earn the trust of your team.
00:43:33.240 I think that's critical.
00:43:35.760 You know, people believe, you know,
00:43:37.380 if you're a bit, if you're more open with the business,
00:43:40.600 I think people will respect you more.
00:43:42.540 And I think they're going to believe
00:43:43.860 in what it is you're trying to do.
00:43:45.740 Whereas if you don't, you know, you
00:43:48.340 just have people that come to work,
00:43:50.060 but not really have a purpose.
00:43:51.440 They're not, they're not connected.
00:43:52.800 They're not bought in.
00:43:54.340 Yeah, yeah.
00:43:55.300 I mean, I think that was a pretty good learning experience for me.
00:43:59.440 The other thing is, you know, the distraction, like we don't, I don't spend any time, you know, we get lots of calls and people interested in maybe looking at, call it M&A opportunities or partnerships.
00:44:15.800 And, you know, from my perspective, we're just building the business.
00:44:19.680 And I don't want to waste a lot of time having those conversations.
00:44:23.300 And I think in my previous life, if someone called me,
00:44:26.780 you would have took it.
00:44:27.480 I would have took it because I was just-
00:44:29.140 Tell me how pretty you think I am.
00:44:30.240 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:44:31.140 Now I don't necessarily care.
00:44:33.420 And, you know, because I know that if we build a great product that's world class,
00:44:37.180 you know-
00:44:37.640 Opportunities will come.
00:44:38.700 Opportunities will come and there'll be the right opportunities.
00:44:41.360 And, you know, we're not-
00:44:42.660 Less distractions.
00:44:43.560 Yeah.
00:44:43.820 And we don't have a burning, you know, fuse at the other end where we've got to like,
00:44:47.360 oh my God, make a decision.
00:44:49.080 There's no decision to make other than, okay, what's the next release going to look like
00:44:52.160 and why?
00:44:53.300 So I think that's been a very good experience.
00:44:57.440 I mean, I've been blessed because I think as an entrepreneur,
00:45:04.760 when you launch your business, my only advice would be
00:45:08.900 you need to keep your head down and you need to just believe
00:45:11.180 in what it is you're doing, even if others don't.
00:45:15.060 But at some point, you have to decide that critical point,
00:45:18.260 is this actually going to work?
00:45:19.460 Because the time you waste trying to convince yourself
00:45:22.380 that this business is going to work
00:45:24.000 is time that you're losing against another opportunity.
00:45:27.340 And so for me, when we did that pivot years ago,
00:45:31.380 we did it because we had no choice.
00:45:33.720 But it was a very tough decision because we invested so much
00:45:36.660 money on this platform.
00:45:37.800 In fact, we kind of joke about it where we're thinking, hey,
00:45:40.320 we should bring that platform back.
00:45:42.900 We still have all the GitHub repositories and whatnot.
00:45:46.740 So I think it's important that as an entrepreneur,
00:45:51.760 you really believe in what it is that you're trying to do,
00:45:54.360 but also, you know, understand that it's okay to change.
00:45:58.100 And in our case, we iterated our platform, like, all the time.
00:46:02.700 Like, there was never a time where we didn't, like, okay, how do we improve this?
00:46:06.080 How do we improve this?
00:46:06.660 We didn't stop.
00:46:07.840 And it actually, you know, we've reduced those releases now,
00:46:12.620 which for me is frustrating because I know that there's so many other new things I want to do.
00:46:17.420 But, you know, we're a bigger company now, right?
00:46:19.900 We're, you know, we've got more people, bigger development, you know, we've scaling issues now.
00:46:24.840 Now my big challenge is how do I actually scale my team so that they're as productive when we were, you know, 15 people going to, say, 50 people, right?
00:46:34.520 And so I'm learning, you know, I'm learning those challenges.
00:46:38.380 That's super cool.
00:46:39.200 Yeah.
00:46:39.440 Justin, I know this is one of the first few interviews that you've done.
00:46:44.060 And I just want to tell you how much I appreciate you coming on here, sharing your story such openly and being a great example of just, you know, putting your heads down and building a real revenue.
00:46:53.100 Like most of the people listen are bootstrappers, focused on revenue.
00:46:58.100 And it's, you know, everybody knows about the Shopify's and et cetera.
00:47:02.180 But it's not often we get to talk with an entrepreneur like yourself.
00:47:04.880 So thanks for coming on.
00:47:05.820 I appreciate it for having me.
00:47:06.880 Awesome.
00:47:07.520 Appreciate you.
00:47:08.240 Thanks for watching this episode of Escape Velocity.
00:47:11.360 Be sure to like and subscribe and leave a comment with your biggest insight from our conversation.
00:47:16.900 Be sure to check out the next episode.