The Growth Syndicate
May 28, 2024
In this episode, we speak to Iron Brands, Co-Founder of Simple Analytics, one of Europe's most exciting bootstrapped stories. Iron and his co-founder Adriaan are on a mission to make analytics simple and privacy friendly, sharing their journey towards €1m ARR publicly.
← To all press mentionsHosts: Ferdinand Goetzen, Clement Dumont
Automated transcript
Iron Brands (00:00):
You can just start a company, you can just go to the KVK and start a company without needing any expertise. So after that I was like, alright, I'm going to start a company. And I was like, oh man, this is gold. I need to be in. Somehow.
Ferdinand Goetzen (00:12):
You come in as a partner. What's the first thing you do?
Iron Brands (00:16):
Ads, not done sending cold emails, not done. Alright. I'm kind of limited here. It's kind of a broader move to say we don't do ads. So I was in this call, which is massive company, 10 people, people from legal, marketing, engineering, just rapid firing all these questions at me. Everyone there, I was like, what the fuck am I doing here? My focus was just completely off. It's because of how the startup landscape is portrayed. Bootstrapping is, I think in the beginning just way harder because you are so limited by, you just have time is on your side, but you don't have any money. Every day is a reality check.
Ferdinand Goetzen (00:51):
What do you think is the most important ingredients for a marketer or marketing team to be successful when budget is limited?
Clement Dumont (00:57):
Co-founder or solo founder. Co-founder. Alright. So if you go on your LinkedIn, you can see that you're actually quite public about what's the current a RR of your companies and when that's going to happen. And then we're going to see how far off you are when you actually reach the goal.
Ferdinand Goetzen (01:11):
Okay. Alright. We have our second ever guest, Iran Brands. Welcome. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me guys. Really excited. So let's talk about your background. Iran, you are the co-founder of Simple Analytics. I would describe you as a serial entrepreneur. You've founded several bootstrap companies and yeah, simple Analytics being probably the one that people are most familiar with. At this stage, you're on a mission to bootstrap Simple Analytics to 1 million a RR. Currently at around 380 5K, if I'm not mistaken. This is with two people.
Iron Brands (01:54):
Yeah, I would say two and a half, but it's like two
Ferdinand Goetzen (01:58):
And some help. Very cool. Yeah, of course you have a team around you guys, but it's you and your co-founder driving this bus, right? Yeah,
Iron Brands (02:06):
Yeah, no definitely. And I wouldn't say, to be fair, I'm not really the co-founders because Ian started it himself, which was about five years ago and I only joined I think what it's now two and a half years ago. So what do you call that? A late co-founder
Ferdinand Goetzen (02:23):
Still works. Still works. Still works. I would say once you hit that product market fit, and if you're there through the early days, the longer the journey goes, the less of a question that becomes. You've also founded another company, which is, sorry, UNI hosted where you guys host Unify controllers in the cloud. I'll be honest, I don't know what that means.
Iron Brands (02:44):
I don't know. Before I started have no idea what you've to tell us more.
Ferdinand Goetzen (02:48):
We'll get to that. Cool, awesome. Look, let's just start where we always start, which is what is your origin story? Where did you start and how did you get to what you're doing here?
Iron Brands (02:57):
Alright, yeah, so I actually started being an entrepreneur, I think it was five years ago. I was in uni in Matech. So I'm from Mastery, studied the mastery and then at one point I was studying doing master's in finance and everyone went into consultancies or whatever and I thought, okay, maybe, okay, let's go with the flow. And I worked, I did an internship at a consultancy and I was like, man, this is not it. They can't be it. It's so boring. I was a nice company, nice people whatsoever, but I was like, nah, this can't be it. And then I did an internship at a startup, which kind of failed big time, but I learned so much. But the thing I took with me was like, you can just start a company. You can just go to Kaka and start a company without need any expertise.
Iron Brands (03:49):
So after that I was like, alright, I'm going to start a company, I've no idea, but I want to start a company. So I met up with one of my mates from university and we were like, okay, what should we start? We were both not engineers, so we couldn't build anything. So we're like, we're still kind of students. We were like, ah, maybe we can make a marketplace for students, connect them with internships at companies and then that's going to be the next Uber. So easy as that. But then five years ago we didn't know nothing. We were complete idiots and the easiest idea we could think of, but we just went for it. And the company's called Fix is actually still alive, Neil, so my co-founder is still running it, but that was, I think, so that was probably started at maybe four or five years ago. And then actually I think we've come full circle now because when I was with Neils we were like, we're just super into how do we grow this thing? We couldn't build, we focused on growth. So do you you read business books but also podcasts And one podcast we listened, obviously it's a Sean Alice podcast and you were on, you were at the printing company.
Ferdinand Goetzen (05:08):
Yeah, 3D hubs.
Iron Brands (05:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was listening with Neil, I remember we were saying we should do what this guy is doing. He was doing AB testing and that kind of, but we had 10 users,
Ferdinand Goetzen (05:22):
We had a bit more budget I think at that time, different
Iron Brands (05:24):
Stage. But that's nice to be listened to your podcast and I'll be on your podcast. But then we somehow made it work. So there was nothing like validation, product market fit, we just kept on just going at it
Ferdinand Goetzen (05:40):
Grinding,
Iron Brands (05:41):
Just trying and just added maybe 2000 sales calls and just pitching the thing and companies were like, yeah, I don't really have this problem. But eventually I think we kind of scaled until 120 KARR with margins like 60%. So that's all right for one person but not for two. And just, this took a very long time. So at one point I was like, okay, maybe this is not it anymore. Or you are actually at the position where it's too big to actually shut down, but also it's not going to scale. So you have, it's not the golden, the bronze handcuffs or something, you dunno which side you're going to go and you get kind of stuck. So at one point then I moved to Amsterdam and the major issue I had with fix is that we couldn't build anything. So I was like maybe I should learn how to code.
Iron Brands (06:44):
I didn't like coding, but I thought maybe that's needed. So I did a no code course and then there was this other guy who was also in the no code course. We met up and that was super nice. I was new in Amsterdam and I was like, hey, maybe we can try and get a meetup of other people in the hackers who I was kind going into that direction. There's people building products themselves and bootstrapping maybe can do a meetup. And he knew a bunch of people and one of them was Ian. So we did a meetup. I had a conversation with Arian and he basically told me, or I said, well whatcha are you doing? And he said, oh, I'm building this analytics tool. And I said, alright cool and is it making any money? And he's like, yeah, I'm doing 10 KA month.
Iron Brands (07:26):
And I was like, alright, that's impressive one person company. So how do your clients find you? And he said, well, I have no idea do. And I was like, oh man, this guy is going to be, this is gold. I need to be in somehow. And that was at the stage where I was letting go fix a little bit more, but it's still took six months before we actually met up again. I was like, Hey man, I'm actually ready to start thinking about something else. Do you need a partner? And he was like, yeah, I can remember a conversation and maybe this will work. And then we did because he was alone, I was like, okay, we need to figure out whether we actually match because that's the number one thing companies get
Ferdinand Goetzen (08:12):
Because you guys didn't know each other at
Iron Brands (08:14):
This point really.
Iron Brands (08:15):
We had no idea. We just had one conversation and then through the phone because I called them and say, Hey, you're looking for a partner, so that's it. So we met up and I was like, okay, how can we make this kind of work but also go out of each other's ways if it doesn't work? And just easy because you didn't want to get caught up in legal and all that bullshit. So I told him, okay, I'll start just doing some work for you. Because I was also just looking for new projects to take on and that was fine. And at one point he said, okay, I told him if you want to do this real partnership long time, then I want a piece of the pie. I'm an entrepreneur and if you're willing to give that up, we should start thinking how we want to do it.
Iron Brands (09:04):
But if you're not and you just want me as a freelancer, then it's not going to work for me. So that was a question and he was like, yeah, actually I want to give up a big piece of the pipe. It helps me scale from 10 to whatever because that's got to be 70 or 60 or 80% of Arian. Andon is going to be worth more than hundred percent of if you stick by. So I was like, okay then let's do it like this. I'll just work for you for three months, one, two days in the week and it's just completely free. And at any moment you can just cut it up if you don't want to. But after three months we feel like, hey, there's something here. This is going to be a good team, then I'll need a big piece of the pie. And then we actually after three months, even after one month, we were like, oh fuck, this is going to work. So yeah, that's how we got
Ferdinand Goetzen (09:59):
Started. Cool story. Crazy how I had the, well very different, but with my previous company also my co-founder, we met on two phone calls and said, let's just start a company. So it's funny how you have some companies where founders go back to, oh we were roommates in college and some you just meet and it just works. What stands out to me is trust is such an important part there because you basically said, I'll work for you for free for a while. So you were willing to show that you're interested, your engaged
Iron Brands (10:32):
Risk. He put in a lot of risk by thinking about me because he was doing and already build a company. I didn't have to do the hard part. The hard part is starting it and actually getting traffic and customers. So I was like, alright, lemme put in some risk here as well. That's
Clement Dumont (10:49):
Nice. You guys are meeting halfway. Actually that was pretty cool.
Iron Brands (10:52):
I remember the point, this is always a very delicate thing, right? Working with co-founders and equity sharing and how you're going to do it. And a lot of founders get into arguments because the one is putting more work or whatever. And even if you go into decent negotiations, it's actually the worst thing is actually getting the best deal because we need to make sure that both of you have the best deal. Normally in negotiations you're trained to or whatever you want to get the best deal or whatever. But we were like, okay,
Together (11:30):
Are you happy? You both need to be happy.
Iron Brands (11:31):
Are you happy with this? Yes. Or you want to be more? No. Okay, we're happy you happy you happy? And then we were like, alright, we're both happy, let's continue. And that's the last time we ever talked about this stuff because from there on was just focus on the business.
Ferdinand Goetzen (11:46):
Yeah, that's great. So let's go practical. You meet this guy, you like what he's doing, you see that he's sitting on something natural traction, which usually is a sign of good product market fit, which is what a lot of companies, it's the opposite. They somehow artificially boost the traction, but there is no real product market fit underneath. So there's something there. You work together on some kind of loose basis for a while. You come in as a partner, what's the first thing you do?
Iron Brands (12:14):
Try to learn what the tool is all about. I mean ...
Ferdinand Goetzen (12:18):
Assuming you've done that in the three months where you were kind of collaborating.
Iron Brands (12:22):
So I was actually trying to understand the users. What types of users do you have? How are people actually coming in? Because obviously there's some ways that people actually find you and just try to create a whole picture of what's going on right now. And from there you can actually start testing new channels and see what works, what doesn't work. Man, I've got loads of going on there. But yeah, so in the past two and a half year we basically tested everything and see what work. He's just pushing buttons and then pushed the one that's working when you push the hardest. And to be honest, he liked working with me because he thought I was a good marketer and I think probably doing well, but I'm not just like, what do you guys call it? I think you called it the t-shaped marketer doing the technically, man, I don't know any AB testing or Python, it was way more bare bones. It was also we didn't have any funding. It was just like, alright, just figure it out, see what works. And then yeah, but I think,
Clement Dumont (13:31):
Yeah, sorry. No, I was just curious. So when you joined, what was actually bringing those customers at the beginning? So what was the journey like there?
Iron Brands (13:41):
So I think Arian got most of the first customers through Hacker News, which was the crowd which was on there. It's like the developers anti Google, whatever, because Simple Analytics is a Google analytics alternative basically. So we make it more simple privacy friendly because Ian thought, hey, this is just this Google analytics, this is monstrosity, it's complex, not everyone needs it. So as an engineer that is annoyed. Annoyed engineers build in their own stuff. Then you launched on Hacker News and then boom, people were like, holy shit, this is what I want. So he got on the front page of Hacker News I think multiple times. So that's where I think the first a hundred users came from and people actually loved the product and they just told other people. And that's how
Ferdinand Goetzen (14:41):
Word of mouth. Word
Iron Brands (14:42):
Of mouth, yeah.
Ferdinand Goetzen (14:42):
Yeah, good product market fit. Yeah, definitely. That's great then. So it's interesting because you talked about, oh I'm not a T-shaped player and I don't do all this technical sales, but honestly, no matter how skilled or experienced you are, the first thing you should do when you enter any kind of growth marketing project initiative company, whatever team is figure out who the hell is buying this thing, who are we selling to? And it's funny that you'll have people who are amazing at AB testing and they'll jump into that before even thinking about who's the customer. So it occurs to me at least when I see your post, when I see you talking that you guys have a really strong idea of what kind of company buys Simple Analytics. Is that something that you kind of went in thinking this is really important or is it more you're bootstrapping, you need to try stuff and you keep iterating your way until you get to that definition?
Iron Brands (15:34):
I think it's a bit of both because obviously as a bootstrap company you're kind of limited. And then my co-founder is a privacy minded guy. So he is like, alright you only before you start ads not done sending cold emails, not done. Alright, I'm kind limited here. Obviously I kind of like it as well. It's kind of a baller move to say we don't do ads because we are, we're not fighting Google, it's like we're not taking any market share of them, but it's like for us it feels that way and we don't want to, with the money we get from our users, actually give it back to Google, give it back to Google and then reinforce that their ecosystem even it's like a drop on the plate but it's doesn't feel right for us to do that. So we don't do any ads. And also sending cold emails spread of a privacy issue there as well.
Iron Brands (16:32):
So I was like, okay, that's not off, that's not what we do, so we need to figure out something else. So you kind of limited in that sense because you don't have budget, it's just me and it's just so what is the something else? Yeah, that's a good one. So we tried lots of stuff and also a lot of fuckups and I'll do the fuckup first, which was at my previous company at Fix, everyone came through sales. So just doing outreach and get on a call with a customer and make them convert to actually become a customer. So I was like, alright, I kind of figured that out in my previous company so I'll probably figure it out here. But man, that didn't work because if you selling
Clement Dumont (17:17):
Different audience,
Iron Brands (17:19):
But if you're selling vacancy spots, people would be like, oh yeah, sure, I'll put mine on your platform as well and if we get the right student through there, I'll pay you fine. But not everyone is everyday looking for a different analytics solution, so you would never get them on the right spot. And then also your product needs to fit with the channel. I think there was this guy, I think it's Brian Belfor, he has this framework which is like four check boxes and one of them is I think channel product fit, which basically means if you're selling enterprise software, you're not going to rely on TikTok, whatever. Yeah, exactly. I was just thinking, so Simple Analytics, if you want to start goes nine euros, you want to do sales calls for nine euros, that's probably not the best solution. So in this, but I didn't think about that.
Iron Brands (18:17):
So I was in this call, which is massive company. It was I think a company that built healthcare equipment for hospitals and so it's a massive company, but there's not a big website who goes to the website like salespeople or something. But they were in the call with me with 10 people, people from legal, marketing, engineering, just rapid firing all these questions at me about the analytics tool. And then the main guy, he basically said, alright, pricing, what are we talking about? So I was like, okay, our pricing is based on page views, so if you have a big website, you pay more. Then for example, if you have a small website, so what is the amount of page shoes that you have? And it was like, yeah, on average it's like 80,000 page shoes a month. I was like, alright, so yeah, that will be nine euros a month then. And then you saw everyone there was like, what the fuck am I doing? And even one of the developers basically said, yo dude, if you want to have this tool, just use it. And then you just logged out and it just went away. And then the guy was also looking at me, he's like, mate, if you just said 500 a month, that would be a sign off. You said nine. So I was like, ah, you
Ferdinand Goetzen (19:36):
Underpriced yourself
Iron Brands (19:37):
Basically big time. Big time. So from now on if anyone wants to call it starts at 500. So that didn't really work, but I'm probably maybe not also the best guy on sales. So if you're very good at sales, you can always hit me up and maybe try it. So what did work was SEO, I believe there's two phases in growth. So the one phase which is actually going from zero to one, let's say you start a company and you want some get traction, I think you don't need to think about all these long-term strategies. It's just get out there and find customers to talk to, send LinkedIn messages, be very scrappy, launch on product and interact on forums, hustle, just hustle to get the first customers into the door. So Ian already kind of did that and he went to from zero to one.
Iron Brands (20:37):
That's from zero to 10 km. So after that then there was time, okay, maybe this is already working, so maybe we just think about sustainable ways to grow the business that you can actually continue and scale. So SEO was one of them that worked out pretty well. So I focus a lot on that. And actually it's interesting now we only start thinking about doing more product-led growth, which was actually one of the first things that actually worked in very small because it's basically word of mouth that worked. But now we are thinking, okay, how can we actually make the flywheel fly bigger? And so we debated a lot, but we are actually going to add a free plan, which is we're five years in now and we are now going to add a free plan. That's also the thing about being bootstrap is adding a free plan.
Iron Brands (21:36):
It's like a risky move because we need money to survive. If it was fe, I don't care about money, I want users and just figure out the money later. But I was like, if we had a free plan, he'd be people that are actually paying, just move back to the free plan. So then we needed to figure out really who our users are. We needed go really who is buying this and who might be switching back? And then we found something interesting, which was we have multiple groups now. So we started off with this, the developer on Hacker News that started using it. But since we've grown a bit bigger also businesses start using it and we found out that most of the revenue actually is driven by businesses. Well, okay, that's not like we figured that out. So the businesses are actually driving the revenue, but still the developers are the most focal about this. So the
Ferdinand Goetzen (22:38):
Ones that Who do you listen to?
Iron Brands (22:39):
Yeah, so the ones that actually love the product the most are not bringing in the most revenue and businesses, they just swipe the cart, use it kind of like, but they don't tell other businesses. It's the developers that actually start just spreading out the word. So we were like, okay, can we get more of those developers in? Because the developer with a side project that uses Simple Analytics base nine euros a month, it's a drop on a plate. But he also has a job, he works in the company. And when they discuss, Hey, should we switch to another analytics tool? This developer say, Hey, I'm using Simple Analytics on the side project. Maybe start looking into that. It's
Clement Dumont (23:19):
Your own brand ambassadors basically.
Iron Brands (23:20):
Exactly. And this is actually how a lot of companies came into the door because they had a developer, a marketeer working that said, Hey, I'm using this from a personal side that it's nice and cool and maybe this is something we want to use. And then it's like the Trojan horse basically. So we were like, okay, if we would strip away the money we get from the small developers or whatever, we could probably 10 x at a moment because it wouldn't be free. And then a lot of people like these types of clients where I don't actually want the money from they come in, use it for free. Most of them still work at a company, they just put it on a side project or a block or whatever because they don't need complex Google analytics on a side project that has hundred visitors every month. So they will just use Simple Analytics. That's the assumption obviously. And then they work at a company and when the company is discussing, hey, we should use different analytics tool, they just vouch for us.
Ferdinand Goetzen (24:23):
It's like a weird brand ambassador, cross-sell kind of strategy. It kind is. Yeah.
Clement Dumont (24:29):
I have maybe a follow up question that link. Well it's not directly linked to this, but I think it's interesting. I feel like especially now since you have GA four, right? I see. I think all the marketers we talk to, everybody's kind of complaining about it and nobody likes it.
Ferdinand Goetzen (24:42):
It sucks.
Clement Dumont (24:43):
It sucks. Like you're LinkedIn and you see at least the post today you're bad. Why we don't like GA four, but I have the feeling because I'm part of it as well, I keep using it. So what do you think is the biggest blocker to actually get people out of GA four to use tools like Simple Analytics for example.
Iron Brands (24:58):
It's free. That's it. We are competing with a free tool and you have to pay money to use us.
Iron Brands (25:05):
So even if you have a project or a business you want to use analytics on, the default is just go analytics. You're not making any costs, it's just free. For us, we start until I think next week when we launch a free plan, we are charging at least nine euros a month. And if you don't make any money then you'll keep just using GA four. That's for the people that are, I would say just the developers in the hackers and people that have a blog. And for companies it's obviously Google Analytics the most well-known thing. It's just the default. You just go there and you dunno a lot about other alternatives. That's my job to actually get the awareness. Yeah, create some awareness. And then again, also a lot of companies just rely on it because we are privacy friendly and simple. So we're built for Simple Analytics and also for people that actually care about privacy and compliance. But there's also a lot of companies like rely on ads and Google GA four, even if it's sucks, it's just the most powerful and complex analytics tool out there that gets a lot of companies, a lot of revenue and we can only do 10% of what insights they can provide you. So if you really need that, you still need to go through it and use it.
Ferdinand Goetzen (26:35):
You talked about as a bootstrap company now the last couple of years there's been a lot of changes in the funding landscape. Lot VC back companies got burned. There's a lot of people thinking about moving in a bootstrap direction. We're also building a growth syndicate around this idea of find different kind of forms of revenue, then build around a community built with a community that Arvid Cal kind of embedded entrepreneur stuff. So this is a big trend. First question. You've always been
Iron Brands (27:11):
Bootstrapped.
Iron Brands (27:12):
Yeah.
Ferdinand Goetzen (27:13):
Has that been a conscious decision or just how it happened?
Iron Brands (27:15):
That's kind of first question how it happened actually, but now it's conscious, but before it was how it happened. And I think both are not wrong. You could go either way with just what fits with your company. For example, by the way, I'll phrase it like this. I think the problem here is actually the media and tech crunch because that's how I got tricked in wanting to have VC funding in my first company. So when we started Fix, you go on LinkedIn, you read the Lean Startup, you read all the Sprout, the media, and there's all these articles. Oh, they got so much funding, they got so much funding and you see three guys on the bridge, on the bridge in Amsterdam. And I was like, I need to be that guy. I want funding now because that's apparently how it's supposed to go. It's
Ferdinand Goetzen (28:03):
A sign of success. People think,
Iron Brands (28:04):
Yeah, it's a sign of success and I want it to be interesting. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to be on Sprout, Bayer, TechCrunch, whatever.
Ferdinand Goetzen (28:12):
On the bridge.
Iron Brands (28:12):
Yeah, on the bridge making picture like seed funding or whatever. So when I was at FIX with my partner Neils, we were like, oh man, we need funding. That's it. Customers we don't care. Revenue we don't care. It's funding, funding, funding. And now I'm thinking, man, I was an idiot. What was I thinking? But it is because when you start out, you just follow what the masses are saying or at least what's getting portrayed in the tech media because it inspires you. You read it and you want to be like it. I wanted to be an interesting person and I knew if I got funding, people would think, oh man, they're building a great company. And my parents would think, oh, he got funding. Oh, amazing. And before Bootstrap I was like, he's doing a little project on the side. So I was just so focused on getting funding and we didn't get it because the business model was not good enough or whatever, but my focus was just completely off and it's because of how the startup landscape is portrayed. So that was bootstrap basically while I wanted to have funding, which didn't get it. So we needed to figure it out. And I think with Simple Analytics, that was a very conscious decision maybe because he was just this engineer, hacker news, anti anti funding.
Iron Brands (29:46):
He was just coming in from a very different perspective than me wanting to be Interesting. Ian didn't want to be interesting. He wanted to build a company, he wanted to be have the freedom, he wanted to grow the business on his own terms. He wanted to have nothing to do with anyone and not be interesting, and I just wanted to be the interesting guy all the time. So Arian took me out of it and now that was a conscious decision.
Ferdinand Goetzen (30:12):
So a lot of companies are now thinking about this, right? A lot of people are starting companies, they're thinking about starting companies today and they're going like, should I bootstrap? Should I go for funding? But I think generally one thing that people ignore is that when you right at the beginning, boots
Iron Brands (30:28):
Out all the way.
Ferdinand Goetzen (30:28):
Yeah, I mean I generally think you can probably, unless if you're building SaaS, let's be honest, you don't need a warehouse of supply, whatever, I think you could probably make an argument against funding for most software companies, but especially in the early days, your interests don't align with the interests of a vc. vc. The whole idea behind a VC is I invest in 10 companies and one of them is going to do great and the two couple are going to do okay and the others doesn't really matter. That doesn't fit with what you need. Especially right in the early days, so companies are now gravitating towards this, but I think some people also have a little bit of this grass is always greener. Like oh, funding, you've got VCs breathing down your deck, you've got a raise, you're not profitable, you lose control over your company and all those things. You can absolutely be true. They don't have to be, but they can. And I would say probably in most cases they do end up being true to some degree. What are some of the challenges of bootstrapping that you think people either aren't aware of or maybe are aware of but underestimate?
Iron Brands (31:29):
I think you need a bit more persistence in terms you have a lot of limitations because you don't have money fixes a lot of things, not everything. Because that's why we're consciously bootstrap because what you're saying is I heard a lot of people actually that did the VC route and then sold the company or bankrupt. I'm never doing that again. I've never heard someone that's bootstrap say that next time I want to do vc. No, everyone is bootstrap and it works out. You can just have a business on your own terms. For example, we don't have an exit strategy. We can do this forever. We do do what we want to do. We wanted to have freedom.
Iron Brands (32:15):
The first thing you do is actually get someone in with money. You're still working for someone still not in a traditional way obviously, but you still need to be accountable for whatever you do. So yeah, those are the things. If it works out, it's just so nice being bootstrap. You have a lot of optionality. We don't need funding, but I'm not against funding. So if there's a very strategic play here, we even might think about it, but we have the options. I have all the cards and the VC or whatever, I don't need you. But when you're running out of cash and you build a business with that burns a lot, you'll need the VC and you'll need the follow up round or whatever. You'll need an extra strategy. You need to have an investments slide pitch deck like bullshit pig deck with tam. Ridiculous numbers always.
Iron Brands (33:14):
Okay, but that's enough about faeces. So bootstrapping is I think in the beginning just way harder because you are so limited by, you just have time is on your side, but you don't have any money. So how long can you do it? How many savings do you have the first time when my first company at fix, I lived with my parents and I didn't earn a single dollar or euro for a year, so I was earning zero a month for a whole year. I lived with my parents, which is luxury, so just okay, that made it work, lived on a bit of savings. Next year I earned 1500 a month for a whole year, which was also, and then I moved toda, which is expensive as you all know. Third year I was earning 2000 a month because we weren't growing properly. So I was like, man, you're getting in a lot of shit because you need to pay your bills and when you have funding, it makes it easy. You have a bit longer runway, but also you're in the pressure cooker, which is also sometimes a good thing because then it needed to happen or you just,
Ferdinand Goetzen (34:23):
Well, I think one thing that occurs to me is that when you're working in a bootstrapped environment as a founder or a marketer or a marketing team, you're forced to face hard truth earlier because when you have money you can say, oh, maybe this campaign or this channel or this thing. Whereas when you don't have money and you need to do a lot with very little, you need to have the right kind of product market fit. You need to be selling to the right people. And those are some of the basics that are, we talk to companies that say, oh, well we do 200 K and this year we need to do 50 million. And you're like, even if that is possible, you're not going to micro optimise your way from 200 K to 10 million. It's big leaps and the kind of things we see make the difference is you do something in the product or something in the positioning or something in the ICP that substantially changes the base economics of your company, the feasibility of your commercial motion. So you unlock an ICP that can spend way more money, you pivot from B2C to B b2b. It's like these big things are the only things actually move companies in massive shifts. When you're bootstrapped, you don't need the same massive shifts. Like you say, you have time on your side if you can sustain yourself, but you do have to face those realities sooner because you can't actually delay them because every month you don't earn money is a month closer to running out of cash and not being able to do it.
Iron Brands (35:49):
No. Yeah, a hundred percent. It is just like every day is a reality check. You can't behind like, Hey, I have a nice salary because the VC is paying me. It's just like you get in touch with reality very quickly when you don't have money. So yeah, that makes sense. Well, I think there's for both ways there's something to say obviously if you're building whatever hardware stuff, obviously, but if you specifically would be looking at sasa, which is just try to stay bootstrap as long as possible because you can always take funding if you need it, if you see a strategic play which gets you 10 x customers, whatever, but you have the optionality to either do that or go your own way because once you get funding and even before product markets fit, you're like, all right, you're going to fees zero and you need to figure it out or you'll die.
Ferdinand Goetzen (36:42):
Yeah, funnily, what I see happen with a lot of companies is when they raise money before product market fit, and if they don't manage to figure out some of these core elements we just talked about before, the money starts to run out, they start going into almost thinking like a bootstrap company because they're running out of cash and they need to extend their runway three to six months to get that next round. And those three to six months is usually when the magic happens. That's when almost every company that's a unicorn pivoted once, twice, or three times from the original proposition. And they always happen during that crunch time. When you start running out of cash and you start having to reconsider the core principles of how you're going to grow, then the magic happens. And I guess bootstrap companies, they just do that from day one. So I think you don't see all the bootstrap companies that are doing 10, 15, 20 KMRR have product market fit
Together (37:33):
And
Ferdinand Goetzen (37:33):
Know their audience. So those success stories stand out more. I want to touch upon maybe a practical thing,
Iron Brands (37:40):
But wait, one question. What do you think? Because I have an opinion, but I never did VC route. You did as well, you did both and you're bootstrapping now. You did a VC route, you experienced both worlds.
Ferdinand Goetzen (37:52):
Yeah, I have both raised VC money and Bootstrap, and I've also worked for companies like Recruitee was bootstrapped 3D House with VC funded and consulted and engaged with lots of companies, all shapes and forms. Personally, I agree, bootstrap as long as you can. I think there are some great VCs out there who really care about the founders, care about the mission and really engage. There are a lot of crappy VCs and the majority are, and there's this very fake culture of when they need something from you or they think you could be interesting, they'll answer every email, they make, every effort, and then when maybe it's not going that hot or you're figuring things out, they don't answer your calls. They take calls while they're on the train. And then every other VC you talk to about, oh, that's not professional. But there are a lot of questionable VCs out there. But I think fundamentally it's all about leverage. Everything's about leverage in the sense, and if you could always say, I don't need the funding, I can go by myself, you'll always be in the strongest position. And I agree. If you see a strategic reason for raising, that's a whole other story
Iron Brands (38:56):
By all means.
Ferdinand Goetzen (38:58):
But I just personally believe that with SaaS it rarely happens that you'll have that big strategic good example is with 3D hubs, at one point we had this distributed network of manufacturers, and one of the big questions is, how do you maintain quality when there's factories across the world? How do you maintain quality? Well, you have to implement this thing called cross docking. What that means is that instead of sending the manufactured parts to the client, you send them to a cross dock centre, one in Chicago, one in Amsterdam, where arts arrive, you inspect them and then you send them on. So you kind of try to balance what would happen in a normal factory, which is proper quality control with this distributed network that's not cheap to set up. That's like a totally reasonable reason to raise funding is to say, we have to build this supply chain operational thing, but with software, what are you going to do?
Iron Brands (39:49):
Oh, we're going to eat up the market share. But these companies, they come and go so quickly that I don't even know how much that really matters. So yeah, I've gone kind of full circle on this. I think with my previous company, we raised too early and I think we would've benefited a lot from spending the first 12 months struggling in a bootstrap environment because we started figuring things out relatively late. In the end, it worked out. But I think being in that high stakes environment, figuring things out, I think that actually gets you to the best, makes you learn the things you need to learn in order to be successful.
Iron Brands (40:30):
It kind of makes sense, but isn't then that faeces have this, what is it? They also have kind an image problem, right? Because that was also the thing that was in the back of my mind is just a horror stories people have. And I've never dealt with any VCs, so I can't really judge whether it's true, but it's like, man, stay away from a company basically, even if I don't know you, but it's like a bad vibe around it or that's my,
Ferdinand Goetzen (40:57):
They're not all like that,
Iron Brands (40:58):
Obviously, obviously. No, I think most of them are perfectly fine, but it's the thing that if there's a shit VC out there that just treat founders not well, it reflects on the whole VC environment.
Ferdinand Goetzen (41:10):
Well, yeah, and I guess it's not black and white, that sense. There are definitely VCs that are really great people, really supportive, and there are really terrible VCs. There are great companies and terrible companies. But that being said, it is also that model a little bit that if you've invested in 20 companies and you have three champions that are doing really well and then you have one or two that are not doing as well, you don't really always the same attention into those one or two. And the thing that you see roughly is when you ask people, how's your vc? If your company's doing well, the feedback's usually pretty good. Oh, they connect us with great talent and they brought us the money and that's great. And when they're not doing so well, they're like, fucking hate my VCs. That's how it is, right? Money is the underlying, every VC is always like, oh, we bring you access to this and that.
Iron Brands (41:57):
It's about the money. At the end of the day, if you didn't bring the money to the table, nobody cares about your network. Nobody cares about maybe with very few exceptions, it's really about putting the money on the table and helping your business case. But yeah, I want to bring it back to the practicality because we do also have a lot of marketers who listen and they're going to be like, okay, cool VC bootstrap. I can't change that. In an environment, let's say a bootstrap environment or one where you are working with very little money, you've touched upon this already with some of the things that you guys do, what do you think is the most important ingredients for a marketer or marketing team to be successful? When budget is limited,
Iron Brands (42:36):
You need to be creative. So that's one thing I'm kind of proud of that we figured that out is like, okay, so that was actually at the beginning when I joined. It was just me and Arianne. You say, okay, we have zero monies. Okay, we want to work with SEO. Okay, that's going to take a while, but we should invest in it. And then at one point it's like, okay, can we not think of other things on how to get more of what we already have? So we knew the first customers, they came from a specific spot where it was Hacker News. So we were like, okay, can we not get more from Hacker News? Because that seems to be the only channel which is actually tested and working, but Hacker News is notoriously difficult to get on the first page, and if you get any promotion, you'll just be stabbed to death on the internet.
Iron Brands (43:29):
So what we did is actually we created some stuff, which we called How to Hack Hacker News. And well, we actually, if you type this in Google, I wrote a blog about it, so it's probably one of the first hits, and you can read what we did, but we started to see if there's any news in the tech space, we'll probably get to the first page of Hacker News. And a lot of people actually go to the article, read it or comment or whatever. So we were like, okay. At that point, I think it was two and a half years ago, those Google analytics had some privacy issues, especially with the GDPR and the EU government. And nobody was like, okay, can we use it? Is it banned or whatever. So what we did, we figured out if there's some news on Google which is relevant to the community, we just have to write about it as the first ones and put it on Hacker News so people actually think, actually read a news article. It's written by us, but it should be obviously very good quality. So what we did is built a little alert system, so when there's anything on Google in the news, we would just get a ping on Telegram and we would pens down, this is it. Let's go. We're going to work on this. And we call it a war room, which is a bit silly, but alright.
Iron Brands (44:57):
What I did was, for example, those thing, Austria, I was thinking of banning Google Analytics because of privacy reasons and not Austria, but the data privacy agency in Austria. So we were like, the moment when it hit, it came into our telegram, we read it and then I wrote this whole thing, which basically replicates the news, but with all more okay implications, this is actually what it means and this is what you can do and just no marketing, because if you one banner or whatever, and you're just done. So only at the last sentence we put like, alright, if you just hate Google Analytics, just give Simple Analytics a spin. And because it was just so informative and so timely and we were always the first actually cover it before TechCrunch or before whatever, we just spin it out on Hacker News. And I think we did maybe 15 of those 15 and probably eight or nine came on the homepage on Hacker News, but we also put it in Reddit, so Reddits and all that stuff. So lots of traffic in the doors. So we were still focusing on building thinking, long-term, building scalable growth stuff like SEO, tweak your product led growth, improve your onboarding pricing whatsoever. But we still stayed scrappy and creative and just try to get more users into the door. And I think if you get really a good balance of that in the first phases until SEO kicks in, then you're golden.
Clement Dumont (46:34):
Yeah, I think that's a good one because I wanted to ask you actually, how do you prioritise, so obviously you have those short-term wins that you need because you also bootstrap, right?
Together (46:41):
Yeah.
Clement Dumont (46:41):
But you have those long-term strategies. So how did you prioritise, okay, we're going to do two third of short-term illa thing versus long-term planning. How did you manage this?
Iron Brands (46:53):
Yeah, so at 10 KMRR we could kind of sustain ourselves. So we could then, actually there's a bit of pressure off because you can pay your bills, so then you can actually focus a bit more on long-term. So the focus was actually long-term, but when these articles hit, we were just like, alright, now time for short term basically that it felt very natural to go in that kind of state or something.
Ferdinand Goetzen (47:23):
It's really kind of like a PR play. At the end of the day. You found a way, you found the right channel for your audience, like you say, that channel audience, channel audience, product fit. And yeah, again, I should give a shout out to PR lab, letting us use their space. And yeah, I think the key to PR people are always talking about the contacts and the outreaches and the press release, but actually it's just about doing something that's worth writing about. And in this case, what you guys are doing is you're giving real value. Yeah, I'm be the first. That was important. The first, yeah, but that is valuable. And you were the first, but you also say you put a lot of work into these articles, you really try to deliver value and deliver the goods.
Iron Brands (48:07):
So at one point our account got blocked on Hacker News because the moderator saw what we were doing, and then I wrote the blog on how to hack Hacker News. I wrote it on Indie Hackers, but then someone picked it up and put it on Hacker News, this guy is gaming us. But then it got to the top spot with a lot of episodes, and actually people, I expected a block path like this guy trying to game us, but it was actually people saying, fair enough. But his articles are great. He's providing a lot of value. You can plug, it is not a marketing, it is marketing, but it's still value for them. So they were like, okay, fine. But real
Ferdinand Goetzen (48:48):
Marketing should be just about creating value.
Iron Brands (48:50):
Exactly, yeah. It's
Ferdinand Goetzen (48:51):
Just you create value for people and then they go, Hey, these people create value and they're interesting and they believe in things I believe in. So I'm going to check out what else they do. Which brings me to the thing, you haven't mentioned it, but I've seen it. You guys are also building a brand building in public.
Iron Brands (49:07):
I had love to know more about the decision to do that because it's easy on the one hand, on the other hand, trying to sell to people and then putting everything public that, so that's a decision. And you guys are building a good story. You guys have a really good story. And the more people get fed up with GA four or the standard solutions out there, and the more familiar they become with you guys, your brand, your story, the more it's going to click. So how do you guys think about the brand you're building and what went into that decision to build in public?
Iron Brands (49:41):
So when I joined, AIAN was already building in public, but for us it made sense on the one hand, because we're privacy friendly company, and so we want to be transparent because that's the brand what we are trying to build. So we want to be transparent, show people what we're doing, show people under the hood basically, and show them, okay, this is how we're building a company. We're also not making use of any ads where this is our NPS score, this is how many data points, and also metrics. So how much we are earning, and not just the revenue, but also profit margins and profit, because that's always the thing that comes to my second point. I think we should talk a bit more, or in general, we should talk a bit more real about money because or building a business, you see so many guys on YouTube, for example, Hey, want to earn 10 KA day or whatever.
Iron Brands (50:36):
And then they're selling courses or you see a lot of e-commerce companies saying, Hey, we're doing like 5 million a year. It's okay. At the end of the day, how much is that and what's the margin? Yeah, I don't care. Maybe if the margin is 5%, then you can live off it. Oh, fine. But everyone is just throw in really big numbers. Well, under the hood, we all know it. It just, it's difficult to meet and meet and it's difficult to build a business, but from the outside and everyone seems to be doing amazing. And especially, I think I touched upon it with VC funding and hey, they have so much funding. They have so much funding. Put it on LinkedIn, TechCrunch, it's all about big numbers. Everyone needs to be bigger, bigger, bigger. And that's what tricked me when I was at vx, my first company, I need funding, and now we actually want to show other people. You can just build a company, which is like, you can live off by yourself without funding. You probably should be an engineer. That helps a lot, but it's job. I was like, yeah, we want to also be a bit more real. Does that make sense?
Ferdinand Goetzen (51:47):
Yeah, yeah. And you also recently launched another company UNI hosted. Can you briefly tell us what is that about and how it happened? What is your, let's put it this way, deciding to launch another company. When you're running a company in the indie hacker world, it's pretty standard. You see a lot of indie hackers with several ventures in the funded startup world. It's like a no-go. You've got to be like 100% in on one thing. How do you balance that? So how did you come to make that decision? Wait, first of all, what is it? How did you come to make that decision? How did you balance your focus and how did you align that with your co-founder?
Iron Brands (52:31):
Yeah, no good questions. Well, I'll just give you a bit of context to actually understand how it happened. So Ari and I have Simple Analytics. We're just with the two of us, and we rented an office, I think it was two years ago, but the office was too big for us. So it was like eight people could fit. We were only with the two of us. So we put on Twitter or X, we put any indie hackers, which in the hackers, maybe for people listening, it's just people building their own stuff, own products, but it's kind of focused on building and SaaS. So we were like any Indy hackers that just want to share an office with us so we can Indie hacker, Amsterdam office. We got a lot of responses. And one guy, he was building a crypto app and he joined us for a day.
Iron Brands (53:19):
He was a chill guy. He was like, okay, you can rent the office. He was like, okay, one of our mates is also also for an office. So we met him, he got in and that was DRIs. And DRIs was building, he was in between jobs and he was building a unified uni hosted, he was building uni hosted at the time. I had no idea what it was. So he was in our office and I was like, Hey, what are you working on? And he said, yeah, is this wifi management system, but I'm self-hosting it. And yeah, it's really annoying. So I'm making solutions to make it like a cloud hosted. This didn't bring any bells with me. It's really technical stuff. Yeah, what is this? Well, okay, basically how I tell it to people is you have your wifi stuff, like the things which are mounted to the ceiling, and you have those at home, but you maybe have one tool at home.
Iron Brands (54:17):
So you don't need a system to manage those. But if you have a big building and you have maybe say hundreds of those things and one is broken, you have this management system that you can reboot it or so you can basically remotely fix wifi at certain locations. Well, this management system is provided by the wifi provider, but you need to host this management solution. So you need to figure out hosting, you need to figure out when the firm of the company doesn't update. You need to update the thing. You need to make backups. So that's why there's always this IT guy walking around at big offices. And you have IT service businesses that take care of this for office buildings and really big companies. So what DRIs actually did, he took the solution and he was like, let me automate it. So let me host it for you.
Iron Brands (55:18):
So you don't need to care about hosting. So we'll host it, we'll do the backups, we'll do maintain security, we'll provide the updates for you. So it's basically like a done for you host management system. So as an IT service business, you don't need to care about that. But at the time I was like, what the fuck is this? I have no idea. And he was building it because he's just in infrastructure and servers and wifi. So he told me the thing and I went to Arian and said, okay, go look at this guy. I think he's building something interesting and look at his code and let me know what you think. And Arian came back to me, he's like, man, this is interesting. So both of us went to this and said, Hey, you want to this, spin this into a company? And he was like a company, how do I do that? And how does that work? Well we just started off from there, but by no means I had an intention to start another business, but just sometimes it just click and then you just figure it out and it works.
Ferdinand Goetzen (56:26):
And you guys are doing some revenue now, right?
Iron Brands (56:28):
Yes. Well it's like almost three KMRR, but it's like the ideal perfect SaaS is just difficult to build, but quite easy to maintain high margins. And so I working a day a week on it to get, is working more on it. But yeah, that's just slow and steadily increasing and it's actually that's super nice. And one thing we were thinking about, when would you engage with something new? Because there's always lack of focus on the project that is really going well. And then for us is we made this little framework which basically says, what does a company or a project that we want to work on need to check? So we wanted, and it's kind of the other way around of how we normally would do, but I was like, okay, is there already competition in the market? Yes. Check validation. Okay, I'm being very short.
Iron Brands (57:24):
Okay. A company is a B2B check. Okay, there's money there. Are there any SEO opportunities for long term? If there are just check ush, whatever. And if you see, all right, we can manage to get traffic to our website within a couple of months. Jack. And then there was one other thing. Oh yeah. Can we outcompete the competition just with a single angle? Just so if they are very expensive, can we make a free plan If they people go rave on their own Facebook that they have shitty support, can we get proper support? Can we get a brand? Are they good at seo O not okay. Can we outcompete them there And uni host that like check, check, check. And I was like, alright, maybe just let's go. We have to go now. Have you published this
Ferdinand Goetzen (58:11):
Framework somewhere?
Iron Brands (58:13):
No. Maybe on
Ferdinand Goetzen (58:14):
Twitter. If you do, we'll put it in the show notes. Alright. Alright. So we now going to move on to some, let's say more short form questions. Answers going to be short. We still have some rapid fires to come. These are not the rapid fires, but just a few short form questions. Clima, you're going to take the wheel here and yeah, let's go.
Clement Dumont (58:34):
All right. So simple questions most of the time and short answer. So what would you say is a controversial opinion that you have?
Iron Brands (58:46):
I hate LinkedIn but still using it. Oh man. Not really, but it was also the baseball. I was like, let's keep it short.
Clement Dumont (58:57):
Yeah. Alright, cool. What is your biggest or favourite film?
Iron Brands (59:01):
Film?
Clement Dumont (59:03):
Yeah,
Iron Brands (59:04):
The French accents kicks in. The one that I told you, the sales one was actually a pretty, that was, I was at the point where I was like, man, I'm such an idiot. How can I sell a nine Euro product to teams, 10 people?
Ferdinand Goetzen (59:18):
But that is such, that's a good learning. It's such a relatable story though. It's really good. Okay. But while we added, what is your favourite
Iron Brands (59:24):
Film? Film? Let me think about it. I think it was a film which was called Defiance. And it was, I like this second World war film, or at least if a film starts and it says at the beginning based on a true story, man, I'm hooked.
Clement Dumont (59:45):
Nice. Okay. Who do you learn from the most?
Iron Brands (59:52):
Ooh, good one. I think Arian my co-founder.
Clement Dumont (01:00:00):
Cool. What is your favourite marketing or growth tool or tip for 2024?
Iron Brands (01:00:06):
Ush
Clement Dumont (01:00:08):
Ush person. Okay, cool. That's a good one. Oh yeah. Now what we do is the face palm of the kudos of
Ferdinand Goetzen (01:00:14):
The weeks. Yeah. So every week or every episode we try to each share a kudos and a face bomb just to kind of shout out some of the good, some of the bad. Do you want to start?
Iron Brands (01:00:26):
Yeah, I just basically tipped it off already, but the face bump for me was LinkedIn, but obviously doesn't come in a surprise that maybe not into LinkedIn because I think it's a lot of fluff and VC funding, basically the narrative we just touch upon. But lately, I think you saw the post I posted with, I just think you responded on it for the listeners, I made a screenshot of people that use AI on LinkedIn and I didn't think about a long time about a post, but I saw it on Twitter and I just reposted it on LinkedIn with a title. LinkedIn is Fox. And then it got took off. I had no idea because normally that's also funny, if you think really hard about a post and you one thing, thousand whatever likes. But it was just people that are using AI to respond to a post and they were just basically saying exactly the same to get more engagement or whatever. And just brings out, I don't think LinkedIn was already a super authentic place, but now it's just
Clement Dumont (01:01:36):
Brings the value down,
Iron Brands (01:01:37):
Brings the value even more down. So that would be the phase bomb. Kudos. I put some thought on this one, but it's not kind of business related, else related. And it's like, do you know the hardest geezer man? So this is this guy, he run the entire length of Africa,
Iron Brands (01:01:55):
Which is the most insane thing ever. And he's just a regular bloke. He's just this regular guy and he just went on this mission and actually did it, which is, man, that's a hat tip. And he said something. So people ask him why did you do it? And he was like, he said something, sometimes you need to risk it for a chocolate biscuit. And I like chocolate biscuits. And I was like, man, this is so spot on. Because actually if you think about it, what he's doing is just insane. But if more people did insane things, the world will be a fun place
Clement Dumont (01:02:34):
Because you run more than one marathon a day, I think for a year, right?
Iron Brands (01:02:38):
Something massive 50 days. And we did three 80 marathons.
Ferdinand Goetzen (01:02:43):
I ran seven K last week and patted myself on the back for six days. I'm still bragging about it even because my running is not my strength, but Cool. Very nice. Very nice. You want to go?
Clement Dumont (01:02:55):
Yes, I'll take it. So probably going to be really original, but I think my kudos is to Jack and Aaron to actually be our first guest on our podcast. So before we reach a million views. I think that's a really nice one to have. And face poem, I would say I struggle a bit to find one this week, but I would say all the time that you work in companies and that you get a CEO or a founder as a marketing team that tries to, okay, structure better your work in your marketing team, we want to know what you work on. Plan sprints. And so you do that and the moment that you do that, they still come every day with, oh, and you're going to do that and you're going to add that. So at the of Sprint doesn't do anything. I think that's something that's for me, it's quite fun.
Ferdinand Goetzen (01:03:34):
Yeah, they come and throw in a thousand requirements and then complain that you're not on time.
Together (01:03:37):
Yeah.
Ferdinand Goetzen (01:03:39):
Cool. Yeah, my kudos is to all the bootstrap companies out there, including Simple analytics and Host and all the other people out there who just strapping on a pair and just building, I think that's one of the hardest decisions to make. And on the flip side, my face Palm goes to a lot of VCs that I'm seeing that after the market changed, they were like, no profitability, of course that's the goal, that's the most important. And they were all acted as if that was always their stance. And now two months later, three months later, the market has calmed down a bit, probably just temporarily. And now they're all going back to the old ways. You're seeing the same kind of attitudes. Not all, but some. So a face pump to those. And yeah, I totally agree on the hardest Giza thing by the way. Incredible getting over them. To our last part, which is just rapid fire questions. These are very, very one or two word answers,
Clement Dumont (01:04:34):
Sir, or you have to choose one or the other or it's a one two word answer. All let's go and we do as fast as we can. All right. Bootstrapped or funded marketing skills or dev skills? Oh, dev skills. Co-Founder or solo founder, co-founder all day SaaS or marketplace SaaS. Amsterdam or Mastery?
Iron Brands (01:04:56):
Oh Mastery.
Clement Dumont (01:04:57):
Oh good. One book you recommend
Iron Brands (01:05:04):
Rich Kings of Shanghai.
Clement Dumont (01:05:07):
Biggest accomplishment last year, business wise,
Iron Brands (01:05:12):
Getting to 30k MRR
Clement Dumont (01:05:13):
One advice for a starting entrepreneur.
Iron Brands (01:05:21):
To start. Well, I can explain there's a bit more to it. It is a super cliche, but this has helped me so good in the sense that everyone wants to be an entrepreneur are things about the life of an entrepreneur. Everyone is making plans and strategy and everyone loves that and everyone has business ideas, but there's only just a few that actually try something
Iron Brands (01:05:46):
And people start reading business books. But you're basically procrastinating actually because you're reading, you're not doing anything and you think you're getting smarter or ahead, but there's still nothing. And you just need to get out there and you can get out there really easily because now you can spin up a website and what is the easiest thing you can do? Maybe or just start a newsletter, start writing and from writing people start reading it. And you want more people, you want to have more readers and you actually iterate on that and you meet people and you get into conversations and then at one point you actually get somewhere, but you need to do this really small thing to get the ball rolling. I never thought I would be at Simple Analytics now because I didn't think of the idea. And also I would be a hundred miles away from Host, which I still completely not understand sometimes. But it just happened. It happened to me because I just went out there and I did some stupid stuff with my previous company. Some stuff didn't work, but I got to meet a lot of people. You just need to get out there and do something and don't think reading books and pitch decks and all that bullshit is going to work.
Clement Dumont (01:07:06):
Oh, good one. Okay. And I think I have a last one. Alright, so if you go on your LinkedIn, you can see that you're actually quite public about what's the current a RR of your companies. So you said that one of your goals is to reach a million a r for Simple Analytics. I'm going to ask you to give me a date on when that's going to happen and then we're going to see how far off you are when you actually reached the goal.
Iron Brands (01:07:28):
Okay. The 21st of November, 2026.
Ferdinand Goetzen (01:07:34):
Okay. Very nice. Perfect. Very nice. I think you guys will do it before then, but let's see. I'm curious. All right, Iran. Well thank you very much. It's been a pleasure having you.
Iron Brands (01:07:45):
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's like it feels full circle from listening to you with my co-founder at Fix with Neils and then talking to you. I didn't tell him I was going to be on a podcast, but I'll tell him after. He's going to be like,
Ferdinand Goetzen (01:07:58):
Man, Neil. So is there anything you want to share with people? Is there anything you want to kind of plug, feel free to tell people something that they should be checking out, following you about whatever,
Iron Brands (01:08:13):
Like the company, Simple Analytics.com. You can follow me on Twitter, which is Iron Brands, which is my real name. But yeah, on
Ferdinand Goetzen (01:08:20):
Best name ever. By the way, best name ever Iron Brands. The fact that you don't start a brand agency is a lost opportunity on your name.
Iron Brands (01:08:26):
No, maybe in the future.
Iron Brands (01:08:27):
And one thing which may be interesting, if you are at the point of starting something or you don't really know you want to bootstrap building, there's one day a month we actually host Internet Friends, which is like a nerd meetup. There's 20 guys at our office just drinking beer and pizza. But it all kind of in Yers that live in Amsterdam, I post on it on eggs. So you'll see it if you follow me. But feel free just to hang out with us, grab a beer and talk to some interesting people.
Ferdinand Goetzen (01:08:59):
Nice. Good one.
Iron Brands (01:08:59):
Awesome.
Ferdinand Goetzen (01:09:00):
Perfect. Thanks for joining us.
Free forever No credit card required Cancel anytime