The Exchanges

Q Very cool. Um, yeah, and I can see from the site, so your Alexa traffic ring is 30,256 sites linking in. Like, it's clearly a good, I mean, a highly trafficked site for the, the space it's serving. Um, what, uh, take me back to the early days. The Hacker News article was a good example, but is there anything weird that you've done, non-traditional, to acquire customers?

A Yeah. Also, one weird thing we did, we did try to take advantage of the fact that we were a Y Combinator company in a, in one particularly interesting way. So we tried to, we went to Paul Graham again, and we're like, hey, this thing is working. Uh, would you make it a requirement for all of the winter batch of Y Combinator to use our tool? And in return, we will give you a dashboard. They'll know about this, but we'll give you a dashboard that they can share with you that has all of their growth metrics in it. And he was like, sure. Uh, so we built the dashboard. We got all those, all the YC companies on board, which I think was important because that was probably 50% of our growth that month. Uh, and then he never looked at those dashboards ever again. Um, so, so we cut that part of the product, but, um, yeah, we did some stuff like that, that, that didn't scale, um, We also built something called analytics academy, which was really popular. Um, we basically just explained the basics of how to use analytics tools and what the difference between all the massive variety of different tools out there was. Uh, and that also worked really well for sort of reaching that audience.

AI assessment note: “one weird thing we did, we did try to take advantage of the fact”

Q Four people total. Okay. And this was 2012 yet or no, still 20 11?

A Still 2011. And we spent a little more than the next year, uh, trying to build out an analytics tool. And the idea was to compete with Google Analytics or Kissmetrics or Mixpanel. Exactly. And it turns out this is a bad idea too. And the reason is that the space is incredibly crowded. Um, this now plays to our advantage. We integrate with all of these tools. Um, there's hundreds of analytics tools out there. It's also very difficult to sell the value of insights. Um, and, um, the concept was that we were going to be very segmentation focused, which is actually where the name segment came from. Uh, at any rate, we spent about a year trying to get this, trying to get this right. Never really got any customers and our, our cash was dwindling. And so we went and had office hours with, uh, with Paul Graham, head of Y Combinator and basically gave him the story.

AI assessment note: “Still 2011.”

Q How would you say, you know, people sometimes might describe like Zapier also as like the plumbing of the internet, right? Uh, you guys obviously probably get that name as well. What would you say the biggest differences between the two?

A Yeah. Zapier is like a point to point integration tool. So we actually use them quite a bit. Um, and that's like, if you want to take one tool and tie it directly into one other tool, they're fantastic. Uh, we deal only in customer data, and we're much more of a many in two segment with all of your customer data from all the different touch points, and then a one out to many places where you're actually going to use it. So you can think of it as you're more using all these different, you're more using a segment to construct a central record of your customers, uh, and then federating that record out to a bunch of different places.

AI assessment note: “Zapier is like a point to point integration tool... We deal only in customer data”

Q Four people total. Okay. And this was 2012 yet or no, still 20 11?

A Still 2011. And we spent a little more than the next year, uh, trying to build out an analytics tool. And the idea was to compete with Google Analytics or Kissmetrics or Mixpanel. Exactly. And it turns out this is a bad idea too. And the reason is that the space is incredibly crowded. Um, this now plays to our advantage. We integrate with all of these tools. Um, there's hundreds of analytics tools out there. It's also very difficult to sell the value of insights. Um, and, um, the concept was that we were going to be very segmentation focused, which is actually where the name segment came from. Uh, at any rate, we spent about a year trying to get this, trying to get this right. Never really got any customers and our, our cash was dwindling. And so we went and had office hours with, uh, with Paul Graham, head of Y Combinator and basically gave him the story.

AI assessment note: “Still 2011. And we spent a little more than the next year”

Q know us because we went through the program. That's why I got so many uploads. Like, let me still try and kill this. Okay. I'll, I'll put the pricing question on. Hey guys, these are free people. They're not, we're still not making any money from this. Like, I'm sure you tried that line, but like, why, why wait? Nine months to introduce pricing, and how did you introduce it?

A So I was actually pretty convinced by the Hacker News, uh, release, and, and, and the reason is that we didn't announce that we were a YC company until two months after that. So as far as Hacker News knew, we were just a little open source library. Um, and so I think we, we got so much inbound interest that I was pretty convinced at that point. And honestly, the reason why we didn't try to charge anyone for about nine months was because we were just terrified of asking people for money, which is like really bad if you're trying to build a business. Um, so it, it took us about that long to sort of work up the courage. We had a, we had a sales advisor early on, uh, this guy, Mitch, he was fantastic. And Uh, he basically would just coach me to ask for money. I remember going to this one sales meeting, um, one of our first enterprise customers and he's like, okay, you have to ask for a 120,000 dollars a year. I was like, are you kidding? Like, that's insane. And he's like, if you don't ask for a 120,000 dollars a year, then I quit. And I was like, well, I guess I'm asking for a 120,000 dollars a year. So I remember in this meeting, I think it was Xamarin.

AI assessment note: “the reason why we didn't try to charge anyone for about nine months was because”

Q How would you say, you know, people sometimes might describe like Zapier also as like the plumbing of the internet, right? Uh, you guys obviously probably get that name as well. What would you say the biggest differences between the two?

A Yeah. Zapier is like a point to point integration tool. So we actually use them quite a bit. Um, and that's like, if you want to take one tool and tie it directly into one other tool, they're fantastic. Uh, we deal only in customer data, and we're much more of a many in two segment with all of your customer data from all the different touch points, and then a one out to many places where you're actually going to use it. So you can think of it as you're more using all these different, you're more using a segment to construct a central record of your customers, uh, and then federating that record out to a bunch of different places.

AI assessment note: “Zapier is like a point to point integration tool... we deal only in customer data”

Q know us because we went through the program. That's why I got so many uploads. Like, let me still try and kill this. Okay. I'll, I'll put the pricing question on. Hey guys, these are free people. They're not, we're still not making any money from this. Like, I'm sure you tried that line, but like, why, why wait? Nine months to introduce pricing, and how did you introduce it?

A So I was actually pretty convinced by the Hacker News, uh, release, and, and, and the reason is that we didn't announce that we were a YC company until two months after that. So as far as Hacker News knew, we were just a little open source library. Um, and so I think we, we got so much inbound interest that I was pretty convinced at that point. And honestly, the reason why we didn't try to charge anyone for about nine months was because we were just terrified of asking people for money, which is like really bad if you're trying to build a business. Um, so it, it took us about that long to sort of work up the courage. We had a, we had a sales advisor early on, uh, this guy, Mitch, he was fantastic. And Uh, he basically would just coach me to ask for money. I remember going to this one sales meeting, um, one of our first enterprise customers and he's like, okay, you have to ask for a 120,000 dollars a year. I was like, are you kidding? Like, that's insane. And he's like, if you don't ask for a 120,000 dollars a year, then I quit. And I was like, well, I guess I'm asking for a 120,000 dollars a year. So I remember in this meeting, I think it was Xamarin.

AI assessment note: “the reason why we didn't try to charge anyone for about nine months was because”

Q Very cool. Um, yeah, and I can see from the site, so your Alexa traffic ring is 30,256 sites linking in. Like, it's clearly a good, I mean, a highly trafficked site for the, the space it's serving. Um, what, uh, take me back to the early days. The Hacker News article was a good example, but is there anything weird that you've done, non-traditional, to acquire customers?

A Yeah. Also, one weird thing we did, we did try to take advantage of the fact that we were a Y Combinator company in a, in one particularly interesting way. So we tried to, we went to Paul Graham again, and we're like, hey, this thing is working. Uh, would you make it a requirement for all of the winter batch of Y Combinator to use our tool? And in return, we will give you a dashboard. They'll know about this, but we'll give you a dashboard that they can share with you that has all of their growth metrics in it. And he was like, sure. Uh, so we built the dashboard. We got all those, all the YC companies on board, which I think was important because that was probably 50% of our growth that month. Uh, and then he never looked at those dashboards ever again. Um, so, so we cut that part of the product, but, um, yeah, we did some stuff like that, that, that didn't scale, um, We also built something called analytics academy, which was really popular. Um, we basically just explained the basics of how to use analytics tools and what the difference between all the massive variety of different tools out there was. Uh, and that also worked really well for sort of reaching that audience.

AI assessment note: “one weird thing we did, we did try to take advantage of the fact”

Q Okay. Take us back to 2011. So you're aerospace, you're like aerospace at MIT. How the hell do you end up in a marketing and sales tech company? Well, tech stack company.

A Yeah, that's a great question. So both of my roommates at the time were computer science, uh, and we were really committed to starting a company together, and we had a friend from Rhode Island School of Design who wanted to join, but we actually started as a classroom lecture tool, uh, and this makes sense. We were students at the time, and the idea was that we would give students this button to push to say, I'm confused, and the professor would get this graph over time of how confused their students were. Uh, so we were excited about it, and a bunch of professors were excited about it, and we got some funding coming out of Y Combinator Demo Day, And we put it in the classroom and it was a total disaster. Um, and basically what happened is all the students opened their laptops and they all just went straight to Facebook. So fantastic for space for Facebook, uh, terrible for us. Um, so we shut down the product about a month after that fall semester had started and I called back all our investors and said, Hey, what do you want us to do here? This is a bad idea. Uh, and they all said, well, we invested for the team. So, uh, you know, go find another idea and, uh, see if you can make it work.

AI assessment note: “both of my roommates at the time were computer science, uh, and we were really committed”

Q Is that you, by the way? What's your role in the founding team?

A Uh, I, I sort of, So I, I did run product for a little while. My co-founder Ilya also ran product for a little while. Now he runs a specific product team. Uh, there's a product team and, and, uh, Chris Child leads product. So there's a whole sort of fully baked product team now that's really responsible for executing and figuring out what to prioritize. Um, I'm still involved with it, but, um, uh, with the planning part, but really that team is responsible for the priorities and, and execution. Um, Yeah, I mean, it's tough, right? Uh, in particular, we face a lot of challenges with figuring out which integrations to build, because we can send data to about 220 places downstream.

AI assessment note: “I did run product for a little while... I'm still involved with it”

Q Okay. Take us back to 2011. So you're aerospace, you're like aerospace at MIT. How the hell do you end up in a marketing and sales tech company? Well, tech stack company.

A Yeah, that's a great question. So both of my roommates at the time were computer science, uh, and we were really committed to starting a company together, and we had a friend from Rhode Island School of Design who wanted to join, but we actually started as a classroom lecture tool, uh, and this makes sense. We were students at the time, and the idea was that we would give students this button to push to say, I'm confused, and the professor would get this graph over time of how confused their students were. Uh, so we were excited about it, and a bunch of professors were excited about it, and we got some funding coming out of Y Combinator Demo Day, And we put it in the classroom and it was a total disaster. Um, and basically what happened is all the students opened their laptops and they all just went straight to Facebook. So fantastic for space for Facebook, uh, terrible for us. Um, so we shut down the product about a month after that fall semester had started and I called back all our investors and said, Hey, what do you want us to do here? This is a bad idea. Uh, and they all said, well, we invested for the team. So, uh, you know, go find another idea and, uh, see if you can make it work.

AI assessment note: “go find another idea and, uh, see if you can make it work.”

Q Is that you, by the way? What's your role in the founding team?

A Uh, I, I sort of, So I, I did run product for a little while. My co-founder Ilya also ran product for a little while. Now he runs a specific product team. Uh, there's a product team and, and, uh, Chris Child leads product. So there's a whole sort of fully baked product team now that's really responsible for executing and figuring out what to prioritize. Um, I'm still involved with it, but, um, uh, with the planning part, but really that team is responsible for the priorities and, and execution. Um, Yeah, I mean, it's tough, right? Uh, in particular, we face a lot of challenges with figuring out which integrations to build, because we can send data to about 220 places downstream.

AI assessment note: “I did run product for a little while... I'm still involved with it”