Tibo & Tom - How to take a SaaS startup from idea to a $1M exit!

2 things. Um, one, you can fail for a long time, decide to quit, uh, your— to, to— I don't know the word in English exactly. Like, you know, you have your eye on the target and you start looking somewhere else for a while, and then you can put your eyes back on the target and still achieve something. That's one thing that I learned. Uh, and the other one is there's always a way to do great stuff and get whatever you want to use as a KPI for success, but to be successful, um, while considering what you like and how you want to work. So it's not just about the hustle, the hustle, the hustle, and never quitting, etc. There's many paths to achieving what you want to achieve. And it's super important to align with how you like things to work. Because if you don't, failure is pretty much guaranteed.

There you go. Hello, everybody. Thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Undefeated Underdogs podcast. I'm your host, Sharath. Today, for the first time in the history of my podcast, I'm doing an interview with, uh, with 2 folks, like 2 awesome founders at a time. And these 2 guys are unbelievable founders. I saw their journey right from 0 to 1 to N. Uh, they're none other than the founders of Tweet Hunter, Tom and Thibault. Welcome to the show.

Hey, so good to be here.

Yes. I'm excited to actually dive a little deeper into the story of yours from Tweet Hunter. You know, like I said, from the early days to where you are after the post-acquisition. So for folks who don't know Tom and Thibault, these are like, you know, some of the awesome founders I know personally in the bootstrapping world. who actually really, really takes care of customers and the community and product, like, you know, in an unbelievable way. They had their fair share of failures before, which we want to cover in the podcast. And most importantly, they made like, you know, a big splash with Tweet Hunter. So before I dive into all these questions, yeah, welcome, welcome again. And right off the bat, Again, I think let's— this is more of like a conversation. Pick whoever. I don't want to like, you know, popcorn it. Whoever like want to just jump in to answer this question. Let's talk about not just like Tweet Hunter, right? Like let's go back to the early, early days of your journey as a founder solo, like, you know, individually. What was— I know the story, but I want to hear from your words how Thibault sold his first product. I believe, like, you know, before even like jumping into Tweet Hunter. So what was your initial days look like as a founder, as a SaaS founder, as an indie founder? If you're gonna go ahead.

The thing is, it was actually just not only me, but it was with Thomas too. Like, basically, we started as startuppers like 7 years ago, right after school by just building our first startup together. It was like the first thing ever for me. Tomer already had experience with the previous job, but I didn't. And we did it.

I think you didn't even have a job. Yeah, you went straight from school to, okay, let's build a startup.

Okay, so let's actually talk about that for a second, right? How did you guys meet in the first place? What was like your Your relationship like? Thibault, you want to go?

We came from different paths. Basically, Thomas was a marketer out of a business school and I was the engineer. And we both decided, we didn't know each other, but we both decided to do this master's degree in entrepreneurship. The goal was basically in 6 months to train us to build a startup. And we just teamed up there and we teamed up and decided to build this crazy project. It was about gamification and education for very young kids. Right. And I think we did this mistake of just jumping on an opportunity that we saw without really thinking about validation or something like founder product fits or founder audience fits. We were basically building something for people that we don't really understand. We didn't really understand.

Right.

And the awful thing is, I think we needed 2 years to realize that it wasn't a project for us. So obviously we learned a lot, but we kind of lost 2 years of our life that we could have done something better, I think.

Nice.

So the

thing is, we want to hear Tom's version.

Yeah, my version is quite similar, to be honest. Like, as Thibault said, like, founder-product fit. We were 25-year-old kids out of business school. We had no kids. We weren't planning on having any, any, like, soon. And so like, what were we doing in this market? And also we actually raised funds on this startup, just a seed round basically, not something huge, but still something. Instead of focusing on how do we make money.

Right.

And so we just went like, bootstrapping was not as popular as it is now. But we weren't really focusing as much on revenue as we're focusing now. Right. And so, yeah, this led to us like breaking up because, you know, your founder is basically your life partner. Right. Yeah. And so we broke up. Thibault went to being the So he went on to another project first. Right. Maybe we can talk about it afterwards. And then he became the CTO of a pretty big startup. And I personally, I went back to being a regular employee, I would say. And, you know, you have to pay the bills. I also think I wasn't as, like, maybe I lost a little bit of confidence. And I needed to feel like I had acquired new skills and that I was in a better place to restart again, which eventually happened.

Right. So

the crazy thing about this first startup is—

Right. Yeah, go ahead. Go

ahead. We broke up and a lot of time went on. And about a few years later, I reached out to Thomas, wanted to buy his shares of the company, and I did. He was very nice to just let me carry on with this project alone. And I ran some experiments, earned a little bit of money. And even if I knew that it couldn't be the next big thing, I made it sustainable. Right. sustainable enough to set it on MicroAcquire. And I did find a buyer, an American guy, super nice. He bought the business and he's actually running it right now. So I really hope that he's going to be able to succeed where we failed.

Wow, nice. So let's actually, there's like so many things I want to unpack there. The first thing I that came to my mind is that product founder, founder product fit, right? Or founder market fit. So both are really, really important. The reason is I had a similar experience myself. So before I did everything right now in the last 3, 4 years, before that, I, with a friend, you know, you know, KP, right? KP and I, we built this thing called Closing Page, which many people doesn't know. It's like a sales thing. We have no background in sales. We are not salespeople. It's a B2B startup. The idea is like to solve a sales guy's problem and, you know, provide some value in their sales flow. We failed miserably, like just how you guys are mentioning, like we spent like 18 solid months while working full-time jobs and spend like a ton of money. We both are non-technical. We hired like an agency. who sits like somewhere like, you know, outside US. So I can empathize with you about the journey, like, you know, about the highs and lows, especially when you're not building something that's not going to work and you're investing time and money and effort. Right. So let's start there. Like, why didn't you give up? Why didn't you feel like, you know what, this is so shitty. Like, this is horrible. We're building, we're not seeing the rewards. Sometimes like customers, or the users who just use it is on a free plan, for example, they're not giving tight feedback. Most people discourage you because it's a nice-to-have product and you have no fucking clue about what you're going to build. Because it's not your product building for yourself. How, how did you process that? And why didn't you like, you know what, this is enough before you broke up? Like, Is there a stage where you both felt like, man, this is tough?

So my view on this is that strangely enough, we were delivering value to our users. Like, I still say today that the best day I ever had in my professional life is the first review we had on the App Store. And it was this mom, a mother of a young child who said like 5 stars. Right. My children are actually brushing their teeth now without complaining because we're using your app. And I mean, we had a lot of people who were really satisfied. Okay. Maybe not everyone. But most of them. And so there was no sign from the market as a, I mean, from the users who were telling us you should quit.

Right.

The sign should have been you're not making money. But the sign we were getting was what you're doing is great. And so we wanted to, because we weren't making any money, we needed to raise more. And personally, maybe Thibault, you have a different perspective, but I started getting discouraged when we were pitching and, you know, we didn't get many follow-up meetings. And in the end, we weren't able to raise a second time. So for me, this was the point where That was the signal where I heard, okay, there's a real problem here. Right. And I got to pay the bills and I don't have the energy or the willingness anymore to keep going on. I don't know what you think about it.

Yeah, I have like quite a different feeling because like you asked why did we stop? Maybe another question is why did we continue? And I think that we were very wrong and very biased on 2 things. That's we raised money and we were doing something that people actually liked in a way that is educational. It's for kids. So it's like at every family dinner, you can say that my business is validated because I raised money and I am doing something quite nice for kids. So this makes you feel quite nice and you are just continuing on business just because you feel good as an individual, but you are actually not earning money. So this, I think it makes you continue for the wrong reasons.

Right. But I think, so it's very interesting that what you said, I feel like I hear a lot of stories about founder saying, hey, I'm not building something I want or a target customer I want. So I'm actually stopping it. Like there is no growth. In your case, it's slightly different. You're seeing, like you said, positive feedback from the users. So what made you like think apart from fundraising, not getting good prospects from second round, whatever the— I think it's like a seed round, I guess, at that point. Apart from that signal, what made you think like, you're seeing value, or you're seeing like this, this feedback loop building, and the reward, intangible reward, I would say, not like a monetary reward. So were you guys like intentionally made a choice, like, since we're not generating revenue, that's actually like, it makes no sense to continue? What was the reason?

I think it

was just about that one a little bit.

It was the realization that it cannot be the next big thing. Like we were hoping to be a big company having multiple products because we loved developing new stuff. We wanted to build an empire and we just saw that it wasn't possible.

That was something I want to unpack, which is, I know looking back, it's like probably the best decision you ever made, but I want to unpack that so that the listeners who are in the same situation, like for example, founders who are still dwelling on an idea for like longer than a year or so, getting these positive signals from customers, And they're not going, they're not moving the needle. So is it like a gut thing? If it is a gut thing, you know, it's a personal thing, but is there a logical reason or something that you felt like, you know what?

In our case, like I think we had this vision where we had a green zone and a red zone. And if we reach some KPIs, we were in the green zone and it was like a very good thing. And obviously we would continue and we never reached this zone. And there was also this red zone with the very bad KPIs and that would have made us stop the business earlier. But the thing is, in 90% of the case, you are in the gray zone in between because the KPIs are not awesome, but they're not super bad either. Right. And so it became gut feeling stuff, like in almost every situation, and there is no absolute answer.

Right.

It's not just gut feeling, at least for me. So I have a personality where I like to discover new things and I change projects and companies quite often. Right. Like up until now, 2 years has been my max, you know? And for me, because there wasn't this founder market fit, I think also my— I think I got kind of bored by the project, you know? Like it's kind of like, Well, I'm not making very good money because I'm not making any. And I have to work on something where I kind of lost the drive and the energy and the motivation to keep going. Right. So for me, it's not just gut feeling, like, is this going to be good, a good company or a bad one? You know, like, uh, I, I feel like I need to move on to something else. Uh, and, uh, and yeah, and I was also seeing all my, my friends from business school or high school or whatever, you know, they, they improving in their lives, getting better and better jobs, etc. And when you're kind of stuck, it's, it's, it's not always fun to deal with,

you know. Yeah, I completely understand. I think it's, it makes End of the day, I feel you should find joy in what you do, right? Like, if you're not finding what you do, and if you're not loving what you do, I feel it'll feel like work and not play. And of course, there is like multiple factors, like you said, you know, peer pressure or like peer comparison. And self-awareness is something like, you know, a lot of— not many founders rely on. And gut feeling is another thing. I'm so happy that you made that decision because without that, you wouldn't be here with TweetHunter and whatnot. So you broke up, you guys like, you know what, let's split up and you do your individually, you guys did your own thing. What did you guys do after that simple project you've built and before TweetHunter? What was some experiments? So, you know, I know Thibault via Twitter. And I think he's one of the first guys who interacted with me in Twitter DMs about like a simple AI product he's working on. And we both like, I think I shared some feedback. I don't remember if I did good feedback or shared good feedback or not. But what are some experiments and what are some projects you took, some ideas you tinkered? In between this space, before Tweet Hunter?

So we had, we experimented with, I don't know, maybe 5 projects or something. We had one project which was about scraping Google Maps and enriching the data,

right?

So that you would get leads for businesses that prospect on a local level. So that, we actually got a client for that. Right. It was an advertising agency for movie theaters.

Oh,

okay. And so they reached out to local businesses so that they would advertise in their local theater, basically. So that was an interesting project, but we didn't have that many clients and they were not self-served clients, right? So we had to provide them with the data, right? And we really didn't want to have something that was unscalable. So we—

And this is all, this is all you both doing together? I think you guys are like together, uh, you founded this thing called Pony Express, is that right? Or—

Yeah.

Are you, are you still like— okay.

Pony Express is our company name, basically, right? Tweet Hunter, Taplio, they are our products, and Pony Express is Right. So yeah, that was together. Personally, I didn't launch or tinker with anything while I was an employee. So I only started tinkering again, to use the same word, when I joined back with Thibault. But Thibault tinkered a lot, I think, throughout.

Yeah, I would love to hear your version, Thibault.

You mean about like, About before Pony Express?

Before Pony Express and even with Pony Express, what are some ideas you tinkered?

Right after this first thing with Thomas, I made basically the same mistake where I started this company and this project. It was about teaching programming. to kids with a video game. And we raised so much money, like more than almost, I think, $500K. We raised, like, we hired a team of 15 people. We basically created a video game studio. And I was so wrong at believing that we could do it because it wasn't really for me. Like, I have this I have this urgency and this willingness to ship fast and to work with iteration and to hear feedback from users. And it's really not how video games work. Like, you need to go in the cave, work during 4 years, and ship something which is absolutely perfect. So again, we did something amazing, awesome video game. where kids could actually create their own video games by coding it. People loved it, but again, we didn't earn money and we ended up closing the company and selling the assets. We managed to get something that we hope again, the buyer is going to launch it because I really loved these projects.

Right. And again, same question, like, what, when you're getting, when you're getting that signal that people are loving it, people are creating, I mean, kids are creating their own video game versions. Again, what made you like, you know what, this is not working for me again, like the second time, not the first time. First time, it's like, okay, you're new.

In this case, it was really like the money on the bank accounts. Like, there wasn't enough money to pay the team. So I went through something that is, I think, the worst nightmare of a startup founder is having to gather the team and have this hard talk about, hey, we don't have enough money to pay the next month. So we are going to close the company and I'm going to help the most that I can, but yeah, we have to close up.

Yeah, it's hard. And I think it's one of— yeah, go ahead.

I think it was, for me, it was really the hardest experience and the one that made me want to move on with this new way of working with Thomas, which is basically validate first. Like, don't spend months or years on something that cannot become big.

Right. And I think that thinking came with a very strong price tag, I would say, which is good. I feel it's like this, from taking this from the quote from this famous Steve Jobs commencement speech, the patient needs the medicine. you know, to get the cure. So which is, which is sometimes tough, but it's a good thing that those are the firsthand experiences you should rely on instead of like learning from others or reading other people's experiences. You can't really make a decision, but coming from those 2 failures and doing a lot of things by yourself at Pony Express, what are some incredible things that failure taught you, both of you? Like, I want to like start with maybe Tom.

So like, for a while after this first experience with Thibault and while I was being an employee, personally, I think I felt like a failure for Like, to some extent, you know, like, I wasn't like, uh, I hadn't failed at everything, but I wasn't accomplishing my goals.

Right.

Uh, and that lasted for quite some time, you know, because, right, like, I also have this, uh, I already said, but like, I like to switch projects, which also, even as an employee, is not that great. because you don't capitalize a lot on your previous experiences. Absolutely. You just, you know, move to it. And then I joined Thibault again. And the fact that we iterated so much on so many, like both at the product, like which product are we gonna build level and the, well, now that we've built a product, like, what features do we build next, et cetera? Like, it's always ever-changing. And so, and in the end, like, we kind of made it because, you know, like, we just announced our exit, et cetera. Right. And so, what this has taught me is, I'd say 2 things. One, you can fail for a long time, decide to quit, Uh, your— to, to— I don't know the word in English exactly. Like, you know, you have your eye on the target and you start looking somewhere else for a while, and then you can put your eyes back on the target and still achieve something. That's one thing that I learned. Uh, and the other one is there's always a way to do great stuff and get whatever you want to use as a KPI for success, but to be successful while considering what you like and how you want to work. Right. So it's not just about the hustle, the hustle, the hustle and never quitting, et cetera. There's many paths to achieving what you want to achieve and it's super important to align with how you like things to work. 'Cause if you don't, failure is pretty much guaranteed. So I don't regret anything. I just know that now I have to trust that the way I work is the good way for me to work and that this delivers results. And I don't have to pretend to be somebody that I'm not, you know?

Love that. Thibault, what about you?

I think there is one thing is our first startup we built together because we wanted to build a big empire. We had these crazy thoughts about building many mobile apps linked together that would create a big ecosystem in which we could provide a lot of value to 2 users. And that was just too big. Like, it was our first venture together. And it created so much complexity for the users. There was no way it's going to work. Something we did very differently this time is bringing back the product to one and only one feature, one thing that is providing a lot of value and asking people to to pay for that upfront. And I think that's how you are able to deliver fast, provide a super smooth experience for users, get valuable feedback because you are asking for feedback on only one thing, and validate your idea quite fast.

I would add, it's also how you retain control over the decisions that you can make. As soon as you raise, you have people who are inside your company and who are going to, they can be really nice, you know, that's not the issue. It's just that at some point, their opinion is gonna matter just as much as yours. They can disagree with what you wanna do. Mm-hmm. They provide you with, you know, you're on life support basically. But at some point the life support runs out. And if you're on life support, then you are not, you are probably not focusing on the most important metric, which is your business has to pay for its cost.

Love that. Yeah, there, I think, you know, some incredible lessons. And I really, really like how you put, Thibault, which is breaking down— everybody has grand vision, right? The difference between winners and losers is that the dream is the same, but the way you execute is different. Like how you build systems, how you approach a problem and how you solve. And by doing that, like, and really, really evaluating the next step. I think those are the things that are— that makes a lot of difference. Scoping down a little bit, toning down a little bit, executing fast, failing fast. I feel those are some incredible firsthand experiences that only people who take action will experience, right? So love that. So, and I think one question before I went— I want to go into Tweet Hunter is that You guys kind of, you said in your words, you broke up after this first venture. And I assume that there are like, of course, there's a solid period of time you, you know, came back together, right? How did you establish trust with each other? You know, because you kind of started something, in your own words, you didn't make it, so you failed. And you're again starting something. And this time with different set of values, different set of rules. So, which is all good, but trust is really important to make things work, right? Especially between founders. So one, how did you establish trust with among yourself? And number 2, for listeners, what advice or tips you can give for founders who are technical like Thibault and who are non-technical like Tom? How do they find their partners? Like 2 of the questions for you guys. Yeah, go ahead.

Go ahead. I think it was an easy one. Like it's, I don't feel it's going to be helpful because it was so easy for us. Like when we got back together to build Pony Express, the trust was obvious. I think Because when we worked together at Pistache on our first startup, no matter the situation, no matter the success or the failures, it has always been— the collaboration between Thomas and I has always been amazing. Like, the degree of transparency and authenticity was

Right.

I think that's true. And, but it could have not been the case, you know, like we, I mean, when we first started working together, because we didn't really know each other, like we were in the same class and in our master's degree, but our master's was about building a startup. So very quickly, you've got to, you know, point at someone, say, you want to do a business? Yeah. Okay, let's go. Okay. We could have been less lucky, but my advice is don't find a co-founder, find someone you want to work with. And it's more about the person than it is about the project. And so you don't have to become co-founders when you start, you just have to work on something together. And you can, you can build a startup in weeks or months or years. Right. But you can do any small-scale project in a matter of days and get the feeling that the person, when working with you, is the right person, that they put in the efforts to achieve Uh, the realization of the project, et cetera. So for me, the, the wrong way to go about it is I have an idea, I need to find a co-founder to help me build it or market it. For me, this is not how most people should go about it. Most people should go about, I have this set of skills, I know that I should have like another set of skills with me. Mm-hmm. So for me, for example, I don't know how to write a line of code. So I need someone who can. Okay, that's what I'm gonna go and try to find. Not someone— I'm not someone with an idea trying to push my idea on a programmer saying, oh, please build this with me. I have great ideas. I come from business, marketing, blah, blah, blah.

Right.

No, it's like, hey, I have these skills, you have those. Why don't we figure out something we want to work on for a couple of weeks? If this goes well, then maybe you can do an actual company together.

I like that a lot because I think the trend I see as well is founders push their— solo founders, when I say founders, solo founders before finding their partners, like how you mentioned. They just push their agenda, their idea, and it feels desperate, like, okay, let's actually make it. Instead of that, what you said is absolutely— I wouldn't say it's not the truth, but it actually logically makes so much sense. I have a skill, you have a skill, let's collaborate. No matter what idea it is, it's not about the end goal. It's about taking that one step together and see how we have that chemistry.

So this one is so good.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I'm so, so good. Like, it's crazy how it's a huge benefit to team up before having the idea, because then you can just build the idea together and the ownership of the idea is shared. And it's definitely not the case in 80% of the co-founder research that we can see.

Right. Yeah, 100%. Because yeah, most of the, most of the co-founders hunts start with, hey, I have an idea, we want you to collaborate. And people like you, even I started, I am a kind of, kind of like falls in that spectrum. When I started ShoutOut, it was like my idea. And I don't know how to code, I actually validated it. And it's, there is no right or wrong way. It's like about building that relationship with your co-founder in a way, right? So there are different ways. And I feel what you shared is absolutely true. So, okay, let's of course talk about the elephant in the room, which is Tweet Hunter. I don't want to get into the details of how you came about the idea of Tweet Hunter because I think you've broadcasted that message thousands of times. So I don't want to talk about that. But one thing I want to also I want to mention is that Tweet Hunter is kind of responsible in a major way to influence on people about how to use Twitter. So was that the case from the beginning? Or was that like a byproduct of what you started? Because I truly saw audience building, why people should build an audience. And it becomes like this behemoth of industry in a way, right? Like for so many startups, like even Shoutout kind of falls in the same market. And TweetHunter has primarily kind of pushed the boundaries, you know, and I saw so many people are getting educated because of your content, your things you did. Was that the case every time or? Is it like, again, like a byproduct? We just started Tweet Hunter and it became like this thing where, you know, the boundaries were pushed.

I don't think we pushed the boundaries or I don't think we, like, I don't think it's either an intention nor like an original intention nor a byproduct. For me, we, So historically, you have great startups that are built by making something that's available to a select few available to a lot more people. And everyone was seeing these trends, you know, in terms of how to write a good piece of content. You can see it on Twitter, like how to write a high-performing piece of content. You see it on Twitter, you see it on LinkedIn. You've got more and more posts that are written in a more careful way that is meant to deliver results.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that we were, if not the first, at least amongst the first to see the trends and not know how to act upon them. upon it for ourselves, you know?

Right.

Like, oh, there's this post, it's super well written. No matter why, like, there's, there's a reason why it performed well, etc. But if I just take one post, it's hard to apply it to my own niche, etc. How do I do the same thing? The entire thought process is longer. So I think We made that easier, and we made so a top one percent of copywriters is always going to be a top one percent of copywriters. You know, like they're always going to write the top one percent of posts. But it doesn't mean that the ninety-nine percent people who are not this person cannot write something that's still pretty damn good and gets results. And I think this is what we helped. set in motion. We contributed to it at least, but we were always already seeing more, and like, we didn't invent this trend, you know, like we were already seeing more and more people understand the underlying structures of formats, etc. Of course. So yeah, but I think we made it a bit more accessible to people.

What about you, Thibault?

I feel the same. Like, we actually built these products for ourselves in the first place. Like, in the first few projects that we shipped, all customers were coming from Twitter. And so we wanted to grow our Twitter audiences and we didn't really know how to do. And the very first version of Tweet Hunter before we offered it to users was actually scripts looking for very high-performing tweets and displaying it on the console to just inspire me to write better tweets. And it worked. And that's why we decided to make it a product.

I like that.

Yeah, it's actually, it's useful from start for me in the first place.

Yeah, I think you kind of build something for yourself again, which is a major lesson I learned as well. After you, for you, it's like 2 times, for Thibault, for you, it's one time, Tom. But yeah, it's one of the obvious things people miss because of the temptation or I don't know, this, have this grander vision of, okay, what if we build this? One thing I want to ask is you build an AI tool before AI become like so popular, right? Like right now it's like, it's like the most common thing people can talk about. Why, when did you saw the potential? Like, you know, and this is like, this is the right path I have to We have to go together. What was like that aha moment?

For me, it was like 2 years ago. It was Christmas and I was invited at my wife's family. We were having Christmas dinner and it was the very beginning of GPT-3. It just released. I just got access and I told them about it and I was saying things like, it's so huge. You don't understand. It's going to change the world. And they were looking at me like I was the craziest guy ever. And they still are, I think.

But yeah, I think— Come on.

But super early, for me, it was crazy how these things are going to change the world.

Right. So for me, I didn't actually think we were doing something in this. we got access to GPT-3 and it was insane for us, but we were already seeing tools that were doing stuff with GPT-3. So I felt like we were late to the party. Hmm. So I didn't at all have this feeling, like I thought like, oh damn, like everything that's obvious is already being done, like writing a blog post,

right?

Uh, or outlining a blog post. And, and so I thought like, ah, shit, like I wish I had access like 2 months earlier, right? And for, for me, yeah, we were, we were late, but it turns out we weren't because like now it's like you just write a post about ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT, and you get like 1,000

Yeah. That's amazing. And so one of the, I think one of the moves you made, which actually were kind of controversial, I remember because Thibault, I do remember you were trying to market both of you, Tweet Hunter, and you're just opening up with your pricing plan. I do remember that phase. And you asked for the credit card before even like showing the product. That was like kind of like a— before users getting value. This was after you validating. I remember you, and it was like we shared some feedback and all that back and forth. What kind of moves— I don't, I don't necessarily treat it as a risk in a way, but it's kind of like a gutsy move. for, for someone who's just getting started opening up their pricing plans, there can be a backlash, right? What was, what was the other moves that you made similar to that, that actually kind of, you know, it's a harsh truth, but people has to face it, you have to face it as a founder, which moved the needle?

So other moves than the The fact that we asked for the card details before the free trial, correct?

Right, yeah. Just, it's like the first thing you do, right? Like when you sign up, all I see is like the card details, yeah.

Yeah, and I mean, we— So we did that for a few reasons. One is we want to validate with revenue. Two is we are And we still are, like we were and we still are a small team. And we honestly, like, to be honest, we don't want to focus our efforts on people who are just curious. So it's not about like charging you out of the blue. Right. It's about knowing that when we spend time, we spend time on people who are motivated enough And there's the third, yeah, the cost of the tech that we use, especially when we implemented AI. Well, it costs a lot of money. So we don't want to, we didn't want to deliver value for free.

Right.

It's like, it's not free for us, you know, so why should it be free for the, you know? So these are the main reasons why we did it. And we backed ourselves by having a far more generous refund policy than we legally should have or whatever.

Right.

But yeah, it's kind of a filter in a way. And other moves that we did, I remember one where we discussed it for a long time with Thibault. You know, it's like, Do we want to remain content, like focused on content inspiration? Or do we add scheduling and publishing to the product? It arrived fairly quickly, but it took a few weeks to make this decision because other tools, like tens of other tools were providing this, you know.

Right.

And so that was a sort of difficult decision. I wouldn't say controversial, but for us as founders, we had a lot of debates about that one. And other truthfully controversial moves, I don't know.

I don't know if they were controversial, but they were super, it was super scary for us to release these Tweet Hunter creative investors thing, where basically we were giving away a little bit more than 1% of our products to people in the hope that they would push us. It was crazy. Right. And it's something that we are very happy that we did, but we made the contracts so easy for them to accept that they could have the advantage and the benefit without doing anything if they want to. And they didn't. Obviously, they helped a lot, but we weren't sure of that. Right. And something else that we are handling right now is— sorry, just one thing, because it's making us quite busy right now, but I don't know if you remember, but we are We are sharing 1% of the sale of Tweet Hunter to our own users. And it's something that I'm so happy to have this opportunity to give back a little bit.

Yeah, because I think that's a clever move. It's kind of involving the community and they have skin in the game too, right? You're kind of not in a way crowdfunding or anything. That's a separate concept. But involving the community and giving a pie, sharing the pie with them is something a lot many people don't do because of whatever reason, because it's a positive-sum game, like you win, they win. It feels more organic. So I want to talk about JK Molina. You know, he's this incredible content writer. He tweets like insane threads. What was the reason bringing him on board? Like, is that more of like a growth hack or what? Where did you get the idea like in the first place?

I wouldn't call it a growth hack because he was with us for quite a while, like up until the exit. So for me, like, for me, a growth hack has this connotation that it's very short-term, et cetera. Right. The idea came from him. Maybe Thibault, you want to give some details on how that happened?

Well, I actually just DM'd him to get his feedback on the tool, and I definitely didn't have this partnership in mind. He was the guy who said, I want to be in, I want equity. And so we started talking about that. And I think he's a very smart guy. He saw the opportunity very early in Tweet Hunter when we had like $2K MRR. But he, as a writer, he knew very, very early that Our way of working, the SaaS, Tweet Hunter, is actually a huge time saver for writers. It's exactly what the technique that he's promoting in his own course. Just looking at great content makes you write great content. That's it.

And there's another thing, which is there aren't, or at least there weren't, that many people who were talking about copywriting on Twitter. A lot of people want to partner up with influencers just because they have an audience and they don't see, they don't pay as much attention as they should to how relevant the positioning, the content, the topic of the person is. Right. So we could have partnered with maybe a bunch of people, but he, I believe, was one of the only big names that were talking about Twitter copywriting a year and a half ago.

Right. There is so relevance, right? I think relevancy is really important when you collab with someone like how he's mentioning, you know, it's about sharing that skillset, sharing that same values. So I'm so glad that you guys collaborated because, you know, everything else after that was like, worked well. I'm going to ask like some questions just for myself because I want to learn from you guys. So with me, take my example, like there are like so many founders like, like me who went from 0 to 1 and that's it. Like, you know, we didn't scale or we didn't made that big exit like how you guys did. There are like a lot of founders that like a majority of founders like side project, either can be a side project like Shoutout went from 0 to 1. I'm just curious, number one, what are some things that founders like me should do from to go from 1 to N, which is building that revenue stream, growing that fast? and making that million-dollar exit, not necessarily for that outcome per se, but what was, what are some things that you can share with the audience and to me as well, the process of going from 1 to N?

So I think there's N and there's N plus 1,000, you know, and I think what we've managed to do up until now is go to one from a lot, and then the next step is a lot to a lot more. Yeah. But in that intermediary stage, for me, like, we remained very lean as a structure. Honestly, we could have started hiring a bunch of people, I don't know, nearly a year ago.

Right.

And we didn't. So that was, I think, super important because we remained agile, we remained quick, and we remained very close to our users. I mean, up until, I don't know, 6 months ago, maybe a bit more, we— I was handling all the customer support,

you

know. So to stay like, your head in the game, et cetera, is obviously key. Another thing which is maybe a bit more actionable, we had one marketing strategy. Mm-hmm. Our marketing strategy is that we do not like traditional marketing. We think it's boring. And so we made ourselves, we turned marketing into something that we appreciate. And what we appreciate is building products and doing stuff that is a bit risky, like what Thibault just said, mentioned, like the creative investors thing, giving back 1% to our users, partnering with JK, building a bunch. And so that's for the original stuff. building product stuff. Like we made, like I did a thread the other day where I listed all the side products, the side tools, free tools that we built around our paid products.

Mm-hmm.

And like just by doing the list, it was insane because like I had like 15 or 20 of those and I forgot a few. Like I didn't even like manage to remember all of them. And so, yeah, that was really key for us, I think, this approach to turning marketing into something that we liked, either because it was exciting and risky or because it was like right into our skillset and what we love doing, which is building products. So for me, like, yeah, compound interest, you know, do that 20 times and It'll pay off. But yeah, Thibault, maybe you want to add something.

For me, I think it was really about shipping more, like shipping more and more and more. Because I remember how we did things before and you wonder about so many things that many of your ideas, you are not shipping them. Like you are just not sure. that it will perform. So you are not doing it. I think this time we just had this way of working where we just think less and ship more. And I think at least once every week we try to ship something new or that would grab attention. And the thing is, you never know. Right. Like you are always surprised by the results. It's crazy how something that you think is going to work is sometimes not. And the opposite also is very true. And shipping more stuff is the best and best way to learn about human psychology, about what people are really looking for. It's the best way to move forward, in my opinion.

Yeah, absolutely. It's not just about ship, just to clarify, because I think Thibault said it, but it's really important. It's not just about shipping features of your product. It's also about shipping marketing.

Right.

And like, it's more about doing than shipping because shipping has this dev terminology to it. It's not just about dev, it's about all aspects of your business. Just,

I think, yeah, I can summarize in a way that it's about building momentum every single week. Like, yeah, exactly. Moving 1 inch, not like a feet, you know, that's like a, that's like most people think that if you move a feet, you may, you're making progress. I completely disagree. I truly believe after, you know, building Shoutout and building like a lot of side projects, it's about really freaking moving an inch every single week or whatever the cadence you put, like, it doesn't matter. Like, how you said, Tom, about compound interest, right? If you move one inch at a time and look back, you've already moved like, you know, so much, right? And that's so underestimated by many people because moving an inch doesn't actually give any output immediately. There is no immediate outcomes to it. I really like that. I think being lean making strategic moves, involving or collaborating with relevant people that actually share your vision. And ultimately, like, you know, building momentum, both from product as well as every other aspect like content, marketing, collabs, launching experiments, launching side projects, like everything counts towards that inch. I really love that. What are some mistakes you made? And I'm sure it's not going to be like, it's not a rosebud, right? It's not like a rosy, flowery path building TweetHunter. You would have made some mistakes along the way. And how did you recover and kind of like moved really fast from it? If you want to share.

Well, at the very beginning, we were super hesitant at adding a scheduler to Twitter. At first, it was only about inspiration. And we didn't want to do it because it was big. Like, it was heavy to develop.

Right.

But we did it anyway because a lot of people were asking for it. And in the first few weeks and months, it was super buggy. Like, people had tweets not coming out or threads cut in half. And images not being posted. And the way we reacted to that is just fixing relentlessly, giving people who experienced bugs were being given a free month of Twitter. And at the same time, we tried to fix bugs in less than a few hours. And it works. When people reach out and you fix the bug in a few hours, they are even more engaged because

Right. From another standpoint, another mistake that I think we did is trying to sell your business. Let me elaborate a little bit. But at some point we were doing— we had meetings with quite a few people who were interested in acquiring us. And it started to divert our focus a little bit. In the end, the people we, the company we sold to, Lempire, which, who makes Lemlist, they, it happened naturally. without us having to divert our focus and start doing stuff that is not in our DNA, like slides, meetings, presentations, like email threads that go back and forth for weeks. It happened much more naturally. Right. And so, yeah, I think at some point, so it didn't impact us too bad because we kept growing while having those meetings and those discussions, et cetera. But at some point, Thibault and I just agreed to say, okay, just let's stop. Let's refocus on our business. We'll just start talking to Lemlist because like we like them and like they seem to get us. And let's go back to running a business. And yeah. Maybe we would have been even bigger if we had not focused on like acquisition meetings or whatever.

Right. I like that. I was also like kind of curiously want to know, so you both, I assume, are full-time, right, on this? You're not—

No, I have 3 other $10 million companies. Oh yeah, we're definitely full-time.

Right. So this is another thing that is like kind of stops many people because they're not focusing full-time on building these ideas. So they just like give up, right? And I truly, I'm against that fact that you can still make time weekends, whatever it is, like morning, early mornings and whatnot. So 2 things. Do you still— do you believe that what you pulled off, like going from, I think, zero to one, I did it myself, so I can confidently say that you can really pull off having a 9-to-5 job. You can hustle your ass off, like I said, on finding time and whatnot. Do you believe people can pull off building million-dollar businesses? while having a full-time job? Is there an angle to it? Number one. Number two is, if yes, what do you suggest? How do you help manage, or advice to them?

Well, billion-dollar company, I would say no, probably not. I mean, there are always exceptions, et cetera. But I do believe you can build a profitable income, like a revenue stream by being part-time, but it's going to take a lot more time for sure. But I don't want to blame people who don't do it full-time because there's many things that can stop, prevent you from doing it. Thibault and I are very lucky. That we had some savings, that we live in a country where people have this bad view about France for business, but because of strikes or whatever. But in fact, the French government really helps us create businesses. Like, I was able to leave my job, have some unemployment benefits that were paying for my bills for a few months. Oh, wow. So I don't want people, like, I don't want to arrive here and say, I hustled, I had zero advantages, and everything is due to my sheer will of becoming better. Like, I did get some advantages that many people don't get.

Right.

So I believe you cannot build a million-dollar company without being full-time, but maybe you can make like a few grand a month. Yeah, for sure.

I might have a slightly different point of view where I think you can validate while having a job, but I don't think you can build a sustainable and highly profitable business because someone else is going to quit his job and do the same thing. And in this world where you have a lot of resources, it will, I think it will outrun you.

Right. You know, I truly believe, I think something that I personally struggle, honestly, I'll be honest with you and transparent. For whatever reasons, I have a full-time job because I have to like, you know, be on a visa and whatnot. There is like a legality issue, which I'm kind of hoping to solve in this year, hopefully next year. But I do, I want to look curiously, like, you know, is there a way can I pull off something like this while doing, while keeping the thing? I think it's about giving attention. I think, yeah, I truly agree with you as well. If you want to build a sustainable thing, you have to give undivided attention. And it's really hard to like, balance to board. So totally with you on that. So a couple more questions before we close off. One is you've raised money before. It's like, I think for Thibault it's 2 times and for you, Tom, it's like one time, right? And why did you choose bootstrapping this time with Tweet Hunter? And number 2 is what made you do that decision? Like, okay, We've made enough that we can do and we can exit. Is it more of like growing from $1 million to like $10 million path? Because I saw your tweet, Thibault, that you're on the path to build the next, basically the next milestone. So is it that or any other reason?

On the first point, I would say that it feels so good not raising money. It's crazy. It's crazy how you can focus all your energy to something that is actually truly valuable. It's insane how much time we spent raising money, just talking to investors, doing these investors reports. So if people don't need it, they should not do it, like really. And it really makes you go way faster. And it's like the last 2 years with Toma has been way more enjoyable because almost everything we did was directly focused to building and marketing our products. It was, we removed all the nonsense stuff about convincing investors and facing a lot of rejection when you are raising money.

Interesting.

Yeah, I'm totally with Thibault on this one. It is a matter of can you not raise because there are projects that deserve seed rounds and Series A, B, C, you know, but for me, if you're building a SaaS, unless it's super enterprise, there is no reason for you to need any, like, to need any kind of funding. Like, you can always reduce a SaaS to its bare essentials, which are not very costly. Right. And I mean, maybe you need some family money to just get the thing out of the ground, but you don't need more than that. Right. And on your second point, like, why did we sell? There's many, there's so many, there were so many good reasons to do it. There are personal reasons, which are that, like, to be transparent about this, like me personally, I, felt like after building a successful company, I wanted to know that I was gonna be secure financially for in the long term. So that's my personal reason. And the professional reason is that we sold to a company that's bootstrapped as well.

Mm-hmm.

And that made it above and beyond the $10 million ARR milestone. And we're convinced that we're gonna go further and quicker with them than we would without them. And in the end, it's not like, okay, maybe you hold on for another year and you sell for twice or thrice the amount. Right. But Does that really impact your life? I'm not sure. However, if like now it's all about, it's more about ambition and ego than it is about safety and material comfort. And I really think we're gonna go further and quicker. Absolutely.

Yeah. So how are you? How are you? I think I should have asked this question in the beginning, but how are you feeling? right now? Like, after 2 years of journey going from zero to like where you are, what are some emotions? You know, what did you do? Like, I'm sure you guys celebrated together with your families and, you know, personally. But how— what are some emotions you want to share with folks? Is that like a sigh of relief? Or what is it? You feel more ambitious?

I don't know. It's very hard. Like, It's the first time we felt this, so it's hard to actually know what you feel because the thing is that we are going to work 2 years with Lempire. So it's not over right now and we are working hard today for our users. So yeah, it's like you get some money, you don't know what to do with the money because you actually don't need it. I don't know. What about you, Tom?

Yeah, I think so. It's funny because one of the things— so obviously you sign the papers, you get the money. It's like exciting for 48 hours or whatever. Right. And What I did yesterday is I sent a message to the very first person who gave me a job. So I was fresh out of college and I sent him a message, like, he's still the owner of the business. I was employee number 3 or something like

that,

or number 2. And I just wrote to him like, okay, well, I just made an exit, you know, and I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for like having me as your second or third employee. Thank you for teaching me specific skills. Thank you for giving me, like trusting me to take on projects and et cetera. Thank you for letting me go in peaceful terms so that I could launch my first company, et cetera, et cetera. And this felt actually pretty emotional for me to to write it up. And I think, yeah, I just feel thankful. Yeah, thankful for many other people. But to write this message specifically to this person meant a lot to me.

And the same to Twitter people. Like, the amount of love and support that we receive from Twitter especially, it's crazy. Like, it's insane how people that you never met can actually really help you on something that is important for you.

Yeah, I think that's the serendipity of Twitter as a community, right? I've never met any of you, but we still have some common connection and a sense of support, early believer type of a thing. And shout out to you for actually supporting me in my journey as a founder with Shoutout. You were one of the first paying customers. So Appreciate that. And I love what you said, Thomas. At the end of the day, it's those people, if you look back, right, those are the ones who installed that belief, confidence, conviction that, hey, I took a shot on you. And I'm so glad you remembered them. You know, not many people remember that. They just move on with their busy life. So I love that. And man, I'm so Thrilled to see, you know, in the audience seat and being like a supporter as well as like, you know, just like a fellow founder. And I'm so happy and I'm so— I don't know how to put this in words, but it's so joyful to see someone like you guys who went from with intention like, okay, let's build small things for fun and see how things work to where you are right now. And That, that is a clear sign for people that things, miracles do happen if you just move one inch at a time, right? So congrats to both of you, and I wish like the best of the best for you. And I hope whatever the thing you're, you're chasing next, it's, it's going to happen for sure. I, I have utmost belief in both of you, the way you handle things, uh, it's phenomenal. The way you treat customers, put people in front of you, for whatever, you know, the experiments you take. And I love that energy, and I'm rooting for you big time. So any closing thoughts before we wrap up?

Yeah, I just want to say, add one thing, just on top of what you just said, is that a lot of what we achieved is our own will, and a lot more is the connections you make, the people you reach out to, There's so many people that we know and that we do not know personally that helped us get through this. So yeah, one last thought is like, don't forget the people. Meet new people, bring value to other people, and eventually, eventually it always pays off.

And I would just say thank you. Like, thank you, Sharath. Thank you, Twitter. Thank you, Tom, also, that you agreed to quit your job to join me when I already had quit my job. So yeah, I'm super thankful right now to a lot of people.

I love that. Yeah, I think you guys share most of, you know, your next steps on Twitter. So that's why I didn't dive deeper into those things because you're obviously going to do that. But yeah, I will let you know, find where people can find you. Like, you want to let people know? You want to tag? Yep.

Yeah, I'm @TomJacquison, which is really hard to spell. So just like Tom J, and you should find me on Twitter.

And I am @TiboMaker. Tibo is T-I-B-O.

Awesome. Yeah, I'll put everything in the show notes as well. But yeah, man, you know, great, great chatting with you guys. Great knowing your experience. And again, rooting for you big time. I'm always here to like support. That's, that's a wrap, guys. For folks who are listening, keep building, keep building momentum. Keep moving one inch at a time. That's all that matters. Everything else universe gives to you, gives back to you. So Good luck with all of your projects and all of your ideas. Keep building. See you guys.

Thank you, Sharad.