Marie Martens - The story of how two founders bootstrapped a $1M+ ARR startup!

So the really, the hard part in the start was how do we get like those first 1,000, 2,000 users in so we can kind of start that product-led growth and we can start the ball, get the ball rolling. And for us, that was really, we did that by cold outreach. So we would just send DMs to people. So we would basically scan Product Hunt and then I would just literally like make lists. I think manual process is already where a lot of people just stop because it's, it's boring, right?

Yeah.

The response rate is super low, but like that we have to keep on doing this day in, day out to get those first users. And I think I, I don't know, I probably DM'd thousands of people from like just a Google Sheet. But literally like trying to keep it personal, you know, trying to look up a bit of the background and this and that. Um, so I did that for months, months long.

Welcome to the Undefeated Underdogs Podcast, where I unpack and narrate stories of ambitious people who turn obstacles into opportunities. My goal for this podcast is to create a platform to narrate underdog stories and maybe play a small teeny tiny role in inspiring you. I intend to highlight the underdog mentality and make authentic conversations with people who play the long game, take action with a chip on their shoulder, and convert obstacles into opportunities. Buckle up as I'll be bringing some authentic founders, VCs, community builders, and content creators who got underestimated their whole lives, and yet they beat all the odds to become insanely successful. Now today I want to tell you a little bit about our awesome sponsor, acquire.com. Selling a business is as tough as building a business. As someone who went through this process once, selling my own startup, I know the pain it takes to get to the end zone. This is where our sponsor shines. Imagine this, you're a founder who's built a solid SaaS product, acquired customers, and generating consistent monthly revenue. The problem is you're not growing for, for whatever reason— lack of focus, lack of skill, or just plain lack of interest— and you feel stuck. What should you do? The story I'd like to hear is you buckle down, somehow reignited the fire, get past yourself and the clichés, and start working on your business rather than just in the business. You start building an audience, move out of your comfort zone to do sales and marketing, and in 6 months you triple your revenue. The reality isn't as simple. Situations may be different for every founder facing these crossroads, but too many times the story ends up being one of inaction and stagnation until the become business— the business becomes less valuable or worse, worthless. If you find yourself here, or your story is likely headed down a similar road, I offer you a third option. Consider selling your business on acquire.com. Capitalizing on the value of your time is a smart move. Acquire.com is free to list, and they've helped hundreds of founders already. Go to try.acquire.com/sharath and see for yourself if this is the right option for you. Now let's get into today's episode. My next guest is a mom of two. And building a million-dollar business all by herself with a co-founder by doing things in public and killing it all along. And I've been a big, big, big fan of these 2 folks, the company Tally. Many, many of you already know what Tally is. It's a form builder, but a modern form builder where it works like Notion. And I'm so stoked to bring Marie on the podcast because I've been following her their journey. And like I said, it's so inspirational to see people like Marie who go above and beyond to balance life and work and to do all that in public. So I'm so stoked. Marie, welcome to the show. How are you feeling today?

Thank you so much for having me. Good, great. A bit tired, as you can probably see, but that's part of the deal, I guess. But yeah, doing great. I'm really happy to finally meet you. Yes, we've

been kind of like, you know, I think I can say this. I'm the early, early users of Tally.

Yeah.

When you shipped the MVP in 2020, September. But first of all, congrats on welcoming your second kid. I'm sure your hands are full and I appreciate you for taking time to join me. I can empathize because I'm a new dad as well. You know, we welcomed our second kid. So juggling between two is— so yeah, I want to talk about that first. Talk to me about parenting. And we were kind of joking around before we hit record about, you know, parenting being hard, but yet it's rewarding, right? So how has being a mom helped you motivate or push yourself and go above and beyond?

Yeah, good question. I guess the funny thing is we already had to reschedule our podcast. I think, was it once or twice? Probably because of kids. Yeah. Yeah, we did twice already, by the way. That's already a good start. And yeah, how did they motivate me? I mean, when we launched Sally, that was also like the beginning of our startup adventure together. So when me and Philip, Philip is co-founder of Sally, and so we didn't have kids yet. And I think we had like this dream image of, you know, we wanted to become digital nomads actually, and we wanted to travel and work at the same time. All of that didn't happen because of COVID but that's a different story.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. I just realized what you said. So Philip is your partner? Yes. Oh my God.

Oh, you didn't know?

I didn't know. I always—

Yeah.

Whoa.

So Philip is my partner, my The father of my of our kids.

Wow, that's awesome. That's even like amazing.

I don't say husband because we're not we're not married. But yeah.

No, no. That's like you're you're a you're a power power couple in bootstrapping world. You're like Beyoncé and Jay-Z maybe.

Wow, that's the first time. Yeah, we are.

You're definitely a power couple. For sure.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, we, uh, we try, we try to keep things afloat. I would say probably it looks better from the outside than it actually is in reality. Um, I think it's been hard, to be honest, on us the past couple of years. It just comes down to having kids, you know, there's less energy and there's just less hours to work. Right. So even when they are in bed, you just have less energy to keep on going. And especially, you know, you're bootstrapping, you're trying to launch a business, so you need to put in the work. And if you cannot do that, then, you know, things just don't happen, especially when there's no team to rely on. But even then, you know, there's always work to be done. Yeah. So we really had to, I think, like kind of rebalance and restructure our whole lives and also kind of come to terms with the fact that there's just less hours in a day now for us, you know, because that just That's just kind of the reality of how it is, especially because we're both in it. So it's not like one person can go full on work and then the other person takes care of the kids. We don't have that.

I was under the impression that you have 2 kids. I didn't know that you guys are partners in real life because in my mind it's like, okay, Marie has some help. She might like, you know, Yeah, took some time off. Maybe Philip is like taking care of things, running things. So it's actually kind of like— but this is so phenomenal because you both have to take care of those 2 kids.

Yeah. It's not like— Yeah. There is no like, you know— It brings a new dimension to the— Correct.

It's like if you have a different— if you're like 2 different people, then there is like— even then it's hard. First of all, parenting is hard, guys. It's freaking hard. I appreciate everybody, every parent who's like trying to raise kids at the same time, do ambitious things like pursue their passion projects, create content. So we salute you. But in your case, I think you are playing a 100x harder game. And I want to unpack that. Why? Why do you want to choose I think kids are amazing, but my curiosity is about why are you not hiring or why are you not raising money or why are you not seeking help to actually run this company? That is, I think, is completely doable and it's completely something that you can outsource or delegate. Kids, you both have to take care. So there is no discussion there. That's like, that's it. Yeah. So curious about like, you're talking about rebalancing, which I want to definitely talk about. But why? Why are you making your— being a founder itself is hard. Being a founder parent is 10x hard. Now you both are being bootstrapped, having 2 kids, running the same thing. It's 100x hard. So

yeah,

why are you not taking that other route?

I think it's— I mean, we started 4 years ago, right? So it's been a couple of years when we started. we didn't have kids. And I think everyone that goes into parenting is naive. Like there's no way that you know how it will be, right? Of course.

Yeah.

You hear stories, you hear the worst stories, you hear the best stories, but you always feel, and probably everyone thinks like, I'll be able to manage or I can do a better job until they're there. Right. And then kind of reality kicks in and you realize how hard it actually is. So I think that's part of like the beginning of our story. Like we thought we would be able to manage it and That was kind of the, you know, the reason why we thought, okay, it would be a good idea to have a child while launching a business. Of course, we knew it was going to be hard, but we didn't really grasp like how hard it would be. Then with Lucy, our daughter being our first kid, that was actually during COVID And it was a very different life for us because basically we didn't have anything else than work and the kid, you know, there's no social activities or anything like that. So after a couple of months, she, I mean, she goes pretty, went pretty early to daycare, which is like, in Belgium, kids basically go after 3 or 4 months to daycare. And at the time, Tally was still very small. Like you mentioned, we had just, we had like our, yeah, we didn't launch yet on Product Hunt for the first time. So it was, I mean, even though it was time-consuming, it was manageable for us. I think we had like around 1,000 users. It was very small. So I think the first year was kind of okay because we managed to kind of combine both things and also, you know, being in lockdown and basically not having anything else to do, we kind of had more time, I guess, and energy to work. the bootstrapping part, because you also mentioned that, like, why don't you raise funds? We, we kind of from the start thought like, okay, we, you know, Filip is a full-stack engineer. I have a background in marketing that we kind of have the compatible skills to try to do it ourselves. And if we can do it ourselves, like, why not try and see if we can grow this thing organically? Sure. But also because combined with the family, we didn't really need extra pressure from investors at the time because as you will also know, there are days where you cannot work or you cannot perform as you would want to do. Correct. And so we felt like bringing in investors would probably make it even harder on us instead of easier because now we were actually pretty flexible even though, you know, you're still kind of a slave of your own business, but we could at least decide to Take time off when we had to, you know, go to doctor visits, be you know kind of organize our own working hours. So that was actually kind of motivator also just to stay independent for us in the beginning. And so yeah, as Tally started growing, we came to the stage where it just became really busy, and we also realized that we had to grow the team. So we Our goal is not to just stay with just the two of us. We have hired people before. Some ended well, some did not end that well. And especially I think the hard part for us was because we were bootstrapped, we didn't immediately have the large budgets to hire senior people. Right. So what happened is that we didn't get like the output always that we wanted from the people that we were working with. So sometimes it was even easier to just do things ourselves again and then and scale the team later on. So that, that all of that kind of happened, uh, throughout the years. Um, and I guess also combined with our age, uh, you know, we— I'm 35, Philip is 36. We're not like young students that are just starting the startup journey. So we—

you're—

and we both want kids in life. We're— I mean, we, we still feel young sometimes.

No, all the time. You should feel young. You're doing Like I said, you're killing it. You both are like, you know, we're all young people at heart. I'm 35 too, so I can empathize. I can empathize with you being, managing 2 kids, not having time. And Marie, you're doing something incredible. So you're already, but yeah.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think we didn't want to kind of put our personal lives on hold. for the business. Sure. And even though we knew it was going to be really difficult, and now that our son is born, we again had went through this rough patch because, you know, the dynamics change again. There's 2 kids now. Before, we were 2 people to take care of one, and now we kind of each have to split up. And We just realized like, okay, we both want to be there for the kids. So we don't have a nanny, for example, because we, you know, we find it important to just spend time with them. So we're kind of now trying to outsource everything else that takes time, you know, all of these things.

The chores.

The chores. And since one month actually only, we're like, okay, this needs to be outsourced. You know, it's something we don't need to spend time on it. It takes away time from Tali, time from the kids. So it's basically looking into how can we optimize everything else so we have time left to work. And yeah, work now is kind of a bit like more like 9 to 5 for us because, you know, because of kids. Yeah. I mean, I think we put in more hours than that, but that's kind of how we try to structure our day and we just try to be really strict on No distractions. We don't have, almost don't have meetings. You know, there's, it's a very small team. If people ask me, you know, can you hop on a call for this? So the default answer will be no. If I'm working, this time is super valuable. So if I have 2 hours, I want to, you know, produce something useful for the business and not spend it on anything else. So it's basically a combination of that and just saying no to a lot of things. And just Really, really focusing on what we know that works and what our recipe is. And yeah, so that has gotten us here. We are hiring again. So we are working with more freelancers now. There's Jonathan, which I mentioned earlier, who's in charge of customer support, has been life-changing for us. And I've now also started to work with a freelancer, mostly helping us with documentation, copywriting. So slowly, Luckily, you know, we are getting there and we are kind of starting to, you know, have really talented people on the team that can help us and also take away some of the recurring tasks so we can really, you know, focus on growth. But yeah, it's definitely been quite a journey and it's not as easy as it sounds and that you can hear that from every parent, you know, there's always struggles and— Absolutely. only one thing needs to go wrong, you know, one person is sick or the baby is sick. Yeah, the whole system collapses. Um, so yeah, it's, it's, um, it's, uh, it's interesting to say the least.

It keeps you on the toes, right? That's, that's why I think, that's why I think, uh, if you wonder why, you know, the Formula 1 racers ride their race car at like 230 miles per hour speed is because everybody knows it's freaking dangerous, but it gives them the thrill. Like,

yeah,

there is like that adrenaline rush, the experience that nobody else will experience. So similarly, I think founders are on the same boat. Like, you know, they have this rush, you know. Yeah. Challenging themselves, like, how can I navigate? Like you're saying, how can I optimize? You're in a phase of delegating, optimizing. So it's kind of like you always are on your toes and, you know.

Yeah, it's really an urge. I haven't really thought about it in this way, but it definitely is because it is also what gives us energy. And of course, the kids do as well. But we have this this passion of, you know, now building this product. And for us, DALL-E, it's kind of like a third baby, you know, like it's, yeah, I mean, besides the kids, the most important thing in our lives, I would say. So we also want to, you know, we want to work and spend time on it. But I think that's like the, yeah, the struggle that every parent has to go through.

It's like you have to raise Tally too. So, you know, when you put in that analogy, like, so you have—

Somehow.

You have a moral— yeah, you have a moral responsibility towards that. And that comes the global impact. This is what I want to talk about, like the scale. It's no more a side project where you're at like doing $100K MRR. You're already crossed that million-dollar you know, golden number that everybody craves for. And now you have much more responsibility than you thought about, like, previously, you know, going back to 4 years ago.

Yeah.

Have you ever imagined, like, yourself, you, Philip, like, both of you, you will reach this stage? And is this always, like, something that you manifested or visualized? This is what— okay, we just started a side project. What was like your— take me back to the early days of Tally. Like, what was your mindset when you launched Tally compared to like, you know, and to the present day?

Yeah, I think our dream when we launched was to build like this lifestyle business that could support our family. And at the time it was just us two. And I think our first really, like, we had like these targets. And our first one was, how can we pay like one person like a proper salary? So kind of like, let's say, you know, what we would earn before in our jobs. And I think the first year we didn't pay any salaries. Yeah. I mean, we also couldn't. And then, or maybe by the end of the first year we did. And I think that was like the first, I remember then we went for dinner and we were like, wow, you know, like one person. is fully living out of this project. Like, that's crazy. Like,

that is, yeah, insane.

And we celebrated that. And then we thought, you know, if things, if it doesn't grow, we can still keep on doing this. And then maybe the other person can do some consultancy on the side and we'll make it work, but we will be, you know, independent.

And

so that was like the first part. And then the second one was like, oh, what if we can both you know, as a family, you know, pay the bills with basically doing what we love. And I remember then our second goal was like, okay, we wanted to make as much as we would do if we would both be freelancers and just would work for, you know, larger companies. Hmm. Because then we thought, okay, that's the dream. Like if we can do that, but with a product, like not by selling our time, but by selling a product that you can actually sell, you know, recurrently. And so yeah, then that happened. And I think actually, now that I think about it, those were like the most special moments because they were kind of like, you know, life-changing and it might seem like— It might sound a bit weird, but like, once you cross that, if there's then like, I don't know, $30K MRR or $50K MRR, the personal effect is not that different. I mean, there's more money coming into the company, but you're like, okay, this is growing now. And the numbers start to mean a bit less maybe because, you know, you're at this point where like, okay, this is now, we can make a living out of it. But then growth really like sped up in year 2 and year 3. And like reaching a million was just almost unreal to me because, you know, yeah. That's something I really never thought we would reach. Yeah. Yeah.

When, when, when did you learn about— I still remember the— that I saw the tweet and I was like, I've been meaning to bring you on the podcast previously, but I saw this tweet, March 2021, 1K MRR, March 2022, 15K, March 2023, 50K, March 2024, 100K.

Yeah.

So every year you're kind of growing. on a ridiculously rapid pace. So, and of course, you said, like you said, it's like, you know, blood, sweat, time, effort, like you poured your hearts into it. But I'm sure it's like, you know, it's not easy. Let's talk about the trajectory, the hockey stick. It's not easy. It's like you must have had your lows.

Yeah.

So talk to me about that growth. Like, how did you experience the growth? And what are some things that you want to share with us? that you never shared before, or that some people like, okay, I have to share this, I have to get out of my chest. It's, you know, about the journey of going from $1K to $100K.

Yeah, I think indeed it sometimes can come across like these things just happen and they don't, right? I think the beauty about our product and why we are able to do it with such a small team is, you know, because we rely on product-led growth. So basically the product sells itself. 3 users create a form, the form has a Made with Tally badge, you know, the form is viral by nature, you share it, and that's how it goes. But it didn't start out like that because we didn't have, um, we didn't have any audience or network to, to share like our MVP with. Um, so you were indeed one of the people that we, we DM'd, but I think I had like 200 followers on Twitter and, um, basically no network in, in, in startup world or no-code space or any of that. So the really, the hard part in the start was how do we get like those first 1,000, 2,000 users in so we can kind of start that product-led growth and we can start to get the ball rolling. And for us, that was really, we did that by cold outreach. So we would just send DMs to people. So we would basically scan Product Hunt and we would just check, okay, who has upvoted similar products or products, you know, that are also form builders or no-code builders or anything like that. And then I would just literally like make lists and I would have like, oh, this is Sharath. Okay, where can I find his contact details? Maybe he's on Twitter. We'd go on Twitter, we'd look for that, find an email, and then we would send, we would just send messages of like, hey, We've built this. Maybe you're interested in having a look. But this, I think, manual process is already where a lot of people just stop because it's boring, right? It doesn't give you a lot of, I mean, the response rate is super low. But I think that was the first point where we realized, and especially like Philip is more experienced than that, but like, we have to keep on doing this day over, day out, day in, day out to get those first users. And I think I, I don't know, I probably DM'd thousands of people from like just a Google Sheet, but literally like trying to keep it personal, you know, trying to look up a bit of the background and this and that. So I did that for months, just open the sheet, text, open the sheet. And I, and, you know, same for Filip, like he was at the same time building the product and sometimes we would get some feedback and he would, you know, incorporate that and keep on building, but also just by himself. So it's pretty lonely and there's not a lot of return, right?

Yeah.

In the start. So I think that's like the first hard part and then launching on public launch, I would say, where we, you know, showed DALL-E to the world. And it was such an important moment for us because we got a lot of positive feedback. So it really validated like, okay, you're building something that makes sense. And we doubled our user base in one day, which for, you know, we went from like 1,500 to 3,000 people. That was crazy. And then it just gives you so much energy back. So then, you know, you're charged again to go to the next phase. Right. So I think the, you know, the beginning is probably always the hardest. And then I would say, fast forward a year or something, you know, then this kind of, you're still super small, but the scaling kind of starts because there's just so many new users coming in, you cannot like serve them. We were doing customer support by ourselves. And so we got to this point where we just burned out. Hmm. We were both, not really able to focus on like growing Tally or like writing content or anything that we're just answering questions from people and Philip was fixing bugs and that was it. And so it doesn't give you a lot of energy. New players are coming in, right? Because, you know, there's new form builders being launched every day, which gives you like stress as well. Like, oh, what if all of this stops tomorrow? You know, we can—

Yeah.

We've always been really— The pressure. Yeah, very aware of that. Like it's going well, but it's also risky, right? Running your own business, like one thing goes wrong and maybe it all explodes. Yes. So that was, that's always like in the back of your head. And I guess still is, of course we've reached like, I think the scale or the volume where we know like this is not going to end tomorrow, you know, we're Building a product that people love to use. And, but it's in our, it's our responsibility to keep on delivering.

Right.

I think that's, that's definitely a pressure that is there every day. Yeah.

In one of those moments, I'm curious, when you got burned out, you're like, oh my God, this is too much. What did you do, both of you, to get over that hump? But because at that time, like you said, it's scaling. That means you're getting more users, more complaints, more bugs, so on and so forth, which is— which you can't control because it's coming from external, you know, things, right? It's not coming from internal. But you have to internalize, you have to get something, some, like in your words, I think you're using energy more often, which is very rare for a founder. What is that? What gave you energy that both of you are like, okay, let's put a stop to this. Let's start something fresh. What was your mindset like?

I think, I mean, because we're in it together, like it has pros and cons, right? I think the big pro is that we're in it together and we fully understand the situation. You know, especially when you have kids, your partner comes home from work, you know, is completely overstressed, wants to work day and night. You don't always understand or you won't always have the patience. Yeah, you can't empathize. But we can empathize and that definitely helps. I think for us in the hard moments, we've always like, okay, so we work from home until now. Actually next month for the first time, we'll have an office, which will also help. But it has always been to like, okay, let's take a step back, you know, if it becomes too much. And even literally, like, we will not work today. We will go somewhere else and we will just talk about what's actually important to us and for the business. And because it's very heavily intertwined, right? Like our personal lives and business. And so sometimes it has resulted in, for example, we had to fire people because things were just not going as we wanted and were requiring more energy than we would get back. So, like, hard decisions like that and basically saying, okay, let's slow down development and let's just see, let's have a look at the roadmap again. Let's see how we can start over. But Things like that. Yeah. I mean, they happen all the time and in all different aspects of the business, but I think just taking a step back and trying to zoom out and trying to help out each other is what kind of has worked until now. Yeah, it's just a constant, you know, you're working on yourself. You're also growing as a founder. Right. More experienced now than four years ago. Maybe also less stressed because you know we've been through already some yes, some ups and lows. So it I guess I guess it gets a bit easier. But also just in the end of the day, you know we're three people. We have hundred K MRR. We we build a you know we can build a business. Fully independently. We're very grateful for that. And that's also, of course, what keeps us going. Like, if it gets hard to just remind ourselves, like, we're doing this while we're also building a family. And that's for us personally, that's amazing. Even though it gets hard, you know, it helps.

Yeah, you seem to be very balanced. You're like, let's go One step at a time and let's see how things work and then we can take that next step. And you're basically ready for anything. You're not taking anything for granted. You know, that's how I think that is probably the best way to look at a startup or a business because things will become very simple. Normal, I would say normal. You will you will slowly eliminate the pressure. You'll slowly take out the stress, not immediately, slowly. But you will know, okay, we're we're not attached to this. But at the same time, we will give our best. I think that is probably the best way to approach doing business, especially when you're growing.

Yeah, you know because especially if you want to survive while doing it. Yeah, for sure. I think what we also What helped us a lot is we have like this framework, and it's I think it was in year two that we realized like what is actually working for us, and it came down to like these three principles of okay, Tally is free, right? That's how we sell the product. That's how it grows by itself. So that's super important. Tally is simple, so we want to keep the product simple, but also our marketing is simple. Our team working is simple. Everything is simple. And Antalya is us, you know, it's the founders, it's the bootstrap story. It's us providing personal support. So every time we have hard moments or decision or difficult decisions to make, we kind of go back to those 3 principles. And it really helps us a lot. Like, oh, should we introduce this feature? Well, will it get us more free users? Mm-hmm. Yes or no, right? Is it easy enough or will it just make the product super complex? Okay. Yes or no. And that's kind of, or like, should we do this interview or this? Like everything kind of comes down to these 3 things. And if it's simple enough, if we can manage it by ourselves and if it helps grow and get more free users in, then it's fine. And that makes it a lot easier to make decisions. And we just, we have to get, like, we have to think about those principles every week because, you know, something comes up or you see something on Twitter or like, oh, we should be doing this or this. And it's like, oh no, no, let's go back to what works for us. And kind of, I guess, being a bit stubborn in that. Yeah. Helps.

I think I will call that, yeah, some people call that stubbornness because they want to be rigid to certain values. I call it self-awareness. You know what you, what you are, what you want very clearly. You have so much clarity that you won't be focusing on other things. You basically focus on the things you really need to do. That's it. Yeah. I think that is really important. I think, you know, pretty much every every founder who made it, all they did was focus, right? Like, that's like the step zero. Focus on one thing, do it, do it your best. And I think there is a philosophy as well.

Over and over again, basically.

Over and over again. And a philosophy of not attaching, you know, having that detachment and anything can happen can help you like, you know, ease down little things. Let's talk about Tally. I want to talk about I think the hockey stick is amazing. I want to talk about it. You also kind of explained the do things that don't scale ways. Like one of the things is cold outreach. I want to understand about why Form Builder in the first place. It's such a crowded place. You're competing with giants like Typeform.

Yeah.

At that point, it's already venture-backed, biggest brand, you know, so many bells and whistles.

Yeah.

Why form builder? And that's why you want to enter into such a crowded market when your intention is to support yourself. You want to be independent. So you're going after something big, which is very hard. Again, you— I think all the 4 years of your life in the last 4 years, You upped your game. You made it very harder for yourself, for both of you, with kids, with being in the crowded market. So all those things are very tough. So why, why Forms in the first place?

Yeah, so, um, combination of things. Um, when we, uh, so basically our first startup failed, so we built something completely else first, and then failed because of COVID and we had to come up with a new idea. And when we were brainstorming, Forms was something that had come up because, yeah, I have a marketing background and we had both used form builders, you know, in our past jobs, but also in our first startup. And we had never really found a tool that we liked to use. And what I mean by that is, so there's Google Forms, Works great. It's free, but you just cannot customize it. And to us, it just doesn't look good. So that was like, okay, not loving this. Then there's the big players. And of course there's Typeform. Typeform looks great, but kind of forces you into this format of, you know, one question per page. And that's something also we experienced can be pretty expensive if you don't have any budget when you just start out. Like we made a waiting list in the beginning, like, yeah, I'm not going to pay hundreds of dollars, you know, for this form. I'll stick to the Google Form. It might not look that great, but anyway, right? Yeah, it does the job. Yeah, it does the job. So those 2 things combined, we were like, hmm. And at the same time, we started using Notion to run our startup. And we just loved it, not only the interface, but also how they were backed by the community, right? And how they kind of managed to make note-taking at the time, like fun and sexy in a way, you know, you kind of just want to use the product. So that, you know, made us think like, can we not do that to forms? You know, how can we make a form builder that is modern that people actually want to use, you know, that you want to spend time in? And about the crowded market, how we saw it is, It's a very competitive market, but every company needs a form at one point, right? So, there's also a huge demand and the demand is validated. We're not, you know, form builders have been there since the beginning of the internet. We're not reinventing the wheel here, but we were like, okay, if we can claim just a very small percentage of that humongous market, the demand is there, right? People like, people need forms. Yeah. But we're so small, we, you know, we don't need the revenue of the big players to be successful for ourselves. And that's kind of how we went into it. And I guess we, you know, we had to do things a bit differently than the established players, of course, because we don't have their marketing budgets. And that's where the whole free part came in. Hmm. And so offering most of it for free is what really differentiates us from a Typeform, for example. Because like 4 years ago, we didn't really know about a lot of other form builders that were doing this. And yeah, that was kind of our biggest USP. And then we also discovered that our interface and our, you know, the user experience is also, was also a big reason of why a specific niche of people were choosing Fertali. So then we thought, okay, there is, you know, there is this, it might be small, like we didn't know it at the time, but there is this group of people that would appreciate, you know, what we're building. And yeah, that's how we ended up with building Forms. And I think over the years I've learned that it is actually easier to launch in a very crowded market than

to,

you know, build the market yourselves. And yeah, I think that that's One thing that, you know, if I would need to repeat this, I would probably go for the same formula.

That is fascinating. I think it's kind of like an unwritten rule, right? Nobody knows about it, but it's actually pretty much there. Yeah. I love that. I love the fact that you admitted that because, you know, a lot many people cover that up and say, hey, we did XYZ and, you know, we were successful. But I appreciate your honesty there. It's like you said, it's— you don't have to sell the problem because the problem has been sold by big players. So all you need to do is like provide a little bit better solution.

Yeah. And find an angle that works for you. And for us, it was pricing and the interface. And that's just what we go you know, really hard on.

And I love the fact that you also mentioned, because one of my questions is, there is so much influence of Notion on Tally, be it design, the functionality, because Notion, you just, you know, backspace and you just like type, it creates like tables, pages and all that, like backslash. You have a similar way of approaching, you know, forms.

Yeah.

So talk to me about that influence. Like, what do you think, you know, how did Notion, how much of Notion played a role in Tally's development?

Yeah, I think Notion, I mean, has been hugely important for us and has been a big inspiration from the start. And I think the text editor interface is, of course, I mean, there was Notion. There was also other tools that, like a whole wave of tools that kind of have this.

Right.

But I think Notion is the most well-known one. And definitely it just made us think like, how can we make it so easy, you know, like Notion does to build forms? And so of course the editor, like the first version was inspired by by Notion. And I think besides the design, also just the way how they have this group of super passionate users, right?

Yeah.

That have formed millions of communities by now and have helped them grow. Because actually at the time Notion, I think there were only like 40 or 50 people. So we thought like, wow, if they can do this, You know, with such a small team, you know, it must be possible, you know, to build something that people actually want to use, but with a small team. So they influenced us in multiple ways. I think if Notion would not have existed, Tally would still be there. Maybe it would have looked a bit different. I don't know. But yeah, definitely inspired by them. And then And what we then saw is that, of course, Notion users also loved using Tally because of the similarities and because of also like the natural, like the integration that we have to send your form data to Notion. And I think what has helped us as well to grow is that Notion users are also very vocal about the tools that they use, the templates they make. Yeah. Same like with no-code. You know, specialists, and and and that's kind of how how how we launched, right? And how people got to know us, and how the whole word of mouth kind of started because of because of those ambassadors. Yeah,

yeah. I have a curious question talking about. I think I just remembered. I think you Tal is one of those tools that actually rode the wave of. COVID and, you know, it took on, took on, took no-code to the next level. I think at that time, no-code was very popular, very, very popular. Everybody's kind of freaking about it. So my curious question is, if you were to do Tally today, where there is no-code movement, but not like 2020, because I was part of that movement, I kind of like rode the wave as well. take back to COVID, like we have so much time sitting on our desks trying new tools that really helped a lot of products. I built a thing called Shoutout on the same ride.

Yeah.

So if you were to do Tally today, what would you do differently or how would you kind of approach starting from scratch around this time where it's all about AI? It's all about like a different wave. So yeah, curious about your thoughts.

Good question. I mean, hard to say. What's actually funny is that, so in Belgium, the whole no-code movement is, it's only just getting started. So, and actually when we launched Tally, we didn't really know that much about it. And it was because of our first users happened because in France it was already big. Mm-hmm. And it's a neighboring country of where we live. And some of our first users introduced us to the No-Code Friends community. And they have a very active community and they kind of helped us also find our first users. And it's only then that we realized, wow, this no-code movement. I mean, of course we kind of knew what it was, but we, it was just not a thing. It was not a hype here. And it's only after launching that we kind of realized that Tally fitted into that wave. So it was more accidentally. It was not, you know, a super strategic decision from us at the time. So I think that would not have really impacted it. But, you know, talking about AI, of course, probably because probably AI would be more, or the form builder would would have more smart capabilities already built in if we would launch today. While now we are a bit more, not hesitant, but a bit more like, okay, let's see what really makes sense, you know, before we start, you know, being the AI form builder.

Stamp AI on every product, right? Everybody's like, we see AI, like, let's stamp it on our product. So.

And we saw it as well in like feature requests like, hey, where's the AI, right? It's like, yeah, but what would you like to, like, what's the use case, you know? And of course it's hugely important and it's gonna, it's disrupting everything, probably also forms, but it would probably play a more important role in development from the start. While now we are kind of taking it more slowly, looking also at like internal processes that support, you know, how can we automate all of that? Yeah. And then just seeing what would really make sense to build into the product. And we have quite some ideas about that, but probably, you know, it will be a higher priority, you know, if you launch it in 2024 than launching in 2023. Would we have grown as much? I have no idea. I don't know. I think what we see now is that in Europe, no-code is getting a lot more popular, but, you know, we're always a couple of years behind in those. Those things. So I'm not sure how that would impact, you know, the growth. It has definitely helped us a lot, actually, you know, on Twitter and the hackers, Reddit, those channels. But yeah, good question. I'm not sure what else I would do differently. I mean, there's been learnings along the way, but I think they were more focused on not really the product, but like, I mean, we've launched features that we thought more people would use and then like there's all of that. Um, we probably would have hired sooner. I think we've grown the team sooner. Um, but yeah, those are things that you, you know, you don't know when you start out.

You gotta take your chances, right? Um,

yeah,

I, I want to ask about— I asked this question to pretty much every founder because once they're successful, they're like, kind of, you know what you're doing. Right? And you don't think about, you know exactly what you're doing and you're like, you know, again, locked in, focused. You just go to the next step, one step at a time. And you often kind of don't think about what would I do if this failed, for example. Yeah. So my question is, what would have, what would have like Marie, Philip, both of you would have done let's say this failed like your first startup. I think your first startup is Hotspot, or is that— yeah, right?

Yeah.

So imagine that's like another— Tally is like another venture like that. What would you have done? Like, do you have any idea, backlog, or like, you know, what would have done? I'm sure you would definitely enter into a crowded market. So I'm curious, What kind of crowded market would you choose?

I think that's something we know now. I don't know at the time, right? If we would have done the same. So I think we would have tried again for sure. So kind of what happened is we kind of gave ourselves one year to try and build a startup. And I think what's also important to mention is so Philip had sold his his previous startup, which was a crypto portfolio, uh, application. So again, something very different. Had done that before we started Hotspot, which means we had some savings in the bank to be able to do this. Um, and I think that's also always important to, to, um, to talk about because in the end, a lot of the time it's just, you know, the finances that decide how long you can go on, right? Yeah. And so for us, it was like, okay, we can now do this comfortably for a year without having an income and we will still be able to pay the bills. But probably we would not have done it for 2 years or for 3 years. Right. So I think we would have probably tried to come up with new ideas and tried to launch them. But if nothing worked and, you know, after a certain amount of time, we would just, we would need to make money again, right?

Right.

And we'll probably, I think we would, I think the idea at the time was to freelance. Like I had some, I mean, worked like around 10 years in B2B marketing through that and helped other companies. And I think we would have done that and probably tried to build something on the side. Until it works. But I have no idea how long we would have managed to do that, you know. Not sure, but I think that would have been the way. That's also how we started with Hotspots. We both had different jobs and we built it on the side. We had like a first bit of traction and only then we decided to go full in. So I think we would have kind of repeated that.

What, what didn't work with Hotspot that worked really well with Tally?

Huh, it's really, really not comparable for me. So Hotspot was a marketplace and it brought together small hotels and travel influencers, and it basically helped small hotels to, to market and, and to create content for, for, for their business by working with influencers. And for influencers, it helped them to find hotels to collab with and to travel for free. And set up partnerships. So I think this, it was a lot more sales heavy, like you had to literally call, like if it would have become bigger, we would have had a sales team, right? And we would have account managers calling hotels and trying to get them in. So definitely not like the product-led growth, like what we're having now. So I think that would have been difficulty number one. And just the fact that there's a marketplace and you need enough of both parties to make it work, it was a very different approach.

Makes sense. Yeah.

I don't know if COVID didn't happen, if we would have succeeded. Like, it's one big question mark. You'll never know.

Never know. No. You talk about product-led growth. I want to understand, apart from, you know, powered by Tally, apart from making it free, almost free, what are the tactics that you think like gel really well when it comes to product-led growth? Is it somewhere like, did you try something and did you fail at something when you tried to put product-led growth into motion?

I think from the beginning we knew that like the barriers to try it out needed to be as low as possible. And so of course the fact that it's free really helps because, you know, you don't have to pay to try it out.

Right.

But from the start, we also, you don't need an account to try it out, right? So actually completely in the beginning, our landing page was the form builder. I remember that. So we just went to tally.so and it was just this and you could start using it. And I think it was like keeping it as simple and super easy to get started. I think that definitely helped because people try it out. Okay, they kind of like it. You'll share it, you know, on social media, for example, and more people get to see it. So I think keeping it simple and keeping it free, then again, you know, helps to get more free users in the flywheel. And I think doing that, but also going really hard on customer support, because once people are in, you want to make them happy.

Right.

Happy users are the best ads, right? So doing that, I think, has helped us tremendously. And again, it's something that doesn't scale. It was just us. Answering questions, us talking to users on Slack, you know, almost 24/7. But doing that, you know, turned the first users into the biggest ambassadors, but also helped us shape the product and build the right things. Because, you know, they kind of told us what to build next. So that made it a lot easier to shape the roadmap and so on. And I think all these things are important. for the product-led growth. So I don't think it's just being free, but yeah, it's a couple of things combined.

What's next for Tally? What's the endgame, Marie? What are you guys thinking? Like 10 years, 20 years? Like, again, I know you're like a one-step-at-a-time person. By this conversation, I already know that. So it's unfair to ask about, hey, how are you thinking thinking next 10 years, but I'm more coming from a point of being ambitious. Like you're scaling, you're not surviving anymore. So you graduated that surviving mode and you're now entering into different mode at a rapid pace too. It's not like you're slowly growing. So ambitiously, how are you looking, Tally? What's your endgame, both of you? You want to share that?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, 10 years is difficult indeed. But I think if you ask us, like, we want to be a household name in the form building scene, right? And for us, you know, how cool is it that Talia is being compared to Typeform, you know, and we're only 3 people. But there's so much more room for growth. What we're seeing now is, so first of all, yeah, we We want to and we need to do a bigger thing. So that's like step one for us. We have quite ambitious product plans as well and to like, cannot like reveal too much yet, but like want to make the forms more dynamic in several ways. And then what we're starting to see is that, you know, there's a lot of enterprise companies that want to use Tally, but we're not necessarily ready for that.

Right.

We don't have the compliance, we don't have the support, like all of that. So for us, it will be looking into, yeah, how can we, how can we go from startups and creators and solopreneurs to like, how can we move up markets? Um, and, um, I think there's, you know, there's a lot to uncover there. Um, and the ultimate endgame, hard to say, uh, hard to say, well, where this will end, but I think the most important thing for us is that We can see ourselves doing this for a lot longer. We're pretty, pretty— You have more runway now.

More than 12 months runway.

Indeed. Yeah, we have more than 12 months. We can also start investing back in the product. And we've always been really careful with that. And this is the first year where we will also— so we have never spent on paid acquisition. And that's something that we will start doing this year. So there's a lot of experimentation now, but Because we have a bit more room for that. And that, you know, that's pretty exciting as well to see if we can not just lean on the product-led growth, but if we, you know, can add some, some more fuel in.

Some more sauce.

Yeah.

Love that, Marie. You know, I still don't know how you do what you're doing, being a mom, you know, managing Tally. It's, it's so much harder than, you know, that one can imagine. So I really, really appreciate you for taking time to talk to me. It's, you know, it's— Thanks. I've enjoyed thoroughly and I'm rooting for you. And, you know, we need more founders like you who are calm, clear, they know what they're doing, no distractions, very focused, and kind of like, you know, have that philosophy of, okay, you know, if nothing works, we'll try again. You know, so I think what I'm sensing is success can make you egoistic. Like, you know, you kind of tend to know that, hey, I've achieved everything. So I, but I see completely opposite of that. You are, you seem to be more like, we are not there yet. We are still like, you know, learning. We're still kind of like, you know, going in the path of becoming better. Yeah. That is something that I think is worth the biggest takeaway out of this podcast for folks who are listening. So appreciate you for joining. Any last closing thoughts before we wrap up?

No, I mean, thanks so much for the kind words and for inviting me and for using Tally since the start. And I think what you said, like, wraps it up nicely. You know, it's I think once you feel too comfortable, things can go wrong as well. So we're uncomfortably excited. That's what keeps us going.

Awesome. That is a great title. Maybe that should be the title. How to be uncomfortably excited about building a startup.

Yeah, I'll leave

that to you. Awesome. That's it, guys. Stay tuned for more episodes. on the Undefeated Underdogs podcast. We have amazing founders like Murray joining the show and dropping their wisdom, knowledge, and lessons and everything else. So stay tuned. Thanks for hearing and giving us your time. Cheers.

Bye.