Building a $$$ 7 figure Shopify SAAS Company at age 23 - Noah Tucker | Midnight Podcast Episode 39

Like kind of, you know, what social snowball gained a lot of momentum for when we first launched because this is like our whole marketing angle and it was like our, in our flagship feature, whatever is like turn your customers into affiliates. And really what that developed into is like turn your audience into your most efficient marketing channel.

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Let's fucking go. Right then back with another episode of the Midnight Pod. We're on a fucking roll. We have the second yank we've ever had on. Is that, is that a disrespectful term, by the way?

I don't even know what that means.

All right?

It means American.

Oh.

I think it's like a tongue in cheek, like English term for an American, but second American on the pod.

I'll embrace it.

Noah Tucker, founder of Social Snowball, which is a SaaS, I guess, Shopify app and SAS that I recently started using. I actually uninstalled it, then reinstalled it. And then I found out that we had like mutual connections on Twitter, which is basically where everyone seems to fucking Know each other these days. And you've just moved to London.

Yes.

From America.

This is true.

With your girlfriend.

Yes.

Shit's getting real. You signed a lease for a year or what?

Yeah, exactly.

Good choice, by the way. Near to me, Southwest. So, yeah, definitely gonna get, get, get to know each other over the next few months, I suppose. And. Yeah, and gym box as well. Yep. And keen to get running as well. So we are back on the wine, by the way, because last night's episode was fucking gin and it tastes like shit.

Oh, God.

So cheers to that. And shout out Paul Weiber. Paul, is it Paul Weiber? Paul Weiber from Jerry's. By the way. He gave me these cups. Pretty sick, I guess. First question, as always. We'll dive into a million different things. It's basically, who the fuck are you? Would you do. What's your background? How old are you now, by the way?

23.

Oh, shit. I thought you were older. What are you? I'm 26.

Oh, nice.

24. So, yeah, I guess diving into where you came from, what you do, we can get into.

Yeah, I mean, like, from a business standpoint. My first ever, like, real venture was right out of high school. I got like super into the drop shipping world. So I guess this is like 2017. Yeah, I was working on a fishing boat at the time. Just like. Yeah, different times for sure. I was working on a fishing boat at the time. Just like trying to make money, doing anything I could. And fishing was like my passion. And it's kind of still is, but haven't done it in a while. And I just had some friends that were visiting and they had like these really simple dropshipping stores selling like bikinis and rompers, like super simple stuff. And they weren't. They. I don't even think they knew what paid ads were. They were just posting on Instagram and DMing people and making a couple hundred bucks a day doing it. And they showed me like their. This is the first time I ever saw, like Shopify or the. The back end of the interface. And they were like showing me like 200 bucks a day just from, like sitting, you know, posting on Instagram all day. And I was like, if I can make 200 bucks a day, like, I will for sure quit this fishing job and dive all into this. And I've always been, like, entrepreneurial, like selling stuff on ebay since I was like a little kid. So I was like, this is right up my alley. So I built a store, you know, was just posting on Instagram. I made Like, a few grand, nothing crazy. Then I went to University of Miami, and my freshman year, during, like, the orientation, I met my now good friend Will, who happened to also be in the ecommerce world. And he was telling me, like, hey, I've done, like. Cause I was showing him that, like, look like it's making 200 bucks today. Like, isn't this crazy? And he was like, dude, I've made, like, over $1,000 a day on my store. And I was like, how is that even possible? And he was running like, these. I don't even know if these are a thing anymore. Maybe they are, but, like, these Twitter ads that you would basically pay these people who owned a bunch of accounts for impressions, and they would, like, retweet your tweets until it hit a certain amount of impressions. So it was kind of like paid ads, but it was like influencers, but a bit more organized than just like, paying someone to post a retweet. And I basically tried that for a new store, and it popped off and I was like, okay, like, I'm on.

Facebook ads at this point.

I didn't even know what that was. I didn't know what that was yet. Like, that didn't even cross my radar at this point. Yeah. So, you know, and ran up a store my freshman year, kind of like got into the world of drop shipping. Like, that was my first, like, real success. I think I did like a 30k month, maybe like 10k profit. But as a freshman in college, like, that was pretty crazy. And then, I mean, that's kind of just the beginning of it. Like, after that, I just dove into the whole E commerce world. I started really getting into paid ads. Like, obviously Facebook ads crossed my realm at some point. Got really into that. Started building stores, did that for about five years. And building an affiliate program for these stores was like, a pretty big part of any store I'd work with. So if I was consulting for someone or building a store for myself, I'd always build, like, some sort of ambassador or affiliate program and to make like, we could dive into this a lot more. But just to make a very long story short, I was very unhappy with the existing tools that existed in the Shopify app store to build an affiliate program. So that's kind of what ended up sparking the idea for Social Snowball, which is obviously what I'm working on now.

So did you finish university?

No, I actually only went for that first year, and then I dropped out before second year.

Yeah, same with me. To be fair, I Actually dropped out twice, but it feels like fucking ages ago now. I dropped out like five years ago nearly. That's mad. That is flying back. So the whole drop shipping thing, because I can relate to a lot of that. Like, 2017 was like golden age. Looking back, it's like proper nostalgic. What scale did you get that to?

And, like, it wasn't while you were.

In uni afterwards, obviously. Five years, quite a long time.

It wasn't anything too crazy. Like, I mean, I've definitely seen people do numbers way bigger than this. I'd say, like our biggest months. And it was. Okay. So it was me and that guy Will who I met my freshman year. We partnered up together and we were like, powerhouse dream team. Like, we complemented each other skills and weaknesses perfectly.

Yeah.

So we ended up partnering up, living together for like four years in Miami. And I think, like, the biggest volume we did in revenue was like a 300k month.

Yeah.

So, you know, I mean, obviously not.

Bad, but still bigger than 99.9% of people.

Yeah, yeah. But nothing, like, too parabolic. And also, like, we were. We were just dropshipping products. So it wasn't anything we were like, super passionate about. Which is another huge reason that I ended up pivoting away from it. Because, like, what I'm building now I'm so, like, passionate about and I wake up so excited.

Did you ever think about getting inside, building a brand? Because that was the progression for me. And like most people I'm now good mates with.

Yeah, actually we did. And we pursued one.

Pretty SaaS is like, similar, but very different.

Oh, it's not even similar. It's a whole different. Whole different world. But yeah, we did actually want to build a brand. We're like, okay, like, we obviously have good marketing skills. Like, we should actually build something real with this. So we were going to build a nootropic supplement brand. Yeah. Not as cool as this one, though. But it was called Rubik. And it was basically just like these, you know, pills you take. And my. My business partner Will is like, super into, like, health and nutrition. So he, like, formulated it. We found like, a manufacturer in Georgia that would, like, bottle it for us and everything. And we, you know, we place an order for like, a few thousand units. We built, like a website and some funnels and made some ads, and we ran it for like a couple weeks. And we were just like, why are we, like, we don't even like what we're doing right now. Like, we were just like, we just thought we had to build a brand. And then we, like, instead of. Instead of, like, having a reason to build a brand, like, finding something that actually was, like, solving a problem for us or, like, something that was, like, important to us, like, we were just like, let's figure out a product to sell because we want to build a brand. And I'm like, now a really firm believer that, like, the most successful brands are created to scratch your own itch. So, like, if you're really passionate about something or you have a problem that you want solved and you can create a product, whether it's a physical product or like a software product, it doesn't really make a difference. Those like. And then you build something that and it works for you. And then you're like, wow, I want to share this with the world because I know other people are experiencing the same problems. Like, that, in my opinion, is when the best brands are built. And I took the complete opposite approach of that. I was like, I want to build a brand and I want to, you know, build something huge.

Yeah.

What should I sell? Okay, this seems like a cool product. I'm gonna, you know, spend a ton of money formulating and building this. Even though, like, I don't even know if this is actually what the market wants or what I would even want. So it was kind of a backwards approach at it.

Yeah, I think most people do that, to be honest. Like, probably that's kind of why, like, when I moved away from the dropshipping space, like, I mean, I was doing like, pretty mad numbers like, three, four years ago. But then I was just like, this is like soul destroying. Because. Because I came into the E. Comm originally had a brand, as in, like my own custom products, blah, blah, before I ever did drop shipping.

Yeah.

And I was like, fuck, I need to make some, like, quick money. When it was, like, relatively easy. And then I went back to brand building. But then even then, like, when I started my jewelry business, Midnight City, which was successful, I was never like, that passionate about it. It was more just like, there's a clear opportunity here. Like, jewelry is pretty at the time was like, relatively low competition in the uk it was kind of easy to start because it's not like that of a not very complicated product. And then I was a bit more passionate about the whole neon thing. But then with this, I definitely feel like, yeah, it's the first time I've been like, I'm actually building something cool for me. And like, the review, the early reviews and like, you know, on a custom formulation, like, really good and stuff. It's ah, it actually works. People resonate with why I made it and like the problems it solves, et cetera, et cetera. So. Right.

And that's like the best motivation process.

It's more enjoyable anyway.

Yeah. It makes it more fun. I'm like, so I genuinely care. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And I want to put my name to it. You know what I mean? Like my actual Instagram and my.

I saw that.

Yeah. My email is on the packaging for the first 8,000 units. I'm going to take it off after that because it's just going to get too much.

Yeah, that might be a bit messy, but.

No, I mean most people wouldn't do that because this time give a fuck.

Totally, totally. Yeah. And I mean when you're building something that you're genuinely excited about and you know, it's like really providing value to the world, it's like so exciting to see that actually come to life. And like, I'm like, exactly what you're talking about. With like the reviews, getting that feedback and being like, wow, people are legitimately enjoying something that I created.

That's the ultimate.

That's what's like, that's what really motivates me at least. Like, like, that's like, that's what it's all like for.

Yeah, exactly. Because like you can make money and you have to do that and that's a good thing. But it's not going to be as fulfilling if you don't actually give a fuck.

Yeah.

And I think most people take probably too long to realize that. I think you have to both at the same time.

I think at least for me, like the, the only way I was able to learn that I didn't want to chase money was by chasing money. I don't think.

Yes.

I mean, maybe not everyone's like me, but like, yeah, like if you're the same case, like, it's hard, everyone can tell you don't taste money, it won't fulfill you, won't make you happy, whatever. I feel like you. That's like one of the few lessons in life that like, you can't comprehend without experiencing. And like, no matter how many times someone stands on stage at like some convention and says that, like, if the people in the audience haven't experienced it firsthand, I don't really think, I don't even think it's fair to give it as advice anymore because I think like, the advice should be like, if you're really money motivated, which maybe not everyone is, but if you are, which is not a bad thing. Chase it and make it and then realize that that's not what you wanted. And then, you know, adjust accordingly. But it's hard to skip that step.

That is so true. Yeah. This is actually quite philosophical. For like, 10 minutes in. Normally we save this to like an hour. I remember actually just a distinct mom, like two and a half years ago when I was driving my green Audi R8, and I was like 23 or 4 at the time, and I just pulled over and wrote a note in my phone, like, chase fulfilling things, not material things. Because I was like, wait a minute, why do I get no pleasure from driving this thing anymore? Even though it's, like, sick. But yeah, it's funny. That's like a really easy to understand example of kind of what you're saying. Yeah, and I completely fucking agree.

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I'd be glad to have you in there. Let's fucking go. Just going back briefly because I like to try and, like, fucking figure out, like, a timeline in my head. So the whole fishing boat thing. Yeah, what's the crap with that? Was that like sea trawlers or what? I used to watch Deadliest Catch. I'm thinking of that.

No, I wish. That would have been way more cool. It was. It was. It was like. No, it was a. It was like a party boat. So basically how it works is like people could just.

I don't know if they.

I guess they might have these in the uk. Honestly, way too new here to even know. But people just pay to go fishing and like it's a very like done for you service. So you don't need to bring a pole or bait or like anything that you would need to bring fishing. Like, we obviously provide the boat, which is a big boat, like 80ft or something. Like a very big boat. We provide you the tackle, the bait, we cut it for you. It's like we'll put the bait on your hooks, we'll help you catch, reel in the fish if you need it. We'll net them the fish out of the water for you and like obviously fillet the fish and give you it to eat after. So it's like a very. It's like fishing but like, it's almost like glamping, like for camping, you know.

Like she was like a tourist thing.

Yeah, yeah.

You weren't out like in minus two.

No. That would be cooler though. I wish, I wish honestly should have just gone with that and that would have been cooler for the podcast. But yeah, no, it was just like that. So I was the one like cutting the, the lines and like cutting the bait and baiting the hooks and like helping people reel on the fish. I was like the first, the first mate on the boat was that it's.

Like a school job or what Was this like a full time thing?

No, I wasn't full time. I mean, yeah, I was still in high school at the time, so I was working. I started working four days a week.

I thought was some dramatic story where like you were fucking homeless, then you were fishing and you have such.

I should have gone with that too. That would have been better, but not.

Much more romantic story.

It was so it was actually over summer vacation, so I was able to work. I would work four days a week and then it was 13 hours shifts though. So like really, really long shifts in the sun. Like physical work, like sweating, like nasty. It would be like from 5am I'd have to get to the dock and I would leave at like 6pm and just be like a zombie. And then I reduced it to two days a week because I literally was like not able to function during my days off because of how tired I was. And it was, I was like, why am I even doing this? And then once I discovered dropshipping, I was like not doing this anymore.

Yeah, fuck that. So when did you stop drop shipping and then start thinking about SaaS? I guess going into that story, yeah.

I guess it was probably like what, two and a half, three years ago now, Something like that. I mean I just like one, I was never enjoying dropshipping. It was just, it's a constant uphill battle. Like when something's an uphill battle, it's a red flag that you're not doing something great. So it's, you know, the payment processors getting shut down, it's the Facebook like flagging your account or whatever they would do. Like it was just, it was just a lot of that. And it's just like I wasn't even liking what I was doing. I wasn't passionate about it. That kept happening. And eventually I think like one time the payment processor that I was using was like locking our money or whatever and I was like, okay, this is the final straw. I am no longer doing this ever again. And I just stuck to it because I always would tell myself that. But it was like, it is pretty hard like when you're making like life changing money and it's hard to like turn that off. But when it was, but when it's turned off for you and then you have an option to do it again or not, that was like, that's like when I was like, okay, I'm drawing the line now. I'm not drop shipping again. Like I'm done with this. I mean we like, we even like we're doing things by the book at that. Like as by the book as possible. By that point we weren't even dropshipping. Actually at that point we literally like would send six figure wires to China bulk ordering our product to a warehouse in Utah and like we would have to custom packaging two day shipping across the US it wasn't like we, we did what we could to like improve the customer experience so that all the like Facebook and payment processing things wouldn't keep happening. But somehow it did one last time and I was just like. And we were almost out of our inventory. It's not like we had like hundreds of thousands sitting in a warehouse. We were like pretty much out at that point. We had to place a new order soon. And I was like, this is a sign. Like I'm not doing this anymore. Like I wasn't happy with it. You know, all the reasons I explained before and like that the payment process, shutting it down. I was like, okay, it's over now. And while like before this I was already starting to, I was like in the idea phase of social snowball, it was actually me and a business partner originally and it ended up not working out with them and I had to buy him out, which is like a whole other story before we even launched. Like it was a disaster and I could definitely dive into that. But yeah, so I was already working on another project that I was genuinely excited about. Plus the payment process shut us down. Plus I wasn't even enjoying E commerce anymore. I was like, okay, this is a sign. Dropshipping is over. I'm going full in on building this product and making it the best thing I possibly can and learning from my mistakes from the previous businesses I was doing.

And the whole idea came from you just couldn't find a solution for you.

Previously more or less. Yeah. So basically I was so even that first store I told you about where I was like selling bikinis and rompers, just like posting on Instagram, I like the entire store was built around an affiliate, well like an ambassador program, but essentially like an affiliate program where and I was just doing everything manual. So I would literally DM people on Instagram that were like following similar accounts and I'd be like, hey, we'd love to have you as an ambassador. And you know, obviously we'd get them to sign up and then I'd go into Shopify manually and make them a referral code for them to share with their friends and I'd make them, you know, another code for them to purchase themselves. And it was just like horribly time consuming. Obviously there were apps that could have made that easier. I just didn't know about them at the time.

Yeah.

So then obviously like once I started getting deeper in it, I started using those apps and I mean they obviously do things like they're not like useless but they were very. Well the interface, like specifically the customer facing interface of what your ambassadors, affiliates are going to be seeing was very outdated. So like it didn't really match with the branding of any site. The functionality that I wanted, which is like just a lot of automation and more configurability and customization, like very simple stuff just didn't exist in any of the tools that I wanted. At least the non enterprise ones. I know there's some like thousands of dollars a month one but that wasn't like in the picture for me and things were very non automated and things that should, should have been automated in my opinion that would actually have been very easy to automate. Like not like anything crazy. They just weren't automated. So there was just so many manual processes that just didn't, it just seemed outdated. Like that's, that's like the, the word that I, that I always go to like when I describe the whole experience with those tools, like they just felt very outdated and nobody was updating them. And there was like a lot of specific reasons for it, but like that was, the general vibe was just like outdated. So I still, I kind of, I mean I had to build these affiliate programs because they were crushing. So I would use those tools and I would like, I would even actually set up my own like you know, zapier obviously like the automation tool. So like I would like connect that to Klaviyo and connect it to Shopify and like be able to have some level of automation on top of using the tools and even as a standalone. So almost like that. You could almost argue that that's like Social Snowball's very, very origin. I didn't even have the idea for it at the time, but yeah, I mean after so much time like trying to build something that didn't exist, I was like. And also obviously throughout this entire experience I built like a really solid network of E commerce founders and operators and I would talk to them obviously all the time. And it was like a very, it was very agreed upon that the affiliate tools in the Shop I ecosystem were lacking and people were pretty actively looking for something better. So after like it was a super like big issue for me. Plus I like got the, I got the concept that the problem was validated from all these other founders. I was like, okay, that was like the light bulb moment. I was like, okay, now like there's definitely, there's definitely something that should be built here and like I'm already not loving what I'm doing with E commerce. Like maybe I'll build something.

So when was that? When you went cold turkey and how long was it between that and actually launching?

Oh my God. So going cold turkey. I mean I went cold cold turkey on E commerce.

Drug drop, shipping. Yeah, it's just crazy all this dropshippers watching this shit, thinking they're fucking Bill Gates. Yeah, you got a realization.

It's not even a real business. It's such a, I mean it is what it is. Like I obviously am guilty of doing it and it's, it's, it's a good stepping stone into other things. But to answer your question, I went cold turkey on E Comm the day that that payment processor shut down. I was like, okay, this is the final straw. I went full in on to Social Snowball pretty much right after because I mean I like, I had a nice amount of cash saved up Nothing crazy, but enough to at least get social snowball off the ground like build out the product. So I mean I had no idea what I was doing when I was launching it. Like I mean even now I could argue I have no idea what I'm doing but the amount.

Are you a coder, developer?

Not at all. So that's like a key fact. I'm extremely non technical. My only background up to that point professionally, professionally was E commerce marketing which you know, I was obviously pretty good at but that doesn't really translate well into building a software product which I thought it was going to be, but it wasn't.

Yeah.

So you know, I didn't know even what a technical co founder was at the time. I didn't know that. That's almost startups like that's like what a proper startup has is like marketing co founder and a technical co founder. This is very, very basic standard stuff that I just had never ever heard about. So you know, I was like okay, I need, if I need someone to build this for me, what am I gonna do? So I found an agency and they said they would do like a done for you. They would build like the website, the all the UI UX and the actual like functioning app. And I, you know, I flew to LA to meet up with them. I like gave them a very, very detailed description. It's called like user stories of like what, how the app would function, like down to every little detail like, like, like what a user story is. It's like detailed to the point like you click this button, this pop pops up saying this. When that happens, this is generated in Shopify and this email is sent to that you know, like every little detail. Pages and pages that I wrote out.

And shit that I couldn't understand when I was in the Slack group saying how do I change the fucking currency? Yeah, yeah, I've just been stupid.

Yeah, that's my fault for not making it more clear. But so yeah, wrote out all those briefs, gave it to them and then they were like okay, we can build an MVP meaning minimum viable product. Yeah, in three months. And I was like oh wonderful. So you know, I paid them, they started building.

Did you have a budget by the way, when you started this?

I didn't have a budget in mind. I mean I was like I'm so passionate about this and like this, I'm so excited to build this that like I what I would be down to delete all of my savings to build it. And I did like I fully did.

Like this is one thing I hear about SaaS, we had a guy called Alex who sold his SaaS business to Adobe for massive money on my episode 23. And the one thing he told me on and off camera was, it's fucking expensive to build a SaaS.

It is, it is.

And the agent, way more than starting an ecom brand.

Oh, yeah. I mean, you can start an ecamm bread for nothing. And, like, so the agency also quoted me a pretty low amount. It was 25k for everything, which is like, that should have been a red flag. But again, had no idea what I was doing. So, like, how would I have the.

Same cheat, to be fair?

So they told me three months to build an MVP that would be, like, ready enough for the App Store. Obviously, there's always gonna be, like, little improvements and stuff. So I was like, great. Three months turned into legitimately 15 months. 15 months of complete. Like, just.

Just.

Nothing was organized with them. Like, it was just a disaster.

They.

I mean, they had some. At the end of the 15 months, I actually ended up cutting the contract with them. It wasn't even done yet.

What did they say after three months? Given there was another.

They would. I mean, you know how it goes when you're working with someone that's like, it's not going well. Like, they're. They're always. They always have like a. Oh, just one more month. Oh, you know, this engineer. Like, there's always some excuse. Like, it wasn't. They were they. I don't think they were bullshitting me. Bullshitting me, but they were definitely just, like, making excuses. And, like, whether they were valid excuses or not, it doesn't matter. Like, they told me three months. It's not like it took five, like 15, and it still had so many bugs that I couldn't submit it to the Shopify app store. So 15 months went by. I was like, I'm just done with this.

The only thing you work on.

Yeah, yeah. So I ended the contract with them. I still paid them the full amount because, like, they. I mean, they lost money for sure. Like, there's no, like, the amount of time they had to put into it.

They're just incompetent rather than, I think so intentionally bad.

Yes, yes, yes. That's exactly what it was. So, yeah, after the 15 months, I hired a very, very senior freelancer. Used to be, like a senior engineer at Yahoo. Like, this guy knew what he was doing, very comfortable with, like, the tech stack, like, the coding language we were using, and I like, kind of filled him in on the Scenario. He was super expensive too, but I was like, I'm not going cheap anymore. Like I need someone to actually do this. Right. He came in within like legitimately two weeks, fixed every single bug, like cleaned everything up, fixed a ton of things that were broken that I didn't even know were broken. Like that would have probably broken once we had a bunch of users. Like really, this guy knew what he was doing, he made. And within two weeks of me hiring him, we had the app approved on the Shopify app store, like live.

How expensive was he?

100 an hour?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because honestly, tech stuff, like developer stuff, it's probably like the one thing, the one skill area in life that I genuinely look and I think I would have. I just don't even know if I was to try and do this myself. I just don't have a fucking clue.

I mean you just have to learn it. Like there's these like three month coding boot camps you could go, anyone could go and they like, you know what to do. Like you'd have a base that you.

Could at least be like it just. My brain wouldn't click with that. It's just not.

Yeah, it's, it's not for me either. Like I'm not going to even try to learn it.

Like some of the fucking wizards that do even just like I could do like basic Shopify, Liquid Edits or whatever.

But it's just a different brain. Like I don't want to learn it because I'm good at other things and I'm, I'd rather have other people that are great at that and love it do it. So it's like, yeah, I'm not trying to learn it but yeah, that's, that's at least how we got, you know, the very, very bare minimum first product live in the Shopify app store. Was that. When was that? This was December 2019.

Oh, so about two and a half years ago.

One and a half.

2019. That's 2020.

Maybe 2020 then.

Yeah. Because 2019 is two and a half years now.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah. So 2020 then? Yeah.

So one and a half years.

Yeah, 2020.

You're right.

Yeah.

And what was the plan to. I guess. Did you have a plan in terms of this is like the business model from the start or did that come about after you do it?

No.

Pricing, acquiring customers, all that sort of shit.

The business model, I definitely was something as a non technical brain. I was very focused on like from the very beginning. We've iterated the pricing actually quite A bit since we launched just from trial and error learning more about our icp. It just made, you know, makes a lot of sense and just from getting feedback overall. But the original pricing model I believe was three different tiers. Each tier would take a flat fee just to use the app plus a percentage of revenue that was generated through the app. So like if someone, if like Social Snowball and okay, just because I haven't even said what Social Snowball does, I feel like I should probably just cover that. It's basically just an affiliate marketing app. So like you know, any store that's selling like well we're a Shopify app. So any store that's selling on Shopify can integrate with Social Snowball and it'll let you build, scale and automate an affiliate program for your online store. What's different about Social Snowball from other affiliate apps is most affiliate apps are one outdated interface, very non automated, all that stuff. But they're also very focused on publishers and influencers. So an affiliate program traditionally is very much focused towards big influencers, publishers, that kind of thing. Social Snowball takes that affiliate model and democratizes it down to the consumer level. So we're very focused on converting your customers and owned audiences into affiliates rather than just the big, you know, affiliates or publishers and influencers. So it's, it takes the affiliate model and just democratizes it for everyone to you know, make it simple.

Yeah, because the only one I'd use or tried to use in the past is one called Refersion.

Oh yeah.

Are they big?

Oh I mean so Refersion is interesting.

The only one I can actually think of my head.

Yeah, they're the biggest. They were the biggest at least, I mean and they might still be the.

Biggest like I said try to use in the past because like I used it but never really the interface was shit.

Yeah, that's, that's what they're known for. I mean I don't want to come here and talk shit about a competitor but I mean it's definitely no secret that Refersions interface is incredibly poor. That's you know one thing I'll say.

Is that the market leader then so.

I mean the thing is like they, they've been around for a while. I think it was like 2010 since they launched. They haven't really updated the product much since and also they got acquired like five years ago and the business that acquired them, Assembly, I don't think they've really put much focus on to improving the product. So I mean, you know, again I'm not here to talk shit about a competitor, but I will say a huge reason that social snowball exists was because of my frustration with reversion.

Yeah, that's usually the best way, I think, to build anything. Kind of like you were saying before, there's a reason to it, there's a personal reason. Yeah. So like business model wise, right. Did you plan from the start for the company to like be profitable? Because I mean, I'm speaking very ignorant, ignorantly here about sas. Like, I hear from other people that like, you know, SAS is only profitable when you get acquired and becomes economies of scale with a bigger business, etc. Like.

Well, I mean, how does that.

What was the plan from the start? Was it obviously spend, spend a bunch of money making it once it's made, almost treat it like, like an econ brand? Is it like, you know, focus on a certain roas that breaks even and beyond. Because that's obviously how I'm approaching this.

Yeah.

Like I'm just interested how the mindset, having done econ before.

Yeah.

Well, how did it compare?

It's funny that you say it like that, like find a good roas, because that is so exactly where my brain was like a year and a half ago when we first officially launched, like, I was like, oh, we have an app, people are going to download it and pay a monthly subscription and if I could figure out a profitable way to run ads, I was basically just thinking we'll growth market our way to the top. We'll just growth market like crazy and we'll run ads and we'll partner with influencers and all this stuff and we will just infinitely acquire users. And I was like, I have a leg up because I already know every influencer in the space. They'll do a push for me, which they did. And that actually did help a lot to be fair.

It's probably how I'd originally heard of it, to be fair.

Yeah, but it, yeah, yeah, maybe that is. But I thought that was the end of it. And I also didn't realize, like, I also thought like after we launched this initial, you know, mvp, the minimum viable product, I was like, all I need is like one part time engineer to like fix bugs if they come up. Like the app is going to be good and like, wow, like I couldn't have been more wrong, which is okay. Like it's been like an incredible learning experience and obviously we've pivoted that mindset significantly. But I mean we're, we learned quick that the small dropshipping stores are not really our best customer. I mean we definitely have some drop shipping customers that crush with us. I mean the ones that are doing high volume, like the level of automation that social snowball brings to an affiliate program, it definitely like will crush. But we learned that we provide more value to the bigger brands and we also make more money off of the bigger brands. So there's no reason that we wouldn't focus all of our marketing and sales initiatives and even product initiatives, especially product initiatives actually towards those bigger brands. So rather than just, you know, trying to just run ads and make cool creatives and get customers kind of like how the game was at least for me in E Comm. We, you know, had that approach for a little while and then we realized that the stores that were signing up were a lot of like really small dropshipping stores. They weren't sticking around, they would close down. Like, I mean it was just drop.

Shipping, small drop shipping stories shut down. Just like you.

Yeah, there you go. There you go. Exactly. So we started, you know, working with some bigger brands and as we tried moving up market, at least it wasn't even successful the first time. You know, we spoke to a lot of really big brands and we learned that there's a lot on the product side, like functionality in the app that we needed if we wanted to ever land these clients. So even though we had a few and those few were making us a ton of money and we were providing a ton of value to them and it was like amazing relationship, we realized that if we wanted to get more like that there is a lot that has to be built. So even though we were building features for the first, you know, I'm talking about like the first four months we were building features, it's not like we neglected the product but we were like very marketing focused. And once I kind of realized that that's not what's going to scale this business and that we need to make the app have a ton, like we need to increase the functionality, improve the UI ux. Like there's just so much that needs to be done on the product side if we wanted to acquire the users that we provide value to and we make more money off of. So we, once I realized that we completely stopped spending on marketing like zero and we hired another engineer and we just have been to this day, I mean this is like over, I guess over a year ago now. Wow. We've been like extremely product focused. So we are just building, building, building and I mean we've still been growing in revenue more so than User count because the users that we acquire now are a lot bigger. So like acquiring one is the equivalent of acquiring like 80 of the users we used to be getting. But yeah, I mean, we've just been building, building, building and just focused a lot more on our brand and you know, the product and partnerships and we've do. Yeah, I mean, we've been doing some initiatives to grow, like partnerships and content marketing and stuff like that. And like, just building a brand on social media has been huge for us too, especially Twitter. But we're not in the same mindset that we used to be where we're just like, I'm gonna build an app, like, just like I build a product, like a physical product. And just. And maybe that was the wrong approach of the product too, but that's at least what I was thinking.

As a drop shop, have you ever run any, like traditional paid media?

We have, yeah, we did for a while. We did for like, we spent like quite a bit on Facebook ads.

Does that work for SaaS?

I mean, that's a, that's a, that's a big statement. Yes, it works for SaaS. For social snowball specifically, it. It's not that it won't work because we probably will do paid ads again at some point, but it wasn't, it wasn't a very reliable. We would do it with a different strategy. Like we were kind of just thinking like, we need every single Shopify store in the world to install. So we were just like running ads targeting like anyone with a store. And, and what we learned is just like the merchants we were acquiring were just not high quality. They would, you know, churn, they would, the store would close down. They were just like small drop shipping stores. But I mean, growth marketing and paid ads does work for SaaS. It just yes. We learned through trial and error the ideal client for Social Snowball and then had to adjust our efforts accordingly.

So how long does the average customer stay now? These like, too high value information?

No, I mean it's.

I mean like say all the small dropshipping stores that you were maybe initially going for compared to like, I guess, like legitimate brands.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's a big difference. Absolutely, absolutely. It's really cool because like, I mean, the drop shipping stores, which, I mean, obviously, you know, we'd love to have their business still on that. We do really crush it for a lot of especially like the bigger ones. But yout know, like, it's a lot of drop shipping stores are like just kind of catching trends. So they would Come and go. So those wouldn't stay on that long often because they would close down, like not even from uninstalling, which is crazy. Like they would legitimately close down the store. But what's really cool, I mean, the bigger brands to talk about, like the LTV of them, they like, they haven't uninstalled. Like, obviously some have. But like most of the big brands that we've acquired, we do such a good job keeping them now. And I mean, I could definitely go in detail with like the initiatives we've taken to like reduce churn and like increase retention with these big users.

Slice groove that messages people when they uninstall. Oh yeah, just like I did. So I couldn't figure out how to use it. But then I reinstalled, by the way, got installed. Thank you. Bye.

But yeah, I mean, like the big. I mean we've only been around for a year and a half so like most of the big users we've acquired have been around since they've installed and have not uninstalled. Obviously some have because, you know, there's always like unpredictable things. But I mean, the, the LTV of these bigger stores that we're acquiring is, you know, so far infinite. So we're. That's why we're, you know, doubling down on our efforts to acquire more of them.

Yeah, because LTV is a thing I spoke about on probably recorded last night, but also just something I'm with it being a subscription product for the first time at least. First time for me. I'm trying to fucking. It's all about the LTV really. But that will present challenges when scaling in terms of like capital and cash potentially. Because obviously, like, you know, say CPA is 30 quid. Well, it's 30 quid right now, by the way. But say it gets to 100 quid because you're spending 20 grand a day on ads, you know, in a year's time, whatever. And monthly fee is 40 quid for my product. You know, say someone says 10 months, 400 quid LTV potentially, then it's like a four to one. But if they're only paying you, if you're only getting 40 quid of them in the first month, then you have a cash problem if you're scaling quickly.

Absolutely.

So has that been. Because that's the, the sass, like things I hear about. I mean, I'm definitely not in SaaS but like people that are in that told me. Yeah, that that's why you go down like the whole raising money route like SaaS often attracts that venture capital, private equity, all this sort of shit.

Yeah.

Have you done that? Are you entirely self funded? Is that something you thought about?

So yeah, we've well to talk about what you first said like, yeah, like that is a huge thing. Like you need to, I mean if you're a not venture backed company, if you're fully bootstrapping, I'd say like you, you need to be able to make the cash back for an acquisition cost in like three months or like you're gonna run out of cash. So let's say like the three month value of a subscription you're acquiring is like, let's just say like a hundred dollars. And if you're spending $100 to acquire a customer, like that's like the peak. Assuming you haven't raised, I mean these big SaaS, companies that raise a ton, like they're making it back in two years, no problem. Like you see attentive giving out AirPods like it's candy on Halloween to every demo call they take because they know their numbers and they know what they're going to pay for an acquisition, including those AirPod costs and they can make that money back because Attentive is a great product. Like they're going to make the money back in two years but they're so unbelievably funded that it doesn't matter if they make it back in two years. So you know, they're, they're doing, they're doing it right honestly. So to answer your other question, we did do a very small, I guess you could call it like a preceder angel round. Yeah, it was actually fully done or almost fully done from merchants who were using Social Snowball a lot that switched from, you know, other legacy platforms. They liked the product so much they wanted to become more involved. And then we. It was all angels that did the round obviously. No, no venture funding.

So yes, that's why I did for this.

Yeah, there you go.

Where's a bit of money and so on and then do you like, are you like cash? Are you profitable like day to day, like, or is it like, is it a case of you got a Runway and if you want to scale you need to raise again, etc, etc, because again, Alex, who sold content, Cal, he's one of my investors now, he spoke a lot about this. Like that was the scariest thing about running a SaaS. I mean his was very different to yours. I think it's cheaper for a start. But they were always looking to raise more money Raise more money. Which when you got a good product that's growing, is definitely doable, but it was like required for them. Is that like. Well, same for you.

What you're describing is the venture treadmill. So once you, once you start the venture that time.

But that makes sense.

Once you start the venture treadmill, you can't ever get off of it because think of it like this. Like right now we, you know, we have three full time at Social Snowball, like a few contractors that help with like marketing stuff, but three full time. And we're hiring another right now. And you know, yeah, we're profitable, but we're strategically reinvesting. We're being as not profitable as possible. You know, like, we make our MRR increases and then we make another higher. Like we're trying to reinvest everything we can into growth. Let's say, you know, hypothetically we were to raise a seed amount, a seed round, $4 million. Okay, great. What am I going to do with that money? I'm going to go deploy it. Right? So I'm going to hire a director of partnerships, I'm going to hire a sales team, I'm going to hire five more engineers, a product owner, like all these essential roles to take it to the next level. That's what you're supposed to do with the capital raise. But then let's say, you know, the economy crashes as it like might be right now. Like, who even knows? And then you can't raise another round. Well, I don't have the same business that I did before that round right now. Like, we could continue coasting and we will never. There's no treadmill we're on. There's no, you know, running out of Runway. Like we are bootstrapping, essentially. Even though we did do that, like incredibly small angel round. We're bootstrapping.

Yeah.

And we will continue to bootstrap. And you know, if we make more money, you know, as MRI continues to increase, we'll make more hires. And it's a very sustainable way of running a business. But to go back to the hypothetical situation, we raise a bunch of venture cash, make all those hires. Now we're spending, you know, 150k a month. Let's say the economy crashes and we can't raise another round or for whatever reason, our MRI doesn't increase to the target that we told investors we would hit and they don't want to participate in our series 8. So what am I going to do? I have to. The business at that point would actually tank for 23. It would actually tank. It would legitimately tank money. So like, and you can't, you know, it's easy to say, oh, you know, I could just fire the new hires I made and then go back to bootstrapping. Once you get on the venture treadmill, it's not easy to do that. Like your business changes when you make hires that are like high level thinkers that are building things on their own. You can't just run that business again without those people. So it's really, if you're going on the venture treadmill, you're staying on it. And you know, the ultimate goal is either an exit or ipo. If you bootstrap, you know, you could kind of just chill and continue growing. And if you have a bad month, like it's not, you know, gonna, it's not the end of the world. Like it's just, it's just a little, it's just, you know, two different ways to build a business. But one of them puts you on a treadmill, the other doesn't. Not to saying that raising venture is bad, it's actually something I'm still considering very much. But it's, it's just two very different ways of growing a business.

Yeah. Interesting.

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Support the fucking pod. Let's go boys. Right, usual wine, top up, break. That all makes sense. And then your treadmill is definitely going to be a sound that we're going to fucking use in the fight going forward. Just coming to like the day today you mentioned a few times, like what does the team specifically look like? And I touched on it briefly and I guess beyond that, like how is it structured? Obviously you've just moved from overseas to London, so I'm assuming it's fully remote.

It's always been remote.

Yeah, yeah. So how does that look like the full picture of the business?

Yeah. So it's myself working like six full time jobs. Yeah, it's. We have a full time customer success guy. So he does like everything customer facing. I mean he does.

So like the guy in the Slack group.

Yeah, yeah, let's do us. Do us. He's a gem. Unbelievable. Like, like he's just super great. He's has a ton of other, he's actually worked for a lot of other Shopify apps. So he was like a really important hire for us. Brought a lot of knowledge to the T. Yeah. Then we have one full time engineer, he lives in Texas. Really, really smart kid. You know, pretty young guy but you know, one of those sleepers that's like still in college. Really, really smart. We're hiring our second engineer right now, like actively interviewing. Like probably within the next two weeks we'll have that higher lined or like hired. And then besides that, I mean it's. Everyone else is part time or contractor. So we have like a head of content who does all of our blogs, all of our guest posting, all of our co marketing partnerships. He aligns the partnerships. He manages like our partner directory and like everything partnerships and content related and then just you know, a couple other freelancers to do like design work, to do like some business development work as well and just like little tasks like that, social media management stuff like that.

So like the whole developer stuff like having like is that a big requirement to like maintain stuff or is that like building new features?

Oh my God. It's so much of both. It's so much of both. I mean I would say like my main job, which is not even what I want, maybe I kind of like doing it, but I'm like a product manager. Like that is like what I do. I am, you know, I am prioritizing new features to build, I am prioritizing bugs to fix. I am speaking with, you know, our customer success guy. I'm speaking with some customers directly. I'm learning what people really want, what features matter most. I am, you know, managing, making sure that things are getting built on time. I'm making sure that things are getting tested before they're released. Obviously, you know, we have like a whole process for all this stuff. So that's like what I spend a ton of time doing. And besides that I'm just doing, you know, anything that's administrative. A lot of things, a lot of tasks that maybe I shouldn't be doing still fall through the cracks and like nobody else picks them up. So I'm still doing like random little things.

Trenches.

Yeah, it just happens. It just happens. And obviously you know, like marketing, sales. I might have already said that. But yeah, that's like what I at least do mostly.

Yeah. Because I was going to say next, like what does your day to day look like? Because that's the question I get all the time. Yeah. And I'm never sure how to answer but I imagine it's similar but different in SaaS. And I guess how has that changed as well since, since the vet, the pre launch days when it was like.

Pure trend so much. I mean it's mostly communication. Like I'm. Well okay, so there's, there's a couple things. One, I'm still our only sales rep so I take all those calls myself. So I limit those calls to only a few days a week. So I could have some days to just like do deep work. But like some days are literally like back to back demo and sales calls non stop. And then like I'm doing a ton of communication. So even though the team is small, like maybe it's like what is a total of seven including part time. There is just a lot of communication that's happening between me and them. Like there's calls, you know, check ins and stand ups and just like a lot, a lot that's going on. And so yeah, I would say like between communication and then like I do do like a lot of social media stuff. So like I am like managing the Twitter and scheduling posts and I mean Twitter has been huge for us so like we've been putting a lot more focus into that recently. And then I'm, and then I'm a product manager. So like I'm, you know, I'm a QA engineer, I'm testing new feature releases, I'm writing very detailed user stories of what needs to be built. I'm writing feedback on what needs to be changed when a new feature is built. I'm you know, making sure bugs that are affecting our bigger merchants are getting fixed before bugs that are, you know, maybe affecting only one or two smaller ones. Like it's. Being a product manager in itself is probably a full time job. That's what I spend a lot of time doing. And a QA engineer, quality assurance for people who don't know what that means.

Is that like checking that shit's working?

It's testing, it's testing and we have like automated tests, like browser tests and like unit testing in the code as well. But it's basically just like you Know if a new feature is built, just to simplify it, a new feature is built. We release it to a staging environment, which is just like a test environment. You know, we have to test that feature extremely. Like a whole procedure for testing the feature. Then test every other functionality of the app to make sure the feature didn't break any other part of the app. Then test it with a ton of users because it's different if there's one user, if there's like. Or affiliates, like, if there's like 10,000 affiliates in the county have to do all that. And then, you know, it gets released to production, which is like the actual environment that like, you know, space goods would. If you log in, like that's what you would see. It has to get tested again there and the whole app has to get tested. So I mean, I'm not sitting there doing every test myself. I have, you know, team members to help with that. But I'm. I'm in charge of all of that. So like that still falls into my lap.

Yeah. Have you, have you found. I mean, I know you said some of the team is young and most the team younger than you or older than you because I was gonna say like I'm. I've always been at delegating and like hiring people. I'm trying to get better. Right.

That's such an impression.

I always had a massive element like imposter syndrome. Like almost felt bad telling people what to do. Oh yeah. Like I'm now self aware and I'm just to know that I'm getting over that gradually. But have you found that? Because obviously you're fucking young, running a cool business.

I've. I used to be really bad at it and it's something that I've been like. It's something that didn't come naturally to me. Like some skills in this business came naturally, came naturally to me and that's just not one of them. I am now very, very organized with documentation, training material. I mean like so we use click up. I'm like a huge. Yeah, you use click up.

I use it for myself, but no one else.

Oh my God, I love click. I'm like a verified ClickUp, like ambassador now.

Like, like a seven billion dollar company.

I lit. Yeah, the huge. They're huge. But my ClickUp profile, not to flex on everyone literally has a blue check next to it. Like that's, that's how click up hard I go. Yeah. I mean like we are like in everything, everything that needs to happen or is happening or like anything that you can imagine is doc is like a task and ClickUp or do minute. Like, it's very. We have to be organized.

Do you do that for yourself and your team?

Yeah, I have. I have my entire personal life organized in ClickUp and the entire business organized in ClickUp. Yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't.

Live podcast was on there. Was.

It was that.

Did you have to have this podcast on your ClickUp? Yeah, yeah. And then the dinner after which you've had to cancel because you were too late.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, rescheduled, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm not very organized, but I'm trying to get better. Like, Google Sheets is my thing.

Oh, no, no, no. You got to graduate from that.

Really?

Yeah.

What do you want?

So what do you. What do you. What do you put in Google Sheets? Exactly.

So I have ClickUp for like, shit I need to do on like a basic level. I do like two weeks sprints, like key things that need to happen. But then, even then, I probably don't use it that well. Google Drive I've always used. I've got like three terabyte of shit in there.

Well, for organ, like, for organizing, like, files and stuff.

It's how I operate everything. Like, I've always split everything into five categories. And this is ever since I was doing like drop shipping. And even before that, I have like product brand, product slash brand. So that's one folder. There's marketing, there's logistics, there's customer service, then there's admin. That's. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's like borderline autism. But I've always split my business and broadly speaking, I think any startup econ business should be split that way. Yeah. And then within that, like, obviously certain ones, particularly the first two, have more stuff in them. But. Yeah, for example, like one sheet I was working on today is like a. Like a KPI tracking thing. Because I'm in the past, I was always kind of like Chad scaling. That's like a term I've heard on Twitter. Like just fucking, like scale, whatever.

Yeah, just like increase the budget.

I have one skew. I'm trying to be really analytical. Like, we have a. Like it's ultimately E commerce, but any online.

Couldn't you use like a well for that or something? Like, what do you.

I have triple L as well.

Yeah, but what, like, what does a sheet do that you can't accomplish with a tool?

Well, triple whale can't do like cash in bank. Like shit. Like, oh, I'm doing like KPIs about every element of the business.

Okay.

Like marketing KPIs, granted. Yeah, I'm just like duplicating shit that's in triple world and triple world is what I'll look at. And by the way, they're fucking sponsored. The pod now. Yeah, that's very relevant. That's the first thing I look at in the morning now. Instead of a Shopify dashboard. Yeah, because. And I think that's the same for a lot of people, including the guys from Purdy and Fig, that brand they're on there on last night, which is probably a week before this because that's the fucking like obviously blended roas, like cac, ltv, all the shit. But yeah, I'm trying to be more organized and I guess Google sheets is.

Well, I mean, something I use like, I don't know, I mean, I guess like cash and bank, that stuff. I still tend to believe there is probably a tool out there that could do this for you. How, how hands on is. Is like keeping all this stuff organized. Like are you typing numbers in manually or is there like at least like a zapier?

I mean. Oh, shit. Like zapier. I'm not, I'm not good at that shit.

Oh, it's so easy. It couldn't be easier.

I use zapier already because the agency I work with have this fancy like fucking iOS 14 get around tracking thing which has zapier. But I didn't set up. Okay, okay. I'm just not that, like, I'm very chaotic. Like every fucking day I'll be like, I have like a list of like the key things I need to work on. I just always have that list like on a physical piece of paper. But then within like 10 minutes of having my fucking rainbow dust and get to my desk at 8am there's like 23 fucking tabs open.

Yeah.

Literally. And I'm like, I try and work on like the more boring stuff first in a day that's just genuine how like my brain works. Like not boring but like, I guess boring like more mentally taxing. I don't really want like fucking dealing with a supplier, you know, shit like that. And then later on I'll be like, ah, yes, we get to work on like the brand stuff now. This is fun. And I'll leave that to like the fucking evening. But yeah, where was I going with that? I mean, I guess I'm just not that organized. But I think there's kind of beauty in the chaos and it tends to work at the End of the day I get shit done. But how about you? Are you like super organized? Fucking guide the flow.

I'm like fake super organized. Like I'm, I want to be super organized. So like I would say a lot of the time, a lot of my time spent now. I guess this could also be part of your other question is like I spend so much time like organizing things and making sure that the team is following certain practices because like I obviously want to build a foundation that can scale and I mean to each their own. And I know everyone runs a business differently. I don't think chaos scales. That's like my fear with it. Like chaos works when it's like a one or two man, three man, four man show. I don't think chaos can be a 10, 20, definitely not like a hundred person company. I mean like the big, big companies definitely have like very, very set procedures, best practices, systems automations. So obviously social snowball isn't huge yet. Like I mean obviously I will be growing it a lot more but I want, I want to have a foundation in place that like can scale. And I think like, you know, when I used to make like simple hires back, you know like assistants or VAs back in the E Comm days it was, I mean unorganized is like a compliment compared to like what I was doing. I mean I wouldn't have any SOPs, any sort of like training material or like systems to follow or project management software. Like I didn't even know what that was like. So now that I have like project management software and I have systems and you know, things are documented well, it's just like things are just a lot smoother. And I also used to like specifically in the hiring and like training I used to assume that people would think the way I did and I realized that they don't. And so I realized they can though. If I write down what I want them to think, then I would write it down and then like people would like my employees would perform to a level I wanted. I was like, oh, okay. I just have to be very, very, very detailed with what I want them to do. Not in like a, you know, a rude or obnoxious way. I just would make very clear documentation and then results would happen, you know, because you can never clone yourself, but you could at least like clone you. At least write down your thought process on like how you should do something and why you're doing it and that kind of thing. So you know, that was a very long answer to your question. But I'm Working very hard towards becoming more organized. But I'm not there yet.

So do you use anything in particular over then click up. I'm asking for me because I've always wanted this. I should know. I wonder often is as I'll fucking get an Amazon delivery which is probably like literally three times a week. And I'm just. Every time I get it, I think this is probably just because I'm fucking entrepreneurial. I always just like think about the inner workings of the business I just bought from.

Yeah.

I'm like, how are they managing the stock for like. Because I've also just signed up from Amazon seller accounts. I'm looking at potentially putting this on Amazon.

But would you absolutely should. And Walmart.

Yeah. Well about Walmart, I feel like brand values.

Okay. Yeah. But fair enough, fair enough.

But the main thing I think is like oh, the one thing I thought in this scenario was like not about I just got the package. It was like how many moving parts are going on to make sure that that was like one click. And it's always one click and it's always on time. And I just think fucking, I like, you know, obviously organizations that scale would, I don't know, a million plus employees probably. There's levels to this shit. Like I'm trying to be organized. It's kind of mad. Like you actually think about the scale of like systems that have to work for any like massive business. Yeah. Any big crazy like those Goliaths. Like yeah, Amazon.

Oh God, yeah. It's too much to wrap your head around.

I'm just like, fuck, I thought I was doing all right just trying to build this shit. Yeah.

It's a different level. It's like many levels above what either of us have ever done.

Yeah. It's crazy.

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See how you fucking feel. Let's do it for the boys. Spacegoods.com. Do you think this is a question I normally ask later, but it's relevant, like, do you have a specific goal for where you want to go with the business? Because like, I've met people that are always like, I want to build the biggest thing possible. And that's kind of like my mindset, but maybe it's wrong. But then there's other people I've met and they're like very, very successful. But they very intentionally, I like, fuck building a billion pound business, you know, hypothetically, because they just know they would never want to do that. Because the stress scale, people like, do you have a specific goal for Social Snowball? And if you do, did you have that before it even launched?

I would say yes to both of those, but it's not a number. Honestly, my goal with Social Snowball is just to be. I want, I want this to be a unanimous consensus amongst the E commerce community. What I want the answer to this question to be. Social snowball. 10 out of 10 times. What is the affiliate marketing platform for E commerce? If you walk to 10 random e commerce people who have never met each other and they all say social snowball. That's my goal right now. Realistically, you know, maybe I'm even being a bit generous. Maybe like three would say that or something. And I mean, you know, maybe more or less, I don't know. But I want that to be. I want us to be the affiliate marketing platform for E commerce. I want us to, to be, I want that to be unanimous. I want us to be when someone's building a new store or whether they're migrating from another platform to shopify. I mean, you know, we are gonna be expanding to other platforms. Later, but at least with the product we have now. Yeah, I want it to be like, this is what you do when you're ready to build or at least like a customer referral program. Like a. Like a owned audience affiliate program. Maybe not like if you're working with, like, publishers and, you know, review sites, but if you're, like, trying to convert your customers and owned audience into a customer acquisition channel, into a marketing channel, I don't want it to be like, which tool should I use? I want it to be like, Social Snowball is the best tool, period, so we're gonna use it.

And does that not then mean that you'd be a massive business and make a footload of money? Or is that.

Well, yeah.

Is that just like a side effect that you're not focused on? But you know, what happened?

Well, I mean, obviously I, like, I want my business to make money, and money over just the lifestyle it could bring you is like a measurement of success in providing value as well. But, yeah, I mean, I'm not like, you know, obviously I want to make money, like, of course, but I think, like, I don't have, like, a money goal. I don't want to, like, because I could. I could pretend I do and be like, oh, like a hundred mil. I don't know. Like, I don't really have, like, everyone.

Says 100 mil, right?

Yeah, yeah. So like, 100 million sounds great. I don't not want 100 million. But what I want is for it to be just like, so hands down, unanimous. Like, Social Snowball is the affiliate platform for E commerce.

Yeah, I definitely see that. Do you. Do you consider it a lifestyle business at this stage or. And I guess, like, that's a tough question. Do you care about, like, balance between, like, life and. Because I know, like, some people are really big on this and I think it's genuinely slightly older people in my experience, because maybe they've, like, been in the trenches for ages and, like, I don't know, fucking. They're like, woke now and realize that life's not all about building businesses.

But.

But then you get people that are like, I just fucking love, love the game. And, like, all they want to do is be in the trenches. And I'm probably somewhere in between, depending on what day of the week you ask me. Like, how do you see it? Like, it's a. Are you all in on. I just want to fucking make that happen at the expense of everything else. Or like, I know, for example, you just moved to London with your girlfriend. Like, how. How much does that play into, like, the way you view the business?

That's a really. It's really interesting.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. I know exactly what you're asking. I know exactly what you're asking. And it's really interesting because today I tweeted, I tweeted in the United. And this is actually something my girlfriend's pointed out to me, and it's so spot on. In the United States, people live to work. In Europe, people work to live. And as far as far as the mindset, like, as far as my stance on it, I'm still a bit undecided. I mean, so, like, such a huge.

Provoking way to put it.

It's so true. It's so true. So, like, here's a great, great example. Like, so I'm like, huge We Work guy. I live at We Work. I basically, I'd sleep at WeWork if I am always that we work. I get so much done when I'm there. There's no distractions. I'm just locked in. I have my cup of coffee. I'm just like, grind. But anyway, I obviously would always go to WeWork. When I was living in the US like many, many cities I've been to WeWorks and since I've been in London for the past, like, what has been like three weeks now, I've been going to weworks almost every day. And there's so many weworks here, it's awesome.

But membership, is that how it works?

Yeah, it's like all access membership. Yeah. But basically what's. What I've realized is, like, in the us, you know, if I was gonna be working, let's say to like 8pm One night, and you know, I'm locked into my laptop and I look up and I'm in the co working area. I see like a bunch of people sitting around sitting there grinding like, whatever. In London I'll be working. And I'm working extra late in London because I still have calls in US time. So I'm working like the double shift here. Like literally till 10, sometimes even 11. It's like a little bit too much, honestly. But I'll be working. Let's not even that extreme. Like, It'll be like 8pm in the common space and I'll look up completely empty. Completely empty. There's not one person, really. Not even one. Like, I'm literally the only person in WeWork after like 7pm at 5 and 6. Most people chasing because 7, like, everyone had result.

Yeah. I always thought London was quite like a, like Work, like always work. Hustle culture.

It's not. Look at the.

I definitely see like France, Spain, Italy being very different, having been there.

Well, even look at me say that. Yeah.

Because maybe I'm so like dialed in. I think London is. I don't know. Yeah, just, just. I guess it depends which bubble you're in or who you look at.

Yeah, I mean, well, look at like all the pubs at 5pm There's a.

Pub down there which you can see from our flat, right on the balcony. And at 4pm that was loaded today.

You can't even walk on the sidewalk next to it a hun. And it's just full of people. And there's nothing wrong with this. I'm not looking down upon this at all. But it's everyone with their jobs, like in their offices, 5pm, they're at the pub with their backpack still on with a beer standing on the sidewalker. And you can't even fit in the pub because it's so crowded.

Yeah.

It's just a different culture. So I don't know, like. So here, like to kind of circle back to your question at least, like, I've. I've been. And I've been to Europe many times before today. So I've like. I've been exposed to both sides. Probably more the living to work side because I've been in America more, but I've been exposed to both a lot. As far as like where I am right now, I think I'm definitely more in the live to work mindset right now just because, like I do. I'm all for enjoying life. I definitely don't neglect it. Maybe I do a bit, but there's just a lot that I need to do right now.

This is such an interesting topic. You just open up a can of worms with that. That point you made. Because I completely agree with you. I'm probably on the same side as you. But like, so many points want to make on this because I think the first point is, do you think that's UK versus Us or is that just actually the reality of like entrepreneur versus non entrepreneur?

Yeah, it's that too.

I feel like. Yeah, it's probably. In my opinion, it's more that. I mean, maybe. I mean, I don't know the American work culture as much, but I've had so many people over the years, like, I don't know, people I used to go to uni with, used to work with, whatever, say, like, you're young, just enjoy life. And then I'm like. And I've said this to Jack and like, multiple of the mates. And like, I do work a lot and people say I work a lot. But then I also reckon I party and travel and enjoy life more than literally anyone I know that isn't an entrepreneur. And then it's like, wait a minute, like I'm confused on what your argument is. And like, and again, without sounding patronizing or whatever, like, these are people like, X person who, I don't know, maybe goes to the pub three times a week, has not left the fucking United Kingdom in five years, telling me that I work too much because there's like seasons to it, I'll be in the trenches for whatever, a few months. And, and by the way, I like what I do anyway. It doesn't feel like very much. Then, like, I've got the freedom to fucking go away whenever I want because I'm not tired by location or time. There's not massive money restraints, obviously, within reason. I'm not fucking flying private to Mykonos yet. But like, I've always had that element of freedom and that's the greatest element of entrepreneurship, I think, ever since I was like 21, like, fortunately. And yeah, I've always found it strange when people like, you work too much, whatever. It's like, what? I also do enjoy life for you more than you ever have or could at least, you know, depending on what people enjoy. But then at the same time, like, I would genuinely rather like, not every night of the week, I could try and take like Saturday night off, Sunday off. I'd rather fucking. And I don't know if you agree, but I would rather work on my shit because. Because coming back to your point before you're working on something meaningful, like, I would actually rather try and build this thing then like, I don't know, fucking go to the pub on a Wednesday. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's just being self aware and being like, what actually makes you tick. Right? Granted, a lot of entrepreneurship is fucking trenches and it's not always fun, but if it's like, if the foundation is actually something that you believe in, like beyond just making money, which again, you've said many times it's so fucking important, then it doesn't feel like a grind anyway. Granted a lot of it is, but, but like, ultimately you're doing it because that's like, fulfilling. Yeah. Like, it's not like hard things are fulfilling if there's like, meaning behind them.

I agree, I agree. I mean, I, I totally agree with every, everything you Said, I also feel like, you know, I don't mean this exactly, but, like, I kind of. Like a bit of my mindset is like, I'll enjoy life later. Like, a little bit like a piece, because I'm just.

Like, I grew that as well.

I'm, like, young and, like, it's a very fine line. Like, it's not that I don't want to enjoy life when I'm young again. I do a lot, like, similar to how you. Like, I could travel. Like, I have location, freedom, like, that whole thing, which I definitely take advantage of. I've been to probably more than 10 countries in the past three months. Like, very much taking advantage of it, but at the same time, like, the time is now. Like, I have golden opportunities. I mean, really, one, right now, golden opportunity at my fingertips. It's. It's the. It is. It kind of is the one who works the hardest that wins. And, like, I'm in a very competitive space, a very hot competitive space. There's a ton of venture money around me. There's a ton of competitors. I have to, you know, I have to grind. And it's not like, it's not like, I don't want to. Like, I. Like you said, like, when it's something that you're passionate about and it's meaningful to you, it's exciting and it's fun. But it's also, like, the time is now. Like, the opportunity I have and what I've built so far, it's now that I've gotten to this point. Like, I don't want to. I don't want to blow it. And, like, I. It's. It feels like my responsibility to, like, go as hard as I possibly can at it. And it's like, I don't.

It.

I don't. I just don't. Like, at the end of the day, I am doing what I want. Like, I want to build this. This is what I want to do. Like, I have freedom, and I'm taking and I'm making the choice to want to work on this. Like, maybe more than other people would want to work on something else. So, yeah, I mean, there's. There's a few different ways to look at it, I think. Like, you know, living to work, it can be toxic if you're not liking what you're doing, if you're working for someone else and you feel like you need to work over time to, like, please them or something, then it's like, okay, then, like, that's gonna make you miserable. But if you're building something that you genuinely are passionate about and you're. And, you know, work and life kind of blend at that point. It's all the same thing.

I think it's a completely different comparison. And like, conversation when it's.

It's.

Yeah, like you're saying someone that potentially hates their job and just has to do it, you know, to fucking pay rent, whatever. Compared to you've chosen to embark on a. As Elon Musk would say, chewing glass and staring into the abyss, like the pursuit of entrepreneurship. That's like a famous quote or something, because that's how fucking hard it is. But yeah, it's interesting what you say because I also agree, but I feel like up to this point in like my early 20s and shit, and the same with a lot of my very successful mates who I've lived with and currently live with and other mates etc, I feel like I've got the balance very. It's a very fine line, but I think I've got the balance right. And there's an element of seasons to it. Like, there's seasons where, you know, I had a year last year and I was still traveling and stuff, but, like, I was in a less good place because didn't go as well. And, like, stuff's going better now, a lot better. But at the same time, there's, like, times where, particularly in winter, I was like, just fucking grinding to get this new thing off the ground. And now I'm like, back in the. I've been back in the trenches a lot, but I. But I enjoy the trenches. But then obviously, like, there's certain times a year where I'll travel. Like, I was in Brazil for two weeks. Like, two months ago. I was in Ibiza. Last month, I'm going Marbella in, like, two weeks with a bunch of guys. But that's like a hostel house. So that's like a lifestyle thing. So it's gonna be working, but it's like, yeah, balance, right? Yeah, I wanted some sun, a bunch of other shit. Then we're going Bali in, like, July or August.

Nice.

Because I fucking love Bali. So there is a fine line, but it's about. I think it's just about, like, optimizing your fucking life to work for you and, like, the benefit for me. And even with this podcast, right. So I fucking love drinking red wine on this podcast and speaking to people, but now I actually get paid for it and. And I meet people that can potentially like, well, definitely expand. Expand my mind and my network. Yeah. So that's like A fucking win win. But it took me seven months of fucking doing these episodes until we got a fucking sponsor. Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's the shit that most people aren't willing to do. So that's just like one example. And obviously it applies to like E Comm and fucking building your own thing as well. But I think life can get like more interesting and enjoyable when you get to the point where you can like design it to fit what you're passionate about and makes money because everyone needs to make money. And it's like something you can do potentially long term. Because I had a taste of that with like the whole dropshipping shit, as I'm sure, I'm sure you did, like making money, traveling, etc. Then it wasn't very sustainable. And then like building brands is way harder. But I also made that work to an extent, but then also didn't make that one work that went fucking. So, yeah, like, it's, it's hard, but I think, I think everything is hard in life. Right? I'm going on a rant here, but like, life is hard. Being like broke and hating your job and enjoying your weekends potentially, because that's what a lot of people do is hard in one way. Grinding your ass off, particularly in like your 20s, and figuring out what you're good at and passionate about and going through, in my opinion, much higher highs and lower lows than the average job. And people will disagree with that and hate on me, but it's just a fact. Entrepreneurship is higher and lower than the average life. That is also hard, but it's potentially like much more financially rewarding long term. Like you can, you have a lot more freedom potentially, like when you make it work. So, yeah, I'm just like very aware of like the realities of different options in life. If someone chooses to party like their entire 20s, they're probably gonna have a pretty difficult 30s. But by the same regard, if someone fucking like never leaves their computer in their entire 20s, they get to 30, maybe they made a load of money, but they don't have any friends, they have no memories. So like, I think there's an art to get in the balance. Right? It's what I'm saying. And I think I've got that balance pretty spot on, at least in my opinion. For me, that's fine.

It's different for everybody. So if you're feeling like you're enjoying life and you're feeling extremely productive and happy with the progress they're making, like, it's, it's, it's a feeling like it's, it's a you thing. It's like what works for you, might not work for me, might not work for, you know, your roommate. Like it's different for everybody.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. What was the original question? I suppose I think you kind of answered it.

I think you asked like, yeah, like, like it was like work life balance, like what is your stance on it? Like roughly.

Yeah, cuz I, I definitely do agree though. Like in my head it was always, even since I was like 18 years old, I always kind of said to myself like be like retired by 30. I. I guess what I meant by retired was like fucking financially retired. Yeah, obviously I'm not gonna fucking sit on a beach for the next 50 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds like you probably think similarly in the sense that you have an opportunity to capitalize on something that you're also passionate about, but could pay you very handsomely, you know, should you fucking get acquired, whatever. So like on that if someone came to you today, wanted to buy the business, like you said, there's no number but like have you thought about that? Because obviously particularly being with SaaS, there's a lot less. It's not like there's fucking drop shippers doing the same thing and it's ten a penny. Granted it's competitive, but I don't know, I think there's more like valuable IP and what you're doing than certainly most E Comm stores and probably a lot of ecom brands.

So your question is what I sell?

I don't know what the question is. I guess you said it's not about the money, but I mean, I'm not about the money.

Yeah, but I mean there's just a lot, there's just way more to it than that. I mean is your question would I sell? I mean for the right price, theoretically.

But it's not just a passion play where like you just fucking enjoy the process.

I mean I do enjoy it. I think like if I were to sell, which is obviously like, you know, a goal, at some point it would probably have to be for more than just price. And I mean I say that but like if I were looking at like an LOI that said like 10 million on it right now, like obviously like that's gonna be considered like let's be realistic. But like I talk. This is, it's interesting you bring this up because I talked to my friend who's actually going through an acquisition right now, seven figure acquisition. He's younger than both of us, so like definitely Like, I wanted to pick his brain on like, what his thoughts on all this stuff were. And he said like, the main reason he wants to sell is not because the business, you know, isn't producing cash or like, or isn't like. It was because he was genuinely not excited to work on it anymore. He was bored. He figured out automating pretty much all of it and hiring and delegating so that he like, didn't really have to do anything in the work that he did have to do. He didn't really like, he wasn't very passionate about what the product he was selling was. He just wasn't loving his day to day. He was bored and not motivated and, and obviously, you know, the money is a factor, but I think like, that was it one of the biggest, if not the biggest factor for him making the decision that it's time to sell. So for me, it's like, I don't feel that way about what I'm building. I'm like genuinely excited. And I literally, I mean, every night I fall asleep and I'm like thinking of new ideas and I wake up in the morning excited to like execute on them and, you know, talk to the team and make a little bit of progress today. Like, it genuinely excites me. So if I were to sell, I feel like I'd probably have to be at a place where I didn't feel that way anymore. And maybe I was like, maybe I felt like this is as far as I want to take the business or like, I don't, I don't know. I would, I would have to, you know, for whatever reason, I can't really even think of what it would be, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't. I would have to not be as excited I am about it as I am now. And it would have to be for the right price, of course.

Yeah, interesting. I actually have a story on like that sort of topic that I don't think I've told on the podcast, which just came to mind because I'm going to tell it. Then explain why I'm telling it. Because I could try and keep it short in 2020, as most people know that regularly watch this. So I had my jewelry business, Midnight City, which was doing like two and a half million pound run rate, like profitable. And then I also had Neon Beach. But in the midst of Neon beach growing crazily, I was like, fuck, I need to sell this jewelry business. Because I was never passionate about it. And I was like, fuck, I don't give a fuck. About it, let's try and sell it. So I went down this whole process with like multiple brokers and I had an LOI letter of intent for it was a low seven figure amount which by the way, I couldn't fucking believe because the business only 18 years. 18 years, 18 months old at the time. Yeah. And I was 24 at the time. And I was like, I was fucking on search looking at like Lamborghini trucks and shit. I got well ahead of myself. But then I remember I actually rejected it because I got really cocky and arrogant because like both the brands are scaling. It was peak Covid. I thought I could sell it for more this. Anyway, fast forward like three, four months and I'm like waiting to like get a better price, whatever. This is when the Neon brand starts going terribly. So like all my focus went onto that. My jewelry brand started to like tail off and scale and then no one would fucking pay any more for it. I ended up getting offer for like way less, which is like less than half the original, man. I'm like, for fuck's sake. And then because of the way the structure of the business is when, when Neon got bought out, as I was explaining briefly before, it basically meant that I couldn't sell the jewelry business because of the amount of time between that deal happening and when I could have sold it as a brand asset. It was. Anyway, the point is, firstly I wasn't passionate about it. But secondly, just on that point, if anyone has like a fucking brand that they're not passionate about or a drop shipping store which is probably harder to sell, but don't make this is like fucking gold advice by the way, very expensive mistake on my behalf. Don't get arrogant and think I can get more, I can get more. If you're not passionate about it and someone offers you solid amount of money, just fucking do the deal. Go through the painful due diligence, which I did, and then turn it down and just do the deal because I wish I'd done that. It's like that's like one professional regret. I mean whatever it's like meant to happen. Told me some load of shit, but I could have solved that for that amount, put it in Ethereum and had like 2020 mil right now, which I don't have. So that's like a painful mistake I made that I haven't really mentioned on the pod. There was like contextual to your point.

And yeah, I'd say the key like with that advice, like the key factor to for that to be true is like you have to not be passionate about it.

Yeah. And I just wasn't.

Because if you are like, and you're maybe feeling a little arrogant, it might not be arrogance, it might be like your ambition speaking like conviction. Yeah. It might be your confidence in that what you're building is actually gonna be so much bigger. So there's a fine line between like, like ignorant arrogance and like ambitious conviction.

Yeah, I agree, I agree. I think you know in your gut if like you do, if something is like either like A has like actually massive potential and B is like the one for you. Yeah. The business that you should work on. And that's a very intuitive thing. Like everyone's different. But I never felt that way with that business I do with my new thing. And yeah, hopefully it will end up being like the perfect fucking love story where it's like, in fact, in 10 years time I can write about the business I didn't sell, but actually we just sold this for a billion dollars cash. I'm sat on a 200 foot Sunseeker customer, there's five women around me. And I'm joking. Maybe I'm not joking, but you get the idea. Like, and it's just like looking back, that was a great thing to happen because it taught me a lot. But yeah, I definitely feel this next one is, is the one.

This is the one.

I mean, I have said that before, I said that about my neon business. But looking back, there's a lot of boxes that this business ticks, which is kind of similar to your business in a way. I mean it's very different. But subscription is the fucking way forward. I'm pretty convinced, especially in like people talking about there's a recession coming, all this stuff. If people use your product, whether it's physical or software, and they enjoy it, that's the perfect customer. Well, yeah, I mean, if they stay.

The way to survive in E commerce is. Well, there's really two things, really. One is retention. So obviously like having as loyal customers as possible, really high lifetime value, which subscriptions, you know, basically solves that problem. If you have someone paying you monthly for the, for a product, like, it solves that. But another huge part is like you still have to be able to affordably acquire customers. So you could be like, your retention could be amazing, but you still need to be affordably acquiring customers, which is like, kind of like the problem that Social Snowball aims to solve is like paid, paid acquisition is incredibly expensive. Like so much more expensive than it was even like a few years ago.

So six Months ago.

Oh, yeah, it's. It's always changing. So like with Social Snowball, it's like. And obviously there's a lot of other tools that were built to like, tackle this problem, but us being one of them. Like turning your customers into a new marketing channel, a new customer acquisition channel is like one of the ways that you can now profitably acquire customers because you're gonna set whatever incentives you get to choose what incentives you're paying for a new customer.

Is that your main offering? Is it? Because obviously I've started using it myself, is that the main pitch is turning customers into affiliates rather than just like, absolutely. Influences. Can you do those as well?

Absolutely. You could do both. You could do both. But the like kind of. You know what social snowball gained a lot of momentum for when we first launched because this is like our whole marketing angle and it was like in our flagship feature, whatever is like, turn your customers into affiliates. And really what that developed into is like, turn your audience into your most efficient marketing channel. So, like, brands need ways to acquire new customers without letting their CAC be controlled by some algorithm that doesn't even have the same incentive as you as a brand owner. Like, that's just not scalable anymore. Maybe it used to be, but it's just not anymore. So, you know, with, with specifically, I mean, there's a lot of different approaches to this problem. But you know, obviously I could speak from the experience with Social Snowball. Like with an affiliate program, you get to choose the customer acquisition cost that you're going to pay. So, you know, you set like an incentive to pay an affiliate. You set an incentive to pay a new customer that's being referred from an affiliate. If you're not making sales with those numbers, you're not going to be losing money. You're just not going to be acquiring new customers. And then you could increase them and then see if like those higher incentives, you know, move the needle to get people to successfully refer. So it just kind of lets you control your CAC and also acquire customers from a source that's not a paid acquisition channel, which is like, obviously also very important for brands.

Yeah, very true. How many affiliates is the biggest onboarded brand have, roughly speaking? That's a good question as well. Like, how big is the biggest brand without telling me who the brand is? Unless you can.

I mean, we have some big brands. I mean, you could look on our website, we have like some, some logos of some big brands. But I mean, I. We have one brand that signed up with us like right when we launched. That still, like, has always done pretty high volume. They have like a few hundred thousand affiliates. Like, yeah, like something like that. I mean, but since then we've had much, much, much bigger brands sign up, but they've only been on for like a month. So they might only have like a couple thousand affiliates because they're like new. But yeah, we have one brand that like installed like the week we launched and it's still a customer.

Are they still paying you 1% of revenue generated?

So I'm not. I'm not sure which plan they're on because all of our tiers changed also since we launched. So now we have. Our three tiers now are 19amonth plus 10% of affiliate revenue, 59amonth plus 3% of affiliate revenue, and then 499 flat with no commission fees ever. So I don't know if they've upgraded since we've iterated pricing or if they're still on one of the OG tiers. But yeah, I mean, they definitely pay us well regardless which plan they're on.

What's the average like fee per month across everything? It's a pretty mad model, to be.

Fair, I think, including free users, because we had a free plan for a while. For like six months we had a free plan. We have like, still a lot of users. I think including them, the average customer value is right around $20, like, I think a bit over $20 actually, including free users. If we were to exclude that cohort, which is probably what we should do when we're calculating that number. I don't know it off the top of my head. I'm assuming maybe like, you know, between 30 and 50amonth per user.

Yeah. Yes, recurring is the one. I don't know why I never got into it before because I look at business like athletic greens, which is like relevant to me. But I just think, fuck, they have like one product. It's just so beautifully simple. It is so beautifully simple. All right, changing topic briefly, because I feel like I always come onto this shit and it's quite relevant because you mentioned it. Do you think. I mean, obviously for you. Do you think having a girlfriend, like, do you think that changes how you approach, like building the business? And I guess I've had probably negative experiences with it. I know plenty of people have had great experiences, but like the general conversation, I guess on this pod and like people I spoke to has been like, you know, I think that there's maybe a misconception that when you're in the Fucking trenches. You need to focus, like, you know, like have a social life later or whatever. But how has that been for you? Because how recent was that?

I mean, I've been dating her for a year, so she's been, I mean, even, you know, before we were dating, like, I was like, like we were like talking to each other. So she's been there since the beginning of Social Snowball. So she's like seen the entire growth, which is. But I mean, like, it's definitely. I mean, I know some relationships aren't like this, but it's definitely been like really helpful because like, obviously for me at least, and I assume this would apply to everyone. Building a business is stressful. Like, it's, it's hard. And sometimes I let emotions control me a little bit. Like, you know, if I'm something, I'm dealing with some employee or like, you know, I have to fire someone just so there's a lot of things that just happened that are. Or like, you know, really stressful things. Like Shopify, like, you know, threatening to delist us from the app Store if we don't like, changes feature. Like things that are scary. Sometimes I like, let emotions get to me and I like, maybe I'm about to make a bad decision to the business. And she's very, she's very like helpful with like guiding me and making sure I'm like thinking clearly before I make any decisions. I mean, and she's also just extremely supportive. So like, I, I'm assuming like with your experience with having a relationship while you're working, and I know we chatted about this before the episode was being filmed, but like, she, your girlfriend wasn't very supportive, which obviously, you know, isn't gonna be helpful. But I mean, in my case, like, she really is so. And she's also like just by chance working in a very similar field. Like she works at a marketing agency doing digital ads. So like she fully understands it. Like she could pitch it. Like she could, like she could work for Social Snowball. And probably most of the. Because I tell it like I tell her everything. Like she knows everything. She could definitely work in Social Snowball. Like in most of the roles. I mean, maybe not like product specific stuff, but it like anything like sales or customer facing. Like she, she knows it well. Like she fully understands it. So that's also like really nice to be able to talk to someone, you know, like a partner that like, it's. It would be different if she like, didn't understand the space. But since she, since she does Understand it really well. Like I could like tell her like specific details of like, like numbers and stuff. And like she like, know. She like fully knows what's going on. Like fully, fully has a good understanding. So it's definitely. It's definitely been only helpful in my scenario.

Yeah, definitely. And you just moved in together on her?

Yeah, yeah, we just did, yeah. Here in London? Yeah, she just got it. She just got a job here. Yeah.

So did you move when she got a job here or you were you gonna move anyway?

No, it was when she got a job here. We were just traveling before, like cuz. Well, she was staying with me in la, but just like kind of visiting me.

Definitely a better place in LA.

Oh yeah, LA's okay.

I haven't gonna talk shit in the comments.

I had fun friends in la.

I like live with the guy that moved to Hollywood and he loves it. It's just not for me.

Yeah, it's. It's not for me. It's not for me. It's not for me. I mean, Miami is like my favorite place in the US for sure. But yeah, I mean, she was just staying with me in la. We were just traveling a ton. Like we tore up Europe. We've been traveling like a crazy amount. And then she graduated university and just got. Well now her second job actually at this marketing agency in London. Like an in person, like office job actually in a WeWork, funny enough. So yeah, we're like, let's send it.

Yeah, that's interesting. That's good. I mean, I feel like I would definitely. I'm definitely open to a fucking relationship if there's a girl that gets me. But I just think I'm a fucking weird kind.

I am too. I am too. Honestly, like, I also think it's like.

Like, how did you meet? Because I always discuss this. Yeah. And I'm not like fucking. There's plenty of girls on Instagram that I can speak to or whatever. I just.

Yeah, yeah.

Can't be fucked. But I just think the whole dating game these days, like in general, let alone like if you're entrepreneurial and fucking have weird niche goals and shit. It's just like, it's a strange world we live in. Like social media is fucked up a lot of. Yeah, just like a lot of people's like dating fucking lives and shit.

It's made it so, so easy, but.

So fake and so easy, but so like flippant and like, largely just like fucking hookup culture and shit, which is like, fine. I'm not opposed to that. But there's a time and a place, and it depends what you're looking for, but. Oh, yeah.

What was your question?

What was my question? Like, I guess, how do you meet? Oh, I always have this, like, one day I'll meet this perfect girl in a coffee shop or a library.

It'll happen.

It'll happen. She'll be in some castle.

You just have to not be looking. Like, that's the thing. Like, when I met.

Definitely not looking, by the way, when I met my girlfriend, like, a romantic idea.

Yeah, no, I get you. I get you. I mean. Well, yeah. So I was actually on vacation in Dubai. She grew up. She's not from. From Dubai. She's actually from the uk, which is, like, why she's here working right now. But she grew up in Dubai. Like, her family grew up there. Like, she went to middle school and everything there. And I was just on vacation with some buddies, and we were just, like, having parties at our Airbnb every night. And, like, we knew some people in Dubai, like, that we were meeting up with, and they knew other people in Dubai that would, like, invite people over. So we were just having people over in our Airbnb. I mean, it was actually my very last night before I was flying home. She came over and we just, like, hit it off super well. Then I think we were just vibing the whole night, and then, you know, I obviously had to say goodbye and then flew home the next morning. But then we just stayed in touch for months, talking a ton, like, FaceTiming and everything and all that stuff. And then she. I was living in Miami at the time, and I was like, you got to come to Miami. You got to come to Miami. Like, you'll have so much fun here. Like, you gotta come to Miami. And then eventually she did. She flew to Miami, and then we started dating from. From that trip.

So that's the right way to do it. Well, I want to change tack before we wrap things up shortly. We always have to touch on girls because it always fucking comes up. Yeah, people love it. Next, over the next year, then what is your focus? I know you've. You've signed the lease for a year, right? In London.

Yeah.

So other than getting to know London and trying to fucking keep up with me on runs, what is your focus for social snowball? Like, is there a specific plan or is it still relatively early that you're just fucking sending it, see what happens?

No, it's a little more organized than that. I'd say, you know, that there's. There's a few different ways that I might take it. I'm very much considering raising venture funding. I know that I kind of maybe didn't sell it great earlier in this conversation, the whole treadmill. I know you love that. But the truth is, like the type of business we're in, it's like pretty standard to raise. And that's not why I would want to do it. But for the reasons that it is standard to raise, it does make sense to, you know, for us to progress the business. It's, it's a bit of a slow process right now just because we have limited resources. So like, we have all these features that we want to build so we could acquire these bigger brands and we know exactly what they want because we talked to them on demo calls and everything. But to get, you know, that laundry list built with two full time engineers and like one part time, like takes time. It takes a lot of time. And at the same time, like, I want to be marketing so we could be growing faster. But if I hire another engineer, like I'm about to, then I can't spend that money on marketing. So it's like, it's a slow process. And at the same time, through all of it, I'm not truly able to focus on like the big picture vision as much as I'd want to because I still have to be in the weeds picking up the tasks that fall between, between the cracks, like just dealing with a lot of things that I rather would not. Thankfully, the team that I have now, they are rockstar. So like, they really do pull more than their weight and they're like gems. But what I would love to do is be able to build a big team of rockstars and people that know a lot more than me and are a lot smarter than me and are very good at specific things. I, you know, there's a lot of hires that I really want to make, so I am very much considering that route. But it's not, you know, nothing, nothing is obviously set in stone. You know, the beauty of the business right now is that like I kind of touched on earlier, like we're bootstrapped and we could just like coast and we're never gonna like have to worry about burning capital and then raising at a down valuation because we didn't hit our MRR goal. And then like investors are, it's just like none of that, like outside noise is affecting me right now, which is, which is a blessing, honestly. But at the same time, like, what I'm building is so great and I'M so passionate about it and I believe in it so much that I want to make sure that no matter what, it gets to the whole world. And I think venture funding could, could be the vehicle that gets me there. But again, not necessarily. I mean, you could look at a lot of bootstrapped success stories. Like mailchimp is like a great example. So I mean, I, I couldn't give you like a super concrete answer on that, but I definitely am only gonna be like head down grinding on social snowball this year. Like they're, I'm not doing this game of like having a million side projects at the same time.

Yeah, completely. Definitely. Where to go? Yeah. All right, final question. And it's become a cliche on this pod, but I ask it to everyone. If you could give three bits of advice to your younger self, I guess maybe 18 year old self, what would they be on the spot?

Okay, so one of them for sure is like, there's no, there's no right and wrong way to accomplish a certain thing. So I used to always look at like someone else who's successful and they, they've accomplished something I want to accomplish and I am working towards a similar goal that they've already done. And sometimes I used to get worried if I wasn't following their exact path because I'd be like, this is how they accomplished it and I'm doing something different. And then I realized that like, there are many, many ways to accomplish the same goals and you don't need to follow someone else's path or another, you know, suggested path. Exactly. You could, obviously you, and you should learn from what the, the way other people do things. But you could definitely carve your own path towards a goal. So like, that's, that was like super important for me. Geez. Three, three pieces. You're, you're, you're hitting me with a.

Lot doggone stincture on this shit.

Yeah, let's see, let's see. I think, I mean, I kind of touched on this, but I really believe that you have to chase and make money to understand that it's not what you should be chasing. And I think if anyone's listening and they haven't like made that like first initial and you'll know when you've made it. Like if you've made that first initial, like jump in cash where you like just like have a taste of freedom. Like if you haven't made that yet and you're like trying to like pretend that you don't want it because you want to like Be listening to what people that are maybe a little bit further in the journey or telling you and are like, oh, you shouldn't be chasing money. I really do believe, like, in order, if it's, if you're one, if you're a person that is very money driven, you, it's not, there's nothing wrong with chasing it, assuming you're not doing any like, shady business or screwing people over. But to chase money to make it and then realize that it's not what you want is like a process that I do think you have to go through. And by pretending that you don't want to be chasing it and then like delaying it, you might, yeah, you might just be delaying it. Like, that might be the result and you might still chase it at some point, make it and then realize that it's not what you wanted. So I think that, like, there's nothing wrong with having to go through that learning experience firsthand rather than just listening to it. And if you're dropshipping, I could probably think of way better advice than this.

But this is probably very topical for viewers.

If you're dropshipping, like, it's a stepping stone and you could, you could really leverage it in your favor to build an unbelievable career. There's nothing wrong with, you know, if that career turns into working for someone as like some really cool position at some really cool startup or something. Like, it doesn't, you don't have to be like this entrepreneur, like, posting cool cars on Instagram forever. Like, dropshipping is really cool because it, one can give you access to capital that can be made relatively easily and you could use that to do a lot of really cool things and build a lot of really cool things. And two, at least for me, like, the connections that I was able to make from it are unbelievable. Like, the, the people that I know now, the people that I respect and respect me truthfully, like, it's, it's, it's crazy. Like, it's, it's crazy. And like, that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the whole drop shipping learning experience I went through. And even though, like, that business itself didn't bring me what I, you know, the, you know, the golden nugget or whatever shiny object I was tracing chasing, like, it, it is like a bit of a dead end. It really can be if you use it as a stepping stone strategically to pivot into something bigger and you use the capital that it's given you and the connections and there's probably even more things that I'm not thinking of that. It can give you, I guess, like, you know, business knowledge and experience. Like you really can turn, you can really build an unbelievable career for yourself. But don't, don't cling onto it too long. Maybe I clinged on to it a little bit too long. I should have probably cut it a bit earlier.

Solid, practical, wise advice from a very wise 23 year old. That was an interesting episode. I learned a lot. I think everyone listening, watching, probably did as well as usual. Yeah. If you're watching the pod, subscribe, recommend it to a friend. All that good. Go buy Rainbow Dust. Go sign up to Social Snowball. Go sign up to Triple World. All that good. And we'll see you on the next episode. Cheers for watching. Peace.

Peace. Sam.