Episode with Andrew Gazdecki (Founder & CEO of MicroAcquire)

Hello everybody. I'm KP and welcome to the latest episode of Building Public Podcast. Today I am stoked that we have a great guest, someone who embodies a lot of my building public energy and just someone whose moves and playbooks are inspiring and things that I'm taking notes of when I become a founder. And just overall someone who gets it, someone who gets how to build a movement as opposed to just building a company. I think David Sacks' famous words. And in many ways have— we have a lot in common. We want to just bring this out together and discuss in public. And without further ado, I want to welcome Andrew Gasdecki to Building Public show. Welcome, Andrew.

Thanks, dude. I'm stoked, man. Good to chat with you, man. So thanks for the invite. And I got to say, that was one hell of an intro, so I appreciate it. And also everything that you do, man. I see you doing amazing stuff, you know, on Twitter and just supporting entrepreneurs. So

stoked to be here. Thank you. Thank you. So for folks who are listening to this, I'll drop a link to this latest book by Andrew on my show notes. That's my book. The book is called— you got the book? Yeah.

That's my book. Whoa.

Of course. Look at it. Take a look. How does it feel to actually physically hold your book? You know, when you first— when you got your first manuscript or first copy, how did it feel for you?

So the story when I got the first copy, like the first printed copy, I didn't keep a single one. I sent them all out for free. Oh my God.

You were doing the giveaway.

So actually, This came yesterday. So, I just got the book and then like thousands of other people got it before me. But yeah, I just gave all the books away. But the trip, I mean, it's printed. It's a book. I don't know. Like, and then—

Has it ever crossed your mind? Was it ever on your vision board like 10 years ago, Andrew? What would you think if you found out that you wrote a book? It's out there. People like me are buying it. Thousands, maybe millions of people are going to buy it the next 10 years. Give me what would go through a 10-year-younger Andrew's mind if he found out about all this?

I'd say you're crazy. And, you know, just to put a, you know, a little bit of like, why did I write the book? Really just to, you know, inspire entrepreneurs. Like, I have no aspirations to be a bestselling author. I will never sign a book. Like, I just can't bring myself to it. I just thought, you know, My journey building my first company was so interesting and, you know, relatable in a lot of ways to what other entrepreneurs are trying to accomplish today by building a SaaS company, not raising a lot of money, selling it for a small but life-changing— when I say small, like not the mega venture exit, but enough to set you up for financial freedom. And it's not a how-to book, it's just how I did it. I include all my mistakes, a ton of them, all the way from the idea all the way to the exit. So when I read it now, there's an audiobook version coming out pretty soon. Nice. I've been listening to that and it's a trip because I lived it. And then just, it's like going down memory lane and it just kind of makes me smile because, you know, I always like to say, you know, I didn't build the biggest company, but man, we had so much fun. Like, it was such a blast building that company. So just like getting that story out of my head before it started to fade and the details and stuff like that. You know, it felt really good to, you know, get that out and get it in everybody's hands. So, yeah, man, I appreciate the support.

Oh, love it. I can't wait to read all the chapters and then, you know, talk about sort of what I took away from it on Twitter, as you know. One thing that's unique about this period in your career, I think, compared to when you were doing business apps, you know, in 2010, Is that now you're writing kind of like writing your chapter in public? You know, I see MicroAcquires tweets, you know, like your reflections, your daily thoughts, you know, on Twitter more often. What's going on in your mind about this? And why does this matter, like, for you?

Number one, I, you know, I really thought about what motivates me, and I just love inspiring entrepreneurs and pointing them in a direction that might help them in some way. And so when I post on Twitter, I saw some of the questions like, You know, what's the strategy? Like, candidly, there is no strategy. I just enjoy— if I think of something that might help someone, and if it just helps one person, I tweet it out. And that was the thought with the book too, where if I can just inspire one entrepreneur to, you know, start a company. And I think the story is just, you know, I didn't come from a lot. I didn't have a technical background. I didn't have any, like, money to start a business. I just put in the work and like was a student of startups to a sense, and I wanted it bad enough. And, you know, so just, you know, helping others is really just kind of my main motivation. And Twitter is a great way to do that because there's a lot of entrepreneurs on Twitter and I appreciate everyone that follows me. And my favorite tweets are the ones where I say something and in the comments it's like, I needed to hear that, or, you know, this really is like relatable for me right now. Those are the ones where I kind of, you know, take a step back and say, you know, I really appreciate it.

You know, if you can take us back to the early days of business apps, because I know you covered that in the first chapter, and there was this pivotal moment where I think it was 2010 when Apple added a new paragraph in their, I think, guidelines, and in a way kind of brought your whole business to a stall, you know, and to a halt. And you were panicking, the company was— the team were panicking, and there was this anxiety that we could find through the words. Walk us through that moment. And then there was another moment, like maybe 6 months later, where, you know, you finally sell the company. What— like, take us through that first win, because I think a lot of entrepreneurs don't understand that the highs can be as great, the lows can be as low, but getting that first win is so important. And I think that's part of your message now, is that get that first small win in a way. So walk us through that chapter if you can, in a brief way.

Yeah, so that happened in 2018, so not 2010, that's when I started the company, but we just got so big to a point where, to my knowledge, we were publishing more iOS apps than any other company in the world. And so Apple made a decision to basically block all apps that were clones. And we saw the announcement and we saw the new guideline and we thought it was gonna affect, you know, games where you make a ping pong game and it's like ping pong with Justin Bieber. Ping Pong with Drake, Ping Pong, there's a ton of those like where you just, it's the same app but you reskin it. And then they started to broaden it one day, like outta nowhere. And so we felt that was, you know, super heavy-handed because it really prohibited any sort of small business from creating an app. And I even had a call with Apple's team and I asked them a question directly. I said, so this app meets your standards, correct? And they're like, yep. And the only issue is that we have prebuilt components to help us quickly build the app. And that's the problem. They're like, yeah. And then I said, I remember this moment like it was yesterday. I was like, so you're telling me if we just spent 4 months building this app completely custom and it looks exactly the same, there is absolutely no difference, you'll approve it? And they're like, yep. We're like, does that make any sense to you at all? And they're— and even the review team was like, no, but like, like, so there wasn't a lot of logic behind it. And so—

And you're not even trying to do clones like this, this clone games you're trying to build. You're trying to help out small business entrepreneurs get on the App Store, right?

Yeah, we were helping, you know, small businesses compete with mega brands that could afford a, you know, 6, 7-figure, you know, custom mobile agency. And like, right, you know, a big part of our pitch was like, hey, Starbucks down the street has, you know, a really robust mobile ordering system. Like, why don't you? So you compete with them. And we have technology that can enable you to do that. So we felt we were doing a lot of good in the small business community, and the rejection rule just flat out didn't make sense. And it's since been, you know, appealed. And, you know, I think that was a good move for just everyone in the industry. But yeah, I mean, going through it, I mean, that really kind of tested my leadership and like my ability to handle like chaos because it was, it just happened one day. It wasn't, we didn't, we had no heads up. Mm-hmm. 30, 60, 90-day notice, like, hey, adjust your business. But we fought through it. And I think the lesson there is startups are hard and sometimes you'll get punched in the face. Like there's a signed Mike Tyson glove.

There we go.

And it's also kind of a reminder of like, you got a plan. Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face. And we got punched in the face pretty hard, but we worked through it. We stuck together as a team and we worked with Apple to appeal this rejection. So I've heard of others, you know, kind of going on Twitter. I won't say anybody like complaining like really loud about like something they don't like about Apple. And when I saw that happening, I was like, I actually like helped change an Apple policy all the way up to like the top execs that speak on stage. Like I spoke to them, you know, kind of shining light on how ridiculous this was. And then, and then it changed. And then we actually found out about the rejection changing. before anyone. So there's articles within TechCrunch, which we shared that story, and then we knew about the appeal before all the media outlets. So we were like the first to hear about it because we basically, instead of complaining, we came to them with like suggestions on, you know, would this work? Would this work? Would this work? We had a number of different ideas because they were just trying to reduce, you know, the amount of apps in the App Store. But in the end, it all worked out. But it was an intense, like, 4-month period. And then after that, it was like back to normal.

Yeah. Well, so fast forward from there to the night before you realized your bank account's gonna get hit by this acquisition money. What were you feeling like? That must have felt great. And what were some emotions you were going through that the night before you knew you were gonna— all right, the sale is complete?

Candidly, I was scared shitless. I mean, I didn't grow up with a lot. So Like, it was one of those moments that was just surreal. And it wasn't like a moment where I earned this. I'm so proud. It was a moment of more of a feeling of, I can't believe this is happening to me. Like, whoa. Like, this is incredibly grateful, but am I ready for this? Like, I did not expect to be here at age 29. Like, it was just surreal. So it wasn't like, yeah, my business is worth that much. Of course you're paying that. It was more Like, wow, this is kind of scary in a weird way. I'm really nervous. I hope everything works out and the deal goes through. Because you have a closing date where all due diligence is done. You have a circled date where you're going to sign the purchase agreement. And yeah, day before close, or probably the week before close, I was just in a weird state of like, is this real? Is this happening? I'm really nervous. So it was more celebratory, I'd say, probably a few months after, once it really kind of sunk in. But in the moment, like I've said this on another podcast, like people think when you go through a life-changing acquisition, you're like, I mean, some people probably are, but like, yeah, just celebrating. You're super just like, let's pop champagne and stuff like that. I was the exact opposite. I was nervous. I was hoping that we did everything correctly in turn because it was such a large acquisition. You know, just like, did we hire the right law firm? Is my business going to be taken care of? And in the end, it all worked out. But in the moment, yeah, a little bit nervous for sure.

I love that. It's definitely relatable. As someone who also didn't grow up with a lot of money, I still like get a shit scare when I see my paycheck now, or when suddenly someone books a business. I'm like, you know, it's— but it's a great feeling to know, like, one thing that you mentioned in the book too is that there's a sense of meaning and satisfaction in knowing that value transfer has happened, you know, both, both parties, both sides. And it just feels good to know that whatever you put out in the world, you know, somebody's valuing it, and then they're benefiting, and they want to take it forward. You know, that's part of the acquisition goals, right?

Yeah, I'd say, you know, my favorite part about Business Apps was, so we worked with a lot of resale partners, and we helped thousands of people basically add new lines of revenue to their business. And they would take our, for example, we'd sell a mobile app for $20, $30 a month. They would resell it to their clients under their brand for $100 a month. If you do the math on all of that, like we had an ecosystem of like in way, like in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So we were like, we built a product that helps small businesses, but then also help agencies grow their business. So we just had like, and then we had, you know, a ton of copycats come out. So like they were also helping small businesses. So,

you know, where you kind of like, you know, led the way there too, it kind of like led the generation of these other copycats too.

A little bit, right? Yeah, I think that was the most rewarding part is just like that feeling of like you really, you know, made a change for the better in an industry across the entire world. Like we, at one point we had over 50 million active users. We published over 500,000 mobile apps. So it was a very like high-scale business and just, you know, just kind of taking a step back and being like, I built that? Like what? I mean, I didn't build it. I had an amazing team and I can't even, I can't even take 5% of the credit. But I'd say that just, you know, you know, having an impact on like so many people because it's such a trickle effect. Like we sell to an agency. Right. They sell to small businesses. Their customers use it. They're super happy. Small businesses grow, agencies grow, businesses grow. So we had this like value chain where just like everyone was winning. And I just found that super rewarding. And, you know, reflecting back, I'd say that's, that's by far my favorite part about startups is how you're able to, you know, impact the world in a better way at scale.

So bring us to the current moment. Like give us a few inflection points that happened, a few hops along the way. That brings us to this moment, you know, where you're now leading MicroAcquire. So after Business Haps, what happened?

Started a crypto company called Altcoin, and that one was kind of a—

Wait, this is 2017 crypto? What time was this?

It was when, like, the big bubble crashed.

Yeah, the ICO time. Wow.

Yeah. So we didn't do an ICO. We raised about $800K for the business, and we ended up selling it to a company called B&K to Future, which is essentially like WeFunder for like crypto projects. But what we were trying to do was speed up times on the Ethereum blockchain. Because when you send Ethereum or even Bitcoin, it's really slow. It can take like 45 minutes. Right. So we were using a layer 2 sidechain solution called Plasma, and we chipped away at it and we were making some pretty good progress. And the first application that we were going to use that for, for commercialization was a Essentially like a decentralized Coinbase, and then the SEC came out and they started finding like companies that had done ICOs, and they find a similar decentralized exchange. And so we took a step back, and we're like, "Are we in the tech business? Are we in the regulatory compliance business?" Like, we're going to need to get a money transmitter license. I even spoke to the SEC proactively. I reached out to them just as like, "Hey, we're not going to launch." Like, like we're going to be completely compliant. client. Like, we're not trying to— we're not like, you know, religious about crypto. We're like, this has to be released. And we made a decision to, you know, sunset that business. So we essentially pulled a move out of Business Apps' strategy where we, you know, took our exchange and then we switched it over to a white label model. And the idea behind that was if we can just get one enterprise customer to absolutely love what we've built, maybe we can sell them the whole company. And then we did that and then the funds were returned back to investors. Then we kind of just moved on from there. But the critical lessons that I learned from that business was number one, the importance of founder market fit. It was a very complex product and I'm not a technical founder. So that should have been, that's something that needed to be led by a technical founder. I did a great job marketing the business. It was featured in, you know, Bitcoin.com, Cointelegraph, all the major, you know, whatever crypto publications during the bubble of like the ICO when everyone's trying to get in there. Because we were the first to do cross-blockchain atomic swap between like where you could change, where you can trade, uh, Bitcoin for Ethereum without someone in the middle. Right. So we got some exposure for that, but also just loving your customer. crypto users and customers, great community, but really my passion lies in entrepreneurs and startups. And so those are probably the 2 key lessons I learned was number one, for my next startup, I wanted something where there was strong founder market fit.

Right.

So I had gone through 2 acquisitions and I had some insights into how that process works. What could be better? And then when I sold first business, the first thing that happened was I had like 10 of my entrepreneur friends reach out like, how'd you sell your business? And so that was kind of like, huh, does anyone talk about acquisitions? Is there any educational material? Like there's books on fundraising, there's books on marketing, there's books on sales, there's books on everything but the most important part of the founder's journey, which is exit. So I thought, huh, maybe there's an opportunity here. And then Going back to the customer, you know, I'm a big believer that you have, you just have to love the customer because you talk to them all day. Like I talk to, you know, awesome people like you, like other entrepreneurs, other, you know, startup founders. And so, you know, if you build a business around a customer that you truly don't like talking to all day, every day, not literally like 24/7, but very frequently, it's just going to be harder because someone's going to create a similar business. Yeah. And they're going to love that customer, right? And they're going to beat you. And so that became really clear to me. And that's what led me to MicroAcquire.

The last 5 minutes, you know, you blew my mind again and you did that first time when you came to On Deck. And, you know, if you remember that first session we had where it was the first time I think I heard how powerful founder-market fit in action could be because, you know, I knew that in theory, like everybody talks about product-market fit, you know, founder-market fit. I just heard about it, read about it. But watching you kind of like exemplify it That's become like the number of times I've mentioned that specific quote, what you just shared, Andrew, within ODNC and On Deck and, you know, etc., is insanely high because I keep telling people, you know, if you personally as a founder don't have a deep insight into a market because of your past, because of your history, because of, I don't know, something that you've done in the past, it's going to be very, very hard. I mean, you can still do it, but it's like playing the video game at the hardest mode, you know, and you will have very little empathy into what customers are going through. What subtle intuitive things, you know, that are hard to put it on a customer discovery interview, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And yeah, sorry, go on.

I'll give you a real example from, you know, how I built MicroAcquire. So I just thought, what would it take me to list a business on a marketplace? Because before that, the only options to sell your business were, you know, through investment bankers or strategic approaches you proactively, where when that happens, you usually hire an investment banker to run a process because if you have one buyer, you have no buyers. And then I looked around the market and I saw business brokers charging like 15% and I was like, what the hell is this? But aside from that, I thought, okay, so it's a marketplace and I have a bunch of employees and I have a lot of customers and it's at millions in revenue. I do not want this information public at all. So, and I don't want my investors to find out. I'd love to come to them with an offer like, hey, I just listed on this marketplace and I got an offer. That's a conversation. Hard conversations like, hey, I want to sell the business. I'm going to put it on this marketplace. So it needed to be private. I needed to be able to due diligence every single buyer that I give access to my private details, which includes my company name, P&L, any sort of metrics that I connect through Stripe or ChartMogul or Google Analytics or whatever. And so I just went through sort of like, what would it take for me to list the business? So I was kind of the customer on the sell side. Right. But then also on the buy side too. What sort of format would I, because I briefly was looking to buy a SaaS company also prior to MicroAcquire and nothing was specific to SaaS. Nothing felt like it was for startups and acquisitions. Right. It felt more for like fire sales and just quick sort of really cheaply priced, low quality startups. And there's nothing that felt like a high quality, Vetted marketplace, right, where I can speak directly to the founder. You know, I don't want to speak to a founder that's been coached and knows exactly what to say and how to position themselves. Like, I just want to know you, like, right? Oh, really? Why are you looking to sell? What's your ideal outcome? Where's the opportunities here? Do we get along? That's like the biggest thing. Right. Because if it's not like buying a car where you just get the keys and See ya. I might have questions like 3 months from now. So I want to make sure I have a good relationship with you, not the broker and the investment banker in the middle. And there's obviously legal ways to force someone to like, hey, you got to do consulting for XY period. So I thought through all of that, like, what do I want? And then also I don't want to pay a huge fee. So I launched MicroAcquire where you can sell your business without any fees, like no fees.

0%. Nothing can beat that, right?

Yeah. It's like, And it's proved to be very efficiently, and we will have some sort of fee over time. But the way we're going to do that is we're going to add value to the acquisition. So it's easier, it's an end-to-end guided process where both the buyer and the seller feel safe. Right. It'll also be optional. So we're not going to lock down everybody. So if you still want to sell for free, you can go for it. But if you want a little bit more insurance with such a big acquisition, So again, just using like those unique insights. So that's why founder market fit is so important because if you have unique insights that other people don't and you're in love with the problem, like I was literally like steaming when I saw the market. I literally was like, this is highway robbery. Like there's no other options. There is zero innovation. This is a blue ocean opportunity. Like literally we can rethink how acquisitions acquisitions should take place. We can streamline this and we can automate 90% of the work that, you know, business brokers do. And so that was kind of, you know, those are, those are 2 things that I highly recommend for entrepreneurs as they're thinking about building a business.

Can you double-click on the second one? Because I think that's also super underrated, like loving your customer, basically, like, you know, like having such a deep insight into that customer and wanting to serve them. One thing, one advice you give which resonated so much with me was you said like something on the lines of, KP, pick someone who you want to serve for 10 years, you know? And I was like, oh my God, so brilliant. Because a lot of people are just quick looking to like, oh, I'm going to build an app for real estate brokers. I'm like, have you ever hung out with a real estate broker? Do you, do you want to talk to that person? You know, I mean, just saying you could, you may want to, but like, do you really think through that? So yeah, double-click on that and just give us a little bit more depth.

Yeah. So the thing about startups, you can build whatever you want. You can serve whatever customer you want. You can work with whoever you want. You can solve whatever problem that you hate. And like, when I say hate, like you would love for it to be different. Yeah. You can, you get to pick everything. So when you're building a startup, you might as well kind of build it around something that you'll enjoy working on every day to the point where it's like a video game. MicroAcquire to me isn't work. Like if that isn't noticeable by now, then I don't know what else to do, but I love serving entrepreneurs. I love when entrepreneurs get acquired and they send me an email saying like, this is incredible. Like you changed my life in a positive way. And I am forever grateful. Like that's, that's what motivates me. But if I was selling to, I always use like dentists as like dentists.

School districts.

Yeah. I hate going to the dentist. So if I like thought of some opportunistic SaaS solution for dentists, but I had to go and sell to dentists all the time. Like, you know, I just, I'd burn out, you know? Yeah. So sort of startup, my point being is startups, they're hard enough. So the more that you can do to put yourself in a position where it's not work and it's fun, the farther you're going to go. And that really applies across not just startups, but really anything. Anyone who's in the 1% in their field, whether that's, you know, a musician or it's, you know, a scientist, Or it's a teacher. They love what they do. But one caveat that I think a lot of people don't understand as well is every job comes with bullshit. Like every job. That's, you know, you can be like, I don't know, you can be like a Supreme Court judge or something like that. And that, like, you worked through law school your whole life and now you're on the Supreme Court. You know, there's still parts about that job you're going to hate, but you're at the top of the game. So you also have to understand that You know, there is no perfect, like, I'm just happy. Like, we, we have, you know, things that we have to work on at Micro Choir, you know, that take time and we'd love it to go fast, you know, just normal business. I have a ton of emails I got to answer, stuff like that, which again isn't like a, I hate this, but just understanding like there are the big components that you can control. There's always kind of like the 30%, just sort of operational stuff that you just got to do to run the business. But yeah, when you build a startup, you have full control over everything. And I think it's really sad when entrepreneurs build these businesses, and then they really just created a job that they hate.

So— Right. Absolutely. Well said. So I mean, there's a couple prompts that I have that I'd love to pick your rapid-fire thoughts on. Well, we don't have to do rapid-fire. We can, we can go a little deeper.

Let's go rapid, rapid.

Okay. All right. All right. Rapid-fire. Let's go. Product versus distribution.

Distribution. I know. It's like, I think Well, I know you asked

Justin Kan this. I know there was a conversation that you did with Justin about this.

I think you should focus on distribution first and then what you do from there, you know, usually like an example with MicroAcquire is, you know, we focus heavily on distribution first because in a marketplace, building the flywheel and the distribution, the supply and the demand, that's, that's the product. So getting basically your brand out there and And really creating momentum while you're building the product is critical. And then if you really want to start, you know, leading a market, then you have to start moving over to product. So it, you need both. When you combine stellar marketing with stellar, just let's call it go-to-market. So sales, marketing, distribution with a stellar product. That's how you win a market.

That's the golden combo, right?

Yeah. But, but my sequence is distribution and then product. They're both important. And also interchangeable.

VC path, bootstrapper path?

I think so. MicroAcquire is venture-backed, but I think for 99% of entrepreneurs, bootstrapping makes so much sense. Like, you know, I always say, if you want to get rich, bootstrap. If you want to change a market, raise venture capital. That's what I'm trying to do at MicroAcquire, and it requires a lot of capital to do that. So when you bootstrap, you're able— if you bootstrap a business to a million in revenue, you can sell that for, let's just call it like 3, 4, 5 million. You're set for life. Right. Unless you're a psycho and you need like a private jet or something like that. But I just don't think a lot of entrepreneurs, and just to kind of broaden this point is a lot of entrepreneurs start these companies and they just hear about this one path that all entrepreneurs go down and they think that's the only way to be successful. But If you're thinking about bootstrapping or raising venture capital, I think the main question you should ask yourself is like, what is an ideal outcome? Is it $5 million? Because if it's just $5 million, like build, make sure you make decisions that lead towards that outcome. Because once you touch any sort of venture capital, that's off the table.

Right.

And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, like there's so much fundraising going around that it's You can get seduced into it. The next thing you know, you're like, again, I have a job I hate because I raise money from people I don't like, or I have a board and they tell me what to do all the time, or I'm under all this pressure all the time. And really all I wanted to do was solve this problem for this customer and then maybe sell it a few years down the line. And then also just statistically, to be successful when you raise venture capital, the bar is a billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar Decabillion.

Right.

So you're asking entrepreneurs like, hey, especially first-time entrepreneurs. That's why I'm such a big fan of stair-stepping in entrepreneurship is this is my 3rd startup, probably my 10th, but the rest— so I've been building businesses my whole life. It's mentally stimulating to just swing for it. Let's see if we can rethink a market. The financial outcome is the last thing I'm thinking about. But if you're at a stage where it's your first startup and you get to any sort of profit, like you're in the money, you're at the blackjack table and you got some chips that you can cash in. But when you raise venture capital, those chips are taken away and you got to get a lot more chips until you can cash it in. So I would just, long story short, for 99% of entrepreneurs, bootstrap and then also understand you can always change your mind. I mean—

That's the fun thing with bootstrapping is that you can always switch gears and suddenly say, all right, you know, that's what Bubble did for 6 or 7 years. They were bootstrapping Bubble.com, the no-code tool, and suddenly this went and raised $100 million round last year.

You can name your terms, you can name your firm, you can name, you know, you're like, you know, the amount, like you're much more disciplined, you know.

But it's way harder to do the other way around. Almost impossible. If you raised venture capital, it's almost impossible to go say, all right, I'm going to go indie now. Like,

yes. Yes. Yeah. That's why it's so important. Just like write down what do you want out of this startup? If it's like, candidly, when I was building business apps, again, you know, growing up, you know, without a lot of means, I just wanted to get rich and I'm totally fine admitting that. Like I helped a lot of people along the way, but, you know, without, you know, growing up with, you know, means, like it just kind of was something that I aspire. I wanted to be a millionaire. Like, Just, that was my goal. And so we had offers from VCs to raise, but we were in the money. And when I mean in the money, we were generating revenue. We raised very little capital. We only raised $100,000 from 2 just awesome mentors that $100K was probably worth $10 million in terms of mentorship from them. And that's how I learned so much about building businesses. Not saying I'm an expert or anything like that. But yeah, bootstrap for as long as possible is the way to go.

All right, 3rd rapid-fire question. TechCrunch.com versus bootstrappers.com?

I think they both serve their purpose.

Yeah, I'm just joking. There was a whole spiel of tweets you made and, you know, before the launch of bootstrappers.com. So actually, can you recap what happened and give us like where we stand on that now?

Yeah, well, I mean, if you look close, it's really just beef marketing, you know, and I, you know, had some fun, you know, throwing some shots at them, but I was like serious. I was so— Business Apps was featured in TechCrunch like a dozen times. I've written for TechCrunch and like, I kind of, you know, hadn't really been reading TechCrunch for a while. And then I went on and it's just like fundraise after fundraise after, and I'm like, what the f— what? Do you guys talk about businesses anymore? Like, And I called him out on it. And then one of the reporters was like, we do cover bootstrap businesses. And I was like, okay, what's the percentage? And then just crickets. And then I just thought, okay, well, you're a venture capital PR agency. Like, that's cool, bro. And then instead of just continuing to complain, I just saw it as an opportunity. So that's another thing for entrepreneurs. You know, if you see something that should be changed, don't complain about it. something about it. So I bought bootstrappers.com. We have a separate team within MicroAcquire, completely separate, and we just cover like the business stories that I grew up reading. Like TechCrunch in 2010 compared to where it is today is totally different.

Different, yeah.

You'd read about like these 2 people who just made an app and it's like it's just being released and they're looking for like beta users and there's a coupon code at the bottom to like get in for free. It was so cool. It was like, it was like a different scene. And I also—

One other thing that I miss from mainstream publications now, I mean, this is not a dig just at TechCrunch, but I think just the mainstream tech publications have gotten a little jaded. And I think the tone of the writing is like a little more skeptical and like a little like, you know, I miss the tech optimism these things had back 10, 15 years ago. Just like what you said, right? Like 2 kids, you know, coded something and then built this and That's what I grew up in. Like, I grew up in India and I read shit like that on Forbes, shit like that on fortune.com. And that's why I wanted to be an entrepreneur, not because a reporter or journalist or whoever was trying to like razz on like a VC-backed startup, you know, who he thinks will fail. I'm like, that's just, you guys are having a pig fight, like mud fight, quote unquote, you know.

Stories that inspire and motivate entrepreneurs and then make you say like, hey, I can do this too. But when I see an article that's like, hey, This company just raised $100 million and then we're excited to announce that a week later they raised $500 million. I'm like, that's so far beyond like where I am. Like, I can't relate.

The majority of the bootstrappers can't relate.

Yeah. And so we decided, you know, there are thousands of businesses with amazing stories that aren't getting coverage. Instead of continuing to complain, we just said, hey, this is— if you're not going to do it, we'll do it. And so we really, I love the stories that we write. We cover everything from businesses run by women, businesses run by individuals in other regions of the world, including India, Africa, just 2 people who met online and they're doing an app that's making like a million in revenue. Like these just really great stories of just like people taking an alternative route than the what you read about, which is raise a bunch of money and then you get a quote from the VC, we're really excited about this business, it's going to change the world. And the founder saying, we're really excited about this round, we're going to hire a bunch of people. That's literally the whole article. Right. I want to hear about the ups and the downs. Why'd you start the business? What sort of tribulations did you have to get through? How'd you get past Who are you? You know, what's your background? Like, how did you— what made you pick this business? So if you go on boostreapers.com, you'll notice, you know, the length of the articles is usually like 4,000 to 5,000 words. And we really just go in depth and we tell their story. We tell stories. We don't, we don't write news is probably like the way we like, we like to discern ourselves.

Right.

But yeah, long story short, we just saw an opportunity and we just said, hey, these, these entrepreneurs need some recognition. And so we decided to help.

I wanted to say on record, thank you for the swag. I just realized as I looked at myself.

That's a fantastic hat.

Folks, Andrew was so kind to send me a little box of goodies and, you know, one of that was this hat. So we have, I know we're about to hit that, you know, hour mark as you mentioned earlier. So one of the questions I had was around, this is probably an undercurrent that's, you know, growing within the micro-acquire marketplace. And I'm curious to hear your take because a lot of my followers and my audience are no-coders. And they're so excited. There's so much passion in that community, just like the Bootstrapper community. And they're always asking me, they're always wondering to themselves, are buyers wanting to learn about— are buyers wanting to acquire no-code apps? Are you seeing activity in, you know, on your platform for no-code micro SaaS apps or no-code, you know, projects? And, or do you believe it's going to grow or it's going to— what's your take?

Absolutely. I mean, it's like, I would say those projects sell faster than You know, many other types of startups. But I'd also like to, I guess my view is, you know, most buyers don't really care what it's built on. It just, does it solve, you know, a painful problem? Does it have paying customers? Is it a good quality business? But what it's built on doesn't really matter much too much. Like, is it on AWS? It's not. I can't do it. Like, very rarely have I seen that happen, but there's a huge amount of interest in no-code apps because number one, they're very easy to transfer to and they're very easy to continue to build upon. And then if you get to a point of scale, you can build something maybe a little bit more robust or you continue building with the no-code platform that it's currently hosted on. So absolutely, like we're like this close to adding a new category. So by the time this podcast comes out, we'll probably have a no-code category on.

Ooh, that'd be fun. I'd love it.

I'd love to promote it. Yeah, if you go on Microquare right now and just type in no-code, there's a ton of apps, like tons, tons, and I love them. I love them because—

As you're non-technical too, so you have a soft corner to this too, I'm sure.

Yeah, I'm just like, hey, like if you're not technical, like there's, there's ways around that. Like it isn't like one of my most— a question that like I always kind of like go, ah man, is when someone's like, but I need a technical co-founder. It's like, no, you don't. Like, there's tools out there where you can learn how to code without, you know, going into like a hardcore, you know, programming boot camp. You know, you can leverage these tools and build a business, and you can build an MVP very, very quickly. Okay. And then you start to focus on distribution, and then later down the road, once you've really kind of got the flywheel going on distribution and you have a predictable and repeatable customer acquisition strategy, you know, you can use that to invest into the product, whether that's, you know, continuing to build out the product in no-code or maybe doing something— Switch over to code. Yeah. So huge, very bullish on that market.

I love that. This is going to be a fun clip when I make a clip out of this. Little-known fun fact, a lot of people don't know, but I kind of learned the— so 2 things. One is I actually had a microacquire moment just before joining On Deck. I didn't know about microacquire at the time, but one of my no-code projects, which is called Letter Drop, At the time, it was meant to be a Product Hunt for newsletter editions. So every day you read like Packy McCormick stuff or David Perel stuff, but it was basically your daily feed of who dropped what on an edition level. So you get like a daily feed of who dropped what. And it was within like 3 weeks I got like inbound acquisition offers and I was already committed to joining On Deck. So I was like, okay, sure, I'm going to, you know, have a— it was a small exit, but it felt so good to your point. And I was like, wow, you know,

you got micro-acquired.

Yeah, I got micro-acquired. So it's like such a great feeling. And I shared that with my, you know, our fellows at On Deck. And I'm like, guys, you are overthinking this shit. Like, you don't know if you don't build in public, if you don't put yourself out there, all your projects, you don't know which DM you might get. And so stop overthinking it. Stop like hoarding all your projects into your silo. Put them in public, you know, just let people know that this is what you're building on. And so yeah,

I couldn't agree more. I think building in public and And really, I didn't even know about building in public. It was MicroAcquire's 2-year birthday yesterday.

Oh, congratulations on that.

Yeah. And I threw up that first sort of revenue graph thing. And building in public is really like storytelling in public. What you're doing is you're bringing people along for your ride, for the ups and the downs. And people want to root for you, like, keep going. Every entrepreneur needs motivation. And sometimes like you'd be, actually you will be surprised at how many other entrepreneurs will root for you. Like, we're all in the same boat. We're all going through the same struggles. We're all trying to figure stuff out as we go. And the more that you share and the more that you're open, the more that you share, you know, your learnings, your mistakes, like how are things going? You know, the more attention your project gets and the more attention your project gets from customers or it's referred to other customers. So there's like really no downside. And it's such a huge competitive advantage, especially today with all the buzz everywhere. You know, people want to hear these like real stories of like how people are building companies.

Right.

And it's motivating. Not only is it beneficial to you, but beneficial to others because it motivates them like, hey, like, you know, stop overthinking stuff. Just throw up posts on what you're working on, like where you could use some help. And I think you'd be really surprised at like how many people would chime in to help.

That is true. There's a lot of kindness in our community. I mean, in both entrepreneurship and even on Twitter. I mean, of course there's a lot of slam dunking and a lot of All that stuff. But also there's a lot of people who just want to help. So I got a couple audience questions I'm going to throw in. And one is from Andreas Klinger, who asks, why do you keep smiling? Why are you always— do you still have that smile on your face despite running a stressful business?

So one thing I do every day in the morning, and this might seem kind of weird, is I practice gratitude as much as I possibly can. So one thing I do in the morning is I meditate a little bit, and then I'll I'll literally just kind of close my eyes and try to bring myself back to a moment where I was really happy. When you start doing this, you'll start going towards like the day you got engaged, like the big ones, but then you gotta really dig.

Julian's birth, probably.

Yeah, but if you do it every day, you know, you got to start thinking about other stuff. And today was like, you know, me and my friends would put like duct tape in the road. So like when cars like drove over it, it like sounded like it popped their We were little rascals, but it brought me back and it just put a smile on my face. I also listen to standup comedy in the morning. If you ever join a team standup, we're laughing the whole time. I'm a big proponent that laughter just does something to you. And if you look at the world in a positive light, it just makes everything so much easier. And so I'm just really grateful for where I'm at in life and I I recognize that I'm extremely blessed. And I just try to stay grounded with those principles and just remember where I came from and where I am today. And blessings. I mean, how could I be upset about anything? Like, yeah. That's

how I feel too. I feel like, man, I can't believe like where I am right now, you know, and everything that goes around me is just a blessing. You know, all of these things that I think were stressful would have been like the greatest blessings ever 10 years ago. Right. So just thinking about that stuff. One last question. This is from Haps. Shout out Haps. Who are some of the inspirational people that Andrew Gazdecki looks up to?

I would say every entrepreneur just trying to better their lives in some way or another, whether they're building a small business, a large business, a billion-dollar business, ones that are just really, you know, solving a problem for customers, making a big impact in the world. I know that's kind of a cop-out answer, but entrepreneurs inspire me. Like, just seeing people To see entrepreneurs go through the ups and downs and get back up and keep going, that's what inspires me. And there's too many to list, but if I had to pick one, I'd say Ben Kelly. Ben, he bootstrapped a rocket company and sold it to Voyager.

Wow.

Yeah, the guy, he's just one of the coolest guys I've ever met. And we were in a founder group together and I really got to know him and he's just such a good person and just Such a just a real one, just a real entrepreneur. You know, and I have a lot of respect for people that hold principles true. So love

that.

That's one.

I love that. I gotta ask last one, which is: Is Russ Hanneman on your payroll yet?

No, he's not. He's no. There's nothing. There's no official you know connection with him.

Might as well be by now.

We're friends. I can say that. I've talked to him personally. He's a great guy, and he'll definitely be making you know.

I love that. I love all the stuff that Chris does for you guys. And I feel like it's now become a standard of announcements or milestones or releases or round announcements or whatever to get to book Chris and get him to do something funny. I also think, I mean, do you agree that he gives like 120% for everything, right? Every clip he does?

Yeah, he— Right? It's just one take. And when I talk to him, I just say like, hey, this is what's going on. That's it. And then the rest is just him, right?

Improv, mostly like just doing stuff.

Yeah. And then I'm laughing the hardest when— Me too.

I'm just, I love that stuff. It's like my therapy when I like just look at some of his stuff. I'm like, it's hilarious. 'Cause he takes some of the tech concepts we talk about all the time and he just like, he's just hilarious, you know? So I love it. Awesome. Thank you so much, Andrew. And again, this is a, you know, ongoing journey with you and I'm grateful that I get to You know, be around people like you, and you're inspiring a ton of entrepreneurs out there, including me. And thanks for being on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, man.

Awesome. Have a good one. Okay, see ya.