The Exchanges

Q So why, why do it? Again, you still have a bunch of cash in the bank.

A Yeah. So we had good runway. We had cash in the bank. It was two things. It was, I met Todd Jackson. Uh, we got to know each other, you know, over the course of a few weeks. He was the, you know, former founder. Yeah. First round actually invested in his business. He was a product guy. He, you know, tried the product. He had some of his kind of designer, uh, you know, co coworkers use the product. Uh, he like, he did a lot of diligence in a very short period of time and understood the vision of what we were trying to build. And he, he, Wanted to use like, look, I want to be involved. And I just had a good relationship with them. You know, we just, we just kind of kicked it off. We didn't run a process. We didn't optimize for evaluation per sales. Like, I think this is the right partner. I think this is the right firm. And what it allowed us to do from a capital perspective was just accelerate our roadmap, right? So we're now going to be releasing the iPad product for play this month. We're building out some other products, uh, some other platforms, you know, as well. So it allowed us to double the team and not be overly concerned with, you know, our, our, our burn. So we doubled the team or 20 people now. And I think if we would have done that race towards the end of last year, we wouldn't have been as far along on the roadmap as we are now.

AI assessment note: “It was two things. It was, I met Todd Jackson... accelerate our roadmap”

Q two 82. So it's not like you're getting no traffic and people are hitting the site and it look, frankly, the design king, you know, congrats. This makes sense. You're coming from agency bones, but The site looks like you guys are a much larger company in terms of revenue than what you, than what you are. So when did the paywall go up? How are you thinking about pricing?

A Yeah, I think the, the, we will introduce, I think monetization this year, uh, for sure. Right now we're focused on retention and growth, obviously, uh, from, from, from our users. I don't know if we want to reinvent the wheel when it comes to actually like packaging in terms of pricing, we'll probably look to do something as other design tools in the space have done. Maybe three tiers will most likely be a freemium product. So there'll be a free tier for starters, a paid individual tier. And then a paid tier for organizations and for, and for teams. Um, so that's been the focus now where, you know, getting our SOC two, you know, certification going. Cause we, you know, we're running into those conversations with companies where we've got a few designers inside of a company using it. And then you go down and you start talking to it and legal and, you know, are you SOC two compliant? And so kind of getting, you know, those processes so we can at least begin to, you know, sell up into the enterprise where we're ready.

AI assessment note: “we will introduce, I think monetization this year... Maybe three tiers will most likely be a freemium product.”

Q of the game, less dilution. Check it out today at founderpath.com forward slash products. That's plural forward slash valuations. Again, both plural founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash valuations. So you just mentioned you're focused really on retention today. Many people would hear that and go, he's pre revenue. What does he mean retention? What activation metrics are you measuring right now to define a retained customer or retained user?

A Yeah. So, uh, so depth of usage and retention, uh, I would say are two primary kind of focuses, right? So we've got, we just put the app in the app store at the end of last year, right? In Q three of last year. And as you know, there's a, there's a gate where you can go in, But you can't get full access. It's in an invite only. So we've got about 30,000 people on the, on the list of people who've registered for full access. And we've been batching those people in over the course of the last year. Uh, we've got 11,000 app installs already of the product on iOS. So comparing usage quarter over quarter and then comparing and then looking at retention rates. So we have cohorts emerging in terms of retained users at five, six, seven weeks that are 80, 85% retained, right? So meaning they're doing more than just checking out the product and seeing, oh, this, is this interesting or not? They're actually using it to, to design things and to build things. So what I'm doing is I'm looking right, looking at, at, at those cohorts and mixed panel, and then going in and talking to those people, right? Over the last six to 12 months and say, what's, how are you using the product? What size company are you working in? Uh, what is the size of your product team? What are the biggest hurdles? What do you want? The biggest piece of feedback we got over the last year by doing this was people were l…

AI assessment note: “retained users at five, six, seven weeks that are 80, 85% retained”

Q Very cool. And did you guys just decide, okay, we're going to be even and split at 25 each or what? How'd you have the equity conversation? That's always tough.

A Yeah, it was, it was relatively equal. Um, we started with our own capital. Um, so we started with a million dollars of capital. Uh, Michael put in the lion's share of capital. Um, so that kind of got us started. We're, I think a good position from, from that standpoint, like we can hire people from day one. Um, we weren't really like hardcore bootstrapping, you know, per se. Uh, and then we ended up raising kind of a pre-seed round, uh, on safes and then quickly followed that up with what ended up being our, our, our seed round. Uh, that first round led, which we weren't really looking to do, but after meeting a partner there, Todd, uh, we, we, we thought it was the right thing to do.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it was, it was relatively equal. Um, we started with our own capital.”