Omer (00:10.160)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talk to AJ, the founder of Carrd, a SaaS platform for building simple and fully responsive one page websites.
In 2010, AJ was designing and creating website templates and themes for a living.
Around that time, responsive web design was growing in popularity and it was a skill that AJ wanted to acquire.
So he set out to design and build his first responsive site template.
When it was done, he put it on his website and let people download it for free.
People liked his template, so he kept building more and people kept downloading those templates and using them to build websites.
And then some people started asking if they could pay him for additional features and support.
So he decided to charge them a one time payment of $19.
AJ (01:16.610)
It was.
Omer (01:16.940)
It wasn't a lot of money, but he'd been doing such a great job creating so many templates and building a following that he was quickly generating six figures in annual revenue.
But by 2015, AJ was bored of building templates and themes.
It had been fun learning a lot of new skills, but he was now ready for a new challenge.
And he was intrigued by the idea of site building software that made it easy for non developers to create websites.
But companies like Wix and Squarespace already had products in the market and he knew he couldn't compete with those companies.
So he looked for a different way.
And eventually he narrowed down his idea to a site builder for really simple one page websites.
And it turned out to be a really good idea that caught on with a lot of people.
Today his business is doing around $30,000 in monthly recurring revenue and is profitable.
In this interview we talk about how he's built a one person SaaS company with no marketing.
And in case you're wondering, it's not a mistake that I didn't mention AJ's last name.
He's pretty much anonymous online.
No one knows his last name or what he even looks like.
But he's a great guy and I had a lot of fun talking to him.
And I hope you enjoy this conversation too.
Aj, welcome to the show.
AJ (02:40.060)
Hey, thanks for having me on.
Omer (02:41.820)
So I always like to ask my guests what gets them out of bed, what drives or motivates them to work on their business.
So what is it for you?
AJ (02:49.580)
Oh, I would say pretty much just the challenge of the whole thing.
We work on a project like Carved.
There are just so many different hats you have to wear and every single day you're putting on a different hat and it's always interesting to see what hat I'll have to wear on a given day.
And.
And yeah, that really just pushes me forward just to keep working and seeing what's out there.
Omer (03:07.670)
And you're a one man company, so you have to wear every single hat.
AJ (03:10.950)
Yes, it's been fun.
Although I do, my longtime business partner from other projects has relatively recently come on to help with some aspects of moderation and stuff because I would literally have no time left if I had to do that myself too.
So the hats are starting to get a little bit too abundant, shall we say?
Omer (03:29.430)
So for people who aren't familiar with Card, can you just explain what the product does?
AJ (03:35.750)
Yeah.
So it's basically just a one page site builder for, as the site says, pretty much anything.
Like a user profile, like for, you know, profile for yourself for your business portfolio.
You know, I've seen a lot of people use it for selling products and stuff and then just pretty much anything that you want to put on the web you can pretty much do with Card.
And I've seen some use cases that I really didn't anticipate at all.
So that's why I try not to just list the things that I know because I know people use it for whatever the hell they want to end up using it for.
So that's kind of cool in its own way.
Omer (04:10.370)
And in terms of revenue, you're doing what, around 30k MRR?
AJ (04:16.290)
Yeah, about 25 to 30 is about where it's been hovering at the last few months.
And it's been sort of on the steady incline, which is good, and against relatively low expenses.
So I mean, it's been profitable since day one, which is great.
And hopefully I get to keep it that way.
Omer (04:31.390)
Love it.
Yeah.
Okay, so let's start the story before any of this happened.
I know your first one of the first products you built was called html5up, right.
And I want to get into that.
But what were you doing before you even launched that business?
AJ (04:49.630)
Sure.
So this would be like late 2000s, early 2010s.
I was designing basically site templates and themes and stuff because around that time I think it was a pretty hot market.
So you could do pretty well for your yourself if you're willing to put in the time to do stuff like that and just sell it, whatever.
And then html5up actually came from doing that.
I had nothing in the way of experience with responsive design.
So I was like, well, I need to teach myself this because that's where everything is going.
So I rolled it, I guess, into also being a project that I could put out stuff on a site that people could download for free.
So if you go to html5up.net, scroll right to the bottom, you will see the very first thing that I ever designed responsively.
So it looks extremely dated by today's standards, but there it is.
And that really kicked off everything else that was to come.
Omer (05:42.600)
Yeah, we were looking at that.
Right?
The mini maxing theme.
AJ (05:47.240)
It's nice in its own way for like early 2010s, I'd say.
Omer (05:51.800)
So were you a designer, a web developer?
What was your skill set when you started out?
AJ (05:58.230)
I guess both.
I mean, I tend not to label myself because I've got this thing about labels kind of limiting you to mentally limiting you to a specific thing.
I'm a developer, that's all I do.
So I did both.
It just had a necessity partly.
But also it was fun just to design, to learn how that works and then also to do the development side of things because, well, you learn different things doing that.
So I did both.
And I guess templates and themes were really a good synthesis of both of those areas of expertise.
And so that's pretty much what it did.
Omer (06:31.590)
Yeah, no, that's a good point.
In terms of labels, that could probably lead to a different conversation, but I think that's a pretty astute kind of observation.
Right.
AJ (06:42.150)
Well, I'm just full of those.
So.
Yeah, not really, that's like my only one, but.
Omer (06:47.550)
Okay.
All right, so how did you build these skills?
What?
Whether it's design or development, are you self taught or was it through kind of college or different jobs or whatever?
How did you acquire all those skills?
AJ (07:01.570)
It was I'd say like 90% self taught, at least on the design side.
Development also, I'd say that I went to school for computer science, although even prior to that I'd already been into programming.
So I pretty much just chose computer science as a degree just so I could pretty much have an easy time in school.
But yeah, it's mostly from being self taught.
And I tell people nowadays you really don't for a lot of things.
Now you don't really have to incur the debt that comes with higher education for some things because the Internet can now teach you pretty much anything you need to know about development or even design to an extent.
And a good chunk of my skills I develop from Just from doing the thing.
So that's really my advice.
Just do the thing.
You'll get better at it.
Omer (07:48.130)
Yeah, I remember, I mean I'm going to show my age here now, but my first computer was a Sinclair ZX81,
AJ (07:55.570)
which was like, yes, that definitely shows your age.
Omer (07:59.090)
And it was like, you know, it was like 1k of ram you had to work on.
And I remember like how excited I was when I got this 16k expander that I could plug in at the back.
But yeah, that's what I do.
Like I remember like going and buying these magazines where they had like code of different kind of programs and I just sit there like copying and typing the stuff up and debugging and sort of, you know, making stuff.
AJ (08:21.460)
Right.
Omer (08:21.820)
And I think that's a really good way to learn.
It's like just, just get in there and just let curiosity kind of just, you know, drive you.
AJ (08:30.020)
Right.
I mean, and just at some point you got to move past theory and get into practice and apply, apply that theory in the real world and see where it takes you.
And I think that's, that is pretty much how I learn everything I've learned and continue to learn.
In some ways that's not good for certain things because then you learn from mistakes that you didn't have to make.
You could have just learned from someone else.
So I mean, I'm not saying that all education is BS or something.
I'm just saying don't be afraid to just get in there and do it.
Omer (09:01.860)
Yeah, it reminds me, there's a great book I'm reading.
Well, I mean actually listening on audible at the moment.
It's called Ultra Learning and it's exactly about this idea of being able to learn things with purpose.
About much more kind of action orientated.
You know.
One guy who became fluent in German in a few months time, I think the author kind of took a four year MIT program and he couldn't get into mit, but you know, they make all this stuff available online and he kind of completed the four year course in like a year and, and actually took the exams as well.
AJ (09:35.180)
Wow.
Omer (09:35.620)
But yeah, really, really good book.
And I was just like, it just kind of inspired me in terms of I have a long list of things that I want to learn and I always think there's not enough time in my life to learn all those things.
And then when you actually kind of think about it the other way and say, actually well, why do I want to learn this stuff?
It's like, well actually I don't need to master the whole thing.
I just wanted to do this one thing, or, you know, if it's a language, I just want to be able to have conversations with people.
Okay, well, maybe just focus on that.
And it's kind of like a manageable, actionable thing that you can kind of get your hands around.
AJ (10:03.390)
Right?
You can learn the first 90%.
Well, maybe 90 is a little high, but let's just say like 60, 70% of something, the critical things, and really get by with that.
I mean, that's why it goes back to the whole label thing.
I think if you obsess over why I want to be a developer, well, then what does that mean?
It means you need to learn, probably.
I think maybe you feel like you have to learn everything when it's like, no, if you just want to make things right, then okay, just learn the skills that you need to go make whatever the thing is that you want to make.
You don't have to learn databases if the thing you're building doesn't use database.
So you can just kind of skip over a lot of things, get to where you want to go by just learning what you need to learn.
Not to get on Soapbox, but yeah, there you go.
Omer (10:47.109)
No, no, no, I was just thinking.
I was like, dude, we could probably just do a podcast just on learning stuff.
Maybe we should talk about that later, you and me.
Right?
New podcast.
All right, so let's talk about HTML5 up.
So you said that it started because you were like, okay, I want to learn about responsive design.
So you created that first theme.
AJ (11:14.710)
Yeah.
Omer (11:15.510)
And then like, what was the plan?
Like, what were you going to do?
Just, I'm just going to create this theme and try to sell it.
Or it was just the curiosity to kind of, what's involved in doing this?
Like, what was the plan?
Or was there one?
AJ (11:29.120)
I don't think there was a plan.
I'm not going to try to retrospectively apply a plan either.
No, no, there was no plan.
It was just, yeah, I'm going to make it.
I'm going to stick it up there, it's free.
If anyone wants it, they can get it, whatever.
Apparently, after, I think maybe after the third design, though, that site actually started gaining some traction.
So that sort of motivated me to make more stuff and beyond that, like, better stuff.
So in a lot of ways, just the traction that site got really fueled me to up my game.
And if you could just scroll up through that page, starting from the bottom, you can just see how both my design and, I guess, development skills as far as front end development goes, really increased over a relatively short period of time because it was like, wow.
People really respond well to this.
And there's something to be said about getting that feedback from users like, oh, wow.
And in this case, I guess it's just the download count is sort of a metric that I could look at and kind of get a feel for, and it kind of motivated me to move forward and do more.
Omer (12:34.840)
Yeah.
AJ (12:35.200)
And then that eventually led to.
I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but that site ended up growing pretty big.
Omer (12:42.440)
And you give away.
The themes are available for free.
Right.
People can just download any one of those.
AJ (12:46.590)
Yeah, yeah, you just download it, use it where it's a Creative Commons.
So, you know, do whatever.
You just have to keep attribution somewhere on it.
Omer (12:53.390)
It's funny, I'm just going through.
I just scrolling up from the bottom of the page and you're right.
It's like, it's almost seeing someone's design skills grow as you look at each of these different things.
AJ (13:02.869)
Oh, it's also the amount of effort I was putting in went up a lot.
You feel, I don't know, it's almost like you will do even better work if you get positive feedback for your previous work.
You know what I mean?
The more people appreciate what you do, the more you want to please them in terms of what you put out.
So it's like a feedback loop and then you just get better and better.
They get a better product, you create better products, and it just keeps going and going.
Omer (13:32.670)
Yeah, yeah.
It's kind of similar to this podcast, like when I started it, like a couple of hundred episodes ago.
God, it's like, I mean, I don't like listening to my voice anyway, and I don't like seeing myself on photos or videos.
Right.
Which kind of makes it pretty restricted life.
But I really cringe when I hear those early episodes.
It's like, oh, my God, that was terrible.
And I think, oh, no, I'm doing much better now.
And probably like, you know, a couple of years later, I listen back to this episode and go, oh, my God, I sound terrible, I sound worse.
But I think there is.
I think if you.
If you sort of think about that and you start to see, it's like, hey, every step I'm taking, every time I try this, I'm getting better and better.
And, you know, from the first few interviews where I was like, you know, I was kind of like reading questions off a script and I wasn't even listening fully to what people were saying.
AJ (14:26.110)
Just try to get through a list.
Omer (14:27.870)
Yeah, yeah.
What am I going to ask them next?
Right.
That kind of thing.
And I remember asking for feedback from people who listen to the podcast, and number of people said the same thing is like, hey, drop the script.
Yeah.
And that was.
For me, it was so valuable.
It was almost like permission to say, okay, I can screw up.
I can kind of forget one question or ask a question I never thought of before the interview.
AJ (14:51.090)
Right.
Omer (14:51.490)
And then eventually you get to a point where it's like, okay, you just have a conversation.
It doesn't.
You don't really need to have questions prepared.
You just talk to somebody and just be interested in what they're.
What they're doing and try to figure out what that story is and then how you can learn from them and.
Right, but it's a process.
Right.
But yeah, you're so right.
It's just like getting an email from somebody or an itunes review, it kind of pumps you up to do more and better for everyone.
AJ (15:17.410)
Yeah.
And over time, you just sort of absorb that energy.
I mean, not to get too hippie dippy.
It just becomes like a part of you.
You just get into this feeling like, I just want to keep making better things, if not for other people, then for myself.
It's sort of this weird sense of feeling like you're actually moving forward.
Omer (15:38.140)
Yeah, yeah.
AJ (15:39.100)
And you're doing it through your own volition from the work that you're doing, the products you're creating or whatever your product happens to be.
Omer (15:45.660)
Yeah, totally.
And no issues with the hippie dippy stuff, man.
It's like, you know, I'm in Washington with the hippie state.
Right.
So whenever you want to come over here, we can kind of go more into that stuff.
AJ (15:56.780)
Oh, yeah, I can go way out there.
Omer (15:58.580)
Okay.
So you've got HTML5 up going, and you're kind of spending more time building these templates, and then the next business you launched or the product was pixelarity.
And so what does that do?
What's that product about?
AJ (16:13.620)
So it is pretty much like the paid version of HTML5 up.
And in many ways, it wasn't really even my idea.
I had a. I mean, it kind of goes back to what I was saying last.
I mean, the user feedback I got from HTML5 up was just great and, you know, motivating.
But also I had people asking, like, hey, is there a way I could use this without attribution?
Because it looks a little weird if I have old credit for some template site at the bottom or whatever.
I was like, okay, maybe send me a small tip or something and then you can remove it.
I'm like, okay, that's cool.
And it got to where that happened with enough frequency.
And at the same time people emailing me, asking questions about templates, but also had people asking for support and if they could pay me for it.
And so I was like, looks like people want to pay me money to do something.
What can I do?
So I basically sat down and was like, what can I put together that kind of meets all these needs, Lets people use this stuff without attribution while also giving them access to support.
In fairness, me getting something out of it because my time isn't 100% free, I have to eat right.
But at the same time add a bit more value on top of that.
And so from all those things I was able to craft pixelarity, which is pretty much it.
You pay a flat amount that gives you a perpetual license to use everything on the site forever attribution free.
And then you choose a plan.
The plan gives you X number of months to access downloads or, and, or support.
And if that runs out, it's no big deal.
You can still use anything you've already downloaded attribution free forever, because the license itself is perpetual.
You're just losing access to support.
And it adds a bunch of exclusive templates that you don't get on HTML5 up.
So it's everything on HTML5 up, plus about 50 or so new templates that you couldn't get with HTML5 up.
So it's a pretty decent deal for 19 bucks to get in at the three month plan.
And that took off really well.
Omer (18:11.910)
So it's 19 bucks, one off payment.
Yeah, it's not a monthly thing.
AJ (18:16.370)
Right.
$19 for the perpetual license and then three months of access to downloads and support.
And again, so if that three months is up, that's okay.
Anything you've already downloaded in that time you can continue to use.
No big deal, you don't have to
Omer (18:28.570)
keep paying, you just kept it really simple.
AJ (18:32.170)
Yeah, well, it's also because I don't like, just it's hard for me to keep track of very complicated things.
So I tend to make things simple for my own purposes too.
It's not all altruistic.
Omer (18:43.540)
So 93 templates on Pixlarity.
And did you design and create all of these?
AJ (18:49.860)
Probably about 70, 80% of them.
And I had another designer help me out with some of the other ones, but with my, I guess, editorial layer at the end of it, just to make sure it kind of fit the feel of all the other ones.
And then I had a couple of coders help me out.
But again, I would train them in the way I would code and then I went in their code after the fact and made sure everything was to my very stringent standards.
So it worked out to be a pretty good deal, and it worked really well.
And I think it gave people what they wanted out of a paid version of HTML5 up, pretty much.
And it's an interesting example of a product that I didn't really conceive of myself.
As I said, it was just created as a way to kind of again, further give what my audience wanted, which was a paid version of this thing that also had some support component to it.
Omer (19:46.280)
And I don't see much on HTML5 up other than you have a banner at the bottom of the page which says, hey, Pixelarity, you can get unlimited access and whatever.
And is that how people were finding pixelarity and people who were choosing to pay were kind of doing that?
AJ (20:05.930)
It's like, yeah, there was that.
And I think when you go download, there's like a, hey, if you want to use it, like in an attribution credit free version of this, go to Pixelarity.
Got it.
There's not much beyond that.
I mean, I didn't do any marketing or any ads or anything like that.
It's just what it is.
Omer (20:22.330)
And how much money did you make or have you made from Pixelarity?
Like, did you get a lot of sales?
AJ (20:28.900)
Yeah, I'd say probably at its peak, I mean, it was about 10, 12k a month or so.
I mean, at its peak, it was pretty good for what it was.
And it certainly, like gave me enough of like a cushion to move on to the next thing, which was a lot more risky and a lot more involved than what I had previously been doing.
But again, it really did give me a nice safety net to move on to the next thing.
Omer (20:54.630)
So how did you come up with the idea for cod?
AJ (20:57.750)
Oh, so for that it was a combination of basically being kind of bored with just doing templates, because at that point, which I think was like middle of early 2015, I think early 2015 is when I kind of came up with the idea.
But I had been doing templates and themes for years at that point.
And at some point you're just kind of like, there's only so much you can do for those.
You kind of have to move on to the next level.
And so I was Thinking of some kind of product I could make that would put all of my skills to use that I had accumulated along the way, which was a pretty decent thing to go back to what I was saying, learning things as I needed to learn them.
At that point I had learned everything from running servers to databases, to backend program, to front end programming, to design the whole thing.
I just wanted to pick a project that would combine all that stuff into one big project where I could really just lean in and just see how far I can go with everything I had.
And I had a few different ideas that I was playing around with.
And then one that kind of stuck with me and ended up being a good fit was the idea of a site builder.
But at the same time I was kind of concerned.
It's like, well, even early 2015 you had these big guys out there like Squarespace and WIX and whatnot.
I was like, I don't know if I want to do something on that level.
I don't think I could with one person.
Which was another kind of prerequisite because I just wanted to see what I could do.
But thanks to HTML5 up actually kind of guided me in the right direction.
Specifically, I had, and I'll just be honest here, back when I was really updating HTML5 up on the regular, there were times when I was just like, I need to just put something up there that doesn't take me too long to make, quite honestly.
So I ended up doing a few one page templates because I was like, yeah, one page.
Because the multiple page things are just a hell of a lot more work.
So I was like, all right, I'll do a few quick little one page things and see, they look pretty, they work nice, and it takes me a couple of hours to make.
And the interesting thing is I was looking at the download counts of those and they were huge.
Those really caught on.
People apparently really liked the one page stuff, which I had no idea it wasn't something that I was looking for.
So I had no idea that that was such a big impact.
And so I was like, okay, what if instead of trying to be like one of these bigger guys and doing everything, what if I just really, really narrow down the scope of what I'm doing to just one page?
Because from a technical standpoint, one page is a hell of a lot easier to deal with than like, you know, a shit ton of pages with just tons of stuff going on, lots of content.
So one page is very simple, very easy to manage for one person.
Me building this thing.
And so it ended up being the perfect fit.
Yeah, okay, I'm going to do a site builder, but for just one page, Sites.
And turns out, in retrospect, that was a great idea.
It not only saved me a ton of work, a ton of time and resources to build the thing, but also just, it turned out to be a good idea that really caught on with a lot of people.
Omer (24:06.200)
What did you build the product in, Michael?
AJ (24:09.880)
I don't get too deep into the stack for various reasons, but it's mostly JavaScript.
Omer (24:14.360)
Wow.
AJ (24:14.800)
Which fits me just fine.
Because if you do, I mean, if you see some of the later templates I did for HTML5 up, they're pretty JavaScript heavy.
Granted, they use jQuery, but getting more into doing vanilla JS type stuff and you can do a lot with JavaScript, it's kind of nuts.
It's just become this weird Swiss army knife of the Internet.
Omer (24:36.220)
So are you a fan of Vanilla JS then?
I am, because I know these days there's so much talk about the cool kids with React and Vue and all of this stuff.
And then the other day I was looking at Basecamp and it was like they have their own JavaScript kind of light framework.
I think it's called Stimulus.
I was like, well, there's still plenty of examples of people out there who building great stuff and they don't have to do more than use some Vanilla js.
AJ (25:07.720)
Right.
So in fairness, when I built Card originally, I wasn't quite as competent in vanilla JS.
So there is still quite a bit of jQuery in there, which, you know, I'm not embarrassed.
Well, jQuery is awesome.
I'm not afraid to admit that.
But yeah, like the framework thing, I've ranted about it on Twitter a few times, maybe a few times too many.
But quite honestly, I don't have a problem with people using frameworks.
And I think frameworks are great.
Whatever really gets you from your idea to actually building something, use whatever the hell, man.
I don't care.
Do whatever you want.
I'm not an ideologue when it comes to that stuff.
I will say, however, that vanilla JS you can do, especially now that Internet Explorer 8 is basically in the ground.
You can do so much with just plain JavaScript now.
You don't necessarily need a framework.
And in many ways I'm a big fan of instead of trying to fit your product around a framework, because frameworks, part of what makes a framework a framework is just.
It's almost like an ideology for how you do things in that context.
Right?
Yeah.
So whatever your idea is for your product, you're having to basically stretch over that framework to get it to work somehow.
So there are going to be times where you're sort of crashing into it because it does things one way and you kind of wish it did things another.
So I'm almost a fan of if you can forego that situation and just kind of build your own pseudo framework for your specific product or project or whatever, if that makes sense.
So you're not trying to fit your idea around someone else's framework, you're building a framework specifically for your idea.
Omer (26:53.430)
Right?
Right.
Yeah.
I have this site project, this app that I built, and it just uses jQuery.
And I keep saying to myself, oh, I should kind of rebuild the front end with React or Vue js.
And then it's like, well, in order to do that, the backend is like flask and Python, so I'd really have to kind of lose the templating kind of piece of that and build APIs around that.
And then I kind of like keep digging this whole deeper and deeper about all this stuff that I should do.
And then the reality is that actually it works, and I could still keep using jQuery if I wanted to.
And, yeah, sometimes you just get caught in this thing about getting excited about the bells and whistles and the technology and trying to do things the way that everybody else is doing them, like, because it's cool, but you don't really need to a lot of the times.
AJ (27:52.770)
No.
And I think it's something a lot of newer developers get hung up on because they're still, you know, they're just getting into it.
They hear all these buzzwords.
Everyone's saying, oh, you should use this, you should use that.
And they haven't quite already acquired the experience to be like, you know what?
No, I'm not going to use that, I'm going to use this instead.
Or I'm just going to use Vanilla js.
It's fine.
Getting hung up on that is a great way to never actually ship anything.
And I've seen so many people do that.
And there are other places you're going to get hung up when building a product, so why get hung up on that, you know?
Omer (28:25.650)
Yeah, totally.
Okay, so you kind of have the idea for Card and you're like, okay, I'm going to focus on one page.
By the way, is it like one page that's the focus, or like, technically it's restricted to one page?
Like If I wanted to, like, oh, can I create a second page?
AJ (28:41.520)
Well, okay, so it's literally a single HTML file.
Like, fundamentally, Card is a static site generator.
I mean, once you get to it, that's pretty much what it's doing, and it's generating a single HTML file for your site.
Now, as far as having additional pages, well, it does have a.
It has a feature called Sections that lets you kind of simulate additional pages within the same single page.
It works well.
And it actually ended up being a funny thing where I added that feature and it ended up being used in ways that just blew me away, which I can get to later.
But what users do with what you make kind of just can really surprise you sometimes.
And that was an example of it.
Omer (29:24.920)
Yeah, give me an example.
What were people doing?
AJ (29:27.560)
For one thing, I originally added just so, like, well, okay, so you want to have a separate little about page on your site.
Okay.
So you can use it for that.
But then I saw people using it for everything from creating modals, like pseudo modals after a form has been submitted.
So you submit a form, and then this thing comes out that looks like an actual modal, but it's actually just a section that says thank you, and you click a button that takes you back.
I was like, wow, I never thought you could do that.
But that makes sense that you totally can.
Or people using it to kind of make presentations, which is weird.
I've seen high school kids use CARD to build school presentation things, which is nuts.
Wow, cool.
I just didn't expect it.
So I won't get too far down that rabbit hole.
But, yeah, just seeing what users can do with what you make is another motivating factor, which that just keeps you going.
Omer (30:24.510)
Well, the one thing I've realized about you is, based on the very long conversation we had before we did even any recording, was that all these rabbit holes, there's usually something interesting down there.
So maybe for the purposes of this podcast, we'll limit them.
But I'm always happy to go down this rabbit hole with you.
Yeah,
AJ (30:47.470)
well, yes, there are plenty more.
We'll avoid going too deep on them.
Yeah, like you said.
Omer (30:51.790)
All right.
So how long did it take you to build the first version of Card?
AJ (30:56.360)
Let's see.
So I came up with the idea in, like, February, March of 2015.
I started work on it that summer because I had to get some other stuff taken care of.
I had a pre.
Pre alpha of just the.
What's called the generator side, basically the static site generator portion of it.
It took About a couple weeks to throw together.
And then from there I had a working pre alpha that I sent out to about a dozen friends by around, I want to say, October.
So it didn't take too long, actually.
And my math is right, it's like five months or so to build the first version.
Now, granted, compared to what you see today, yeah, it's like that thing was super primitive, but it was enough to kind of give people a sense of what I was trying to do.
And I actually got a huge amount of really useful feedback just from having this crappy prototype sent out for them to play with.
And I very quickly, like, discovered, you know, pain points and things that, you know, just didn't make sense.
Things I needed to do, things I needed to add.
Like, for instance, the idea of having starter templates wasn't in at that point.
In fact, it wasn't even something I was considering until my friends are like, yeah, it's great, but I'm not a designer.
What the hell am I going to do with a text element or an image?
They look at it and it's like it's just a blank screen.
What, are you going to help me here?
So then I was like, okay, maybe it would make sense to have templates, which ended up being this great idea that is going to fuel some other stuff coming soon.
But things like that I got out of that phase of the project, but, yeah, about five, six months.
Omer (32:38.940)
So, you know, like, a lot of the times when, when people build a new product, there's always this, like, you start looking out in the market and you look at other similar products or competitors, and you're like, wow, there's a really high bar for all the things that I should have.
And it's easy to get sucked into that where, you know, you just feel like you've got to put so much into this product for it to be decent or for people to want to pay it, you know, get people to pay attention to it.
And the reality is that a lot of the times that, you know, I've spoken to, you know, a lot of founders, the first version of the product, they often start with, it's not that great.
And it's just kind of maybe solves a small problem and there's just still a lot of things that, that, you know, it doesn't do.
And so is there like, something like when you were launching this, did you have that struggle where you felt like there were all these things that you wanted to add, but you didn't?
And now you look back and Sort of say, yeah, that was a smart thing for me to sort of take that approach.
Like what's some of that experience or wisdom we can share with people who are kind of like struggling with that dilemma right now.
AJ (33:50.080)
So this won't apply to everybody.
But at least in my case, I did not have this problem at all.
Because from the get go, the whole reason why I did this project was to challenge myself and do things my own way to see what of my own ideas would work and what wouldn't work.
I didn't really have any interest in looking at the competition and just mimicking what they were doing, which is fine for some products where you're trying to be competitive in a specific space.
You'll need to do that to know what features people look for.
In my case, I wanted to do something entirely new, whether or not it worked or not.
So for me it ended up being a big benefit because I don't have that stress of trying to figure out, oh, what is this company doing or that company doing.
I just look at a problem that comes my way and then solve it in the way that I would solve it without really looking elsewhere.
And again, doesn't apply to everybody.
But it is a very freeing feeling to not have to keep worrying about what everyone else is doing and you're just focusing on the thing that you're doing in front of you.
Omer (34:55.860)
Yeah, that's great advice.
And I think if people can do that, it takes a lot of pressure and stress off in many ways.
Right, right.
AJ (35:04.540)
And in fairness, I mean, again, the reason why I say it doesn't apply to everyone is because not only is it a, it depends on the product and category that you're in, but also, you know, are you self funded, are you bootstrapping or do you have investors?
Is this going to be your full time gig?
If that's the case, full time gig is in like you're quitting a job to do this and you have bills to pay.
You're going to need to be a little bit more conscious of what the market's doing.
You can't just do what I'm doing.
So I can't stress that enough.
I don't want people just going out there saying, well, I'm just going to build a product, not look at what anyone else is doing.
It's like, okay, just make sure that all the other variables in that equation line up for that as well as they did for me.
Omer (35:43.080)
Right.
AJ (35:43.240)
If not, then there's nothing wrong with looking at what the competition is doing.
I Don't want people making a rash judgment just because some dude on a podcast is talking about how awesome it is for him.
Omer (35:54.760)
And again, to remind everyone you didn't have that pressure because you were still generating some decent money from pixelarity.
AJ (36:02.600)
Yeah, that helps so much.
Omer (36:04.040)
And so this was kind of more like a fun project.
It wasn't like, I'm building this card thing and this is going to be the business, and I'm going all in, and it's got to work.
AJ (36:14.850)
Right.
It's not like I went to friends and family, said, hey, guys, can you give me some seed money so I could do this idea?
Or it's not like I went to investors or anything.
It's like it was just.
It was just a thing.
If it worked, it worked.
If it didn't, it didn't.
You know, I did not have the pressure that other people have, and I am very cognizant of those situations that people are in.
So, again, don't think that my way is the.
Is the way that everyone should be, because it's certainly not.
Omer (36:37.810)
Let's talk about marketing, because your whole marketing kind of approach was really interesting with carrd.
And typically, you know, when we start thinking about a product like this and how we're gonna market it, we'll have a whole bunch of things.
You know, I'm gonna run Facebook ads, I'm gonna start doing content marketing.
I'm gonna build a blog, I'm going to build an email list.
Dah, dah, dah.
You didn't do any of that, right?
AJ (37:07.380)
No.
Omer (37:08.180)
What did you do?
AJ (37:09.220)
I basically just tweeted it out.
Oh, yeah, I'm done with this thing here.
Go check it out.
And part of it is because what I was just talking about, I didn't have that pressure of having, like, this didn't have to succeed, you know, like, so when you have that option, which I know it sounds very almost douchey, really, like, just, it didn't have to succeed.
So, like, I'm not going to go nuts over, you know, trying to line up a marketing strategy or anything.
Oh, I just tweeted out I had a sizable.
I forget exactly what I had.
I had a sizable Twitter following at that point.
I was like, hey, I'm done with this thing that I've been working on.
Go check it out.
And then it just kind of started rolling on from there.
Now, it'd be unfair not to say that part of what really kicked it up to the next level, however, was once it got put up on product hunt now, that kind of blew up.
That's really when it moved to the next level.
And so I can't thank Ryan Hoover and his team enough for putting that thing together and really giving products like mine a place to really show off, even with as small of an investment, if any, I put into marketing a product like that can blow up so intensely on a platform like his.
I mean, he really built something special there.
Omer (38:15.560)
But you didn't put it on Product Hunt or you didn't have some kind of launch plant.
AJ (38:20.120)
The funny story is one of my followers actually hunted it on there, but before it was actually launched.
So it was just a coming soon page, and it never actually got featured.
So I was like, well, shit, man.
It's not even a thing yet.
So I actually sent a DM to one of the folks who worked at Product Hunt.
It's like, hey, I actually just launched this thing for real now.
And one of my followers kind of jumped the gun and posted it before it was ready.
So it didn't get consideration to be featured.
I was wondering if you guys could take another look.
And I very quickly got back a flight.
Oh, yeah, it'll go up tomorrow.
I was like, oh, sweet.
And then that day was the day that the thing just blew up.
And it was incredible because it gave me a glimpse of what was to come in terms of how just the volume and scale and things that.
It's interesting when you get featured on a place like Product Hunt or other places, but Product Hunt in particular, because it's so focused, it is a preview for scale, which I'll get into later, but it really does show you where the cracks are and the things that could easily break in something that you've made.
And, yeah, that was a great experience.
But, yeah, that was pretty much the marketing I did, tweeting it out and then getting put on Product Hunt.
Omer (39:29.270)
So as far as Twitter goes, you have, like, over 50,000 followers.
And I see, like, a lot of people who have, like, you know, 100,000, 150,000 followers, but they're also following people, right?
So they're just playing that game where it's like, keep following a bunch of people.
Some will follow back.
The ones that don't unfollow them follow a bunch more people.
And you keep building up that way, right?
Yeah.
AJ (39:58.070)
You have a friend who actually has a script who does.
I don't know that.
I didn't know this was a thing.
But that's interesting that people do that.
Omer (40:05.430)
And so how did you build your following?
Like, before you Got to the point where you sent that tweet about his card.
Like, what were you doing on there?
That started to build this following.
AJ (40:17.050)
So that I would say almost entirely came from having pretty prominent placement of my Twitter account on HTML5UP.
I had, I think even to this day, there's a button up there that says follow me for updates, like new stuff.
And it turns out people like free stuff, so they ended up following me.
Whenever I'd post an update to html5up, I'd also tweet about it.
And so that was just a fast way for them to get that notification.
But, yeah, all came from that and then from there.
It kind of grew from there, though, once people figured out maybe this guy has something more to him than just making site templates.
Omer (40:50.420)
Right.
And as far as Product Hunt went, you kind of.
Again, it only went up there because your friend hunted it too soon.
AJ (41:03.060)
Yeah, hunted it too soon, as in it was literally just a coming soon page.
There was nothing there.
So I was like, well, of course it didn't get featured.
It wouldn't make sense.
Omer (41:10.870)
So the only work you did there was to send that email asking them to reconsider it once it was live.
AJ (41:16.150)
Yeah, I DM'd one of the folks that was like, hey, yeah.
And they were cool enough to reply very quickly.
And then it got reconsidered and then it went up the next day, which was pretty awesome.
Omer (41:25.430)
And what did those two things do?
Like, were you selling Card at that time or it was like, here's just available and you can sign up for free and I'll figure out how to charge for it.
AJ (41:35.110)
So I did put some thought into this.
So I actually.
So two components of this.
Omer (41:39.660)
First thing was, I like the way you said that.
Like, I did put some thought into this part.
AJ (41:45.300)
Shocking as it may seem, I do occasionally put thought into things.
And this was one of those times where I really focused and put some thought into a thing.
So the first thing was because actually, HTML5 up went up on Product Hunt in its very early days, and I noticed a huge spike in traffic on something.
I was like, where the hell is this coming from?
And I saw it was coming from this site called Product Hunt.
I tracked it down.
I was like, holy shit.
This is pretty awesome that this thing exists.
And it helps elevate the profile of these products that people would otherwise not know about.
So I knew that if Card got featured, I don't know, I didn't know if it would get as good of an effect as HTML5 up had.
But it would get a good bit of traction from that day.
So I want to maximize what I would get out of it.
So the two things I did was, the first was Card has a.
You can use it without signing up.
As in, you can go to Card, co build, pick out a template or don't pick out whatever you want to do and actually just build a site.
You don't have to type anything, you don't have to give an email, you don't have to do anything.
You just build whatever you want, just play with it.
If you like it, like if you like what you just made, then you can publish it, put it in your email and all that stuff.
But if you didn't like it, you just go away.
And we were talking about this before, but I think the correct term is low friction.
So you can very casually, just without even touching your keyboard, just accidentally build yourself a website, which is pretty cool.
And so I knew having something like that, and this is just from personal experience, I hated going and, oh, I want to try this out.
Oh, it wants my name and email and a phone number or something.
I just want to see what this thing is.
I don't want to give you all of my information just to try it out because then you're just going to bother me later.
So forget that.
And at the same time, I didn't want to put up like a video making a video or something demonstrating the product.
I'm like, screw that, I don't have time for that.
I'm just going to let people try it for themselves and I'll try to design the architecture of this thing such that you can do that, you can try it out before even signing up.
And so I did that and that turned out to be a good idea.
And then the second thing I did was I made sure there was actually a way for you to pay for this thing if you want.
So I had to come up with a, what I ended up calling a pro plan with additional features that you could get access to.
Originally, it was just one plan, $19 a year, that plan still exists.
There are just other plans that you can get now.
They're cheaper and more expensive.
So I made sure both of those things were ready to go before I started putting out the word for card.
And so when it launched on Product Hunt that day, yeah, that was insane.
It really took off because people were able to just go in casually and try out the product without having to give up any information.
And it turns out that when you let people do that, it's Much better than showing them, you know, some freaking intro video or demo video or like, having a really long and lengthy marketing page that explains what the product is.
It turns out just letting them use it is the best marketing you could possibly have if your product is good, apparently.
And yeah, those are like, the two major things I did.
The two major things I put thought into.
Everything else I didn't put any thought into.
So let's just get that out the way.
Omer (44:58.420)
And was the product good at that point?
Like I mentioned about the podcast, do you look back at that first version and sort of cringe about things that it did badly or didn't do at all?
AJ (45:09.540)
So the thing is, I don't have that thing where I look back at my old work and cringe.
I look at it as like, oh, I learned how to do this back then.
That's cool.
Like, there's very little.
I look back at and just like, oh, I wish I did do that.
You know?
So even, like, old builds of card, I actually have.
I think I have the pre alpha and then even the pre.
Pre alpha still loaded up on a server here just to check out every once in a while because I did some screenshots for some.
Something I put out a while ago.
Yeah.
Even looking at it now, it's not embarrassing in any way.
It's just, no, this is where I was and here's where I am today.
And so I guess as long as where I am now is greater than where I was, it's all good.
And it's really nice to see that progress and being able to look back at it and say, oh, look, I learned how to do all these things and built this thing at that point.
Now what I do is a lot better.
But it's cool that I was able to figure this out back then and all that.
So, no, there's no cringe.
It might make other people cringe, but it doesn't make me cringe.
Omer (46:07.000)
I feel like I'm in a therapy session here.
It's like, no, no, no.
Actually, yeah, AJ's got a better way to think about this.
But it's true.
It's like, you know, if you have that sort of learning mindset and sort of a kind of more growth focused, and you're just saying, hey, it's not about, you know, looking back and sort of cringing about it, but it's more about, am I making progress, am I learning?
Am I getting better?
Then that's all good.
Right, Right.
Whereas.
But it's still easy, right?
It's Just like, it's for a lot of people.
It's like you put stuff out there and you're always like, man, are people gonna, like, think this is crap anyway?
I do, anyway.
AJ (46:45.090)
Well, the nice thing about Product Hunt is that I can go back to that day, that post up there, which I believe March of 2016, I think is when it went up there.
I can go there and I can see not only the upvotes, but also the comments people left.
Compared to what Card is today, yeah, it was kind of crap.
Compared to what it is today, it's not.
It wasn't for the time, it wasn't terrible.
But relative to what it is now, yeah, it was kind of crap.
But again, it goes back to what I was saying before getting that feedback loop from your users, getting feeling like, yes, I accomplished this.
People appreciate it, and now I'm moving forward.
I'm able to take that and move forward and also criticism.
I certainly had some people post there, post comments, or even email me saying, oh, you should do this, that.
And I was like, okay, this is cool.
I'm getting things that I can use as to climb forward and improve and get better.
Because it's not just about getting good feedback.
It's about getting any feedback.
And as long as it's not someone just saying, well, your shit sucks, just for no reason at all, it's good.
It's all good.
You learn, you move forward, and you make even better things.
So I can go back, look at the very earliest alpha I have a card, not cringe at it and be like, wow, it's amazing how far I've come since that day.
Just knowing what I know now, I would probably have done this and this different, but I'm glad I was at that point when I was just as.
I'm glad I'm at this point where I'm at now.
Omer (48:05.460)
Yeah, yeah.
AJ (48:06.780)
Not to get too philosophical, I tend to go off on these.
Omer (48:09.580)
Yeah, no, no, no, I get you.
And you weren't charging a lot for Card.
Like, you said $19 a year.
And now I think you have a plan which starts from $9 a year.
AJ (48:25.620)
Yeah.
Omer (48:25.940)
So how did you come up with the pricing and, like, how did revenue grow after the tweet and the Product Hunt?
AJ (48:33.620)
So I'll answer the second thing.
First, revenue was sort of like, kind of.
It got a huge boost when Product Hunt posted it.
And then, you know, kind of obviously, like every other product that gets feature on Product Hunt, it's a huge surge initially, and then it kind of goes down but then it tapered off and then it was sort of like definitely higher than the baseline it had prior to what was there before.
But then over the months that would follow it, as I worked on it added more features that, you know, the start trending upwards and upwards.
And it's sort of been in that mode ever since, you know, up from less than 100 bucks a day to, you know, close to a thousand a day, you know, that kind of thing.
But as far as how I came up with pricing again, part of it was I didn't need to make a whole lot off this early on.
So I didn't have, you know, oh, I have to make this much to break even.
Because quite honestly, overhead was basically almost nothing.
It was super cheap at that point.
Now it's a lot more now because I have a lot more servers and a lot more infrastructure in place because there's just that many more sites back then, not much in the way of cost.
So I just didn't have to price it super high and I wasn't really greedy, so whatever.
But also the pricing was, as I looked at it, fair for what you were getting for that.
Actually, I did look at the competition to an extent, just to figure out I don't want to charge too much or too little.
I just wanted to put it somewhere where people felt this was fair.
And 19 bucks a year felt fair for what card offered at the time, which was not a whole lot.
I mean, you couldn't really build super.
Quite honestly, the elaborate stuff that people make now, you couldn't do back then.
So it felt fair.
So 19 bucks a year was, I think, a good fit at that time.
But since then, as you mentioned, I've got even cheaper plan, but I also have more expensive plans now because I've added more and more complex features on top of what was originally there.
And so I figured, well, it makes sense.
Instead of just raising the price of that plan, I can add additional plans so people can pay for what they actually need rather than, you know, making them all pay the same thing.
And as far as like that $9 a year plan that was actually, I added that mostly for an interesting demographic that began using Card, mostly younger people, which is interesting, building little fan sites for various things.
But they wanted a few more features than what the free plan offered, but they didn't need all the stuff that came with the normal pro plan.
So I was like, well, okay, I'll make a slightly cheaper plan with basically none of those pro features that you get in the normal pro Plan, but also with some of the limitations of the basic free plan taken away, and it actually caught on, so.
And I'm surprised actually didn't cannibalize any of the other plans, so that's pretty great.
Omer (51:13.070)
Wow.
And then so beyond the tweet and the product hunt stuff that we talked about, what other kind of marketing did you do?
AJ (51:22.190)
None.
Word of mouth, I guess, is what I really rely on.
And I think, again, part of it is the one other thing that I put thought into, which was having the frictionless or low friction.
Omer (51:32.910)
No friction.
Anyway, whatever.
AJ (51:34.870)
Yeah, whatever it is that got you into the product, that really helps, because then someone can say, hey, you should check out this.
Someone can build a site and.
Oh, okay.
Well, on the free sites, there's a thing at the bottom that says made with Card.
So if you see a site that's built with card and you're like, oh, this is pretty cool, whatever, and then you click on that out of curiosity, within 30 seconds, you could be building a site of your own without having signed up.
So there's sort of almost like this flow from, like, stumbling upon card one way or another, either through word of mouth or through a link from someone else's site, and then getting to where you're actually building a site yourself with very little friction along the way.
So that, I think, has probably been the biggest driver since day one and probably continues to be as well, since, again, I'm not really doing any other marketing, so.
Well, I guess this podcast marketing.
I guess so.
Omer (52:26.580)
Yeah.
AJ (52:26.980)
Maybe I'm doing more than I think.
Yeah.
Omer (52:28.910)
But then I reached out to you.
AJ (52:31.070)
Fair, Fair.
Okay.
Omer (52:32.830)
Yeah.
And because I was like, oh, this is such an interesting story.
It's not like, you know, you were kind of like, pitching, hey, I'm going to do this round of podcasts.
And is that a thing?
So, yeah, they do that, man.
Yeah.
There are people who will.
You can hire to help you get on podcasts.
AJ (52:48.870)
Like an agent.
Wow.
Omer (52:50.270)
Yeah.
AJ (52:51.310)
That's awesome.
Omer (52:52.270)
Show me the money.
AJ (52:53.230)
Yeah.
Omer (52:53.960)
Okay.
All right.
So we should wrap up soon, but I wanted to talk a little bit about, like.
Okay, you talked about, like, the multiple hats and wearing, you know, all of these things.
What does your typical day look like?
How much time do you spend on the product every day?
Obviously, you're not doing much marketing, but you're doing all the support yourself.
And what other stuff do you have to do on a daily basis?
AJ (53:17.000)
So my day typically looks like.
Well, the first part usually is support and content moderation, which, like, I mentioned early on in the podcast, my business partner handles the bulk of that now.
But there's some stuff that is indeterminate that we're still trying to figure out what we need to do with.
And it's not like we get a lot of crazy stuff posted, but there's still some, you know, areas that border on, you know, is this spam, is this, is this questionable in some certain ways?
And what do we do with it?
So those things get flagged by him for me to look at.
And then I look at those and we don't get a ton.
But, you know, I still check them every day.
I do, actually, and I do support again later on in it, but then for the rest of the day when I'm working on the product, it's just whatever has to be worked on at that point, which right now is, as of the recording of this podcast, is getting our payment system ready for, you know, the new SCA regulations that are kicking in, you know, because Stripe had to basically redo their entire API and also some other pretty large things that I figured I may as well do at the same time, which I think people really appreciate once it launches.
But then, yeah, it really just depends on what has to be worked on.
There's so much for a project like Card.
There's just so much I could be doing with it.
I have a few dozen to do, lists for every one for each aspect of Card, and it's just so much there.
Every time I think of something, I just add it or anytime someone suggests something, I'll consider it.
And if I think it's something that will work, I'll add it.
And I will basically never run out of things to work on so long as I'm working on Card myself.
Now, I think the multiple hats thing, that can only be.
And this might be going a little bit off topic for your question, but at some point I don't think that's going to be sustainable because just the sheer growth of the product over time, if I look at just year over year, is just a crazy increase.
Who knows where it's going to be next year?
There's a good chance I will not be able to just sustain this on my own or even with my business partner handling content moderation, because it will just no matter how much automation you add, at some point you're just going to need to add more bodies to the mix, which for a guy like me, is actually kind of not something that I really want to do.
It's something that I would have to do and not because the product would fail, but also because I just want to maintain a certain level of service for our pretty sizable user base at this point.
And also new users coming in.
I don't want the quality of the product to go down because I'm insistent on just running this myself.
I have to be realistic about it.
Omer (55:46.410)
So are you kind of subscribed to the company of one type mindset?
AJ (55:50.770)
Yeah, well, I mean, I was actually on.
If you're referring to Paul Jarverse, I was actually on his little podcast as well.
Yeah, to an extent.
But I think there is a depending on the product.
So some products, like my buddy Peter Levels who runs Nomad List, that's pretty much a solo affair.
I mean, he has some people helping him out here and there, but it's pretty much him on it.
Product like that I think is much easier to run and scale with just one or a few people than maybe a product like Card that has a lot of user content.
I think that's really where the delineation is.
It's like, could Twitter exist with one person running it?
Hell no, there's no way.
Because you just have.
With more users and more user generated content, the more overhead there is to deal with that content in terms of not just moderation, but also storage and management and backups and things like that.
If there's one mistake I made early on, it's that I didn't think this would be as big as it became, which I know is almost like a humble brag, but it really is a serious consideration because there are some scale decisions I would have made.
Now, I did take scale kind of into account early on, but not to the extent that I should have, which I think it was.
Paul Graham, I think he says, do things that don't scale.
And I'm pretty sure I more than once said, do things that don't scale, but kind of plan for it so you don't get screwed.
And I planned for it, but not enough, I think.
So over the last six, nine months, it's pretty much me being pretty hardcore about doing that.
Finally scaling the things that need to be scaled, increasing our infrastructure, redoing our entire payment system, redoing how a whole bunch of other things are done under the hood that users won't actually notice, but they may eventually feel because things will just run faster and better.
So.
And I totally forgot your question because here I go with one of my rants.
Omer (57:53.350)
But I've got to ask you, like, something else you just kind of reminded me of is like Are you doing all the Support through Twitter DMs?
AJ (58:02.150)
No, through email.
Although I still, I tell people, like, look, just contact me.
However, because at this point it's all going to the same place anyway.
So just if you want to tweet at me or DM me or email or use the form on the site, whatever, it's going to be the same person replying to you.
Omer (58:15.850)
Does that go into a help desk system or it's just like an email?
AJ (58:19.370)
No, it's just if you DM me, we talk over dm.
If you email me, we talk over email.
For now, again, but that's another thing that's going to have to scale because at some point I can't answer 100 inquiries a day.
It's just without that just being my full time job, which it can't be because I'm also coding.
Omer (58:35.290)
Yeah.
AJ (58:36.250)
That's why I think solo bootstrapper archetype, if I can even call it that.
I think kind of it's not realistic past a certain scale.
I think you just, you just can't do it.
And I think there's one thing I've learned in the last three years, three years now, three, four years of doing this.
At this point, it's that, yeah, you can't do it all on your own, at least not forever.
So just be ready for that.
Omer (59:03.910)
That's good advice.
All right, we should wrap up.
So now we're going to get into the tough part.
We're going to do the lightning round.
Okay.
So I'm going to ask you seven questions.
Just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
AJ (59:16.030)
All right?
All right.
Omer (59:16.830)
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
AJ (59:20.070)
Well, I think Paul Graham's thing, do things that don't scale in general.
That is a great idea.
Omer (59:25.270)
And listen to it.
AJ (59:26.470)
Yeah.
Hero.
Yeah.
Omer (59:28.630)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
AJ (59:31.240)
Oh, I haven't really read any books relevant to the topic.
Sorry.
Omer (59:36.840)
Well, what do you like reading?
AJ (59:37.800)
Honestly, I haven't had a lot of time to read.
I do read like a lot of fiction when I get a chance.
Like, you know, just a lot of William Gibson stuff.
Pretty big into cyberpunk, that.
That genre.
Yeah.
Nothing really pertinent to what we're talking about, unfortunately.
So I guess I should have prepared a little bit on that.
Omer (59:51.720)
All right.
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?
AJ (59:57.310)
I'd say a willingness to kind of put in the work yourself.
It doesn't matter what it is.
Just if it's support, be willing to do support.
If it's coding, be willing to do coding.
Especially early on.
Now, at some point, you can put other people in those roles, but early on, you need to be willing to at least do it yourself, if for no other reason, to understand what goes into those things.
Omer (1:00:18.670)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
AJ (1:00:22.440)
I'd say just having hobbies that aren't computer related.
You know, like, just like exercising or running or bike riding.
Anything that takes me away from screens has probably been the best thing for me since doing this, because it's just.
It helps to just take your mind out of the context that it seems to be in, you know, 10 plus hours out of every day.
Omer (1:00:43.000)
I just started playing golf a few months ago.
AJ (1:00:45.560)
Oh, nice.
Omer (1:00:46.120)
Yeah.
AJ (1:00:46.400)
And I don't know if I'd be much of a golfer, but it does look kind of fun.
Omer (1:00:49.240)
Oh, I suck so badly.
AJ (1:00:51.940)
But it's more about the fun.
Omer (1:00:53.180)
Yeah, exactly.
As long as I'm getting better, Right, right, exactly.
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
AJ (1:01:00.500)
I think something in VR.
Strangely enough, I was actually kind of down on the whole VR thing up until I tried out my friend's Oculus Quest a couple months ago, and then five minutes later, I ordered one.
So it was like, there's something there.
I don't know if it's fully developed yet, but it just seems like we're eating around the edges of something really cool.
Omer (1:01:22.240)
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a separate conversation.
I have a few thoughts on that.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
AJ (1:01:30.880)
Oh.
So I've been designing, like, site templates and stuff for years now, and I've actually.HTML 5 actually wasn't the first time I started giving them away for free.
I put them up on other sites, and since I've been doing it for so long, I've actually come across sites just searching for other things using my templates from way back when.
So apparently my old crap litters the Internet, which is kind of fun to think about in a way.
It's like plastic that never decomposes.
Right.
Omer (1:01:59.620)
Love that.
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
AJ (1:02:03.460)
I'd say just being outside kind of goes back to the habit.
Things that just.
Just kind of enjoying life, like taking this too seriously, which, again, I understand is a luxury that is somewhat unique to my situation.
But I think, you know, everyone can just Benefit from occasionally just dialing it back down and really just putting it all in perspective.
Why are you doing what you're doing?
Is it really as important as, you know, other things in your life, like, you know, your family or your health and whatnot?
Just try to enjoy existing outside of whatever it is that your occupation happens to be.
Omer (1:02:40.930)
Yeah, I love that.
AJ (1:02:42.050)
I don't know if that's a passion, but it kind of is for me.
Omer (1:02:45.250)
Well, yeah, I think it is.
Okay, you pass.
AJ (1:02:48.930)
All right.
All right, cool.
Omer (1:02:49.930)
All right, so if people want to find out more about COD, they can go to cod.co.
that's with a double R. Yes.
AJ (1:02:58.770)
Because that was trendy back then.
Omer (1:03:00.330)
It was trendy, yeah.
AJ (1:03:01.250)
Also, trying to find a name really is so hard for a thing like that.
Omer (1:03:05.630)
Oh, yeah, tell me about it.
AJ (1:03:06.630)
For those who are actually interested, there is a write up I did about a year after I launched card.
It is themakingof card co again with two Rs, where I actually go into the whole name thing and why Card is the name that it has today and how that was a whole cluster unto itself.
Omer (1:03:23.870)
I didn't know you had that site.
It's the Making of Card.
AJ (1:03:29.950)
Yeah, just the making of Card Co. See what I did there?
It's very clever.
Omer (1:03:36.950)
Okay, I got it.
Yeah.
The making of Card with a double R dot co. Yeah.
Okay, cool.
We'll put that in the show Notes.
Yep.
AJ (1:03:46.150)
Sounds like you didn't do your research.
Omer (1:03:47.990)
I know.
I've been slacking.
And then if people want to go to html5up, it's html5up.net or.com.
AJ (1:03:56.590)
i finally got that years ago.
All right.
Not that it matters.
Omer (1:04:00.180)
And pixelarity.com.
yeah, that's it.
And if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
AJ (1:04:07.620)
Twitter J LKN or just email AJKNIO so that's, you know, whatever.
Omer (1:04:16.340)
Sweet.
AJ (1:04:16.860)
My DMs are open on Twitter.
If you want to say hi or complain or whatever it is you want to do, that's fine.
Omer (1:04:23.140)
Yeah, cool.
That's great.
All right.
That was great.
Thanks for joining me, man.
That was great.
AJ (1:04:28.680)
Hey, really appreciate it, man.
I had a great time.
Omer (1:04:30.640)
Wish you all the best.
Take care.
AJ (1:04:32.840)
Thank you.
Omer (1:04:33.480)
Cheers.
