The Exchanges

Q So, so what came first? It's, I mean, it sounds like you're trying to help, you said podcasters specific and video creators specifically. Did you start out, start out as a podcaster?

A No, we fell into it. We actually tried to build back in 2015. We tried to build a social audio network. It was think of like Reddit based on audio. So like these forums, um, and threads all based on audio messages. And it was a failed startup. We worked on it for two years, tried to raise money, really did all the things incorrectly. Um, and at the end of that project, we had this little internal tool that took a lot of these audio clips from the startup that didn't work out and shared them on social media. We use that as an internal marketing tool. We actually built it internally, use it ourselves. And when that company folded, uh, we started selling it and that was January, 2017. And, um, we've been running with that ever since.

AI assessment note: “No, we fell into it. We actually tried to build back in 2015.”

Q over a million dollar run rate bootstrap is impressive. So like, let me dig here for a second, right? So when you say, when you say your first hundred customers, it really was just pure outreach and brute force. Actually take me through like what your days look like back then. Was it a LinkedIn search for podcast host and then a LinkedIn message or like, how'd you do it?

A It was a lot of, uh, my technical, uh, Nick is my technical co-founder and he built me this, um, we use the, um, iTunes API to give me a little search dashboard. So I'd go on Twitter and I would try and find people that are promoting their new episode, ideally like their first or second episode. I'd look for their podcast in our little search tool and then their RSS feed always had their email in it. So I'd grab the email and then I had a little template that, um, I was just sending cold emails to people and probably sent in between 30 and 50 every day or two, I would say. And, um, that's how we probably got our first 50 to a hundred customers. And then, um, we started doing some work on social outreach on social media really worked hitting up podcasters on Instagram. They would share an image of their episode and I'd send them a direct message and say, Hey, why don't you turn this image and try it with the video instead with that audio included? So, um, that was probably the first hundred and After that, content marketing really started picking up for us. Um, and then it's kind of just been slow, linear growth every month since then.

AI assessment note: “I'd look for their podcast in our little search tool and then their RSS feed”

Q They're almost have like their own persona, superhero personas, you know, the, the business lady or the business guy. And then you have like the developer, then you have like the person that's like, we'll just growth hack like crazy and has very high empathy levels. Right. So when you look at your, your three on wave, how would you sort of typecast the three of you? What are you?

A Um, marketing and support. So I'm listening to the customer. My goal is to understand what our customers are looking for, asking about what's frustrating them. My job is to take in all that information and relay it to my other partners who are both more technical, um, but also still very, uh, good at a lot of other things too. Uh, but, uh, Nick Fogel, who's my original co-founder, um, he's a former lawyer turned software developer, so he can wear a lot of different hats. Um, and he really, he plays more, um, CFO basically. He's like really high level. He's doing software development, but in the company standpoint, he's really thinking high level about finances and, um, allocating resources, things like that. And then, um, Rob, our third partner, he is front end feature development. He can really take all of this and put it into the product. Um, so that's kind of how us three kind of all work together.

AI assessment note: “marketing and support. So I'm listening to the customer.”

Q well, Nathan, that's a dumb question. You want them to click a link to like Book a demo or to start, you know, sign up for free, but there's a lot of people right now that are optimizing these cold emails, just like reply rate for ISP purposes, right? So were you at, what was your like call to action? What was your number one goal in the cold email?

A So my approach for cold email is, um, I keep the initial outreach very short and I usually try to start with an opening question that I All I'm trying to do is invite a conversation. Like I'm not even trying to get them to do anything in that first email. All I'm really doing is trying to get permission to sell them something they might be interested in. Instead of saying like, Hey, I built this tool. Here's what it does. Here's the pricing in this big cold email. The email would just say something like, Hey, I saw you are promoting a new podcast. Like, congrats on that launch. I know it takes a lot of work. Uh, what else are you doing to promote it? Like, what else are you thinking of? And if somebody really cares about podcast promotion and they're trying to find new things, they'll reply and, you know, and tell us what they're working on to start a conversation. So yeah. That was, that was really kind of my first, um, is really the first goal, and then in that follow-up conversation, that's when I introduced the product, and I'm trying to get them to sign up for a free, our product's always been freemium, so it was always sign up for the free plan, you can create a video, no risk, we'll delete your account if you want us to, whatever, um, and get them to actually try it out.

AI assessment note: “All I'm trying to do is invite a conversation.”

Q like I mean, it sounds like you've actually done what most people would do, right? Which is you build a large freemium base, and the way to generate more revenue is obviously keep that funnel going, but also upsell them additional products to increase your RPO per customer. So you've built new products. I mean, is that the thinking there? And if so, talk to us about the second product.

A Yeah, we, we actually built another product within wave called wave link, which is the landing page for your podcast. Um, so we do have an up sale available there for, um, eight dollars a month. So you can use a custom domain and it's just a nice, easy landing page for your podcast. Um, but subtitle was really the second product that came out of this, uh, when we built our automated transcription tool for wave. That was just for these audio clips. Well, we went through all this work of, uh, generating automated transcriptions and rendering them, uh, in videos using, uh, FFmpeg that we figured anybody can use this for any product, uh, or for any video. It doesn't have to be a podcast. So subtitle was actually, uh, another company that spun out of this that just focused on actual video footage, um, as opposed to audio to video. So subtitle is a second product. And it was just a pretty simple, uh, captioning tool for any video. You upload it, same thing happens, transcribe, and then, um, create a new video with the captions, but, um, that did okay. We got up to like,

AI assessment note: “subtitle was really the second product that came out of this”

Q That's great. And so you've, again, you've done that since 2017. So not, I mean, that's not bad growth at all. Have you done that all bootstrapped?

A Yep. All bootstrapped. We haven't raised any money. We all put, my co-founder and I put a thousand bucks in both. And, um, have just been building it that way. The first year was, man, it was a lot of just a lot of direct outreach and, um, getting this thing off the ground took just a lot of brute force, but we were very lucky in the fact that our product creates content that, um, helps promote the product itself. So we have watermarks and, uh, you know, for our free plans and then even our premium users, like the, the animations that we've created are very unique to wave. Um, so, uh, it really stands out. So word of mouth has really helped a lot too.

AI assessment note: “Yep. All bootstrapped. We haven't raised any money.”

Q with with this is if you look at like consumption of video content on these social networks, especially on mobile devices, a very large, I don't know the actual number, but a very large percent actually happens on mute, which means you have to have a very compelling visual in the 1:02 seconds to get people to actually unmute. Otherwise, these clips are totally useless. How do you approach that?

A The first thing we did was, um, provide a lot of customization so people can use images. The best thing to do is put, um, a headshot of somebody, of the guest, ideally, usually for these, you know, for, uh, interview style podcasts and, uh, make the visuals look really good, really sharp animations, but the big key was having, um, automated transcriptions and captions so that even if it's on mute, whatever the person is saying, identifying multiple speakers and having the words show up as the clip's playing, uh, was really key. So we got that in, um, and people have been using them and, Um, you know, it's a lot of podcasters that don't have an audience. They're really trying to build it. So they're trying to find really unique ways to stand out and, um, you know, get people checking out their podcast for the first time. So that's kind of our core, uh, core audience there.

AI assessment note: “the big key was having, um, automated transcriptions and captions so that even if it's on mute”

Q What is the, what is the number one utility metric that free accounts hit that make them convert to your 10 dollar a month plan? Is it the 10 minutes of video generated per month? Is it the rollover features? Is it the no way, like the no branding reason? That's the main reason people upgrade. What's the number one reason?

A Uh, the number one reason they upgrade is more time. Our free plan is very limited. Um, it can allow people to create, you know, maybe 2:32 clips or so on the free plan. Um, so it's really when they hit that metric and they want to create, you know, three, four, five plus videos within a month. But, um, yeah, our product funnel is, um, it's actually pretty straightforward, um, as far as Uh, every step in the process that when they upload the video there, you know, the chance of conversion increases, but, um, really what happens, uh, the best time is when they upload and create their first video. Like people that go through that, I think we're converting like 25, 30%. Um, and we have, uh, our conversion rates around seven to nine percent. So we have a lot of volume coming in, um, for that type of conversion rate to sustain growth.

AI assessment note: “the number one reason they upgrade is more time. Our free plan is very limited.”