Ep 1: The accidental SaaS founder (with James Gill)

In this first episode of SaaSy as F**k, we talk to GoSquared CEO James Gill about his journey from being a teenager thinking that there might just be something to this internet thing, to being the founder and CEO of a successful SaaS company. 

It was an absolute delight chatting with James, as he throws pearls of wisdom out as if they were nothing. Well worth a listen if you're interested in SaaS or startups. 

Transcript:

Jon: Welcome to SaaSy as Fuck, where a fat man with a beard asks dumb questions to smart people. I'm Jon, I'm a copywriter

Alex: and I'm Alex, I'm a producer, audio, musician, composer, and nerd. That sounds more impressive than mine. Mine's a lot of things. Can you reel in a bit, please?

Can you just kind of make yourself sound less talented? Easy, easy. I'm Alex, I'm an audio producer. I'm an audio producer. Cool. Perfect. You can just keep that. Cause

Jon: that's, that's everything. And I used to use the first one. Don't use the second one.

Alex: So what is SaaSy as Fuck as a, as a podcast then?

Jon: So the goal of SaaSy as Fuck is to talk to experts in different corners of SaaS, from founders to copywriters and marketers.

Developers, designers, you name it. We want to talk to them about successes, failures, and [00:01:00] basically what goes into creating a successful SaaS company.

Alex: This is going to be a bit weird in the format of things. Cause we've, we've had the interview that we're going to kind of cut to in the middle of the thing, and hopefully we won't ramble for too long.

Um, but there's like, There's a lot of, like, information that me, as a person that isn't, you know, well accustomed to Sass, um, is have a few questions and I'm quite interested in this kind of stuff now. Before, I wasn't. Couldn't, couldn't care less, but just, just from that one interview alone, I thought, you know what, I might as well, you know, Take a bit of knowledge into this and get a bit learning from it.

And to

Jon: clarify, you're, you're opening this sass podcast by saying that a week ago, you didn't give a fuck about sass.

Alex: I'm trying to be the rebel in, in the the podcast group. Um, I'm

Jon: okay. I'm okay with it. I'm trying to,

Alex: that's where you're starting. You know how you like, [00:02:00] you know, like in a school or something like that, you'd always get that one kid that would just suddenly jump out at being like the cool kid or the rebel or that thing.

I'm trying to go for the rebellious one. Um, I hope that's okay. No, I'm

Jon: okay with that. I'm hoping that now this, Podcasts will document your progression of being indifferent to Sass, being a full convert

Alex: y. I'd like it to be like a journey, you know, that like episode one, Oh, Alex really didn't seem to care so much about Sass.

Episode like five, he's seeming to be more interested. Episode 20, he's now created his own Sass business and he's a successful career man. Yep, careerman. Yeah, that's, that's my goal. But anyway, I'm sure we'll, we'll do this a lot. How did you find that the interview went? How, how, how was it for you?

Jon: Well, this is obviously, this is my first ever podcast interview I'd carried out and I [00:03:00] was very nervous and I had no reason to be because James, um, was a fantastic guest.

We had a nice chat. We had a good, it was just an enjoyable conversation. It wasn't, didn't feel interviewey. It felt like. A regular conversation with some pre written questions.

Alex: He seemed really nice about it. I think that was one of the, the cool things. He was, he was just very casual about things and he seemed like he wanted to just chat about stuff that he was, he was interested in and exciting.

He seemed to throw like a number of curveballs though, and that was hilarious to see him kind of not panic, but just be taken aback at the fact that he's been researched this much. How, how was that?

Jon: Like, it seems, that's what I want. I want it to be that. I want it to be, I like an interview where someone doesn't quite know what the question is going to be.

I could easily have just gone straight to, you're the CEO of a successful SaaS company, [00:04:00] you know, tell us about that or tell us about the company or that and stuff. And, Oh, I'm just wondering now, I didn't ask him once about what the company did. I don't think that's not, it's fine. It's fine. Um, Yeah, so I like, I wanted to kind of throw some sort of curveballs out there.

I wanted to get to know him because I think that when somebody's not really prepared, you see the person more. And I think what we saw was that James is very passionate to talk about. All of his endeavors and he talking about kind of early in his career and how almost kind of dealing with success to a degree.

And it becomes, it was interesting. I liked that. I think I've managed to kind of bookend the interview with two questions he probably didn't expect. And that was, that was quite satisfying. I'd like to carry that on, but some people are easier to research than others. It wasn't. It took some digging to find some of the questions for James, but I dunno, I guess it depends on the people and what they've done as to how easy it is to do that in future.

Alex: Yeah.

Jon: So, um, do you know much

Alex: about like the company that [00:05:00] he works with? It's GoSquared, right? If, um,

Jon: Yeah, it's GoSquared. It's effectively a marketing platform where you can look at things like the analytics of the company and You could have messages pop up to interact with the clients and automate emails to the customers, things like that.

So it's going to help any kind of SaaS companies to interact and I guess kind of analyze the traffic in the market they're getting. So it looks like a really interesting Business itself. And that was kind of why it was quite good to kind of get him on as a CEO of a good, interesting SaaS company early on.

It's definitely a good start. That was quite, that was quite nice. But yeah, didn't we go too much into the bones of that, which maybe, maybe that's what he wanted from a podcast, but we didn't go anywhere near that really.

Alex: I was, I was going to ask, like, one of the things that I wanted to know is like, was there any questions that you kind of.

Looking back on it now, would have wanted to ask him or anything like that? You kind of like, you wanted to delve [00:06:00] deeper into that he kind of spoke about?

Jon: I think most, I think there's mostly, most of the answers he gave had a lot to it and it raised more topics. And I think that it's one of those conversations where it felt like it could have gone on for hours and hours.

We were both surprised when it was so late when it kind of, that it kind of got an hour. And after kind of the interview ended, we had a chat about it that and he was, you know, It sounds like there's so much more, even after that talking to him, then there was more things came up than like, Oh, I'd love to chat about that.

So, I mean, we'll definitely try and get James on again in the future. If we have a, if we have more than three episodes, we'll try and bring him back. Um, but yeah, there's, there's loads that it's, I kind of wasn't sure how would I do. I can be quite rambly. And I can get distracted. And so I, I wrote this questions down more to kind of keep myself a bit more in line.

Um, but luckily James [00:07:00] kind of had so much to tell and talk about and told a great story. And so yeah, it made it kind of very easy, but it meant that there's loads of things you could talk to him about more. He's somebody that's got a lot of interesting things to say.

Alex: I think, I think it lended to the kind of the interview style, because there's loads of different ways of like approaching it, isn't there, that you can have very formal questions, these are what I'm going to ask, and then you can have a very, uh, to and fro kind of one where you just, you're just having a nice casual conversation, and that seems to be what, Worked best, at least in my eyes, my ears, it was, I realized my eyes doesn't really work in that kind of context, but

Jon: I liked it was really weird sensation kind of doing interview, um, because you couldn't make it the interview on the day because of personal circumstances.

So it was just me and him, um, and apart from kind of panicking about audio because. I don't know what I'm doing. I just clicked record on Zoom and hoped for the best. I was a bit nervous about kind of that side of it, but then also you got to listen in later on. Yeah. You got to [00:08:00] listen back to a pre recorded interview.

And I had no idea. I enjoyed the conversation, but I had no idea someone else would. And so you giving the feedback that you enjoyed hearing it. Yeah. It gave me faith that this Maybe this podcast has legs.

Alex: Yeah. I think it's, it's very easy to kind of, when you're interviewing, you're not going to hear everything that's going on.

You're going to not, you're not going to have like an understanding of how it feels if it's slow or fast, but it seemed to have a great kind of tone. And A style to it that was engaging, for me at least, but I'm gonna say that because otherwise if I said it was naff then I think you're just gonna be upset that the intro to the podcast is me saying oh it was all right but a little bit shit at these parts.

Jon: Especially how you started by saying about If you started going, I was pretty indifferent to Sass. I listened to your chat and I, if anything, I dislike it. That would be pretty upsetting from my point of view, but I felt it's a weird comparison to make, but he, [00:09:00] if after a job interview, I know if a job interview has gone well, based on the tone of the chat you have and the way the conversation flows, and it had a similar feel to that, I felt like it was a good conversation and would be interesting to other people because.

I enjoyed the conversation and he enjoyed the conversation and there was no real awkward moments where I wasn't like gasping for more questions or he wasn't giving one word answers there was no

Alex: no

Jon: concerns there so the free flowing nature of it and the fact that we were both kind of laughed several times and it was an interesting thing and after the after the event we still kind of had a bit of a chat and that tells me that it was good like I said the same thing as I've historically with job interviews that's what I've gone with if I talked to somebody And I have a laugh and it's free flowing.

I come away, even if, even if you don't get the job, you know, that it was, it wasn't a waste of an hour, waste of two hours, whatever it was. And so that's kind of, I had that same kind of feeling. I was like, how'd it go? [00:10:00] I think, well, because I enjoyed it. I talked to him again. So that's, that's a kind of a really nice, that's a nice indicator to me, but hearing somebody straight away kind of saying, yep, that was good to listen to was a massive relief.

Alex: Yeah, I think you did a great job with it all. Um, I don't think there's, you didn't ask him any super inappropriate questions, which I'm proud of you for. I think that was one of my concerns and, and it didn't last two hours. So that's great. It was, it was nice and condensed. Um, well I had, even though you weren't

Jon: there.

I had the looming presence of being the looming presence of you know, you've got to listen back to this. If it went for two hours and you had to edit a shit ton out of it, that would have been taken you the whole weekend. That was on my mind. I knew that I didn't want an unhappy you going, what the fuck did you do?

Why, why did you just let it go? [00:11:00] You had six times where you could organically have gone, well, we're running out of time there, thanks for coming on as that was kind of in my head. So even though you can make it, you were still very much there in my head and in my heart to make sure that I kept it relatively on track.

I mean, I noticed about an hour in that I was aiming for less than an hour. And that, so I, it still went over, but not as over as I thought it might.

Alex: Yeah. Well, I think, as I say, I think you've done a great job for a first episode going in. I'm excited to see if we get any more kind of guests that do approaches and do say, please chat

Jon: to us.

Because that's, that's a good point is obviously this is effectively a, A pilot episode is what I guess you'd call it. This is us kind of testing the water, gathering feedback, and hopefully. Gathering interest from potential guests, like you say. So if anyone's listening out there who wants to be on SaaSy as fuck, let us [00:12:00] know, contact us, we're on Twitter at, at SaaSy as fuck, DM us, let us know.

And we'll get, we just want people from all different aspects. We don't want this to be just CEOs of sass. We want it to be designers, copywriters, entrepreneurs, marketers. Anything, people who have created their own bootstrapped SASS company using no code products, all sorts, we want it to be on a kind of big spectrum, so it is, that's where we want it to be, we want it to be all different people, more different kind of experiences and special isms.

So, yeah, that's a good shout, that's a good little link there, that isn't talking about how we, we need guests, because if no one else wants to come on. This is

Alex: our only ever episode. Well, like it, you know, you're interested in Sass. I'm semi interested in Sass.

You know, eventually, if we get enough guests, I might become interested in Sass. And that's what I want out of it. [00:13:00] Also, that's

Jon: become the new goal. The new official goal of the podcast is to make sure that you are deeply engaged. You're as interested in Sass as I am. And you, you want to, I don't know, maybe you'll be doing a notebook, notebook.

Had on your phone where you just note down hundreds of ideas for software you'll never make. Exactly.

Alex: Yeah, that's it. And, and, you know, knowing, you know, learning a bit more about SAS, I know that, you know, that is a possibility. I could have hundreds of projects that I will never complete, but you know, they'll be there written down, hidden

Jon: away under the bed.

That's where, that's where it all starts. It all starts with an idea. That's what we'll do. We'll get you, we'll reel you in and you'll have all those ideas as well. You'll be unable to sleep at night because you're trying to work out. how to implement a product you'll never probably end up making. Or maybe, or maybe I'll be, maybe that's it.

Maybe you'll outgrow the podcast by creating your own Sass business. [00:14:00] That is a

Alex: possibility. And that is the, that is one thing I'd like to overtake the Sass podcast itself by creating my own Sass product. Maybe that's, maybe that's the goal. Go full

Jon: circle when I, when I'm there going this week on SaaSy as fuck, I have Alex.

Yeah. He quit the podcast last week, but he booked himself as a guest for this week. So

Alex: I will be the single worst interviewer though. I will give you only one word answers and a lot of them will be no or no comment.

Jon: Especially if at that point you've gone and I've got no one to actually edit the sound because I will just make it, I'll just leave it as a raw interview of Awkward Sponsors.

And that'll be the end of the podcast. It'll end on your final interview. It'll be badly edited. Put it on the internet. And that'll be it.

Alex: Gosh, it's too, it's too dramatic for me, I think. Um, is there anything that you would want to kind of, um, say or lead in to the podcast [00:15:00] itself? Is there anything that you kind of want, comments or anything like that, that you'd want? Listeners who are probably bored of us talking now, um, is there anything you want to kind of

Jon: Say, I think, I think it was just a, it was a really good challenge.

It was a really kind of organic and enjoyable chat with some very good answers and some, you know, some very good ideas and things that can be learned from. If anyone has a SAS company or works in the SAS industry, there's a lot of things there that you can learn from. So yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely should be a good listen.

Enjoy.

James: Hi, Jon, how are you doing? I'm good. Thanks. How are you? I'm, I'm doing well. Thank you. Doing well. I, I feel like I don't have quite the level of professional setup that you do, but, uh, but, but good to be chatting.

Jon: No, no, no. It's good. I've, I've had this microphone for far too long and I've used it for nothing.

Worthy of actually having the microphone. So it's good to actually have a use for it. So, no, it's good.

James: Yeah. Good to, why [00:16:00] not start a podcast just to use the microphone? Well, exactly. Yeah.

Jon: Just to buy the purchase, just for that. How's your week been? Cause you're in England as well, aren't you? So you've obviously had the heat.

James: Yes. Yeah. I guess we've had our summer now, haven't we? And, uh, now we're, now we're back in whatever this is. Rain for the rest of eternity. Um, yeah, yeah. Doing, doing okay. Thanks. I'm, I'm actually back in my. My parents, uh, home, uh, today. So that's why I've got various things behind me. Uh, very boat themed, uh, very alcohol themed as well.

There's all of the booze is in here too. A wet

Jon: bar and a boat behind you. Yeah,

James: exactly.

Jon: Um, I will say now and apologize on behalf of Alex, he couldn't make it. Um, some personal circumstances came up. So kind of producer. So he's there to mostly tell me when my sound is off or I'm just trailing off and running off.

So. Okay, yeah. There's no one there to reel me in at this [00:17:00] point, so we'll just see how it goes.

James: Sure, sure thing. No, sounds alright. I'll try and help if I can, and uh, I guess you can fix it all in the edit, right? But that's,

Jon: that's, yeah, that's, that's, that's on him anyway. He gets to deal with that later on and go, oh god, okay, I'll edit that out.

Yeah. Thanks again for joining us. Obviously this is the first episode of hopefully many. Yeah.

James: Yeah. No, I'm honored. No, I, yeah, yeah. I'm truly honored. Uh, always happy to chat with other interesting people. And, uh, yeah, no, I thought, um, was it on, uh, was it an indie hackers that, that it was posted? Yeah. I've been trying to spend a bit more time on there and just saw it and I thought, oh yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I'll be up for that.

Jon: Indie hackers is a weird one for that where you. Sometimes you'll post during, there'll be lots of responses, lots of conversations. Sometimes there's nothing really. And so I think you replied quite a while after I posted. I was like, Oh, someone's interested.

James: Yeah. I think I had it open in a, in a tab and I was like, Oh, I better get back to that.

And then like something [00:18:00] more urgent came up and then I was like going through trying to like cleanse my, my life a bit. And I was like, Oh, I never got back to that. And I think I even had like, something written out and I just didn't hit the send. So I was like, Oh yeah, well, why not?

Jon: I'm glad you went back to the tab.

Otherwise it would never have happened. My, my microphone would have gone unjustified for longer.

James: Oh, what a shame that would have been. Yeah.

Jon: So, I mean, this is going to be very kind of moderately unstructured as an interview. I have some notes, um, something to talk about, but generally speaking, I'm just kind of interested in the, in obviously you and your opinions on things and in the world of SaaS and your kind of journey here.

Um, And I want to start actually, I was looking through, I was looking through your Instagram because looking for things in research and I noticed that. You're on the cover of Square Mile Magazine, I believe, if my math is correct, at the age of 22 years old? Is that right?

James: You did do your research, uh, [00:19:00] yeah, yeah, I recall that vaguely, yeah, what's this kid got, or something was the, uh The

Jon: headline was, what's this kid got that you don't?

So I want to open with the question. What did that kid have that I don't? ,

James: uh, I don't know. Extreme naivety. I, I don't know. Um, uh, that was, well first of all, I was very slight honored and also massive imposter syndrome being on the front cover of like a very, I guess for anyone who's. not aware of that magazine.

It's, it's sort of handed out in the financial district of London, isn't it? And it's like handed out in the city. And, and somehow I ended up doing an interview with, um, a very, uh, very, uh, kind and, uh, very generous, uh, journalists with that, uh, who had a lot of time, uh, to chat with me. And we ended up chatting and I, I did, uh, I just had an extensive conversation with her about.

Go Squared and the company and our [00:20:00] journey at that point and, um, and Sort of didn't hear anything more from it for a while. And I was like, Oh, well, you know, maybe they won't use that. I'll probably put someone far more qualified in the mag. Uh, and then eventually she was like, Oh, no, no, no. I think they're going to run it this for this issue.

And then she emailed like. I think later in the day, I was like, Oh, they might actually put this like, as the cover story. I was like, what? And then they invited me to some photo shoot in like some warehouse and all this trendy stuff. Got to wear a Paul Smith suit and all this. And uh, yeah, it was, um, quite, uh, quite a fun, quite a fun day that, but, uh, yeah, I don't know.

Probably the most. Remember my five minutes of fame? Hopefully not my full 15 minutes of fame, but you know, it was a enjoyable time. But yeah, I don't know. Back then, I think, I think at the time, yeah, that was obviously when I was quite, quite a bit younger. Um, but you know, tech startups were kind of a new thing.

It was a very different world. And, uh, [00:21:00] there weren't that many people relative today doing much in the way of Startups, let alone software, I don't even know if SaaS was even a term we were really widely used back then and, um, and to, to have some like kids, uh, doing something vaguely interesting, uh, in London in tech was, was a bit of a novelty, I guess.

And, um, yeah, ended up getting, getting there, but I dunno, yeah. I, uh, they haven't asked me back yet, so I don't know.

Jon: Was that, so how long into GoSquared was that?

James: Yeah, so GoSquared's been going a long time. Uh, very weird story. I guess everyone's weird when you get to know them well enough, but our story is a startup story.

Pretty weird. Um, we, we started a company back when we were at school and, uh, we were, we were actually I think studying for our, our GCSEs, so we were out Oh, it school. School. I [00:22:00] assume it was

Jon: university. So it's actually . Yeah, no, we

James: were, um, I just, I just remember, um. Oh God, if you want to go right back to the start, you can edit this all right out, but

Jon: I'm sure we won't.

James: But, uh, I remember when I was at school, I, I was always into design. I always loved art. I love design. And, uh, I was also kind of like fascinated the idea of building a business and, you know, various, my, my, my dad's always run his own businesses and, and I always kind of thought it might be a route for me.

And, um, I, I ended up doing the Duke of Edinburgh Award, vaguely relevant, uh, and uh, um, you, with the Duke of Edinburgh Award, you had to like pick a skill that you wanted to develop. Um, and our school, uh, lovely school, but they, they kind of had this fear of computers and computers were for using Microsoft products only and only to do numbers and work.

And um, and, and I ended up like, [00:23:00] In my spare time, just wanting to like, I thought the internet is this opportunity. Like maybe I could build a business on the internet and, uh, but I had no idea how to. And so with the Duke of Edinburgh thing, I sort of took a little bit of time every week, just learning, like how do I make a website?

And like, I use Dreamweaver and all this stuff and then figuring stuff out and got quite interested in it. And then, uh, down a few, you know, I don't know, fast forward a little bit, ended up meeting two other people at school, my co founders, Jeff and JT. Uh, who were both phenomenal, like smart brains and, uh, knew much more about this coding malarkey.

And we sort of all just started getting together and that was kind of how GoSquared started. That when we're at school, we used to just get together and geek out and build fun stuff and sometimes build a website for some friends. And we kind of just did it around this name of GoSquared. And the reason for that name was, um, there was a website called the Million Dollar Homepage and I don't know if you remember that or are aware of that, but

Jon: No.

James: [00:24:00] There's certain sort of people That's, I guess, a way of judging people's age sometimes, because I saw the Million Dollar Homepage, and it was basically a guy called Alex Chu, who I think, I think he went on to start Calm App? Um, so he's, he's done very well, but he, he came up with this idea of like early internet of like, um, like basically he, he came up with this idea, the million, yeah, the million dollar homepage.

It was basically a grid of a thousand by thousand, uh, pixels. And you could buy, like, a group of pixels for a dollar each, and it made this god awful looking homepage of, like, can you imagine, like, people just buying random, like, dots on a page and just paint colors, flashing things, and it looked awful, but this guy, through his sheer genius, made a million dollars from selling pixels on a homepage.

And that [00:25:00] simplicity of that idea just inspired me to think, like, oh my god, like, If that can make a million dollars, like what else could? And we started a site called Go Squared because we're selling squares. on a home pay for like, I don't know, 10 each or whatever. And we learned how to build a website really by doing that.

And, and, and that was what brought us together. And we learned that it's actually quite hard to make a million dollars on the internet and, uh, at least legally. And, um, and, and then we, uh, evolved from there. We sort of figured out how to build a blog, got people coming to the site. And then eventually found that we started to try and build like an advertising network.

And then we're like, Oh, there's so much chaotic, confusing stuff around us. And by doing that, we end up building some like graphs and charts to show you some like how much traffic your, your ads were getting. [00:26:00] And then people started signing up because they wanted to use the analytics piece. And then, before we knew it, we were like, more people wanted to use the analytics.

And then we broke it out and built a, an analytics kind of live real time analytics view that arguably is like the first real time website analytics tool that existed. And, um, and, and, and that was kind of our journey into the world of software as a service, I guess. And, uh, yeah, I can go into more detail on that if you, if you want, but, but yeah, we, we learned, um, Well, yeah, we, we, we finally had a good problem on our hands because no one was really interested in anything we were doing up to that point.

And we, we launched a tool we called Live Stats and it was very simple. It just showed you rows of like a row for every visitor on your website. So if you had 10 people in a room, they went to your website, we would show 10 rows and [00:27:00] each of them would have like which page they were on and what browser they were using and stuff.

And the idea kind of actually like In our eyes at least, it exploded and we had so many people wanting to use it that we couldn't keep up with the demand. So we were like, how do we scale this thing? And we had all these problems that were like good problems finally, rather than trying to find, uh, how to, you know, get people to even care about what we're doing.

And, uh, and yeah, that took us on a Kind of the journey we've been on ever since, to be honest. And we've, we've stuck together. The three of us are still running the company. We've kept the team, um, very lean and small. Um, but we, we now service, yeah, thousands of teams, um, built out the platform extensively and, uh, really focused more on serving software as a service businesses, actually with the, with the.

Tools we're building and, um, and yeah, the, the future is looking brighter than ever. I have to admit, even though it's raining outside, it's um, yeah, exciting.

Jon: That's an amazing evolution from just [00:28:00] being at school, just going, the internet is a thing. Let's have a look at that. All the way to being like you say, like you've had the point, you've benefited from having to go, let's specialize.

Let's focus on certain customers because it's too broad to focus on everyone. Focusing on SaaS is quite a good idea because that's what you're doing anyway. You kind of. Learning as you go and scaling up. And yeah, cause I wondered that cause I wonder where kind of the idea was. Cause obviously it's looking at your software things like the.

The engagement folks of the kind of the emails and the chat

James: and

Jon: that stuff. Then there's the real time analytics as well. So it kind of feels like the best bits from a few different tools that I've seen before. So you look at things like things like Google Analytics and things like Drift and like a bunch of those different things that make sense to be together.

And that's kind of what you've done. So it makes sense. I was that it. Now I see from that kind of trial and error and that evolution, how you get to that point, because the more you're going to build that demand, you're then going, okay, what's the next problem we can solve for these [00:29:00] specific people? And that, it makes sense now.

James: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Um, you know, we've, we've always got a lot to improve and work on. And I, you know, I think we, We, we, we're always trying to, we're always trying to improve. And, um, I mean, there's all sorts of tangents we can go off on this conversation around things we're working on at the moment or that I'm, you know, struggling with or figuring out.

But, um, but yeah, we, we've certainly, one thing we've never stopped doing is evolving our product, perhaps to a fault. Um, but, uh, I think, I think one thing that's, It's definitely been true is that the, just the world around us has, has changed so much since being kids at school. And uh, you know, it kind of, it's never felt easy doing this, but the challenges are different today to what they were back in, back in 20, even like 2010, 2011, like when, um, you know, it used to be that, [00:30:00] um, the, the, the building, uh, a way to take payments was hard.

I remember like we used to, uh, we used to, we used to get a, a printed, letter in the post, uh, like three printed letters in the post every single day that would arrive to our office because we had like three different payment accounts from all these like different corporate companies and like you, uh, sold three Plans worth of 9 yesterday and we'd get a letter in the post for each and, and we, and like, you know, we, we had to figure out how to tie that up and like report on that and all this stuff.

And like, you know, you used to have to basically build everything, everything from scratch. And because of all that, all of those challenges and difficulties, like a lot of people didn't know what they were doing. A lot of people found it hard to do this stuff, including ourselves. Um, But now it's like so much [00:31:00] stuff's being simplified and abstracted away that like So many more people can get involved.

And so now, like, the challenges are not, can you accept payments on the internet? You're like, why should anyone care about what you're doing? Because there's 10 other people that are doing exactly the same thing and probably better than you, faster than you. And, um, and it's like, you know, figuring out, well, how do you make it?

killer product and a fantastic product that people love using, but also how do you make sure people stick around and use it and tell their friends about it? And how do you position yourself in a market that's, that's incredibly competitive? And, uh, yeah, like that, there's, there's just very different challenges today.

Um, and, uh, and yeah, like, I think we're just, yeah, always learning how to get better at solving whatever's the most difficult thing for us at the given time. Yeah.

Jon: You raised a good point there that I think is a problem amongst SaaS generally, if you look at software as a whole industry, standing out is now, [00:32:00] often what makes a difference is that element of going, you can look at five different pieces of software that do essentially the same thing and price points can vary and functionality can vary, but largely can solve the problem with a few different things.

How have you approached that? What is your kind of main strategy for standing out and, and, you know, highlighting yourself amongst competitors?

James: Yeah, I, I think, um, well, I, I'd be lying if I said we had nailed it, you know, we're not, uh, a billion dollar company today. Um, but, I think, I think what we've always tried to do is play to our strengths and not try and pretend to be someone we're not.

Um, and, and, you know, in our space, you've got very big companies. You've got companies like HubSpot, you've got Salesforce to some extent, you've got, um, even rel like relatively newer players, companies like Intercom who have done phenomenally well. [00:33:00] Um, and. They've got a lot of advantages. They've got bigger budgets.

They've got more engineers. They've got more salespeople. But I think one of the, one of the other advantages is there are, there are more, there are more, uh, providers in the world. Like there are more companies in the world, but there are also more customers in the world. And, and I think it's sometimes really easy to get deflated that like, Yeah, you're not winning every customer that comes in the door, but there's so many, it's just hard to, I find it often hard to compute how many possible companies, uh, customers there are in the world for what, what we are doing.

And, um, there are more created every, every day. There are more customers that could be using or potential customers every single day. And I think There is always a slice of the market that you can, that you can own. And, um, and, and often there's an opportunity to own a part of the market [00:34:00] that maybe other companies have decided isn't for them or isn't worth them serving.

And another, another, like, I just think another thing that's been amazing, having been around in the world of software, I, you know, I feel like I'm speaking like an old, an old wise man. But it's just like, you know, since, since starting GoSquared, I have continuously been amazed at how many huge companies can be built out of, markets I didn't think existed.

Like just when you think something's been solved, like someone comes along and does a smaller part of the problem better. Like, I remember when we, when we first were like kind of trying to operate as more of a team, we, we were like using Google chat, whatever it was called to chat amongst ourselves. And then I remember we stumbled upon Basecamp had their, or 37 Signals at the time, had [00:35:00] their, um, campfire, uh, team chat thing.

And we thought like, Oh, okay, that's cool. And there was like another thing called hip chat, which is by Atlassian. And we were like always a bit frustrated, but it always seemed like, well, you know, that's, that's the options that that's the market done. Um, and Atlassian is a big company, like they're clearly putting a lot of resource into it.

And then that sort of out of nowhere came Slack and like this internal team chat thing that seemed like. Something that was kind of only for hobbyists. Suddenly someone's made a multi gazillion dollar company. And similar to like, you know, companies like, um, more close to home, like Segment, um, who, uh, obviously built a multi billion dollar company on the idea of like essentially tag management and, and, and like an open source analytics.

implementation library. They don't even offer the analytics themselves. They help you implement like tools that we've been building. It's like, would, would I [00:36:00] have ever bet that there would be a billion dollar company off that? Like, hell no. Otherwise we would have probably built it. Um, you know, and it's, it's just incredible.

And so, I don't know, I just think, um, it can be really easy to get deflated about the number of, Companies that exist, but I, and I, I think often a temptation is to, to overbuild, to outbuild, and it's certainly been a temptation of ours to do more. And, um, I think where, what's continued to amaze me is by doing a smaller part of the problem, um, you can find immense success and, uh, Yeah.

And I just think as well, like, um, yeah, when you're a smaller team, probably the number one advantage you have is the ability to operate, like to just move very quickly and to, to chop and change very quickly. And, um, you know, it's just like having a tiny little speed boat against a big oil tanker. It's probably a bit of a cliche metaphor now, but [00:37:00] you know, these, these companies, they They, they, they are just so slow to respond to certain changes.

And, um, when you're a, when you're a smaller company, you can get out of their way and focus in your own lane and, and still do very well. And, um, and you can use that to your advantage, I think, tremendously. Uh, so, so, yeah. Um, yeah, I think all of those things are sort of. Helped us just, you know, keep building and growing along this, this journey.

And, um, I also would say like, you don't have to build a billion dollar company. That's not necessarily everyone's definition of success. Um, I think more now with the, you know, the creator economy and all of this, like. There's a tremendously exciting movement of people that are like, they just want to do something they really enjoy and work on stuff with people they enjoy working with and they want to make a healthy income, but they don't necessarily [00:38:00] want to be billionaires.

Like, that's, that's perfectly fine. It's probably fine to just want to be a millionaire. It's perfectly fine to want to earn just a salary, but do what you love. Like, um, And I think, you know, I think for too long, people's definition of success has been to be the Facebook of whatever market, to be a unicorn.

And like, God, like that, when you actually think about what it takes to do that and the sacrifice and trade off you have to make as an individual or as a team of people to, to build a billion dollar company, like. That is, there is such significant trade offs on the human side, I think, that it often gets lost in, um, wide scale tech media reporting.

Jon: Yeah. I think you're right there. I think that's a massive thing that, and that's why I really like the indie hackers community, because like you said, it's the idea of people looking to have the [00:39:00] ownership and make a living. It's not about get rich quick schemes. It's not about, okay, I want to have the next Google, the next Slack, things like that is that it is about creating products and projects and software and things that, like you said, the speedboat analogy does work because you look at Slack as a best example of that is that I, when Slack came in, because I've kind of got a history in web development as a tester, Slack was a massive game changer when it came in.

The idea of going, okay, let's move it away from dinky little instant messaging apps and email as the two kind of, that you look at. It kind of changed the game. Now I hate it. Now, when I join a selection, I go, right, well, how much do I have to mute here? Mute, mute, mute, mute, mute, because it's so much noisier.

The same problem you had with email to start with. That's why it was good in the beginning because it wasn't just a wall of noise smashing you in the face. And so you look at those like early Slack versus on it. Obviously, I'm sure the people that got shares in Slack are very happy with how that [00:40:00] success was done, but as a consumer, I don't like it as much now.

And I'm sure there are a lot of people who are there early on that don't like what it's become potentially, or don't like the lack of agility with that software, because you can't, cause you've got corporate deals and you've got people requesting certain things and you've agreed to certain things. And there's a lot more demands up from shareholders.

It is better. And like you say, is that your biggest strength as a company or size is that you can talk to your customers and you can go, right, okay. They don't want this. Let's not waste time on that. Let's change direction. Let's do this. Let's grow it out. And that whole, how many customers have we got versus them?

And how much money have we got versus them? It doesn't really work out in the same way. And it isn't a definition for success, even though it's easy to look at as the most easy metric to just glance and go, Oh, we're, we're the 400th biggest SAS in this particular market. It doesn't matter. Are you steadily growing?

Are you making a decent living? Are you able to [00:41:00] pay your staff? Things like that are much more important and much bigger and there's so many companies that on paper are successes that aren't because they're Because they're in debt or they have all these agreements and they're limited what they can do.

And yeah, I like what you said about kind of success not being defined by those numbers, because I don't think it is. And I think that that doesn't really bring you happiness. If you just focus on those numbers is why, you know, we're starting a podcast. If we go by, right, well, where are we in the iTunes charts that dictates success.

It isn't, it's going to be about feedback and hopefully some conversations and stuff like that is going to be what we measure it based on, because you're just going to be depressed every day. You look at the charts and go, no, it's still not number one. We're failing again, everyone. Let's start again. Yeah.

So it's a much better way of looking at it. And it does mean that you can kind of. You know, listen to your customers more. And I like that.

James: Yeah. And I, I, I'm not, uh, for one minute saying that no one should set out to build a billion dollar company. And [00:42:00] it's just that I think, I think it feels like the tide is turning a little bit and that like, for a while it felt like the singular definition of success was, have you raised a series A, series B, series C, series D round of funding?

Have you, you know, sold to one of the major tech companies, or have you gone to IPO? And if you've not done any of that, then it doesn't matter. And in, in reality, it's just lots of different ways to define success. And, and that if you don't want to go down that route, you know, I hugely respect so many of the businesses that have, charted their own course, you know, um, companies like Wistia, um, and you know, I, I guess Basecamp are probably the synonymous ones.

I know they've had a rocky ride with their reputation over the last year or so, but, um, uh, and, and Wildbit as well, who make a bunch of cool [00:43:00] tools. And, uh, there's, there's a lot of really cool, inspiring companies that have I mean MailChimp as well, like a phenomenal business and raised little to no external funding and have built fantastic companies.

And, and often these companies have incredible, and I just don't think it's a coincidence. These companies often have really good, um, sort of a really different kind of vibe of working at and, and, um, reputation for what they're like to work at. Um, you know, and it's less about growth at all costs and, um, it's about some balance.

And I, I just think that that trend is only increasing where, you know, people, uh, People are human, humans, and humans have lives, they have families, they have, uh, hobbies, they have [00:44:00] interests, and they, they, they don't all, uh, subscribe to the, this sort of Silicon Valley idea of billion dollar, you know.

Success. And, um, but that's fine if you do, if you want to do that, fine. But like, it's not the only way.

Jon: Yeah. No, no, no, that's fair. I think that's, that's the kind of a good point, isn't it? That the benefit is that there's different avenues to take. It's not that there's now one's better than the other. It's because you go, okay, good.

It's not just, this is the one route. It's that you've got different choices. Yeah, it's a good time. Yeah. That's a good point. Actually. Cause obviously you've, obviously it's probably not just the three of you from high school anymore. So where, so now how can I, how many people have you got in the company now?

James: Well, yeah, we're still very small team. Um, I think we're about 12 people. So, um, we're still very, very lean. We obviously work with quite a few, um, freelancers and contractors as well, but like the core team is still, still very, [00:45:00] uh, very lean. And, um, But it, but, you know, I'm always amazed at how much we achieve with such a small team.

So, yeah.

Jon: I worked with strictly in my, specifically in my mind about this, is that I worked with the CEO before who as the company grew, he didn't have a very good way of letting go and he micromanaged some very good people out the company, both of that. So how do you cope as a CEO, as you grow even just a 12 people, and as you deal with kinda freelancers.

How do you cope with that kind of, you know, handing over responsibilities and potentially taking a step back from certain things? How have you kind of approached that?

James: Yeah. Um, well, I think, I think one thing to be clear on is like, I've, I've made a lot of mistakes over, over the years, and I think very hard for anyone to walk into running a business.

and Get It All Right. And, um, and, you know, I, I speak [00:46:00] to a lot of other founders and especially those that are doing it for the first time. Like, it's really tough. And I think with, with the world of Sass in particular, like, People are often, well, if they're anything like me, then they've been a product person, they've been a designer, and they live in sketch or figma.

And naturally, like, if you do grow your team, you start naturally absorbing the responsibility of having people to look after and keep, you know, manage and deal with. And, um, and, and I, I think for a very, very long time, I, I struggled with this, that, that juggling of, you know, it's, it's not like you go one day from being, in schedule day to the next day of you're managing 10 people.

Like, um, you gradually do it and it often starts with one [00:47:00] and, and that's in some ways harder because you've got to juggle like You know, you've still got, someone's still got to design that landing page. And then you've got to manage that person. And the headspace you have to be in to design, like, a feature in the product, versus, you know, helping someone on board into the company.

They're just so different in terms of their, the parts of your brain that need to do those two things well. And there's that, um, I'm sure you, you've come across, uh, Paul Graham's essays and he's, uh, he's, he's got an essay called, um, I think it's called Manager Versus Maker. And it kind of, I, I think it sums up the, the challenge very well in that you, you're either on a maker's schedule or you're on a manager's schedule and everything's very hard if you try and blend the two.

And so one of the things. I've tried to do for a very long time is have [00:48:00] days where I You know, and I think the other thing is that I was always finding that whatever I was doing, I was feeling guilty about not doing the other thing. Yeah. So if I was designing a landing page, I'd be like, Oh God, Oh God, no, I haven't done those 10 things.

And then if I'm talking to someone and having a catch up with them, I'm like, Oh God, the landing page. And so, and that's just dry. That's just enough to drive anyone mad. So I, uh, I, for a while, have like tried to divide my week into like, I have Mondays. I try to keep All of my meetings are Mondays and Tuesdays.

And, and, and then I have, I, I just, like, those two days are quite hectic, but then my, the rest of my week is, is much more open for, for thinking, for deep work. And, and I think that has been a really And trying to encourage that as early as possible in the company I think is quite a good thing and it certainly works [00:49:00] better if you can encourage everyone in the company to do that because then it's a bit more tricky when some people have their Friday as their day of meetings and you're doing your Monday.

Yeah, you need to have that

Jon: lined up a bit don't you, otherwise that doesn't work.

James: Yeah, and it is tricky and there's always some compromise, but, uh, but that's been part of it. And then, and then I guess, um, Increasingly, I've been realizing that as you get to, I think, the 10 person mark, it feels like quite a tipping point in terms of the company needing more deliberate guidance and focus and, and a more, more established role of like, leadership.

And, and, um, and I think for a while, like, I mean, I have to admit, I think for a while as, as founders, we all kind of felt that like, Well, no one really needs to be full time, like, guiding things, you know, we gotta get stuff done. We've gotta build things. We've [00:50:00] gotta ship things. And so, it was always felt that, like, there wasn't, you know, at least my amount of head space on that stuff was always very small.

And I always struggled with it because it's like, if you design a landing page, you ship a landing page, and everyone can see you've done that work. Leadership stuff and setting direction is like, you can think for days and have nothing really to share and just be tossing a problem around in your head and trying to figure it out.

And you can have like 20 conversations with other, uh, founders, mentors, whatever, and not have much to show from that. That's like a conclusion. And it's very hard to justify that work. But I think. If you're not doing that stuff, then it's like this very important, but not urgent work that that has to be, be happening to, to guide a team.

And I think that that just [00:51:00] increases in importance as the, the team and the company grows. And so, yeah, I, I, One of the things I did was, one of the most impactful things I've done is work with a coach to help me. People told me to do that ages ago, and I thought, nah, whatever, like that sounds like, you know, nonsense.

And, uh, I have to admit it's one of the best decisions I made because it gives me, You know, a few hours every other week to voice stuff that's on my mind, get it out of my head, and helps me sort of reset my priorities. Um, also brought in some help in terms of, like, operational stuff, and they've helped me, like, prioritize things within the company, and importantly, get my act together on hiring to help hire people into roles that, like, that I had been doing previously.

So, um, there's been quite a deliberate effort to like, fire myself from like, James should not be [00:52:00] designing the product. James should not be managing the product roadmap. And it's not so much that it's like, I think in reality, it's not been so much that, um, Like, Oh, James, it would be nice if you let someone else do that.

Now it's more being that like, James, you're screwing all this stuff up because you can't do it all anymore.

Jon: You much energy, right? You can't do five jobs well.

James: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you, you kind of can when you have to, uh, when you're three people, because. When you're three people, you like, don't even need to talk to each other.

You sort of like make a, like a face gesture and you're like, Oh yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah. Okay. Do that. And it's like, you're just so, you know, you don't have much communication overhead, but when you, even when you're like 10 people, you're like. The number of like, you know, that diagram like nodes and you draw the lines between all the nodes and it's like,

Jon: yeah,

James: the amount of stuff that needs to be coordinated becomes so huge.

And so, [00:53:00] um, yeah, like I, yeah. And, and yeah, exactly. Like I, I couldn't, I realized it was getting to a point where like, Everyone realizes getting to a point where I can't continue doing all those jobs. And there's other people in the company have been struggling with those same things. And so, yeah, I've been trying to get out of the, well, hiring great people in who can do those jobs better than me.

And, um, and, uh, And importantly, trying to let them get on with it too. And I'm paranoid about micromanaging or getting too involved with people and not letting them do what they need to do. And I think as a product person, as a design obsessive, that's something I struggled with for a very long time. Um, but I think increasingly I've just taught myself, I've realized for myself, partly from the coaching that like, What I want to do is not be the best designer in the world or be the [00:54:00] best product manager in the world.

I want to lead a good company and I want to be better at that. And, and that has been very clarifying for me to say like, James, just step away from the product, step away from this and just let someone else do it. And, uh, and, and that's been helpful. And I think honestly, in most things when we're managing a team, like Things get a lot easier when people are clear with themselves about what they do want to do and what they don't want to do because then it becomes a lot easier to, to, to make people more successful in their own roles, you know, and in their, in their own journeys and what they're, what they're doing.

And I found that for myself, but I find that now with, with the rest of the team, like so many of the problems with, with, with team stuff is, Well, one of the problems is often communication, but another is that people are in roles that they don't fit with. And, you know, they came in for this, and [00:55:00] they realize they don't want to do that anymore, or the company's needs for that role have changed, and they It's not necessarily a personal thing, but it's just like, you know, if someone's in this role and the company needs something else, then like, you're not going to help that person succeed in their career.

And that person is probably going to struggle to help the company succeed doing that role. So it's like, how do we shuffle things around and make things work better for everyone? Um, uh, so yeah, I don't know. I think that's maybe, maybe me rambling on a bit too much, No, no,

Jon: no. It's interesting because what you covered there was something that is a big part of what often isn't talked about when it comes to starting a company and growing a company is that, like you say, you don't do everything perfect first time.

You learn from other people. You, it can be difficult, like things like letting go of people. I gave the example of micromanaging people before, and it's something that I think it is a big thing to let go of. Like you say, it grew from three people, but you've done these [00:56:00] key things that have driven a company and grown a company.

It is difficult to then just go, somebody else can do this as well as I've done it before. And so your head goes, I'll just keep an eye on it. I'll just ask him a question. I'll do that. And it, and it can't be easy to kind of really cut that cord, let that trust grow. Cause trust is something that is an organic thing that has to be given room to kind of establish itself and have those relationships form.

And when it's something like a company where it's something you've put so much time and effort into. That must be a tough thing to do because it's not, it's not a natural thing to do. Really. What we tend to do is when we care about something, we've grown swing, we've put so much time into it. You want to kind of keep it close, keep an eye on it and keep that control.

So hearing you talk about the kind of the struggle to get to that point to go, no, no, I've hired them for a reason. I should let them do that. Then that's not your role anymore. Cause like you say, is that when you're a CEO with three people, you're not just being a CEO, you're doing everything. [00:57:00] You're doing all sorts.

When you get to a point where you've got more people and people doing those jobs, CEO becomes more of the job really, is like you say, running a company. And it's interesting that you're resistant to having somebody kind of take that role or run the company and kind of, it's easy going to go, it'd be fine.

We've done it fine so far. We don't need to have somebody specifically doing that, but evidently you've realized that you benefit from having that and you've made that effort to kind of cut yourself off from some of the roles you've done before. And it's interesting to hear that. Yeah. Like I say, you don't hear that It's a massive part.

It must be something that every CEO must go through, especially for a startup.

James: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think, um, I think, I think it was so like, it's so, I find it so hard to talk about, uh, anything in, in like running a company in isolation because everything's so connected. But I, I think, um, another thing we, we learned.

The hard way through, through building the [00:58:00] company to date is that, um, like making mistakes when you're hiring is just so, so costly, um, because, you know, we, we've hired people that just haven't been right in the past and, you know, wherever, wherever, you know, for all sorts of reasons and, um, Especially in the early days, you know, we're excited of building this company and everything's new, everything's fresh.

And the opportunity to bring people on board is, especially if you've got some cash in the bank, as we did, um, well, as we do have some cash in the bank, but I mean, like when you got cash in the bank, There's a huge temptation to hire. And I think, especially when you've raised money and things that, um, you know, there's this, this, you know, people investing come when investors make investments, they don't invest in you and expect you to keep all the money in the bank account and just look at it.

Yeah. [00:59:00] Um, so, Yeah, and I think in our early days, we, we sort of were just so naive around how to build a, you know, we could build software, we couldn't build a team or a company. We didn't get, we didn't know how to do that at the time. And I think we made a lot of mistakes. We didn't have the experience of, of making those mistakes.

We didn't talk to enough people that had made those mistakes. And, and we ended up bringing people in that, you know, were keen, that liked the company and liked us and we sort of brought people in that we thought were smart but didn't necessarily know what role they should go in. But like, as long as they're smart we'll find something for them to do.

And I think, I think that was just a recipe for, for chaos because, um, Well, well, sometimes people were just not the right fit in terms of the culture and, and their way of thinking, um, and, and, [01:00:00] and what they cared about, um, which makes it, then, then you end up, you know, you being on this speed boat compared to the old tanker.

But if you're bickering on the speed boat, you're going all over the place. And, uh And yeah, and also just not having structure in the company where people know who to talk to about what. And, um, and I think, I think having made a lot of mistakes there, we've become very cautious with our approach to hiring and very structured and very process driven around hiring to a point that I think often people are very surprised at for a company of our size.

Um, but, but we, it's, it's, honestly, it's so critical. And, uh, and I think however costly it is to run an extensive hiring process, the cost of Hiring the wrong person is far greater. And I think one of the things I'm most proud of today is just [01:01:00] how phenomenal our team is in terms of how hardworking they are, but also how well they gel together to just come together, you know, when times are tough as they often are.

You can Fight amongst yourselves or you can pull together and work through things and time after time the team does that. And, um, and, and, and I think with, with firing yourself from roles, you have to have that trust that like someone's going to do the job better than you could. And, uh, and, and if they don't, then they're going to learn and they're going to get better and they're going to keep getting better and they're going to keep evolving.

And time and time again, like I just amazed that like, People we've brought on that I thought I was good at product, but actually, God, there's so much I didn't know. And this person teaching me a lot now. And, and, uh, and yeah, and I, I just think like a lot of, yeah, a lot of people sort of, in terms of, [01:02:00] again, measures of success, a lot of people state that team size is a measure of success.

And, um, again, I don't, I don't really buy into that at all. Like, you know, I, I think. I think you, you want to, like, I've always thought trying to keep the team as, as lean as possible for as long as possible enables us to keep moving fast. And a smaller group of really smart, hungry people can often do a lot more and can often be a lot more ambitious.

than a team double that size. Um, and, and, and yeah, and I, I, I just, uh, I, I think, I think just trying to be, yeah, just being really aware of, um, how important it is to, to make the right hires is, is just a really critical, uh, sort of skill. process to have in place. There's a book that's really helpful or that really helped me called Who.

I think it's like the Who Methodology, [01:03:00] W H O. And, um, and it's, uh, it's a little bit old school, I guess you could say, but it's, it's very taught me a lot. It was recommended to me by another founder. And, um, and, and it's, it's just a really valuable kind of process that even if you don't follow it. You know, piece by piece.

There's a lot to take from that around how you approach interviewing people and saving the candidate like from a laborious process that doesn't go anywhere and saving yourself from investing too much time in people that probably that may not work out. And yeah, very valuable stuff in that. So I know if I was going to say more on it, I would just be reeling off stuff in that book.

So

Jon: that's what I was going to ask, but that's good to have a resource to kind of point to and say that that book because It's something that I think in tech, I've felt that recruitment is often seen as easier than it is. And it's not [01:04:00] given that attention. So the idea that you've learned that that is so important this early on, and even the company being that size, it's quite interesting to hear.

Cause I've, some of the interview processes and some of the recruitment processes for tech jobs vary so wildly in sometimes just go, Yep. You seem nice. Come on board. Other times it's four different interviews with different exercises and tech tests and stuff that really don't prove anything that contributes towards the day to day life.

So kind of good to hear that there's kind of different alternatives and people looking at the balance of that, because it is a critical thing that I think people do overlook quite easily. And it sounds like you've learned that lesson in the past, that if you don't take that seriously, you can really backfire because you know, it's, It can be tough because if you, if you end up, if the process isn't there and it's not strong enough, you end up with people who are in the wrong role for them without that being their fault.

And so it becomes a really awkward situation because you as a company, you want to support that person and want to be able to, you know, be [01:05:00] there and be a good employer, but. If that's not the right fit, it can be a very difficult situation to solve. So it's definitely a key thing for companies to spend that time on.

James: Yeah, a hundred percent. And that, I also, I also just think it's such a, such a small world, like, and I think a lot of companies treat their hiring process with without the care and respect that it deserves. And I think I've always felt that, well, we've sort of got a saying that like, everything we do is marketing.

And I don't know, I'm not sure that we came up with that. But like, I do believe it 100 percent in that every single person we speak to, whatever via email or anything in any capacity within the company, um, Including the hiring process is an interaction someone's [01:06:00] having without with our company and they can come away from that feeling like they've been treated like a number in a system, a ticket or whatever, or an anonymous like entity, or they can come away feeling like they've been treated with respect and communicated to.

And, you know, I, I. I personally have not really been through a recruitment process having done this thing. Of course, you came from there, you're that far beyond. I do, but you know, I have family and I have friends that have gone through, through the, the, the terribly stressful anxiety inducing time that is looking for a new job.

And there's, you know, when, when people go to interviews, they get, terribly nervous and focus on trying to learn about stuff and trying to do begin the best impression they can. And the number of times people do that or get excited about something like that, they turn up, they go back and then they don't hear [01:07:00] again.

They don't hear anything again. They don't hear even a, sorry, this, this wasn't right. Like, At the very least, like, communicating with people that there is a process, that there is a timescale, that you're in the process still or you're out of it. Like, all of those things, they seem so small, I think, sometimes to companies, because all that matters is hiring that right person, but there's the other, like, 99.

9 percent of people that are in that process that Could come away with a slightly more positive impression of, of your company. And, um, so I might say it's not worth it. It's not, doesn't have ROI, but I kind of think that one of the reasons that I like to run a company is that. Not everything's about the ROI.

Sometimes it's just about doing the right, right thing. And as much as we can, I'd like to try and instill that in the company. And, you know, we don't always get it right, but I think that's just an area where I'd [01:08:00] like to think that we do.

Jon: Yeah. And that's fine. It's funny making the effort in these areas makes a difference.

Cause I know that I'm somebody who is definitely, if I know somebody who has been through the interview process or works there or something and have positive things to say, That carries a lot of weight. If they have negative things to say, that carries even more weight. And so having that idea of, you know, every interaction you have is a reflection of the company.

It is. And it does, people talk, people, it can be a very tight knit industry where if you're looking at different people in different roles, they talk to each other, they go to meet ups or they have friends. And it can be the difference between getting the right candidate or not, because people might just hear and go, I went through this before and they were, like you say, they didn't get back to me or interview was too rigid or things like that.

And it is a tough process for everyone. I know people who have. who won't look for new jobs because the anxiety of job searching and interviewing is such a big thing. So making an effort to make that more copable and make it a better [01:09:00] experience for everyone makes sense. And I think it does reflect well on the company.

If they take that effort to treat people as people, which sounds insane, the idea that some people

James: don't. It always helps. Some

Jon: people don't. Some people, some companies don't. And it's a bit, a bit mental to me. It's not something that I really kind of understand. Sometimes you go, Oh, it's such a core thing.

You need people to work for you. Why would you not treat that process with respect? Treat the people like people is. Yeah, no, it's good to hear that. I'm going to, I'm going to veer off slightly, largely because

James: Veer off for all you like.

Jon: Thanks. The producer was on the call today. He messaged me going, you have not covered any of the topics that we've talked about in the past,

James: so for

Jon: me, I want to make sure that at least I'm going to veer off wildly because I don't want to kind of keep you too long.

The one thing I really want to talk to you about is Screenshow. It's when I saw on, you mentioned, I think it was on, on Twitter. I think I saw you talk about it. I'd like to know what that process was. Cause it sounds like a really interesting, I don't know, a micro project. I'm not sure what it is to you, but I'd like to hear from your point of view, where it [01:10:00] came from.

James: Oh, that's, that is definitely veering off on a curve ball there, Jon. Yeah. Uh, no, yeah. So, um, so I go squared. One of the things we've been doing this year is really focusing, as I mentioned earlier, focusing on our SAS customers, and we really believe that the products we're building can help SAS customers more than more than they can help a lot of companies.

But we, as individuals, as a team, really We run a SaaS business and we feel we can connect with what other SaaS companies are going through very well, particularly companies like us, like zero to 20 kind of team members, um, especially customers with, uh, companies with, You know, going through building that winning their first customers.

And, um, and we really, we really feel we're building products that can help them, whether it's, uh, winning new users, understanding [01:11:00] their users, um, providing good support to their users. We've got, you know, our, our platform helps you do all of that. Um, and having said all of that, though, when you're building those tools, it can still be very easy to get into the mindset of like, the person building the tools and, and not the user of the tools.

And whether you're a designer, whether you're an engineer, whether you're in a marketing role, it's very easy to become extremely insular, especially with all of us, You know, working remotely and, uh, talking to each other on Zoom, you can end up just talking to the team about all of these things and you can end up like building up these imaginary ideas of like who you're trying to help.

And so at the start of the year, one of the team, um, Matt, he, He threw a bit of a [01:12:00] random idea out, like, I think it was in one of the first weeks of the year. It was like, I would propose we take a day out and all try and build a SaaS company ourselves and put ourselves into the shoes of what our customers are going through

Jon: in

James: one day, uh, we'll call it launch day.

And, uh I know everyone on the team freaked out. It was like, uh, what? That sounds ridiculous. Um, and so yeah, we popped it in the calendar and we thought, well, you know, it may be a complete disaster, but let's find out. Matt, you give us a schedule for the day, tell us what we should prepare, and we'll go ahead and do it.

The main instruction was just like, try not to spend too much of the day thinking about a name or an idea and just like, try and, try and see if you can get something off the ground in a day. And uh, so everyone, everyone on the team like, went away. [01:13:00] Whatever your role on the team was, like, you, you, like, it wasn't really optional.

Everyone, started that morning and they had like a domain of some sort and an idea and the goal was to try and get something off the ground by the end of the day. And, um, and yeah, and my, my idea was, well, it was, uh, it's what we use internally already where, um, And I'm sure a lot of listeners will have stumbled upon this too, where, um, you have a website and you want to sort of show a screenshot of your, your product.

And I know for us, like, we've always had this headache of like taking screenshots of our product. Because, like, the product's always changing, and if you're working on the product, like, oh, you add a new button here, or you change the color of the logo, whatever. And, uh, and so we built a thing that was like, it basically automatically, um, screenshots specific screens of our product, um, on a, on a recurring [01:14:00] basis, and saves them into, uh, Uh, like a S3 bucket, a specific, uh, URL.

So then we just put like that URL is like the SLC of an image in the site. And it's always an up to date version of the product. That's the idea. And for the most part it works. Um, so we have, we have this like internal tool that we built, uh, or, and, and so on the day I was like, well, I wonder if like, we're not the only company that, that wants that, like, maybe there's other people out there that want that.

And so I. basically was like, how am I going to build a website? How am I going to pitch this? How much did it cost? Like, does anyone care? And so, yeah, I used Notion. I used a thing called Super, which helps you turn a Notion page into a website. Um, I found a tool to capture leads. I, um, shared the, and I, so I wrote a value [01:15:00] proposition and stuff.

Uh, put some indicative pricing, uh, around it. Um, and shared it on Twitter. I put it on IndieHackers. I put it on probably LinkedIn or something. And we started capturing leads. And then I sent like a typeform survey out to the leads. Um, and, uh, ask for feedback, like, or, you know, tell me more about the pain point.

What's your role? Like, when did you last have this issue? Like, how much would you, would you be able to pay X amount for it? Like, um, I don't know, all sorts of questions. And truthfully, like, after, like, by the end of the day, I, I I think it'd actually been one of the most popular things like I'd shared on the internet in a long time and I'd built a fairly substantial, uh, I'm struggling to remember the numbers now actually come to think of it, but like, um, there was, I don't know if I quite got to a hundred, but like, there was definitely pushing towards that, [01:16:00] that, um, in terms of like people who had pinged me about it and, and dropped their details.

And I, I think I'd gotten a good like 20 or so responses on typeform, um, with feedback to further the idea, um, which is exciting. And, uh, the only thing is trying to take it to the next step because we did launch day for a day. And, um, and now we're trying to, we're actually trying to pencil in the next, the next launch day.

And I think this time we're actually looking at making the launch day Uh, more public so that it won't just be the team, but more people getting involved. And so we want to encourage more people to do this and become part of it. So, uh, that's exciting. And hopefully launch day next time, maybe I can try and like do more on my screenshot thing and see where it goes.

But, um, but yeah, it was very exciting for a day. I think the whole team got really energized from it, but it also. Bringing it back to the original [01:17:00] goals of the day for us was like to put ourselves in the shoes of what our customers are going through. Through Yeah. Like what is a founder going through when they're getting an idea off the ground.

And um, and it very quickly showed like, you know, we all had to sign up for Go Squared as a new user. We all had to go through our onboarding for the first time. We all had to be horrified that you had to wait for X, Y, Z or that our join for. Or, you know, and all of these things that like, just, you often blinded to when you're in that like building mindset that customers experience every single day.

And so, yeah, it's a very, I'd encourage. Others listening, I would definitely encourage, um, every now and again, just take a day out and do something a bit wild. Like, hack days, I think, are fantastic. The artificial constraints of giving yourself a day to do something, it breeds so much creativity and sparks [01:18:00] so many ideas.

You can even do a hack hour, even if a day is too much, you can do a hack hour. And we've done that before. And I tell you, it's insane what people can do in an hour. If you, if you tell them to do something, if you tell them you got an hour to do something that you haven't been able to do and chip it in an hour, like the creativity that creates is just It's just amazing.

So I, I think it's really fun and yeah, excited to do another one. And hopefully, uh, hopefully we can get a date on the calendar soon. Yeah.

Jon: That sounds really good. Cause you're right. Like the idea of like a hack day or even like an hour from that is that things like extreme prioritization, isn't it? You can realize how much you faff around and go, I should better do this first.

I'm going to look at this. And

James: yeah, actually

Jon: you go off. Shit. I've got a deadline here, but it's running it. Yeah. Now things that you do differently and how, like you say, how much more you can get done than you probably think you can. You can, cause it's so easy to get nothing done in an hour, in day two.

You have a deadline and have that [01:19:00] goal. That's really interesting. And that launch day idea sounds like I've not heard that before. Um, and this is something that. I saw you post about, and I thought, but firstly, it's a good, it's an interesting concept that in a day you're trying to do that. And like you say, it, it does two things.

It has that creativity, has that fun aspect. It's got that create that, that driver, but it's also got that thing where you've learned about your own product. You've made yourself a customer. You force yourself there because you write in software and in, you know, I think in most businesses. So it really actually, Put your head in your customer's shoes is very difficult to do.

And it's so easy to get an echo chamber going and to kind of find yourself going. We think this is what people want because we like it. We built it. It's not when you first watch someone use your software, you're like, Oh, we do not cater for that in any way. And those things. And so you putting yourself in those shoes is great for that.

And screen share as well. The other thing that struck out to me, stood out to me, sorry. [01:20:00] It looks like a great product. It's something I looked at and went, Yep. That's great because so often you go to like a how to or a guide and you look at it and you go that screenshot is out of date. How relevant is this thing I'm looking at?

How it feels low quality when you go to something and it shows an old screenshot. It's something that implicitly in your head you go, Hmm, is this, is this page something that was written four years ago by somebody? And it hasn't been back to, you don't know. So update screenshots is something that. It can seem like a small thing, but I think it has a, it builds a trust and it builds a good impression with the, whoever's looking at it.

So it looks like it's an impressive software as always. What kind of. It's a little bit annoying as well. When you think about the amount of time people spend going, what's, what's a really good thing we could offer and do. And in a day you went, there you go. I actually know that's actually a good product.

I can actually, that's got legs.

James: Yeah, no, I appreciate that, [01:21:00] Jon. And, uh, yeah. Um, all I can say is stay tuned on, on the product side because, um, yeah, we, we. Part of the challenge is taking what we've had as this internal tool and turning it into something that others can use and I think, yeah, I've been very reassured by people's excitement actually around using it.

And, um, yeah. I think one of the things I've realized is it's quite hard to run multiple SaaS businesses at once. And, uh, you know, got, got my work cut out with Go Squared. But, um, but I think, you know, we've, we've got like some demand there for Screenshow. We've got a product that can be supplying that demand.

And, um, and, and I think, yeah, and I'm keen to sort of see what we can do to get it, get it over the line. And, uh, and yeah, hopefully, hopefully there's something that can, can make some people's lives easier there. That would, that would be, that'd be quite fun. Yeah. That'd be good.

Jon: Like you mentioned earlier, [01:22:00] there's good problems and there's bad problems and having too many good ideas and too many options there.

That's a good problem to have, isn't it? Just do both things. Great. But otherwise you'll CEO of GoSquared and still doing well there. So it's not. I can't even lose sleep over it, is what I'm getting at.

James: We shall see, yeah. I, I don't know, I, part of the reason I do this is I, I love, I love creating new things.

I love, I love building things. I love talking to, to customers. Um, I get a real kick out of, I think everyone on the team gets a real kick out of, Putting something into the wild and seeing people use it, seeing people enjoy it. And, um, and I, you know, I think that really gets us all up in the morning. And, uh, yeah, um, I, I just, I'm always trying to find like, God, can I carve out an hour here to work on that thing?

And I think a lot of people struggle with this. It's like, you know, you have these side projects and these, these, uh, like little hacky things that you've, you've You want to want to be pushing forward like, you know, for me [01:23:00] also, it's like writing on the blog or whatever. And it's like trying to trying to build a schedule where you can, you can put some time into to satisfy those cravings, I think is, yeah, still trying to work on that.

I'm trying to get better at that. But, uh, but yeah, hopefully you can keep chipping away at that and making it a bit better. 1 percent better every day, they say.

Jon: Yeah. I think a lot of people kind of, particularly kind of creative people have that thing about ideas versus time is a big factor in everything we do.

And that thing of going, if we had a list of things you want to do, then there's never going to be enough time to do all those things because I've had to be quite brutal recently about doing it. And. My wife, Jessie has been very good at going, you're already doing a thing, write it down. Come back to it later.

And it's really helped me to get there. I mean, this podcast wouldn't have happened if I did not have written down other ideas and gone, I'll come to them later on. So yeah, like you say, you've got kind of different ideas for businesses and [01:24:00] blogs and content and Nevermind the fact that you're still being a CEO and all that comes with that.

There's a lot to, a lot to do, so that's, that's fair.

James: Yeah, but I, I certainly, um, I think it's definitely, you know, the, the launch day side of things is definitely exciting and it, um, You know, the f like taking a step in the right direction. It's like, I, you know, I'm, I'm talking about sort of, you know, the challenges of continuing something on, which is certainly a challenge.

I, I know a lot of people struggle with just getting something out for the first time, and the, the, there's a lot of fear around. Putting yourself out there, you know, I had fear around sharing the screen show thing because I was like, well, it might be a rubbish idea. People are gonna think it's weird. I'm like, I'm doing this when I've also got GoSquared and, and, um, but it's like, you just, At the end of the day, people, people have a lot going on in their lives.

And if you do something that's silly, like people [01:25:00] might think it's silly today, but in an hour's time, they are going to have forgotten about it and moved on with their lives. So like, whatever fear people have around, like, feeling like they might look like an idiot for putting something into the world.

People, people forget, people will ignore it. The, probably the worst thing is people just will ignore it and not care at all. Um, if people like take a moment out, take a moment out of their day to laugh at something you've done, you've got their attention. That's, that's an achievement. Um, and so, yeah, I, I think it's just like trying to, trying to find, uh, I think boxing time and, um, and, uh, giving yourself a, just putting that time aside is sometimes the thing people struggle with.

Like, you know, people have endless ideas that they, they want to try out and, and rarely get them over the line. And I, I think it's, it's just, um, I, I, I've watched a talk a while ago. Um, there was, It was just talking [01:26:00] about time management and stuff, and it was saying that like, people always say they are distracted, and um, and that when you write the word distraction out, it is the word traction with the word dis before it, it's like, if you want to make, if you want to avoid being distracted, like, Focus on what you're trying to build traction towards.

And whatever that is, like, make sure it doesn't matter like what the tasks are necessarily, but like, make sure your day and your calendar and your time is being put aside for those things you want to make traction towards. And if you're doing that, if it's like 10 minutes, make sure it's just 10 minutes and, and then you can't, you can't moan at yourself.

If you put that 10 minutes aside to push something forward, whatever you achieve, you're still putting that time aside and, and, uh, and that'll help you help you push forward and, and, and challenge those distractions. And, uh, yeah. Um, and hopefully help get, get, get things moving and, uh, yeah, just start small.

I think habit habits as [01:27:00] well. It's like, You know, I've been trying to get a part of working with the coaches, um, also really been helping me think about my, my schedule and my day. And it's just like, I, I used to suck at waking up in the mornings. I used to suck at exercise. I used to suck at all this stuff.

And it's like, Over time he's like, you know, every year people set out their New Year's resolutions that I'm gonna, I'm gonna run an iron, I'm gonna do an iron man, I'm gonna give up alcohol, I'm gonna, uh, eat, be a vegan, whatever, it's like, most people, and myself included, tend to take on too much. at once.

And it's just like the power of like doing a tiny little thing and doing it every day and then layering on from that, like doing, doing five minutes on this every day. Like for me, it's like, I used to say, I'll do five press ups a morning and before you know it, you're doing 25 press ups a morning and you're getting up at 6am and you, it's like all of these things.

I just think like, Over [01:28:00] time, these things all compound and help you become better, stronger, help you grow. Um, and uh, yeah, yeah, I think that, I don't know, I feel like that's gone quite deep. No,

Jon: no, that's good, it's good advice, the idea that we, that it's something that, it is something that we find is helpful where we do set big lofty goals and it's easy to focus on the, the end, but actually those small steps, the idea of just doing, um, Doing something today towards that goals.

It could be something small. It could be a conversation. Could be making notes. Could be writing a blog, any of these things are a step towards that. And once you've done one thing, it's easier to do another thing. And so like you say about the five precepts is a good example of that. Doing a small number.

James: Yeah.

Jon: We'll soon become more because you go, Oh, that felt good.

James: Yeah.

Jon: I felt good doing that. So tomorrow I'll do another five, five. Okay. Might be, I can do 10.

James: Yeah. Good thing. So that's actually,

Jon: that's good. That's good advice. And it's a good kind of philosophy to live by. And also it's good time to end as well.

Cause I [01:29:00] know I've got over the time that I was planning to. Oh, God, we have, haven't we? God, that's flown by. Blown by. It's been a great chat. Hopefully this isn't the last episode of this podcast. And so maybe we'll have it on in the future to cover. Some of the many of the topics I was going to bring up.

I just didn't. So, yeah. Thank you so much, James, for coming on and being part of this first episode, which hopefully first of many. Really appreciate it. Really kind of exciting for us to have a guest come on with such, you know, good story to tell, things to talk about, um, good messages to send and even ending with some philosophy.

That's perfect. So thank you very much.

James: Too kind. Thank you so much, Jon. Been a pleasure.

Jon: And that was our interview with James Gill. That was a really fun chat for me. Um, hopefully it was a good chat to listen to as well. Um, thanks everyone for listening to the, this first episode of SaaSy as Fuck. Um, if you want to follow us on Twitter, we are at SaaSy as Fuck.

Um, if you need a copywriter, then I'm available on Twitter at [01:30:00] wildcardcopy. Um, and if someone's looking for a podcast producer, where can they find you, Alex? Oh, that's at AlexTheProducer. That's very on the nose. Appreciate that. Makes it much easier to remember. Right. Yeah, that was, I think, a good first podcast.

Let us know. What do you say now? Comment on iTunes, leave us reviews. Let us know what you think. Scathing

Alex: reviews. Scathing reviews. Just scathing reviews. Just criticism. And that's it.

Jon: Please sounds good to me. Please. Right. very much for listening. Um, hopefully see you if we have a second episode.

Alex: Thanks Alex.

No trouble, [01:31:00] man.