The Exchanges

Q That's great. I mean, that you're actually, I mean, you're modest or you're humble, but that's actually a pretty healthy scale that quickly. So, I mean, how have you added these customers so quickly?

A So at the beginning it was, we did a launch event here in Scottsdale, Arizona, where we are, invited everybody that we knew and tried to scale through our local networks, blasted everyone on LinkedIn, that sort of thing. Um, then we did a product hunt launch. So we had that experience of, uh, of, of getting some, uh, some press there. Uh, we launched an affiliate model. So we've got just over 300 affiliates that have helped up, helped us, uh, sell the product. Uh, and then we started our paid ads. So in Q two, we started doing testing with Uh, different advertising on LinkedIn and Google and Facebook and Instagram. And we got our model down to where we thought it was pretty scalable and then started pumping money in, in Q three.

AI assessment note: “we launched an affiliate model. So we've got just over 300 affiliates that have helped”

Q Interesting. Okay. So ad spend scaling, like a lot of people have this thing where if I just raise, I can just spend a hundred grand a month and it'll work. You're actually are now spending that much per month, but imagine it wasn't just a flick of a switch, right? Talk to me about some of the learning curves on that.

A Yeah, so the ramp went up pretty consistently. When I was on here last year, I think we were spending 30 or 40,000 a month, and we went up to 50, and then 55, and then 60, and as we were doing it, we're constantly measuring our acquisition cost, how many signups per week we have, and then making sure that a huge swath of those customers aren't canceling as soon as they get in the app, um, because that's a challenge that we saw last fall. We brought in a huge wave where we, like, doubled our customer count in a month, and then we saw our churn Spike because we got a lot of bad customers. So we were a little more careful about how we ramped up, but, um, it's just been swapping out better creative and saying what messaging resonates with the customers that are staying the longest and what case studies do we have from, you know, we've got 200 customers doing this particular thing. Let's make a case study out of it and target our marketing a little more. So it's just gotten a little more sophisticated, I'd say in the last year.

AI assessment note: “we saw our churn Spike because we got a lot of bad customers”

Q Wait, hold on, be specific. What is create a few things inside?

A Okay, so four users and four subjects is our metric. Four by four. We've got posters of like a Jeep driving up a hill all over the office. So if they do four by four, Churn is under one percent monthly. It's like a, like .7% monthly, which, which is really where we want to see overall churn trending toward. And so our game is how do we invest enough in customer success to ramp those customers up quickly, guarantee their success. Now, not all of them that sign up or are ready for the tool. So part of ramping up our customer success is identifying, Hey, this probably isn't a good fit for you yet. Um, let's not convert you. Um, so we're, so we're evaluating that.

AI assessment note: “four users and four subjects is our metric. Four by four.”

Q Okay. So let me ask you a question of those five signups. I imagine you frequently get emails that say, Hey, like I forgot about this trial. You just dinged me, like cancel my account. So how do you, one, how many, how frequent is that? And two, how do you make sure it doesn't happen by driving activation metrics?

A Yeah. So inside the app, we're constantly trying to, to, um, educate users about this. So we do have intercom. We have a stream of messages that are going out. So they have a lot of opportunity to cancel. I would say that it was more of a, uh, it was a higher number at the beginning of people that would get charged and want refunds. Whereas now they're pretty aware that they're about to be charged. We know that they're active. We're tracking things like how many subjects they've created, how many users they've added, how many of those users are admins, how many processes they've documented. And so we can kind of red flag an account that has low usage and know that they, uh, would be a candidate for a refund.

AI assessment note: “We're tracking things like how many subjects they've created, how many users they've added”

Q Interesting. Talk to me about churn. What's your churn today and how do you manage it?

A So churn is by far the largest issue because we have a product that is an aspirational kind of product. Documenting your business is something that everyone knows is important, but it's not an urgency unless you're really scaling, really hiring. So we've had some months with zero churn, and then we've had some months with a 10% churn, and it just depends on the audience that we're going after. Our blended percentage is about four percent. It's a, it's something we're, we're working on, uh, improving every day. We started a certified partner program, um, to, to have more handholding for the customers to walk them through that. Um, we're improving our onboarding sequence and using tools like app cues is something we've started to use. Um, but yeah, it's a, it's a, um, definitely forefront of my mind right now.

AI assessment note: “Our blended percentage is about four percent. It's a, it's something we're working on”

Q Okay, so not a, not a huge amount. Um, and then talk to me real quick about the product launch. So, or sorry, product hunt launch. So it looks like you were, um, you got out 448 upvotes, uh, when you launched. What, what, what did traffic look like on launch day?

A Traffic was good, but at that time we had no traffic to the website. So any traffic would have been a huge bump. So, you know, it was, it was exciting, but I think more than anything, we got some influencers and people reaching out that said, I like this. Let's talk. It got us a few affiliates more than customers. One thing we had tried at that time is we took off the credit card gate. So currently, and, and, uh, before that we had a credit card gate up for our trial, you put in a card and then you get the free trial at that time for those, that two weeks span, we took the credit card gate off. Um, those customers converted extremely poorly. So we, we, uh, it helped us get the word out, but it, it wasn't a good acquisition.

AI assessment note: “Traffic was good, but at that time we had no traffic to the website.”