welcome to another episode of the SAS podcast I'm your host, Omar Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SAS business. In this episode, I took too a. J, the founder of Card, a SAS platform for building simple and fully responsive one page websites. In 2010 A. J was designing and creating website templates and themes for a living. Around that time, responsive Web design was growing in popularity, and it was a skill that A J wanted to acquire. So he set out to design and build his first responsive site template. When it was done,

he put it on his website and let people download it for free. People liked his template, so he kept building more, and people kept downloading those templates and using them to build websites. And then some people started asking if they could pay him for additional features and support. So he decided to charge them a one time payment of $19. It wasn't a lot of money, but had Bean doing such a great job creating so many templates and building a following that he was quickly generating six figures in annual revenue. But by 2015 A J was bored of building templates and themes. It had been fun learning a lot of new skills, but he was now ready for a new challenge, and he was intrigued by the idea of site building software that made it easy for non developers to create websites. But companies like Wicks and Squarespace already had products in the market, and he knew he couldn't compete with those companies. So he looked for a different way. And eventually he narrowed down his idea to a site builder for really simple one page websites.

And it turned out to be a really good idea that caught on with a lot of people. Today, his business is doing around $30,000 in monthly recurring revenue and is profitable. In this interview, we talk about how he's built, Ah, one person SAS company with no marketing. And in case you're wondering, it's not a mistake that I didn't mention ages Last name. He's pretty much anonymous online. No one knows his last name or what he even looks like but he's a great guy, and I had a lot of fun talking to him, and I hope you enjoy this conversation too real quick before we get started. Firstly, don't forget to grab a free copy of the SAS Tool kit, which will tell you about the 21 essential tools that every SAS business needs.

You can download your copy by going to the SAS podcast dot com, and secondly, enrollment for Sascha Plus is now open. Plus is our online membership and community for early stage SAS founders. So if you need help launching and growing of SAS business and you want to connect with all the founders around the world and build recurring revenue faster than plus will help you to do just that. Just go to sass club plus dot com to learn more. Okay, let's get on with the interview A. J. Welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me on.

So I always like to ask my guests what gets him out of bed, what drives or motivates them to work on their business. So what is it for you?

Oh, I would say pretty much just a challenge of the whole thing, and we work on a project like Carved. There's just so many different hats you have to wear, and every single day you're putting on a different hat. And it's always interesting to see what hat I'll have to wear on a given day. And ah yeah, that really just pushes me for just to keep working and seeing what's

out there and you're one mine company, so you have to wear every single

high. Yes, it it's been fun, although I do. My long time business partner from other projects is relatively recently. Come on, help with some aspects of Mike moderation and stuff because I would literally have no time left if I had to do that myself. Do so the had to starting to get a little bit too. Ah, abundant. Shall we say

so For people who aren't familiar with card, can you just explain what the product does?

Yeah, so it's basically just a one page site builder For, as the site says, pretty much anything you know, like a like a user profile like for, you know, profile for yourself for your business portfolio. I've seen people use it for selling products and stuff. And then just pretty much anything that you want to put on the Web, you can pretty much do with Card. And I've seen some use cases that I really didn't anticipate it also. That's why I try not to just list the things that I know, because I know people use it for whatever the hell they want to end up using it for. So that's kind of cool in some way.

And in terms of revenue, you're doing what around 30 k m r.

Yeah, about 25 30 is about where it's been hovering at the last few months, and it's been sort of on this steady incline, which is good and against relatively low expenses. So I mean, it's been it's been profitable since day one, which is great, and hopefully I get to keep it that way.

Love it. Yeah. Okay, so let's start the story before any of this happened. I know you're 1st 1 of the first approx you built was called html five up, and I want to get into that. But what were you doing before you even launch that business?

Sure. So this would be like late two thousands early 20 tens. I was designing basically site templates and themes and stuff because around that time I think it was a pretty hot market. So you could do pretty well for yourself if you were willing to put in the time to do stuff like that and just, you know, sell it, whatever. And then html five up actually came from doing that. I had nothing in the way of experience with a responsive design, So I was like, Well, I need to teach myself this because that's what the where everything is going. So I rolled it, I guess, into also being a project that I could put out stuff on a side, you know, that people could download for free eso.

If you have html five up dot nets girl right to the bottom, you will see the very first thing that I ever designed responsibly. So it looks extremely dated by today's standards. But there it is, and that really kicked off everything else that was

to come. Yeah, we were looking at that right? The mini maxing Haiti.

It's nice in its own way. For like, early 20 tens, I'd say

so were you a designer. Ah, Web developer. Like, what was your skill set when you started out?

I guess both. I mean, I tend not to label myself because that I've got this thing about labels kind of limiting you to, like, mentally, limiting you to a specific thing. Like I'm a developer. That's all I do, you know. So I did both just out of necessity, partly, but also just it was fun. Just a design to learn how that works and also to do the development side of things. Because what you learn different things doing that. So I did both. And I guess templates and themes were really, like a good synthesis of both of those areas of expertise. And so that's pretty much waited.

Yeah, I know. That's Ah, that's a good point. In terms of, like, labels, you know, that could probably two different conversation, but I think that's Ah, yeah, pretty astute kind of observation. Right.

Well, I'm just full of those. Not really. That's like my only one. Okay.

All right. So how did you build these skills? Like whether it's design or development. Are you self taught, or was it through kind of you know college of different jobs or whatever. Like, how did you acquire all those skills?

It was, I'd say, like 90% self taught, at least like on the design side development. Also, I'd say you like, uh, that I went to school for computer science, although even prior to that had already been into programming. So I pretty much just chose computer sciences a degree just so I could pretty much having easy time in school. But it's it's mostly from being self taught, and I tell people nowadays, like you really don't for a lot of things. Now you don't really have to, you know, incur the debt that comes with higher education for some things, because the Internet could now teach pretty much anything you need to know about development or even designed to an extent and a good chunk of my skills I developed just from doing the thing. So that's really my advice. Just do the thing. You will get better at

it. Yeah, I I remember. I mean, I'm going to show my age here now, but my first computer was the Sinclair ZX 81 which was

definitely shows your age,

and it was like It was like one k of RAM you had to work on. And I remember, like, how excited I was when I got this 16 k expander that I could play it at the back. But yeah, that's what I do like I remember, like going and buying these magazines where they had, like, code of different kind of programs. And I just sit there like copying and typing this staff up and debugging and sort of, you know, making stuff right. And I think it's a really good way to this. I just just get in there and just let curiosity kind of just drive you

right. I mean, and just at some point you gotta get move past theory and get into practice and apply. Apply that theory in the real world and see where it takes you. And I think that's that is pretty much how I learned everything I've learned and continues to learn. You know, in some ways, that's not good for certain things, because when you learn, you learn from mistakes that you didn't have to make, you could have just learned from someone else, so I mean, I'm not saying that all education is, you know, Bs or something. I'm just saying, like, don't be afraid to just get in there and do it.

Yeah, it reminds you there's a great book I'm reading. What? I mean, like you dissing, inaudible if the woman is called ultra learning and it's exactly about this idea off being able, Teoh learn things with purpose, about much more kind of action orientated one guy who became fluent in German in a few months time. I think the author kind of took a four year M. I t program and he couldn't get into M i. T. But, you know, they make all this stuff available online or any kind of completed the four year course in, like, a year and that you did the exams as well. Wow,

but yeah, really, really good book, and I was just like it just kind of inspired me in terms of I have a long list of things that I want to learn, And I always think there's not enough time in my life to learn all those things. And then when you actually kind of think about the other way and say, actually, why do I want to learn this stuff. It's like, Well, actually, I don't need to master the whole thing. I just wanted to do this one thing or if it's a language, I just want to have conversations with people. OK, well, maybe just focus on that. And and it's kind of like a manageable, actionable thing that you can kind of get your your hands around.

But you could, like, learn the first, like 90% want May nineties will high, but let's just say like, 60 70% of something, the critical things and really get by with that. I mean, that's why it goes back to the whole label thing. I think if you obsess over well, I want to be a developer. Well, then what does that mean? It means you need to learn. Probably like I think maybe you feel like you have to learn everything when it's like No, if you just want to make things right, then okay,

just learn the thing, the skills that you need to go make whatever the thing is that you want to make, you don't have to learn databases. If the thing you're building doesn't use database, so you can just kind of skip over a lot of things. Get to the where you want to go by just learning what you need to learn. Yeah, yeah. To get on a soapbox, but yeah. There you go.

No, no, no, no. I was just thinking I was like, Dude, we could We could probably just do. Ah, a podcast just on learning stuff. Yeah. Maybe we should talk about that later. You write, you put. All right. So let's talk about HTML five up. So you said that it started because you were, like,

Okay, I wanted to learn about responsive design. So you created that first theme? Yeah. And then, like, what was the plan like, What were you gonna do? Just I'm just gonna create this theme and try to sell it. Or it was just the curiosity to kind of what's involved in doing this. Like, what was the plan? But what's that one?

I don't think there was a plan like I'm not gonna try like, retrospectively apply a plan either. No, no, there was no plan. It was just gonna make it. I'm gonna stick it up there. It's free. If anyone wants that they can get, you know, whatever. Apparently like after I think they after the third design, though, like that site actually started gaining some traction. So that sort of motivated me to make more stuff. And beyond that, I like better stuff.

So in a lot of ways, just the traction that site got really fueled me to up my game. And if you could just scroll up through that page starting from the bottom, you could just see how both my design and I guess development skills as far as front end development goes, really increased over a relatively short period of time. Because it was like, Well, people really respond well to this. And, you know, there's something he said about getting that feedback from users like, Well, while there's and in this case, I guess it's just the download count is sort of a a metric that I could look at and kind of get a feel for, and it kind of motivated me to move forward into more. Yeah, and then that eventually led to I don't get too far into myself that so I ended up growing pretty big,

and you give away the themes were available for free, right? People could just don't let anyone of those.

Yeah, you just don't use it where it's ah, Creative Commons. So do whatever you just have toe keep attribution somewhere on

its money. I'm just going through. I just scrolling up from the bottom of the page and you're right. It's like it's almost seeing someone's design skills grow as you look at each of these different things. It's

also the amount of effort I was putting in went up lots. You feel you It's almost like you. You will do you even better work if you get positive feedback for your previous work. You know, like just the more people appreciate what you do, the more you want to please them and in terms of what you put out, so you just it's like a feedback loop, and then you just get better and better. They get a better product, you create better products, and it just keeps going and going.

Yeah, yeah, it's got a similar to this podcast. Like when I started it like, you know, a couple of 100 episodes ago. God, it's like like I mean, I don't like listening to my voice anyway. And I don't like seeing myself on photos or videos, right, which kind of makes it pretty restricted life. But I've really cringe when I hear those early episodes. It's like, Oh, my God, that was terrible.

And I think, Oh, no, I'm doing much better now and probably like, you know, a couple of years later, I listened back to this episode ago My court. I sound terrible, but I think what there is, I think if you if you sort of think about that and you start to see it's like, Hey, every step I'm taking. Every time I try this, I'm getting better and better. And, you know,

from the first few interviews where I was like, you know, I was kind of like reading questions off a script, and I wasn't even listening to fully to what people were saying. Just try to get through a list. Yeah, yeah, What am I gonna ask them next, Right, that kind of thing on. I remember asking for feedback from people who listen to the podcast number of people said the same thing is like a drop. The script on that was for me was so valuable was almost like permission to say, OK, I can screw up. I can kind of forget one question or ask a question. I never thought off before the interview,

and then eventually you get to a point where it's like, OK, you just have a conversation. It doesn't You don't really need to have questions prepared. You just talk to somebody and just be interested in what they're what they're doing and try to figure out what that story is and and how you can learn from them. And but it's it's a process, right? But yeah, you're so right. It's just like getting any email from somebody Or, you know what I choose? Review it, really? It kind of pumps you up to do more

and better for the for everyone. Yeah, over time you just sort of absorb that energy not to get too hippy dippy. Really? It just becomes like a part of you. Just get into this feeling like I just want to keep making better things if not for other people than for myself. It's sort of like this weird sense of feeling like you're actually moving for Yeah. Yeah, and you're doing it through your own volition from the work that you're doing, the products you're creating or whatever your product

has to be totally on DNO issues with the hippy dippy stuff on. It's like in I'm in. I'm in Washington with the hippy state, right? So whenever you want to come over here, we can kind of going more into that stuff.

Oh,

yeah, I can way out there. Okay, so you got html five up going and you're you're kind of spending more time building these templates on. Then the next business you launched, it was the product was pixel parity. And so what does that do? What's that product about?

So it is pretty much like the paid version of HTML five up, and in many ways, it wasn't really even my idea. I had a, uh I mean, it kind of goes back to what I was saying last. I mean, the user feedback I got from HTML five up was just great and, you know, motivating. But also have people asking like, is there a way I could use this without attribution because you know, it looks a little weird. If I have all credit for some templates Side of the bottom, wherever I was like OK, Oh, you know,

maybe send me a small tip or something, and then you can remove it like, OK, that's cool. And I got to where that happened with enough frequency, and at the same time, people e mailing me, you know, asking questions about tell us we also have people asking for support and if they could pay me for and so it's like it looks like people want to pay the money to do something. What can I do? So I basically like that. Sounds like what can I put together? That kind of meets all these needs, you know, lets people use this stuff without attribution while also having, you know,

giving them access to support. You know, in the end, unfairness, you know, me getting something out of it because, you know my time isn't 100% free. I have to eat so right, but at same time, at a bit more value on top of that And so from all those things, I was able to craft picks hilarity, which is pretty much it. You pay a flat amount that gives you a perpetual license used everything on the site forever attribution free and then you choose a plan. The plan gives you X number months to access downloads or and or support, and if that runs out, it's no big deal.

You can still use anything you already downloaded attribution Free Forever. Because the license itself is perpetual, you're just losing access to support and adds a bunch of exclusive templates so you don't get on html five up. So it's everything donation all five up, plus about 50 or so new templates that you couldn't get with a show five up. So it's It's a pretty decent deal for 19 bucks to get in at the three month plan, and

I took off really well. So it's 19 bucks. One off payment. Yeah, it's not a monthly thing,

right? $19 for the perpetual license and then three months of access to downloads and support and again. So if that three months is up, that's OK. Anything you already download in that time you continue to use. So no big deal, you have to keep paying.

He just kept it really simple.

Yeah, well, it's also because I don't like just it's hard for me to keep track of very complicated thing. So I don't know anything simple for my own purposes to isn't all altruistic.

So 93 templates own picks, hilarity. And did you design and create all of these?

Probably about 70 80% of them. And I had another designer help me out with some of the other ones. And but you know what? My I guess editorial layer at the end of it just to make sure it kind of fit the feel of all the other ones. And then I had, ah, a couple of coders help me up again. I would train them and, like the way I would code. And then I went in their code after the fact and make sure everything was, you know, to my very stringent standards. So it worked out be a pretty good deal, and it worked really well. And it I think it gave people what they wanted out of, like a paid version of html five up pretty much. And it is an interesting example the product that I didn't really conceive of myself.

As I said, it was just created. Is it a way to kind of like again further give what my audience wanted, which was a paid version of this thing that also had some, you know, support component to it.

And I don't see much on HTML five up other than you have like a banner at the bottom of the page, which says, Hey, picks hilarity. You can get unlimited access and whatever. And is that how people were finding pics? Clarity and people who were choosing to pay were kind of doing that.

Yeah, there was that. And I think when you go download there's like, Hey, if you want to use a like in an attribution Credit Free version of this go to fix clarity coming, it is not much beyond that. I mean, I don't do any marketing you're running ads or anything like that. It's just just what it is.

And how much money did you make of you made from picks? Hilarity like, Did you get a lot of sales?

Yeah, I'd say, probably at its peak. I mean, it was about a 10. 12 k a month or so me. And at its peak, it was pretty good for who it was. It certainly like gave me enough of, like, a cushion toe move onto the next thing, which was a lot more risky and a lot more involved in what had previously in doing. But again, it really did give me a nice safety net to move on to the next thing.

So how did you come up with the idea for Card?

Also for that, it was a combination of basically being kind of bored with just doing templates because that, you know that at that point, which I think was it was like middle of 20 early 2015. I think early 2015 when I kind of came up the idea it was, I have been doing templates and themes for years. At that point, you know, at some point you're just kind of like there's only so much you can do for those. You kind of have to move on to the next level. And so I was thinking of some kind of product I could make that would put all of my skills to use that I had accumulated along the way, which was, you know, a pretty decent thinking, You know, they go back to our saying like learning things as I need to learn them. At that point,

I had learned everything from, you know, running servers to databases to back in programs the front and program to design, you know, hope the whole thing. I just wanted to pick a project that would combine all that stuff into one big project where I could really just lean in and just see how far I can go with everything I had. And I had a few different ideas that was playing around with, and then one that kind of stuck with me and ended up being a good fit was the idea of a site builder. But at the same time, I was kind of concerns like, Well, we have, you know, even early 2015 you had these big guys out there like, you know, squarespace and Wicks and what not?

I don't know if I want to do something on that level. I don't think I could one person, which was another kind of prerequisite, actually, to see what I could do. So and then, But thanks to html five up actually kind of guided me in the right direction. Specifically, I had just be honest. Back when I was in a really updating issue of five up on the regular I there were times I was like, I need to just put something up there that you know doesn't take me too long to make Quite honestly. So I end up doing a few one page templates, goes like, Yeah, one page because the multiple page things that just hell of a lot more work. So I was like,

All right, I'll do if you like quick, little one page thing to see. You know, they look pretty, they work nice and it takes me like, a couple of hours to make. And the interesting thing is, I was looking at the download counts of those and they're huge, like those really caught on, like people apparently really liked the one page stuff, which I had no idea it wasn't something that I was looking for. So I had no idea that was such a big impact. And so it was like, OK, what if instead of trying to be like one of these bigger guys and doing everything,

what if I just really, really narrowed down the scope of what I'm doing That's just one page. Because from a technical standpoint, one page is a hell of a lot easier to deal with. And, like, you know, shit on the pages were just, you know, tons of stuff going on. Lots of contents. One page is very simple, very easy to manage for, You know, one person me building this thing and so ended up being like the perfect Yeah. Okay,

I'm gonna do a site builder, but for just one page sites and turns out, in retrospect, that was a great idea. Uh, it not only, like, saved me a ton of work a ton of time and resource is to build the thing, but also just it turned out to be a good idea that really caught on with a lot of people.

What did you ah, build the product in Michael?

It's Ah, me. I don't get too deep into the sack for a very season, but it's mostly javascript. Wow. Which fits me just fine. Because if you dio I mean, if you see some of the later templates I did for HTML five up there, pretty javascript heavy. Granted, they used j query, but like I started getting more into doing vanilla Js type stuff and you could do a lot with JavaScript. It's kind of nuts. The this has become this weird Swiss Army knife of the Internet.

So you find a vanilla Js then I don't like these days. There's so much like, you know, talk about, you know, the cool kids will react and view and all of this stuff. And and then I think the other day I was looking at base camp and it was like they have their own JavaScript kind of light framework of a school stimulus. I was like, Well, there's still plenty of examples off people out there who building great stuff and they don't have to do more than you know you some video Js

right? So in fairness, wanted built card. Originally I wasn't quite as competence in Vanilla Js. So it there is still quite a bit of Jake weary in there, which I'm not embarrassed where j Query is awesome. I've not afraid to admit that, but yeah, like the framework thing. I've ranted about it on Twitter a few times maybe a few times too many, but quality. I don't have a problem with people using frameworks, I think framework, the great whatever really gets to you from your idea is actually building something. Use whatever the helmet. I don't care, you know.

Do what? Everyone. I'm not an ideologue when it comes to that stuff. I will say, however, that vanilla Js you could do swollen. Especially now that inner explorer is basically on the ground. Like you can do so much with just plain JavaScript now, like you don't necessarily need a framework. And in many ways, I'm a big fan of instead of trying to fit your product around a framework frameworks, what makes the framework a framework is just It's almost like an ideology for how you do things in that context, right? Yeah. So whatever your idea is for your products, you're having to basically stretch over that framework to get it to work something.

So they're gonna be times where you're sort of crashing into it because it does things one way, and you kind of wish it did things another. So I'm almost offend of, you know, if you can forego that situation and just kind of build your own pseudo framework for your specific product, of project or whatever, if that makes sense. So you're not trying to fit your idea around someone else's framework. Your building a framework specifically for your idea.

Right? Right. Yeah. I have this site project this app that I I built and we just uses Jake weary and I keep saying to myself, Oh, I should kind of rebuild the front end with react or view Js And then it's like, Well, in order to do that, the back end is like flask and python, So I'd really have to kind of lose the template ing kind of piece of that and build a P IES around that. And then I kind of like, keep digging this hole deeper and deeper about all this stuff that I should do. And then the reality is that, you know, actually, it works. And I could still keep using Jake weary if I wanted to. And yes, sometimes you just get caught in this thing about getting excited about the bells and whistles and the technology and trying to do things the way that everybody else is doing them like, because it's cool. But I don't really need to do a lot

of times. No. And I think it's I think it's something a lot of newer developers get hung up on because they're still, you know, they're just getting into it. They hear all these buzzwords, everyone saying, Oh, you should use this. You should use that. And they haven't quite already acquired the experience to be like, You know what? No, I'm not going to use that. I'm going to use this instead. You know where I'm just gonna use vanilla Js. It's fine.

You know, getting hung up on that is a great way. So never actually ship anything. And I've seen so many people do that. And there are other places you were gonna get hung up when building a product. So why get hung up on that,

you know? Yeah, totally. Okay, so you kind of have the idea for card, and you're like, OK, I'm gonna focus on one page. By the way, is it like one page? That's the focus. Or like, technically, it's restricted to one page. Like if I wanted to like, Oh, can I create second page?

Okay, so it's It's literally a single HTML file. Like, fundamentally, card is a static site generator. I mean, yeah, once you get to it, that's pretty much what it's doing. And it's generating a single HTML file for your site. Now, as far as having additional pages, what does have A It has a feature called sections that lets you kind of simulate additional pages within the same single page. It works well, It actually ended up being a funny thing where I added that feature and ended up being used in ways that just blew me away, like which I could get away. But like what users do with what you make it kind of just You're really surprise you sometimes. And that

was an example, you know, an example. Like, what were people doing?

For one thing I originally added, just so like, Well, okay, so you want to have, like, a separate little about quote unquote page on your site, Okay, so you can use it for that. But I saw people using it for everything from like creating mo dels like pseudo models after, like a form has been submitted. So you submit form, and then this thing comes out that looks like an actual motile, but it's actually just a section that says thank you and you click a button it takes you back was like, Wow, that's I never thought you could do that, but that makes sense that you totally can or ah,

people were using it to kind of make presentations, which is weird, like I've seen, like, high school kids used car to build a school presentation, things which just nuts. Well, cool. And I just I just don't expect it, you know? So I want you to too far down that rabbit hole, but yeah, just seeing what users can do it with what you make is another motivating factory wish that just keeps you going.

Well, the one thing I realized about you, based on the very long conversation we had before we did, even any recording was that all these rabbit holes? That's usually something interesting down there. So maybe for the purposes of this podcast Ah, we'll limit them. But I'm always happy to go down this rabbit quarter. You? Yeah, well,

yes. There. Point, Seymour. We'll avoid going to too deep on the mill yet, like you said. All right,

so how long did it take you to build the first version of card.

Let's see. So I came up with the idea and, like Mom, February, March of 2015. I started work on it that summer because I have some other something here. I have a pre pre alfa of just e what's called the generator side with basically the static site generator portion of it took about couple weeks of their together. And then from there I had a working pre Alfa that I sent out to about dozen friends by around October. So it just it didn't take too long, actually, and my math is rise like five months or so to build the first version now granted, like compared to what you see today. Yeah, it's like that thing was super primitive, but it was enough to kind of give people a sense of what I was trying to do. Actually got a huge amount of really useful feedback just from having this crappy prototype sent out for them to play with. And I very quickly,

like discover pain points and things that you just didn't make sense things I needed to do things I needed. Add, for instance, the idea of having starter templates wasn't in at that point. In fact, it wasn't even something I was considering. Until my friends like, it's great, But I'm not a designer. What the hell am I gonna do with a text element or an image like they have a look at it and just like it's just a blank screen. What, are you gonna help me here? So then I was like, Okay, maybe it would make sense to have templates which ended up being, you know,

a great idea that is gonna feel some other stuff coming soon. But, you know, like things like that. I got out of that phase of the project, but, yeah, about 56 months.

So, you know, like a lot of the times when when people build a new product, there's always this, like, you start looking out in the market and you look at other similar products or competitors. Andi, you're like, Wow, there's a really high bar for all the things that I should have. And it's easy to get sucked into that where, you know, you just feel like you gotta put so much into this product for it to be decent or for people to want to pay it, you know, get people to pay attention to it. And the reality is that a lot of the times that you know, I've spoken to,

you know, a lot of founders, the first version of the product they often start with. It's not that great. And it's just kind of maybe solves a small problem. And there's just still a lot of things that that, you know, it doesn't do. And so is there, like something like when you were launching this, like, did you have that struggle where you felt like there was all these things that you wanted to add? But you didn't. And now you look back and sort of say, Yeah, that was a smart thing for me to sort of take that approach. But what Some of that experience of wisdom we can share with people who are kind of like struggling with that Don Lemon right now.

So this one applied everybody. But at least in my case, I do not have this problem at all because from the get go, the whole reason why I did this projects was to challenge myself and do things my own way to see what of my own ideas would work and what wouldn't work. I didn't really have any interest in looking at the competition and just mimicking what they were doing, which is fine for some products where you're trying to be competitive in a specific space. You'll need to do that to know what features people look for. In my case, I wanted to do something entirely new, whether or not it worked or not. So for me ended up being a big benefit because I don't have that stress of trying to figure out Oh, what is you know, this company doing of that company? I just look at a problem that comes my way and then solve it in the way that I would solve it without really looking elsewhere and again doesn't apply to everybody. But it is a very freeing feeling to not have to keep warring about what everyone else is doing and you just focusing on the thing that you're doing

in front of you. Yeah, that's great advice, and I think if people can do that, it takes a lot of pressure and stress off in many ways, right? It's just

and in Ferris. I mean, again, The reason why I say it doesn't apply everyone's because not only is a tent on the product and category that you're in, but also, you know, you self funded au bootstrapping or you do you have investors. Is this gonna be your full time gig? If that's the case, you know, full time gig is in, like you quitting a job to do this and you have bills to pay. You're gonna need to be a little bit mawr conscious of what the market's doing. You can't just do what I'm doing. Yeah, I can't stress that enough. I don't want people just going out there saying,

Well, I'm just gonna build a product. Not looking at what else is doing, OK, just make sure that all the other variables in an equation lineup for that as well as they did for me, right? If not, then there's nothing wrong with looking at what the competition is doing. I don't You would make it your rash judgment just because you know some dude on a pot gases talk about how awesome it is for him.

Yeah, and again to remind everyone you didn't have that pressure because you were still generating some decent money from pixel

charity. Yeah, that helps so much

and said that this was kind of like a fun project. It wasn't like this is on building this card thing on this is gonna be the business and I'm going all in and it's

gonna work, right? It's not like I went to friends of Hamid said, Hey, guys, can you give me some seed money so I could do this idea? It's not like I went to investors or anything. It's like it was just It was just a think that worked at work. If it didn't it, didn't you know, I did not have the pressure that other people have, and I am very cognizant of those situations that people are in. So again, I don't think that my my way is the is the way that the everyone should, because it's certainly not.

Let's talk about marketing because your whole marketing kind of approach it was really interesting with card on, and typically you know what we think start thinking about a product like this and how we're gonna market in. We have a whole bunch of things you know, I'm gonna run Facebook hours. I'm gonna start doing content marketing. I'm gonna build a blogger. I'm going to build an email list ended. A You didn't do any of that, right? No. What did you do?

I basically just tweeted it out. Ellie, I'm done with this thing here. Go check it out. And part of it is because I was just talking about I didn't have that pressure of having like this. Didn't have to succeed, you know, like so when you have that option which I know it sounds very almost Do she really, like, just didn't have to succeed. So I'm not gonna go nuts over trying to line up a marketing strategy or anything. I just tweeted out at a sizable I forget exactly that sizable Twitter following at that point. Hey, I'm done with this thing that I've been working on. Go check it out and it just kind of started rolling on from there now. It would be unfair not to say that part of what really kicked it up to the next level, however,

was once it got put up on product hunt. Now that kind of blew up. That's really when it moved to the next level. And so I can't thank Ryan Hoover and his team enough for putting that thing together and really giving products like mine a place to really show off even with as, ah, small oven investment, if any. I put in some marketing. A product like that can blow up so intensely on a platform. Like, isn't he really built something special there?

But you didn't put it on product hunt or you didn't have some kind of launch blend

the folks arrears one. My followers actually hunted it on there, but before it was actually watched. So it was just a coming soon Patient never actually got featured, so I was like, Well, shit, man, like, it's not even a thing yet. So actually sent a d. M. Teoh, one of the folks that worked a product times. Hey, I actually just launched this thing for real now, and one of my father's gonna jump the gun and posted it before it was ready,

so I didn't get consideration to be featured. I was wondering if you guys taking a look. I very quickly got back in place like Oh, yeah, it'll go up tomorrow. Oh, sweet. And then that day was the day and it like the thing just blew up. It was incredible because it gave me a glimpse of what was to come in terms of how, like just the volume and scale and things that it's interesting when when you get featured on a place like product hunt or other places products in particular because so focus. It is a preview for scale, which I'll get into later. But it really does show you where the cracks are and the things that could easily break in something that you've made. And, yeah, that was a great experience, but that was pretty much the marketing I did tweeting it out and getting put on products on.

So as far as Twitter goes, you have, like over 50,000 followers, and I see like a lot of people who have, like, you know, 250,000 followers. But there was a following people, right? So they just playing that game where it's like keep following a bunch of people. Some will follow back the ones that don't own follow them, follow a bunch of people and you kick it building up that way.

You have a friend who actually scripted that. I didn't know that this is the thing that's interesting, that people do that.

And so how did you build your following, like before? You got a point where you sent that tweet about his card. Like, what were you doing on there that started to build this following

so that, I would say almost entirely, came from having pretty prominent placement of my Twitter account on HTML five up. I had, I think even to this day, there's a button up there. It says, you know, follow me for updates, like new stuff. And it turns out people like free stuff. So they ended up following me. You know, whenever I posted update th five up, but also tweet about it. And so that was just a fast way from to get that notification be It all came from that, and from there it kind of grew from there,

though once, you know, people figure out, maybe this guy has something more to him than just making site templates, you

know? Right. And as faras product hunt went, you kind of again. It only went up there because your friend hunted it too soon.

100 too soon as and it was just It was literally just a coming soon pages was nothing there. So of course it didn't get featured. It would make sense.

So the only work you did there was to send that email, asking them to reconsider it once it's like,

Yeah, I d and one of folks those like, hey. Yeah, And they were calling out there, apply very quickly. And then it got reconsidered. And then it went up next day, which was pretty awesome.

And what did those those two things do like? Were you selling card at that time? What? It was like he is just available. You can sign up free and I'll figure out how to charge for it.

So I did. I did put some thought into this, so I actually so to two components of this first thing was

I like the way you said that. Like I did put some thought into this.

Shocking as it may seem, I do occasionally put thought into things. So and this was one of those times where I really focused and put some thought into a thing So the first thing was because actually HTML five that went up on product hunt in its very early days. And I noticed a huge spike in traffic on some things. Like, where the hell is this coming from? And I saw it was coming from the cycle product hunt attract. Sounds like all we should like this. This is pretty awesome that this thing exists and it helps elevate a profile of these products that people would otherwise not know about. So I knew that if card got feature that it I don't know. I don't know if it would get as good of in effect as a team of five up had, but it would get OK but attraction from that day. So I want to maximize what I would get out of it. So the two things that it was the first Waas card has a You can use it without signing up. As in, you can go to car dot c 04 slash build, pick out a template,

or don't pick it up from what you want to do. And actually just build a site. You don't have type anything you have to give an email Young to do anything. You just build whatever you want. Just play with it. If you like it like you feel like what you just made, then you can publish it, put in your email and all that stuff. But if you don't like it, you just go away. We're talking about this before, but I think the correct term is low friction. So you've been very casually just without even touching your keyboard. Just accidentally build yourself a website, which is pretty cool. And so I knew having something like that.

And this is just from personal experience. I hated going, and I want to try this out. Oh, it wants my name and email and a phone number or something, like, I just want to see what this thing is. I don't want toe give you all of my information just to try it out, you know, because then you're just gonna bother me later. So forget that. And at the same time, I didn't want toe put up like a video making a video or something demonstrated and product let you screw that. I don't have time for that. I'm just gonna let people try it. for themselves,

and I'll try to design the architecture of this thing such that you can do that. You can try it out before even signing up. And so I did that, and I turned out to be a good idea. And then the second thing I did was I made sure there was actually a way for you to pay for this thing if you want. So I had to come up with a well. I ended up calling a pro plan with additional features that you could get access to. Originally, it was just one plan, $19 a year, that plans will exist. They're just other plans you could get. Now they're cheaper and more expensive. So I made sure both of those things were ready to go before I started putting out the word for card. And so when it launched on products on that day, yeah,

it was insane. It really took off because people were able to just go in casually and try out the product without having to give up any information. And it turns out that when you let people do that, it's much better than showing them. You know, some freakin intro video a demo video are like having a really long and lengthy marketing page explains what the product is, it turned out just letting them use it is the best marketing you could possibly have if your product is good family and those would like the two major things I did the two major things I put thought into everything else. I don't put any thought into it, So let's just get that out.

And was the product good at that point? Like I mentioned about the podcast like, Do you look back at that first version and sort of cringe about things that it did badly? What didn't do

it all? So the thing is like, I actually I don't have that thing Where I look back in my old working cringe I look at it is like, Oh, I learned how to do this back, man, that's cool. It is very little. I looked back and just like, I wish you didn't do that. Yeah, even my old bills of card I actually have. I think I have the pre Alfa and then even the pre pre Alfa so loaded up on a server here just toe check out every once in a while. But I did some screenshots or some something I put out a while ago. Yeah, even looking at it now, it's not embarrassing in any way.

It's just No, this is where I was and here's where I am today. And so I guess as long as where I am now is greater than where I was. It's all good. It's really nice to see that progress and being able to look back and say, Look, I learned how to do all these things and built this thing at that point. Now what I do is a lot better, but it's cool that I was able to figure this out back then and on all that. So now is there's no cringe. It might make other people cringe, but it doesn't make me

cringe. I feel like I'm in a therapy session here. It's like No, no, no. Actually, your age has got a better way to think about this, but it's true. It's like, you know, if you're have that sort of learning mindset and sort of a kind of more growth focused and you just say Hey, it's not about you know, looking back and cringing about it. But it's more about Am I making progress? Am I learning? Am I getting better? Then That's all good,

right? Whereas But it's still easy, right? It's just like it's for a lot of people. It's like you put stuff out there and you're always like Man of people going to like think this crap Hey, I do anything

for her. Well, the nice thing about product on is that I could go back to that day that post up there, which I believe March 2016 I think is when it went up there I go there and I can see no, only the up votes, but also the comments people left compared to what card is today. Yeah, it was kind of crap compared to what it is. That is not It wasn't for the time, but wasn't terrible, but relative to what it is now. Yeah, I was kind of crap. But again, it goes back to was saying before getting you know, that feedback loop from your users getting feeling like, Yes,

I I accomplish this. People appreciate an hour moving forward like I'm able to be. Take that and before and also criticism like I got certainly has some people post their post comments or even email me saying what you should do this, that I was like, OK, this school, like I'm getting things that I can, you know, use as to, like climb forward and improve and get better And because it's not just about getting good feedback, it's about getting any feedback. And as long as it's not someone to say, Well, your shit sucks, you know, just for no reason at all.

It's good dog. When you learn, you move for and you make even better things so I can go back. Look, it the very earliest Alfa I have a card, not cringe it and be like, Wow, it's amazing how far I've come since that, Like just knowing what I know now, I would probably done this in this different, but I'm glad I was at that point when I was just as I'm glad I'm at this point where I'm at now. Yeah, yeah. Not to get too full of software attending often He's

Yeah. No, no, no. I I get you And, um, you weren't charging a lot for card like you use it 19 $19 a year, and yeah, now I think you have a plan which starts from $9 a year. Yeah. So how did you come up with the pricing? And like, how did revenue grow after the tweet and the product hunt?

So well, after the second thing, revenue was sort of like, kind of They got a huge boost. One product ton posted and then, you know, obviously, like every other product that gets featuring problem is huge surge initially and then it kind of goes down but then tapered off. And then it was sort of like, definitely higher than the baseline it had prior to what was there before. But they over the months that followed as I worked on it, added more features that, you know, started trending upwards and upwards, sort of in that mode ever since you know about from less than 100 bucks a day to, you know, closer 1000 today.

And I think that kind of thing, as far as how I came with pricing Well, part of it was I didn't need to make a whole lot off this early on, so I didn't have, you know? Oh, I have to make this much to break even because quite honestly, overhead was basically almost nothing. It was super cheap at that point. Now it's a lot more now because I have a lot more servers and a lot more infrastructure in place because there's just that many more sites back then, not much in the way of costs. So I just didn't have to price it super high. And I wasn't really greedy. So whatever, but also the, uh,

pricing was as I looked at it, fair for what you're getting for that. Actually, I did look at the competition to an extent just to figure out Yeah, I don't want to charge too much or too little. I just wanted to, you know, put it somewhere where people felt this is fair and 19 bucks a year felt fair for what card offered at the time, which was not a whole lot. I mean, you couldn't really build super really, quite honestly, the elaborate stuff that people make now you couldn't do back then, so it felt fair. So 19 bucks a year was, I think,

a good fit at that time. But you know, since then, as you mentioned, got even cheaper plan but also have more expensive plans now because I've added more and more complex features on top of what was originally there. And so I figured, Well, it makes sense. It's just raising the price of that plan. I can add additional plans so people can pay for what they actually need rather than, you know, make them all pay the same thing. And so it's like that $9 your plan that was actually I added that mostly for a, uh, an interesting demographic that began using card mostly younger people, which was interesting building.

It'll fan sites for various things, but they wanted a few more features than what the free plan offered, you know, But they don't need all the stuff that came with the Normal Corp plans. I was like, OK, I'll make a slightly cheaper plan. We're basically none of those pro features that you get in a normal for plan, but also with some of the limitations of the basic free plan taken away and actually caught on. So I'm surprised, actually cannibalized any of the other plans, so that's pretty great.

Well, And then so be on the tweet and the product hunt stuff that we talked about. What other kind of marketing did you do?

No word of mouth. I guess what I really rely on and I think you get part of it, is but one other thing that I put thought into which was having the friction bus or low friction, No friction anywhere. Whatever it is that got you into the product. Yeah, we're like, that really helps because then someone can say, Hey, you should check out this. Someone could build the site. And okay, well, on the free sites, there's a thing of the bottom that says Made with card. So if you see a site that's built with card Oh, that's pretty cool.

You know, whatever you click on out of curiosity, within 30 seconds, you could be building a site of your own without having signed up. So they're sort of almost like this, flow from, like stumbling upon card one way or another, either through word of mouth or through a link from someone else's site, and then getting to where you're actually building inside yourself, with very little friction along the way. so that, I think has probably been the biggest driver since day one and probably continues to be Well, since again, I'm not really doing any other marketing, so Well, I guess this podcast saying begin marketing. I guess so, Yeah. Maybe

I'm doing more. And I think, Yeah, but then I reached out to you. Fair. Fair. Okay. Okay, because I was like, Oh, this is such an interesting story. It's not like, you know, you're kind of like pitching. Hey, I'm going to do this round of podcasts, and it's anything they do that man.

Yeah. There, there. There are people who will you can hire to help you get onboard. Catholic Agent? Well, yeah. Show me the money. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we should wrap up soon, But I wanted to talk a little bit about Mike. Okay. You talked about like the multiple hats and wearing You know, these things.

What is your typical day look like? How much time do you spend on the product? Every day. Obviously noting which marketing, but you're doing to support yourself and what are the stuff? Do you have to do on a daily basis?

So my data we looks like, Well, the first part usually is support and content moderation, which, like I mentioned early on in pockets. My business partner handles the bulk of that now. But there's some stuff that is indeterminant that was still trying to figure out what we need to do with. And it's not like we get a lot of crazy stuff posted. But there's still some areas that border on, you know, is the spam is this is questionable in some certain way and what we do with it. So those things get flagged by him for me to look at. And then I look at those and we don't get ton. But, you know, I still check him every day. I do,

actually, and I do support again later on it. But for the rest of the day, when I'm working on the product, it's just whatever has to be worked on at that point, which right now is, as of the recording of this podcast, is getting our payment system ready for you know, the new S E A. Regulations are kicking in, you know, because stripe after basically reading there in high FBI and also some other pretty large things that I figured I may as well do at the same time, which I think people really appreciate once it launches. But it really just depends on what has to be worked on. There's so much for a project like art. There's just so much I could be doing with it like that.

I have a few dozen to do us for every one for each aspect of card, and it's just so much there. Like every time I think of something that added or something, anytime someone suggests something, I'll consider it. If I think it's something that will work, I'll add it, and I will basically never run out of things to work on, so long as I'm working on card myself now, I think the most will Hatch thing. That can only be and this might be going a little bit off topic for your question, but at some point I don't think that's gonna be sustainable because just the sheer growth of the product over time, if I look just era of year is just a crazy increase. Who knows where it's gonna be next year? There's a good chance I will not be able to just sustain this on my own or even with my business partner handling content, moderation?

Because it will, just no matter how much automation you add, at some point, you're just gonna need to add more bodies to the mix, which for a guy like me, is actually kind of not something that I really want to do. It's something that I would have to do and not because the product we fell, but also because I just wanted maintain a certain level of service for our pretty sizable user base of this point. And also, you know, New Year's is coming in. I don't want the quality of the product to go down because I'm insistent on just running this myself like I have to be realistic about

it. So you kind of subscribed to light. So the company of one type mindset,

Yeah, I mean, I was actually on. If you're referring to Paul Jarvis E. I was actually on his podcast. Yeah, to an extent, but I think there is a depending on the product. So some products, like my body, Peter Levels, who runs Nomad List, that's that's pretty much a solo affair. I mean, he has some people helping him out here. There is pretty much him on it. Product like that,

I think, is much easier to run and scale with just one or a few people. Then maybe a product like card that has a lot of user content. I think that's really where the delineation is like, Could Twitter exist with one person running it? Hell, no, There's no way, because you just have with more users and more user generated content, the Mawr overhead there is to deal with that content in terms of not just moderation, but also storage and management and backups and things like that. Like if there's one mistake I made early on, it's that I didn't think this would be a big as it became, which I know is it is almost like a humble brag, but it really is a serious consideration because there are some scale decisions I would have made. No,

I did take scale kind of into account early on, but not to the extent that I should have, which and it was, you know, Paul Graham. I think he says, do things that there was scale and a pretty sure more once said, do things that don't scale but kind of plan for it, But so you don't get scared and I planned for it, but not enough. I think so. Over the last, like 69 months is pretty much me being pretty hardcore about doing that. I finally scaling the things that need to be scaled, increasing our infrastructure, redoing our entire payment system, redoing how a whole bunch of other things were done under the hood that users won't actually notice. But they may eventually feel because things will just run faster and better. So and I totally forgot your question, because it here I go with my rants.

But yeah, I'm gonna ask you like something else. You just kind of reminded me of Is like Are you doing all the support through to D. M's?

No, they're email. Although I saw that I tell people like, Look, just contact me. However, because at this point it's all going to the same place anyway. So just you want tweet at me or DME or email. We use the form on the site, you know, whatever. It's gonna be the same person

replying you does that go into the help desk system is just like an email.

No, it's just if you DME we talk every day. And if you email me, we talk every no for now again. But that's another thing that's gonna have to scale, because at some point I can't answer 100 inquiries a day. You know, it's just without that just being my full time job, which it can't be because I'm also coatings. Yeah, yeah, that's why I think the ah solo bootstrap er, archetype. If I could even call it that, I think kind of it's not realistic past a certain scale. I think you just you just can't do it. And I think if there's one thing I've learned in the last three years of three years now,

34 years of doing this at this point, it's that, Yeah, you can't do it all on your own, at least not forever. So just be ready for that.

That's good advice. Alright, we should, uh, wrap up. So now we're going to get into the tough pardon. We're going to do the lightning round. Okay? So I could ask you seven questions. Just try to answer them as quickly as you can. All right. All right. What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?

Well, I think Paul Graham's think do things of those scale in general. That is a great idea.

And listen to it here. Oh, yeah? What book would you recommend to our audience

and why? Oh, how Really Read any books for relevant to

t o sir. What

do you like reading? Honestly, Haven't had all the time to read. I didn't do really like a lot of fiction when I had to get a chance that, you know, just a lot of, ah William Gibson stuff. Pretty big instance. Cyberpunk. That genre. Yeah. Nothing really pertinent to what we're talking about, Unfortunately, so I guess I should have appeared on that.

Uh, what's what attribute or characteristic in your mind off a successful founder,

I say willingness to kind of put in the work yourself. Now it doesn't matter what it is. Just you know that support. Be willing to support its code and be willing just coating, especially early on now. At some point, you can put other people in those roles, but early on, you need to be willing to at least do it yourself, if for enough, no other reason to understand what's what goes into those things.

What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

I say just having hobbies that are computer related, you know, like just like exercising or running or bike ride. Anything that takes me away from screens has probably been the best thing for me since doing this, because it's just it helps to just take your mind out of the context that it seems to be in, you know, 10 plus hours out of every day.

I just I playing golf a few months ago.

I don't know if I'd be much for a golfer, but it was kind of fun.

Oh, I suck so badly that more about the fun exactly as long as I'm getting better, right? Right. Exactly. What's that new or crazy business idea you'd have to pursue if you had the extra time?

I think something in VR. Strangely enough, I was actually ah, kind of down on the whole VR thing up until I tried out my friends Oculus quest. Ah, a couple months ago and then five minutes later I ordered one So it was like, There's something there. I don't know if it's fully developed yet, but it just seems like we're eating around the edges of something really cool.

Yeah, yeah, that's a separate conversation. I have a few thoughts on that. What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't

know? Oh, so I've been designing, like, site templates and stuff for for years now, and I've actually html five. It was actually wasn't the first time I started giving them away for free. I put them up on other sites, and since I've been doing it for so long, I've actually come across sites just searching for other things, using my templates from way back when So apparently my old crap litters three Internet, which is kind of fun to think. In a way. It's like plastic that never do like a decomposes.

Love that, And finally, what's one of your most important passions

outside of your work? I say, just being outside, you know, it kind of goes back to the habit thing that just like just kind of enjoying life, like trying taking this too seriously, which again, I understand, is a luxury that is somewhat unique to my situation. But I think, you know, everyone could just benefit from occasion. Just dialing it back down and really putting it all perspective. Why you doing what you're doing? Is it really as important as you know other things in your life? Like, you know, your family or your health And what not. Just try to enjoy existing outside of whatever it is that your occupation happens to be.

Yeah. I love that.

I don't if that's a passion, but it kind

of is me. Well, yeah, I think it is. Okay, you pass. All right. All right. Cool. All right. So if people want to find out more about card, they can go to card Don't CEO. That's with a double r. Yes. I was

trendy back. Mr. Also try to find a name really so hard for like Oh, yeah, tell me about it. For those who were actually interested, there is a right up. I did about a year after a launch card. It is the making of dot card CEO again with you ours, we'll actually go into the whole name thing And why card is the name that it has today. And how? How? That was a whole cluster. And in

unto itself, I didn't know you had that site. Just It's the making of card.

You're just the making of dot card dot ceo. See what it there? It's very clever.

Ah, OK, I got it. Yeah. The making off dot card with a double are OK. Don't steal. Yeah. Okay. Goodbye. But then they showed up, and

it sounds like you didn't do

your research. I know it's been said thing. If you want to go to a team of five up its html five up

dot net or dot com, I finally got that years ago. All right? Not that it matters.

And, uh, pixel Parretti dot com. Yeah, that's that any people in touch with you? What's the best way for them to

do that? Twitter at a J l k n or just email a j at l k n dot io. So that's you know, whatever. Sweet. My diem's were open on Twitter. If you wanted, say hi or complain or whatever it is

you want to do, that's fine. Yeah, Cool. That's great. All right. That was great. Thanks for joining me. Mom,

that was great. Hey, really appreciate that I had

a great time. We sure The best take here. Thank you, Justice. All right. Thanks for listening. I really hope you enjoy the interview. You can get to the show notes by going to the sas podcast dot com where you'll find summary of the episode Anil ing toward the resource is we discussed? If you enjoyed the episode, then please consider subscribing. And if you're in a good mood, consider leaving a rating and review to show your support for the show. Thanks for listening until next time.