Saas Companies that Anyone Can Start with Rob Walling

1. 0:00 – 6:45

   Airline neighborhood with houses and hotels

   1. SPSam Parr0:00

      There's a lot of online communities. Anyone can start one. You get a few hundred people together. There are so few people who've not only run in-person events, but who do them well. And if you can do that, it is an incredible competitive advantage. [upbeat music] Okay, uh, Shaan's not here. What are we gonna talk about?

   2. BWBen Wilson0:29

      Uh, a few things.

   3. SPSam Parr0:30

      Oh-

   4. BWBen Wilson0:30

      Uh-

   5. SPSam Parr0:30

      ... let me tell you something. Sorry.

   6. BWBen Wilson0:31

      Yeah

   7. SPSam Parr0:32

      I asked you a question, then I interrupted you, but let me tell you something. So I'm doing something cool in 10 days. So on the pod and on Twitter, I talked about how I'm buying a piece of property, and I'm turning it into, like, a thing, like a, like a hotel, Airbnb fitness thing. I have this guy, I'm not gonna say who it is yet because I haven't asked his permission, but basically he bought, uh, like 5,000 acres in the South, in a, in a state in the South, let's say Georgia, and he is turning it into an airline hotel or a airline neighborhood soon with hotels. So basically they're putting an airstrip in the middle of this piece of property, and then they're lining up houses along it. So, uh, you could buy a house and then soon it's gonna be a hotel, and then they're gonna have an airplane hangar there. So for all airplane enthusiasts, you can keep your plane there and take off and land on this, you know, right outside your home. So it's basically like having a, uh, a house on a golf course, except instead of a golf course, it's an airplane runway and hangar. But here's the kicker. He asked me if I wanted to come check it out, and I said, "Yeah, sure." He goes, "All right. Meet me at the Teterboro Airport in New- like outside of New York on, you know, January 25th, and we'll fly my jet down." Um, so I'm flying private down. I'm gonna go up-

   8. BWBen Wilson1:55

      Nice

   9. SPSam Parr1:55

      ... to New York just to fly back down, just like [laughs] an experience it.

   10. BWBen Wilson1:58

       [laughs]

   11. SPSam Parr1:58

       But-

   12. BWBen Wilson1:58

       Nice

   13. SPSam Parr1:59

       ... isn't that, isn't that sick?

   14. BWBen Wilson2:01

       So is this, um, is it like super rural or is it, uh, kinda just outside of a major metropolitan area?

   15. SPSam Parr2:07

       It's an hour and a half outside of a major area.

   16. BWBen Wilson2:11

       Got it. So and most of these people, most of these houses, is this gonna be these people's, like, full-time residence you think?

   17. SPSam Parr2:18

       No. No, probably not. It, it's a lot of, like, older people. You don't have to be, you don't have to be, like, rich rich to do this. I think you have to, like, be able to afford a $200,000 plane or something like that. That could be your hobby. So you have to have some money, but it's not, like, gonna be necessarily, like, incredibly wealthy people.

   18. BWBen Wilson2:37

       Yeah. So enough to afford, like, a Cessna or something like that.

   19. SPSam Parr2:40

       Yeah.

   20. BWBen Wilson2:40

       And you can just fly in, and it's just somewhere to fly, and then you stay by your airport and just hang out and chill.

   21. SPSam Parr2:46

       Yeah. That's kinda neat, right?

   22. BWBen Wilson2:48

       Yeah. It is kinda cool. How much do you think he's in on this project?

   23. SPSam Parr2:51

       Um, uh, I'll, I'll say it, and then if he says I can't... But, uh, nearly eight figures is the money that he's had to use his own money to do that, and then he'll, uh, raise some more money.

   24. BWBen Wilson3:03

       And then how many houses is he building?

   25. SPSam Parr3:04

       And he was like, he was like, "Oh, it's just, like, a side project." And I was like, "What? That is huge."

   26. BWBen Wilson3:10

       [laughs]

   27. SPSam Parr3:10

       That is, uh, and, um-

   28. BWBen Wilson3:12

       How, yeah, how rich is your friend? Now, what, what does this represent for him?

   29. SPSam Parr3:15

       I don't know. I just met him. Um-

   30. BWBen Wilson3:17

       Huh
2. 6:45 – 12:20

   Sam on the front page of HackerNews for defending Elizabeth Holmes

   1. SPSam Parr6:45

      friend who goes, "Hey, you're on the front page of Hacker News." If you don't go to Hacker News, it's basically like Reddit, but, like, if I said Reddit for nerds, th- you would be shocked because Reddit is for nerds. But this is-

   2. BWBen Wilson6:56

      [laughs]

   3. SPSam Parr6:56

      ... like, really for nerds, like nerd nerds, and it's all, like, computer nerds and of which I am one of them. And I, uh, I got a text saying that my article that I wrote in 2015 was on the front page of Reddit or on Hacker News, and it was getting... Which means you'll get millions of visitors. And the headline to my article was The Coverage of Theranos is Utter Bullshit. And I wrote this article defending Theranos, Theranos, and defending Elizabeth Holmes, and it did not age well, that article.

   4. BWBen Wilson7:31

      [laughs]

   5. SPSam Parr7:32

      But let me explain what the article... Do you have the article in front of you? As-

   6. BWBen Wilson7:36

      Yes

   7. SPSam Parr7:36

      ... I wrote this-

   8. BWBen Wilson7:37

      Can I... I, I just wanna talk about my favorite, uh, like, sub-headline, which is [laughs] you called it a minor PR hiccup.

   9. SPSam Parr7:45

      Yeah.

   10. BWBen Wilson7:45

       [laughs]

   11. SPSam Parr7:46

       So I call this a minor PR hiccup. So I wrote this in t- so I was, uh, like, 24 I think, or 25 when I wrote this, so whatever. You know, I've grown. And I read my writing and I was like, "Oh, my God." I, I wasn't bad then, but I'm way better now, and so I was a little embarrassed. But, um, the article basically was written after people accused Holmes of at first doing something wrong, and they were hating on her. But previously in the, in the previous month, in the previous few years, she was on the cover of all these same magazines. And the point of my article was on the, on the, on the surface it looked like I was defending her, and I was defending her. But what I really was also doing, and I say this in article, is is I was defending this idea that, like, it's... I think it's nonsense and crazy that we build these people up and say that they're like the next, uh, you know, the next Steve Jobs or whatever it is, and we, like, want small businesses to win. And someone starts a business and we want them to win, but then once they get really successful or potentially, like, uh, they're considered like a winner, we turn on them and we just hate them just because they're doing something, like, that seems really weird, and they talk funny, or they look funny. And I thought that's bullshit. So I stand by that second half because now that's even, the whole anti-tech is e- thing is even bigger. But yeah, I was wrong. I, I was so wrong about her.

   12. BWBen Wilson9:10

       Yeah. It's just you see so many cases of a lot of these hit pieces that are totally not fair to founders that, like, your guard was up enough that you didn't see that this was the time that they were actually right.

   13. SPSam Parr9:23

       She fooled me, man. She fooled me.

   14. BWBen Wilson9:24

       [laughs]

   15. SPSam Parr9:26

       She fucking-

   16. BWBen Wilson9:26

       She sucked you in with her deep voice and those big eyes.

   17. SPSam Parr9:29

       Dude, she got me. I was so on board. The reason, here's why I was on board with it, and the reason why I was on board with it is really, uh, I can't decide if it's a good reason or a bad reason, and you tell me. So their biggest backer was Tim Draper. I don't know Tim, but I used to be friends with his son, and his friend's, uh, son Billy is an awesome dude. And from what I've read about Tim, Tim seems amazing. I know that he's, like, this, like, high integrity, very honest person. He seems like a great guy. He don't party, don't drink. And he's known for, like, being one of the first investors in SpaceX, I believe first investor in Hotmail. So a bunch of these, like, really amazing companies that helped found the internet and create the internet and, and everything. And he was super on board with Thera- Theranos for a long time. And so I was thinking, "Well, there's no way that Tim Draper would do something, um, or, like, would be tricked by this," 'cause he obviously didn't know. But he's like, "There's no way that Tim would be tricked by this," and that's why I was, like, on board.

   18. BWBen Wilson10:26

       Yeah. And just to back you up, uh, just reading from the article, "It's expected that a young company that's attempting to change a massive and archaic industry will mess up. It appears that Theranos made a bunch of mistakes, and I'm not defending their actions. I'm also not saying that the media shouldn't point out the truths about Theranos' mistakes." You know, you just go on to say, uh, talk about how the, the cycle kind of flipped on him. So yeah, I mean, it is true what you're saying, but it is still funny to have an article up [laughs] with that headline.

   19. SPSam Parr10:54

       And I didn't delete it on purpose. So, uh-

   20. BWBen Wilson10:56

       I think it's funny

   21. SPSam Parr10:56

       ... around three years ago someone made fun of me for that article, and I was like, "I'm not deleting that. We'll keep it up. It's all right. I got it wrong." If I'm gonna, if I'm gonna take swings, I gotta let people see the misses too.

   22. BWBen Wilson11:08

       Yeah. Absolutely. Um-

   23. SPSam Parr11:11

       All right. Wanna go to one more topic?

   24. BWBen Wilson11:13

       Yeah. We got four minutes, so.

   25. SPSam Parr11:15

       All right. So you tweeted out something that was pretty cool. What was it?

   26. BWBen Wilson11:20

       Okay. So it was essentially we started a new family tradition in my family this year, which is... Well, it was just, and it was just my wife and I doing it because we, we, we started... We're gonna try and roll it out to my siblings and my parents

   27. SPSam Parr11:32

       But didn't she make a presentation?

   28. BWBen Wilson11:35

       Yes. So what it is is that I decided, it was kinda my idea, that at the end of the year we're gonna make presentations about how the past year went and essentially what our goals are for the coming year and our resolutions and that type of stuff, and we're gonna present it at, like, a family board meeting. It could be a slide deck. It could be, like, a memo. But it's essentially called the board meeting. The family board is sitting there, and you have to present on your year.

   29. SPSam Parr11:59

       It looked like she was presenting to a bunch of people.

   30. BWBen Wilson12:02

       Yeah
3. 12:20 – 18:30

   The family board meeting

   1. BWBen Wilson12:20

      the wrong idea that we were, like, getting hardcore, going over our numbers. Like, a lot of it was, was kind of funny. It was, was played for chuckles. But it was a good opportunity to just reflect on what we'd done and, uh, and what we hope to do this year and, and, uh, and go over it with each other.

   2. SPSam Parr12:35

      So what was the, uh... Did... Was that effective?

   3. BWBen Wilson12:39

      Yeah. I mean, some of the stuff... So let, let me read some of this stuff, actually. Um-

   4. SPSam Parr12:44

      Me, it's fair

   5. BWBen Wilson12:44

      ... because my-

   6. SPSam Parr12:45

      I'd do the same, I'd do the same thing

   7. BWBen Wilson12:46

      ... so my wife actually collects the stats. Uh, she had a little-

   8. SPSam Parr12:52

      And your wife's pretty alpha, right?

   9. BWBen Wilson12:55

      Yeah. She graduated from, uh, a top law school in the country, and then-

   10. SPSam Parr13:01

       Which one?

   11. BWBen Wilson13:01

       ... works for... Georgetown. Um-

   12. SPSam Parr13:04

       Pretty fancy.

   13. BWBen Wilson13:06

       Yeah. It's a good, it's a good law school. And then she works for a big law firm now. So she took stats. She, like, tracks all her mother stuff, 'cause we had a baby last November. Um, and so I couldn't believe some of the stuff. So, like, gallons of milk that her body produced in 2021.

   14. SPSam Parr13:26

       How many?

   15. BWBen Wilson13:27

       350.

   16. SPSam Parr13:28

       Gross. Isn't that crazy?

   17. BWBen Wilson13:29

       [laughs]

   18. SPSam Parr13:29

       How does a-

   19. BWBen Wilson13:30

       Isn't that insane?

   20. SPSam Parr13:30

       ... how does a body do that? That is crazy.

   21. BWBen Wilson13:33

       I know. That sta- blew my mind. 350 gallons-

   22. SPSam Parr13:35

       Oh, my God

   23. BWBen Wilson13:36

       ... is so much. It's so much.

   24. SPSam Parr13:38

       So you're tr- [laughs] that is hilarious. You track how much milk your wife made.

   25. BWBen Wilson13:43

       She, yeah, she also kept track of how many nights she slept on the floor in our daughter's room, 'cause, like, some nights she wouldn't sleep. And so 104 nights.

   26. SPSam Parr13:51

       What?

   27. BWBen Wilson13:51

       Almost a third of the year. Yeah. She slept on the floor in Claire's room. Um, nu- the number of hours she spent nursing her was 1,800. Um, and then we tracked other stuff.

   28. SPSam Parr14:01

       Wait, 1,800 in one year?

   29. BWBen Wilson14:03

       Yeah.

   30. SPSam Parr14:04

       Wow. Man-
4. 18:30 – 30:30

   Rob Walling joins the show. About Rob.

   1. SPSam Parr18:30

      his job to start a podcast, a, a popular pod- uh, a podcast that's going pretty well, and he works for us part-time as a part, our producer. And he, his wife is a very successful lawyer, and I asked him, I said, you know, "Like, a lot of men might be self-conscious about that, about your wife earning significantly more than you. How does that make you feel?" And, uh, I w- we were ... I was just curious.

   2. BWBen Wilson18:51

      Has your wife ever earned more than you, Rob?

   3. RWRob Walling18:54

      Ooh, that's a good question. Um-

   4. SPSam Parr18:56

      Well, your businesses are-

   5. RWRob Walling18:57

      I think so

   6. SPSam Parr18:57

      ... like family businesses, kind of, right?

   7. RWRob Walling19:00

      Yeah. I mean, she runs her own thing. Dude, I actually think ... I mean, yeah, so when I left Drip two years ago, I sold the company and then I left it in 2018. I didn't work for six months, but it's li- so I wasn't earning anything. But then even after that, like, starting Tiny Seed, I didn't take a paycheck for a year, and she was making several hundred grand at her business. So yes, she has, but it's also like, yeah, but I sold a comp- I, [laughs] I think I'm excused at this point, you know?

   8. SPSam Parr19:22

      Right. I, uh, my wife became a millionaire, a, a liquid millionaire before I did.

   9. RWRob Walling19:27

      That's awesome.

   10. SPSam Parr19:28

       Because of-

   11. RWRob Walling19:28

       Did, did-

   12. SPSam Parr19:29

       By two months

   13. RWRob Walling19:30

       ... what was it? What was it, like, stock or what? What'd you have to-

   14. SPSam Parr19:32

       She worked at Airbnb for a long time, and then it went public in December, and I sold my company in February, so she beat me by two months.

   15. RWRob Walling19:39

       You didn't feel, you didn't feel bad about that at all, did you?

   16. SPSam Parr19:41

       Dude, I was pumped for her.

   17. RWRob Walling19:42

       Yeah.

   18. SPSam Parr19:42

       I was so ... I mean, the, the way the ... E- everything is ours, so-

   19. RWRob Walling19:45

       Yeah

   20. SPSam Parr19:45

       ... it, it was like, frankly, when she got paid, I was like, "Oh, I just got paid, too." I mean-

   21. RWRob Walling19:49

       Totally

   22. SPSam Parr19:49

       ... I thought it was awesome. Um, we're live now, by the way, Rob. Uh-

   23. RWRob Walling19:53

       Oh, great

   24. SPSam Parr19:53

       ... are you okay with that?

   25. RWRob Walling19:54

       Absolutely, sir. I'm alwa- [laughs] I'm always.

   26. SPSam Parr19:56

       [laughs]

   27. RWRob Walling19:56

       I was born ready. Yeah.

   28. SPSam Parr19:58

       So, uh, this is Rob Walling. Rob, you, uh, you ... I was just on your pod, like, uh, two weeks ago. Did it go well?

   29. RWRob Walling20:06

       Yeah. I got a lot of positive feedback, actually. What was interesting is someone said, a couple people said, "You guys have real great rapport." And I said, "Which is funny, 'cause we've never met. It's not like we're best friends." But they said, "You sounded like you were friends. You're naturals." You know? And I said, "I think it's e- it's easy to have a podcaster on a show, because they're just entertaining naturally."

   30. SPSam Parr20:24

       And I've been reading your work for, like, 10 years.
5. 30:30 – 42:30

   Why you should or shouldn't sell your business

   1. SPSam Parr30:30

      I loved it. I mean, I still, I'm still here, and I love it. Um, like I hate it-

   2. RWRob Walling30:34

      Mm

   3. SPSam Parr30:34

      ... and I, I hated, uh, like there was days where I'm like, "This sucks. I hate media. I hate dealing with people." Of course, I had like those normal things. But like the thing is, is that like I started my company because I was just blogging for fun-

   4. RWRob Walling30:47

      Yeah

   5. SPSam Parr30:47

      ... when it didn't make money, and I didn't actually think it was gonna make money. And now that I have something, I still do this because I've just am a compulsive and I love it. And so I st- I love my company. I just wish, I wish I was wealthy, that I didn't have to sell it.

   6. RWRob Walling31:02

      Yeah.

   7. SPSam Parr31:02

      Do you know what I mean?

   8. RWRob Walling31:03

      Yep.

   9. SPSam Parr31:03

      And so, n- 'cause now I know I'm gonna have to go and start it again one day.

   10. RWRob Walling31:06

       You're gonna have to start something, and that one you won't have to sell, right? You'll be in a position where you can decide to, to do it or not, and you can make bigger bets because if it goes to zero, it's not like you're sitting where I was in 2015, where it's like I am literally worth millions and millions of dollars on paper, and I have actual liquid net worth about 400 grand in retirement savings between my wife and I, and I have about $50,000 in the bank. And our house, which had no equity 'cause it was, you know, it, it had gone down or whatever. So that, that was it. So I was like h- I felt way overexposed to something tragic happening.

   11. SPSam Parr31:40

       When you are doing 3 million in recurring revenue, um, I'm not sure if you, how you do, like if people pay up front or what, whatnot. But w- like I've seen ConvertKit's numbers, the like all the public stuff that they reveal, and they're, they didn't have a significant amount of cash in the bank. Was your, was your thing the same way, where-

   12. RWRob Walling31:56

       Absolutely

   13. SPSam Parr31:57

       ... wait, wait, wait-

   14. RWRob Walling31:58

       It-

   15. SPSam Parr31:58

       'Cause like 10, you think 10 employees making 10, uh, making $3 million, like, oh, you should have like plenty of money. But what, what was the truth?

   16. RWRob Walling32:07

       The truth is that growth chews, just destroys cash. Like no matter how much cash we made, I've, I was spending it on AWS bills. I was spending it with SendGrid. I would hire another contractor. I would hire another employee. The moment we, we grew by 10 grand in a month, let's say of, of, uh, monthly recurring, and I'm like, "Great, now I can hire another engineer 'cause oh my God, we are understaffed." So at 10 people, we were way understaffed. Um, and yeah, I'm trying to think. Uh, a- and that's where like my decision at that point was I'm either gonna raise an angel round, like a seed round, or we should sell it, and that was, that was the decision of do we double down on this business for another two to four years, or am I ready to, to, you know, make, make that choice of letting it go.

   17. SPSam Parr32:53

       And that, so that was... I, I was a Drip user. Who owns it?

   18. RWRob Walling32:56

       Um, well, what's interesting, so Leadpages bought it, and Leadpages had, uh, raised, um, 38 million in venture. And they... It's actually a parent company, right, called Avenue 81 Incorporated that owned Leadpages and then acquired Drip. So there's two products under one umbrella. Well, pretty soon, within the, the Avenue 81, you know, CEO realized the opportunity here is Drip. Like Drip is a multibillion-dollar opportunity, whereas landing pages are, you know, the whole market at the time was 80 million, maybe 100 million. And that's, that sounds like a lot to us, but they're venture-backed, so they need to get to billions in valuation. So they actually sold off Leadpages, and the company is now Drip. So Drip owns Drip now. You know what I mean? Like it's, it was a, a turnaround. I don't know if you, I don't know if you ever heard that this happened with Best Buy, where they acquired-

   19. SPSam Parr33:46

       Geek Squad, right?

   20. RWRob Walling33:46

       ... Geek Squad.

   21. SPSam Parr33:47

       Yeah.

   22. RWRob Walling33:47

       And now like Best Buy would not exist without Geek Squad because that was like all their net profit through the, you know, last 15 years. That essentially [laughs] that essentially happened with Drip. They've just refocused the whole team. They had 170 employees, and I got to start handpicking people from the Leadpages team and pulling them over to help grow the team. So when I left, there were 100 and something people working on Drip.

   23. SPSam Parr34:07

       Do you feel like, see, it... Remember like when you're a kid and you used to date someone, and then you see her with another guy, and you like feel just like that, that jeal- you feel like anger-

   24. RWRob Walling34:17

       So funny

   25. SPSam Parr34:17

       ... and, but jealousy and you're sad. Do you, do you still have that? Do you have that emotion when you see Drip?

   26. RWRob Walling34:24

       I don't. And, but, but I will say that there have been some things that have happened that have, m- that I haven't been happy with. So they like raised prices, and they didn't do it very well right after I left, like a few months after. And I was like, "You guys are better than..." Like, I would've done that so differently, and if I was in the room, I would've said, "Don't do it." They just did it really fast. They didn't grandfather. You know, they just made kind of all the 101 mistakes, and that sucked. And I, and then there was a huge backlash against Drip, which is part of my legacy. Like Drip, Drip is, you know, it, it's like the hustle will always, you will always be the founder of the hustle, right? And I will always be the co-founder of Drip. They, they've messed with the UI. They, they've reshaped it and stuff. So when I go in now, I'm a little bit like, "Ugh, I liked it the old way." But, but I don't feel... It's not the ex-girlfriend thing. It's more of a I did have to let it go, you know?

   27. SPSam Parr35:09

       Right.

   28. RWRob Walling35:09

       And just, and just let it go. I still use it. I, I mean, I'm in it every day. It's such a good tool. [laughs]

   29. SPSam Parr35:15

       Do you... That, that's a good sign. Do you, um... And then MicroConf, was that a big business? 'Cause I'm, when, when I started HustleCon, I like researched you guys to steal ideas, but like also like to make sure it was a good business, and I was like, "Well, Rob's pretty savvy, and he's doing it. So like, yeah, I could probably make a profit off this."

   30. RWRob Walling35:31

       Yeah. Yeah. It was definitely pre- You know, it was a side project, like a hobby all this time, right? Until about two years ago where when I left Drip, I had this big, uh, decision of like, do I have this podcast? At the time, I had a co-host with the podcast. I'm solo now. Um, had MicroConf. Do I sell all of that? I li- I literally thought of just leaving the whole entrepreneur, like blogging, podcasting thing and going and like s- I was gonna acquire a tabletop gaming, the second-biggest tabletop gaming website, right? Which is like-
6. 42:30 – 50:50

   Rob's favorite Saas businesses that he's working with

   1. RWRob Walling42:30

      The founder of Builder Prime is the Sa- is Saas. We funded it with TinySeed, and he had a home improvement project, and he said the experience dealing with the contractor, the contractor was fine, but the communication was like text and then email, and it was, anytime there's a bunch of texts and email, that can be a product, right?

   2. SPSam Parr42:46

      What was the name? Build a what?

   3. RWRob Walling42:48

      Builder Prime.

   4. SPSam Parr42:49

      Builder Prime. Okay.

   5. RWRob Walling42:50

      Builder Prime. Yep. And so it's in essence, I think he might call it CRM for ... Yeah, he calls it best CRM. But really it's not only the sales process, but then it's the communication during a home improvement project. And so like shouldn't you ... I would say, well, shouldn't, couldn't you use Basecamp? Isn't that like project management? Or could I use Microsoft Project like online, right? 'Cause you could ... But it's like, no, this is a strongly typed version of that, that is completely built for their needs.

   6. SPSam Parr43:19

      How's this going?

   7. RWRob Walling43:20

      It's going really well. I can't disclose revenue, but, um, I'll say anyone in ti- He was in batch two. Any of those companies are gonna be, you know, mid-six figures into seven figures, right?

   8. SPSam Parr43:31

      The, um, founder of HubSpot, Brian Halligan, came on the pod and he told us that when they f- I, I, I'm gonna paraphrase the story. I might get it a little bit wrong. He said that when they first started HubSpot, they were like at a fork in the road and not sure which way they were gonna go, and for a minute, I think they even created it and even had some sales, but they were like, "Well, let's like HubSpot is a CRM, but then let's create like LawSpot." So it's like a HubSpot just for lawyers.

   9. RWRob Walling43:56

      Yep.

   10. SPSam Parr43:56

       So instead of like making it one for everyone, we're gonna make an individual one for different industries. And so let's create LawSpot and just get lawyers to use it. And that's kind of basically what this c- company, Builder Prime, is. Because you would say like, "Well, why can't you just use HubSpot? Why can't you just use Asana?" Whatever you want to, whatever it is.

   11. RWRob Walling44:13

       Mm-hmm.

   12. SPSam Parr44:13

       I understand. And so, all right, this is a cool company.

   13. BWBen Wilson44:17

       But, but, but-

   14. SPSam Parr44:17

       How big is the team on this? What, what, Ben?

   15. BWBen Wilson44:20

       My, my other question is, um, like d- do you have any companies, Rob, that you work with that are building apps on top of Salesforce or HubSpot that are like building in those ecosystems? Or do you think they should always go the direction of Builder Prime and just build their entire own ecosys- ecosystem?

   16. RWRob Walling44:37

       W- we have one who is built on Heroku. We have, I'm trying to think, one who's kind of built a, he has a WordPress plugin, kind of built on WordPress. They're actually doing really well. It's Castos. It's podcast hosting. They're, they're into seven figures. But there's no ... You know, so the thing is, is with building on Hu- HubSpot or Salesforce, there's this platform risk, right? 'Cause I had an angel investment that was doing really well, was built on Shopify, was a Shopify app, and they started killing it, and then Shopify came a-knocking and said, "You gotta start paying us a big chunk of your revenue or we shut you down." I mean, really, you know, I would, I, I would say it's shady shit, but it is what it is. It's platform risk, right? Um, so that's where we have to be aware. Like, if you go to sell a Saas company and you're solely built on top of a platform, you sell for a lower multiple than if you were on your own. So as a result, what we say when folks come in and apply and say, "Hey, I'm only on Heroku," or if we, we see Shopify apps come through. We had to have seen Salesforce apps come through. I don't remember a HubSpot one, to be honest. But what we say is, "Cool. It's not a non-starter. But how are you thinking about this? Are you building for ... What other platforms are you building for? How do you escape that?" 'Cause by the ... You know, when you're 500 grand a year, no one cares. When you're 5 million a year on a platform, they notice, and that there's, there's a danger there.

   17. SPSam Parr46:04

       That's, that's pretty cool. That's interesting. I, I mean, I, I knew that was true, but I didn't know that Shopify could change the prices that they charge.

   18. RWRob Walling46:11

       Seen it, seen it happen firsthand, yeah.

   19. SPSam Parr46:13

       Uh, what else was interest-

   20. RWRob Walling46:14

       It was-

   21. SPSam Parr46:14

       Go ahead.

   22. RWRob Walling46:14

       Yeah. There's, there's another one. Um, this one's interesting. It's called ScrapingBee, and the cool part about them is they are public with their revenue, so I can actually at least give you an idea. So they crossed a million dollars in annual recurring, uh, just two, three months ago. And if you look at what it is, is it's they allow you, if you want to, um, sc- scrape the web, right? If it's like, well, I wanna get all, you know, the products off of an e- this particular e-commerce site. You can go in, and it's not a GUI. Like you need to write a little bit of code, but then they have all the servers that allow you to get around being blocked by APIs or whatever. And when you think about this idea, it's, it's like, well, that sounds like a nice little 5, 10K a month idea, right? They're doing north of a, you know, probably 100, 100 grand a month right now. I haven't looked at their revenue recently. But like-

   23. SPSam Parr47:04

       Dude, it says they have two employees

   24. RWRob Walling47:05

       ... and they're going for ... Yeah. It's two employees. It's the two founders.

   25. SPSam Parr47:10

       What?

   26. RWRob Walling47:10

       They're doing ... It's crazy. We're encouraging them to hire actually, because [laughs] here's the problem. Let's say they wanted to sell. I'm not saying they do, but if they wanted to, that's a problem. Like, they would, they would be worth more if they were a team of five or 10 than if they are only two.

   27. SPSam Parr47:26

       Where is their-

   28. RWRob Walling47:26

       Because they're making a bunch of profit, but it's, there's risk there, right?

   29. SPSam Parr47:30

       Do they ha- Is this like, uh, one of those, uh, public revenue things w- on, like the bare metrics or whatever?

   30. RWRob Walling47:35

       You know, I think they just disclose it on Twitter.
7. 50:50 – 1:10:10

   Rob's ideas for new SaaS companies that anyone could start

   1. RWRob Walling50:50

      to myself, "That could, that's an idea," right, if you take it. Or if there's a bunch of email, you know, or texts back and forth. Um, those are... 'Cause it's communication or it's just storage. There's a couple things that, um, I'm pretty fascinated by. So one is podcast apps are doing quite well. Like, we're in Riverside now. We've funded, I'm invested in SquadCast, which is a competitor-

   2. SPSam Parr51:15

      Yeah, yeah

   3. RWRob Walling51:15

      ... of Riverside. Um, and then c-

   4. SPSam Parr51:17

      We use, uh, both of them. We're using Riverside now. We use SquadCast. We use Zencastr. We use every-

   5. RWRob Walling51:22

      Zencastr. I was with them before, yeah, with SquadCast. And then of course, podcast hosting, right? There's Castos and Lib- Lib- Libsyn and, and others. And there's podca-

   6. SPSam Parr51:31

      We use that, I think.

   7. RWRob Walling51:32

      Even podcast editing like Alitu. I, we use, I use Audacity, and then my editor uses Adobe something or other. But, like, Alitu, A-L-I-T-U, is podcast editing in the browser. So, like, the stack's starting to get there. We have disparate tools to do things. But when HubSpot launched... So I, so I know Dharmesh, right? Dharmesh and I were bloggers and speakers. We met at BOS in 2008 or something. So I remember when HubSpot launched. And I remember thinking, "But all of these things exist." Like, in the early days, HubSpot was like, it was like a, a, a blog, I think, plus a marketing website plus An- Google Analytics plus I don't remember what else. Something else.

   8. SPSam Parr52:09

      Like an email capture form or something.

   9. RWRob Walling52:10

      Something like that. It was very simple. But I was like, "I could..." But I remember saying, "Dharmesh, but I could build that, you know, with MailChimp plus WordPress." You know, I'd... And he's like, "Yeah, but business owners don't wanna do that. They want a bundle."

   10. SPSam Parr52:22

       And he was right.

   11. RWRob Walling52:23

       I, I think... And he was right. [laughs] I said, "They're public, and we're, you guys are a, you know, an amazing company." I think of the same thing with podcast production, where I, right now, I mean, I've been running a podcast for 11 years, and I have, you know, people helping with it, and I literally am in Notion dragging this thing over here and then sending an e- that sends an email to my producer to do something that, that we then log into Castos to uplo- You know what I mean? It's like where's the HubSpot for that?

   12. SPSam Parr52:48

       So-

   13. RWRob Walling52:48

       Where's the bundling of the podcast stack?

   14. SPSam Parr52:51

       I, I have a strong opinion. I have two strong opinions. The first is I'm almost certain... No, I'm partially certain that for the most part, podcasting software and podcasting tools is a horrible business because a few reasons. Very few podcasts are successful, and most all of them are broke.

   15. RWRob Walling53:12

       [laughs] Here's my, here's the counterpoint to this-

   16. SPSam Parr53:16

       Great

   17. RWRob Walling53:16

       ... because I-

   18. SPSam Parr53:16

       'Cause I would like to be convinced otherwise

   19. RWRob Walling53:17

       ... I am an investor, so I see the numbers, all right? Um, SquadCast doing several million a year in revenue, and they're not doing it on the fly fishing podcast. Think of the three avatars for a, a podcast. There, there's the hobbyist, my Dungeons & Dragons podcast, my fly fishing, and they're gonna, they're broke, and they're gonna pay nine bucks a month, right? And they're gonna churn like crazy 'cause they're gonna start-

   20. SPSam Parr53:41

       They're gonna churn, yeah

   21. RWRob Walling53:41

       ... it's too much work. All right. Then there's the next tier up, which is startup for the rest of us. I'd say My First Million is in that, where it's like a single show. But i- if I go to pay $100 a month for SquadCast, Riverside, $100 a month for hosting, it's not a big deal to me, right? And I don't think it is to you. They're, so it's not $9, but for you it's like 100. I think if I were to say, "Oh, My First Million should pay $500 a month for each of these," you start to feel like, "Ah, I'm not sure that's worth it." But there's a number there, okay? So there's a... And they, and we don't churn. I mean, I've been doing it for 12 years. You guys have been doing it for several.

   22. SPSam Parr54:13

       It's like the, the, the SMB of, of podcasts.

   23. RWRob Walling54:15

       Yes. It's the SMB that actually sticks around. There's hobbyists. There's SMB. Then there's one level up. So there's iHeartRadio. There's ESPN's podcasts. There's the Kevin Smith podcasts, Smodcast, right? There is Kara Swisher has a whole network. Gimlet Media, NPR, like, once they w- especially once they went remote. That's the enterprise.

   24. SPSam Parr54:36

       But how many of those are there? Because for example, like- Vox, I think Vox was trying to sell their CM... Like, it's, all media companies are like, "Oh, we built this proprietary technology to, like, get our articles shared better," and, like, things like that. And, like, cool, I would love that technology, but they wanna go out, like Washington Post is doing this, they wanna go out and sell their software. And I'm like, how many fucking media companies could pay 100 grand a year for software? Most media companies are broke. And so that's my same thing to podcasters. But all right, I agree, those exist. I wanna be, I need to be convinced, though, that there's, like, enough of them.

   25. RWRob Walling55:09

       Ben was gonna say something.

   26. SPSam Parr55:10

       It's just, yeah.

   27. RWRob Walling55:10

       We should let him talk. [laughs]

   28. BWBen Wilson55:11

       Yeah, y- [laughs] S- I, I, I was blown away. So we got a pitch from one of these recording companies, o- one of the ones that Rob mentioned, I won't say which. But I assumed that the pro tier that Rob was talking about would be, like, 10X what a normal plan was, and it was, like, 100X. It was like, it was, like, [censored] plus a month for, um-

   29. SPSam Parr55:37

       [censored] a month?

   30. BWBen Wilson55:38

       A month, a month f- for some-
8. 1:10:10 – 1:18:13

   Founding a company as a non-technical founder

   1. RWRob Walling1:10:10

      you're, if everybody's too price-sensitive, to your point earlier, if everyone's a fly fisherman podcast [laughs] and everyone's paying you, you know, 10 to 20 bucks a month and that's kind of where most people are, and then your churn is 10%, like, uh, you just can't. You know, almost impossible to build a m- million, $2 million business. But when you get to the point where, hey, my average revenue per user is 100 or 500 a month, and your churn is 2 or 3%, you would have to own the whole market. Uh, like there's almost any market is big enough that that can be a $5 million business.

   2. SPSam Parr1:10:40

      All right, my last question. Um, how many of these folks building software companies that you see, yourself included, are non-technical?

   3. RWRob Walling1:10:50

      Ooh, that's a great question. And in fact-

   4. SPSam Parr1:10:51

      And if they are non-technical, what do they do?

   5. RWRob Walling1:10:53

      Yep. Um, so I'm a developer or was. I haven't written code in years, but we actually a- ... So we do a state of independent Saas survey, and we put out a report, an i- like an industry report. And we asked the question, "Do you have at least one technical founder?" Right? Or, you know, an yes or no, right? And the number of Saas companies, kind of bootstrap-ish Saas companies with z- with no technical founders is, like, twen- I believe it's 20%.

   6. SPSam Parr1:11:28

      Wow, so it's-

   7. RWRob Walling1:11:28

      25%.

   8. SPSam Parr1:11:29

      Wow. It's very possible.

   9. RWRob Walling1:11:31

      It is. And usually what the expertise they have, they're either the subject matter expert, like we're gonna build software for accountants, I was an accountant for 20 years, right? We're gonna build software for UX designers, I'm, I was a designer for 10 years. They're either that or they're sales or marketing. That's what they should have. Now we've seen where there's a developer and then there's, like, the business pers- the business guy or gal.

   10. SPSam Parr1:11:54

       Which just means, like-

   11. RWRob Walling1:11:55

       And it's like-

   12. SPSam Parr1:11:55

       ... anything

   13. RWRob Walling1:11:56

       ... it just bo- yeah.

   14. SPSam Parr1:11:57

       Yeah.

   15. RWRob Walling1:11:57

       It usually winds up meaning you're not actually that helpful, and you probably shouldn't be a co-founder. [laughs] You know, if you can't sell or market or, like, have input on the product, you know, or, or develop it, like those are really the four roles, um, you probably shouldn't be. You shouldn't be in it.

   16. SPSam Parr1:12:11

       So if I'm, if I ... Like I'm not tech- I'm not technical-

   17. RWRob Walling1:12:15

       Mm-hmm

   18. SPSam Parr1:12:15

       ... but I, um, I can, like, tie stuff together and use Zapier, and I'm super creative. How do I start a start- a software company without hiring or-

   19. RWRob Walling1:12:24

       [laughs]

   20. SPSam Parr1:12:24

       ... I would m- if maybe hiring's it but without having a co-founder?

   21. RWRob Walling1:12:28

       Right. So for you, since you have money, you would either acquire something, 'cause there's always stuff for sale that you may wanna acquire and then just grow if you have a mark- a content marketing expertise, or you would hire, you know, a developer, an agency or something to build it. If you don't have the money, uh, a lot of people non-technical will work a day job and actually funnel money to the side to basically pay for a developer to do it. Um- The other two approaches I've seen are exactly what you said, which is I'm gonna build my minimum viable product using Zapier and Notion and chewing gum, right? And I'm just gonna cobble it together to the point where, hey, if I get a few grand a month in revenue, this proves it, and now I'm gonna use that to get it built. It's a harder way to go, but it's possible. The last one I've seen, which is genius, and this is what the founder of Castos did, 'cause he's not... He's a single founder, not a developer. He worked a day job. He started a productized service, podcast editing. And he hi- he got it up to, I forget what the number was, 30 or 40 grand a month-

   22. SPSam Parr1:13:28

       Wow

   23. RWRob Walling1:13:28

       ... in productized podcast. He was one of the earlier ones, which was called PodcastMotor. He was working a day job the whole time. So then while he was in that space-

   24. SPSam Parr1:13:35

       Was he actually doing the editing, or he would-

   25. RWRob Walling1:13:37

       No

   26. SPSam Parr1:13:37

       ... uh, he did it at first-

   27. RWRob Walling1:13:38

       Hired a person

   28. SPSam Parr1:13:38

       ... and then, and then got someone overseas?

   29. RWRob Walling1:13:40

       Exactly. Yep.

   30. SPSam Parr1:13:40

       Yeah.

Episode duration: 1:18:13