Omer (00:10.000)
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 talked to Holly Stevens, the co founder and CEO of Subly, a SaaS product that provides automatic transcription, translation and subtitles for your audio and video content.
When Holly was running an online community and marketing agency, she realized how effective video was in attracting customers, both for herself and her clients.
She quickly discovered how difficult to it was to create subtitles and transcriptions for those videos and then share them across different platforms.
Holly wondered if this was a big pain for other content creators too, and if there might be an opportunity for her to solve that problem.
She knew that the best way to move forward with an idea was to just get it out there and see what happens.
So she quickly created a landing page.
The page was pretty simple.
It described a fictional product that would make it easier to add subtitles to videos and invited people to type in their email address and get notified when it launched.
She shared the link to the page in various different Facebook groups, and in a few days she had about 50 people signed up.
And that was enough for Holly and her co founder Kevin to move ahead with the idea for the next year.
They still worked their day jobs, but would meet in the mornings and evenings to work on their product.
Eventually, about a year later, they launched their product and had around 100 people sign up.
But the product was still free and they hadn't yet figured out how to make money.
It took them several more months to figure out how to get their first paying customer.
Currently, Subly is doing around $120,000 in annual recurring revenue.
The team has raised a seed round and they have around 60,000 people using their product.
In this interview, we dive into how Holly validated her idea with a simple landing page, how she used LinkedIn to generate interest in the product, and how with a very tight marketing budget, they've been able to build a pretty significant user base a relatively short period of time.
So I hope you enjoy it.
Holly, welcome to the show.
Holly Stephens (02:43.630)
Thank you so much, Omar.
I'm so excited to be here.
Omer (02:46.670)
Do you have a quote, something that inspires or motivates you or gets you out of bed that you can share with us?
Holly Stephens (02:52.030)
I think for me, rather than a quote, it's something that I live by whenever I get a blocker, I suppose.
And one of those key things I always go back to is just take that first step.
Because actually that first step is sometimes the hardest that maybe when you need to start a new presentation or you don't know something, just even open up kind of Google Slides to get started.
Maybe that first step and that quote kind of goes into so many different aspects and that was probably one of the biggest things when entrepreneurs start an idea is that they need to take that first step.
And that is definitely one of the hardest things.
Or that's what kind of always motivates me is just get going.
And the one thing that always drives me is actually right now we're a pretty big team.
And it's a team that motivate me every single day to build a business and give them the freedom they want with their families.
And yeah, that really does drive me every single day to wake up and work to a brilliant team that we have.
Omer (03:55.220)
So tell us about subly, what does the product do, who's it for and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?
Holly Stephens (04:01.860)
Sure.
So, well, like every single person probably listening to this right now, especially you and I am, we use our phones and our computers every single day.
And we will see videos.
We will see them on Instagram, on YouTube, LinkedIn.
It could be an internal video that someone might be viewing at their corporate company they work for.
Well, actually 85% of these videos are watched without sound on social media alone.
But when you add subtitles to these videos, it actually increases engagement by 80%, which is huge.
But actually a lot of teams, a lot of creators actually don't add these subtitles.
It is really time consuming for them.
But they even know that it could increase that engagement rate for them.
And so the process really is that it's time consuming to transcribe, to translate, to subtitle videos.
And it gets costly and it's complex and it's outdated.
And for freelance, it can take them a long time too.
So essentially subleat is the solution.
It's the end result of making it really easy to transcribe, to subtitle, to brand a video and translate into multiple languages.
And it's a platform that does this all for you.
It will transcribe it easily.
You can edit the transcript, you can repurpose the video by embedding the subtitles and then you Translate that into 31 languages if it's required.
And we also allow it so that it's really easy for anyone to get started from a single creator all the way to a multi team.
And it could be used by A creator all the way to an agency.
And yeah, so we've.
It's been a product that really came from a pain point myself, of just adding subtitles onto videos.
And then as that product evolved and more users that we spoke with, we saw that there were so many other areas that we could solve for different teams as well.
And that's where our product has really evolved.
Omer (05:56.760)
And tell us about the size of the business today.
So you mentioned the team.
How big is the team right now?
Holly Stephens (06:03.880)
Yeah, the team's now 14 in around 18 months.
I think that's grown.
Omer (06:08.440)
And I just.
I saw a post from you today saying we're hiring.
So you have like, what, five open positions?
Holly Stephens (06:14.360)
Yeah, so we're constantly hiring at the moment, especially now that we've had this next round, seed round.
So, yeah, UX designers and software engineers is what we're hiring at the moment.
Omer (06:23.920)
And how many users do you have using Subly?
Holly Stephens (06:26.720)
Yeah, so we have around 60,000 users that are now using us, which is just fantastic.
And a lot of those as well.
And signups we've had are even businesses that need us, not just creators as well.
So we have 6,000 business accounts that have joined Subly, as well as 2,000 educational institutions as well.
Omer (06:46.640)
Nice.
And then in terms of revenue, where are you?
Holly Stephens (06:48.720)
So at the moment, we're tracking around 10k a monthly recurring revenue, and that's just after six months since launching our subscription.
Omer (06:56.380)
Awesome.
Okay, so let's kind of go back.
I want to talk about how you came up with the idea and sort of started the business.
And this is not the first company you've started, so I think that is kind of some useful context because the way you started Subly was probably different to the way you may have done it a few years ago.
So let's Talk about the YouTube channel, because that's where it all started for you, right?
Holly Stephens (07:26.060)
Yeah, that's right.
So, yeah, the idea really came from that I had a previous business that was a community to help females start their own tech businesses.
And I'd been running this business for around 10 months, received a lot of coverage around it as well.
And I also had my own marketing consultancy that I was running as well, so was helping clients with ads, with social media content.
Um, and I really.
The.
The main problem was when I was doing this content for my clients as well as running this YouTube channel and this online community was that I realized that I could get to more people and help more people if I produce more video content.
And so I started to put this video content on YouTube.
And I started to do video content and just interviewing people as well.
And what I found was that from this YouTube content alone, I couldn't really share it in an easy way.
So for example, you need to cut and resize a video for the right social media platform or when I was doing the ads for my clients, it also wasn't easy either.
And then when I started to look at some of the stats around how to increase engagement with my YouTube channel, if you it was repurposing all of this content on different channels.
But adding subtitles could significantly impact how much engagement you got on those videos.
And then I started to test it myself and I was using all these different tools and I was uploading and redownloading different videos and probably using our competitive products now, but nothing really quite worked for me.
It wasn't easy to add subtitles on this video, but when I did I was getting significant engagement.
And yeah, that's where it really came from is that I really didn't have a product that was so easy to use for me.
And it was taking me so much time.
For example, for me I was doing maybe 40 minutes for an interview on YouTube and it was taking me around eight hours to get this video up and running.
And that was because it was.
You had to re upload and re download, then you had to add the subtitles and then transcribe it and then send it to a different team.
And I used all these tools and it wasn't anything quite suited that I could use.
And I've been in tech my entire career in marketing and I can work out this process in a simple way.
And I asked lots of communities on Facebook on social media communities and they also tried different tools and they couldn't quite find something.
And that's where this whole problem I experienced really started, subtly got it.
Omer (10:04.650)
So I think if you're putting a video onto YouTube, like there are ways I think that YouTube can kind of create these auto generated type subtitles, right?
Holly Stephens (10:14.670)
Yeah.
Omer (10:15.470)
And then if you want to do anything yourself, I don't know that much about it, but I know that you end up creating like these SRT files and then you have to, you know, either upload them to the service, that will kind of layer on the subtitles.
So how does this work in terms of like making it easier?
Are the subtitles sort of baked into the videos?
Do people have to use your player to get the subtitles to work?
How does that kind of actually work in behind the scenes?
Holly Stephens (10:42.320)
Yeah, sure.
So you see subtly used in, in different ways.
So if you're a YouTube creator, what you would do is you would typically record a video and then you may upload it straight to YouTube, which some people do.
But what a lot of YouTube creators would like to do is take that video and repurpose it in some way.
So it would be cutting it or adding the subtitles.
And so we, we that process of upload to Subly, you can resize it for the right platform and then you can also add the subtitles and you can extract the subtitled video with the subtitles embedded, which YouTube does not do.
A lot of the other platforms don't either.
And that's what you want, you want the subtitles embedded onto that video because a user might just remove them, but then they've missed out on actually seeing your content.
And then with YouTube, the other element is that they don't, they don't do that, whereas Subly does and also for different teams.
So typically as a YouTube creator you might use, might use their auto generated function.
But if you're an internal comms team or you're doing a product launch or you're trying to get some customer validation or you're creating content yourself as a coach, you may not put that onto YouTube.
Especially kind of for corporates, you wouldn't do it because you need an area where it's really secure for you to send that out to your customers, to your internal teams.
And YouTube, you wouldn't use it for that reason.
And also for, for creators as well, they tend to do like short snippet of videos as well.
And you wouldn't upload a one minute video to YouTube, you would typically do longer form content.
So we're suited for kind of really those internal videos as well as a social media video as well.
Omer (12:22.330)
Yeah, I mean, I mean the social, social media videos I think that, that I think most people will, will get right away that you see videos coming up in the newsfeed, most of the times they're muted.
When you see a subtitled video, you just can't help but start reading it.
So even if you don't turn on the sound.
And I think that's kind of a good example of okay, well you've got a piece of content you can upload to YouTube, but maybe you need to use it in five different places and you need to put it on LinkedIn and Instagram and whatever.
And I think that it kind of quickly becomes clear how much work you have to do on each video to make it work on Those different platforms and have subtitles.
Okay, so you're feeling the pain yourself.
What did you do to get started?
Holly Stephens (13:10.990)
Yeah, so what I've learned actually from the past, like different things I started was that you just need to get the idea out there.
And when I experienced that problem, I just put up a landing page.
I just created something really quickly and the business wasn't even called subly.
Then we had a completely different name that I'd made up and it just simply said an easy way to add subtitles onto your video.
And that's where it all started.
And then the way that I started to validate this further was actually posting in Facebook groups where I, I could see a similar profile probably to me or where I thought that there would be that customer, that user.
So I went into a lot of Facebook groups and I'd post on social media Facebook groups and said there's this solution launching.
Have you seen it?
Have you used it?
And just started to validate it that way, just through a simple landing page, just trying to get people's emails through to see if everyone else needs the solution as well.
But then what happened was I didn't need to do that work because people were like, oh, this solution is launching.
And then they would post it into other Facebook groups.
And I really saw a need for the business right then and that's how I really started to validate it from that point.
So that's where it all started.
It was like with a landing page.
And quickly, within a few days we had 50 people sign up to this solution.
And it wasn't just people that I'd seen on Facebook maybe commenting on my post.
It was large corporate companies that even TV production companies where someone had passed it on to someone else.
And that's how it started to grow.
And then before we knew it just from a landing page and before even launching anything, that database was growing even further.
So that's where it all started was from that very simple landing page and
Omer (15:00.260)
you didn't have anything about the product or screenshots even though they were made up because there was a real product.
It just talked about the problem, just
Holly Stephens (15:11.420)
talked about the problem.
Just simple solution to add subtitles onto your videos.
And it was just like this can be done in three steps.
You automatically transcribe it, then you can add the subtitles and they're embedded onto the video for you to share.
That's all it was.
And yeah, three step solution.
And yeah, there's nothing else on that page.
I think I've still got Screenshots now and we look at them Subway of how it first looked.
Omer (15:39.010)
Oh, I'd love to take a look.
Maybe you can get a chance.
Send me one.
Yeah, okay, great.
So you've got about 50 people signed up fairly quickly.
Did you, did you follow up with them?
Did you, did you interview them?
Did you try to try to learn more about why they were signing up?
Holly Stephens (15:55.040)
At that point I had set up kind of a zapier integration with just using mailchimp and it just had a flow of emails just to maybe look like it was a product that was nearly there, but I hadn't even launched, hadn't even built anything.
And yeah, it was just.
That was all it was.
And then from that point, Kevin.
So Kevin, my co founder and I, who was working together at a consultancy company, he had seen this post in one of the groups that I was part of and he was like, holly, we've, we've known each other now for a while.
I would really love to see what this product is.
I think you're behind it.
And that's where it was like we both really wanted to work together.
He is such a brilliant software engineer and loved working with him on the projects we were working on.
And he also helped out in mentoring other women on their tech businesses.
That I was part of my community.
And so we just started to build and every single day after work, because we both still working full time, we'd meet in the mornings for coffee and after work for hot chocolate and we would just start.
He would be coding and I would be thinking of all these crazy ideas, how we can market the idea and sell it.
And that's where it just kept evolving.
And as we started to build, people who were in our network just wanted to get on board with that.
And so David, who has worked with Kevin in the past, wanted to join.
And Kevin was getting so excited at this point by us launching this product.
And we had.
And the database just kept growing with people who needed it.
And then Lucy, who is now ahead of product, really wanted to help us launch a product and get involved with product management.
And then so we just started to build it between the four of us and that became the five of us.
And we're all huddling every, every week.
And David was in the UK and I was still back in Australia then.
And we just would keep building together and just building a really great team around us and that became six of us.
And then, yeah, until we were, we became six people.
And then we didn't launch until February 2020.
And during that whole time, Lucy was taking user interviews, Kevin was taking on the feedback.
I was marketing the product and building out the website further.
He brought an intern who would help us with content marketing.
And we were just bootstrapping this and just meeting day after day to get this off the ground.
And yeah, we did that for around 14 months between that and even launching a full product.
So it was just always speaking to our customers and always just trying to persevere through just to get this out the door.
Omer (18:40.540)
So was anybody working full time on the business in that period of about 14, 15 months?
Holly Stephens (18:45.820)
No, no one was full time.
The first person that went full time was Miguel, our software engineer, who's still with us today.
He's amazing.
And he was the first person that we employed and paid.
And yeah, there was no one full time.
And I didn't actually go full time until June 2020.
Omer (19:03.470)
Got it.
So tell me about, like, the product that you started building.
Like, how did you figure out what to build?
So you, you, you obviously had experienced a problem yourself and so forth from that.
In terms of like scratching your own itch, you had an idea of what you needed.
But what were you learning from these interviews that you were all doing and how did that change the product you ended up building?
Holly Stephens (19:39.230)
Yeah, so probably from all these user interviews, we started off with that simple problem of subtitling and just embedding the subtitles onto the videos and making it really quick and easy for people.
But what as we're doing those user interviews, we then would speak to a podcaster or we'd speak to a content creator, someone in internal comms, a large corporate.
And we just knew that with this real problem of just adding subtitles, there are other elements that need to be solved around it.
So that may be that they need to repurpose it for different channels, as we already knew.
It could be that they wanted to take the audio file from their podcast and then put that into subly and then repurpose that as well and add a video to it.
It could be with that internal comms manager.
She didn't just have an audience in who speak in English, she had multiple regions that she then needed to tell people the message from the CEO.
And we just saw so many different areas where if we just start with this core problem of subtitling, we knew that then if we built that out really well and a really great product around it, we can solve these other solutions from just this one single problem.
So, yeah, as we kept speaking to them, we just, we saw These areas where our business could be built out and we still do that today.
We still meet and interview users, whether it's for our product or we even interview churn users.
And we just constantly want that user feedback to just keep improving and just see all the different use cases that they may have that may be that they need to work with their video company, they need to translate and share with different team members.
And so as we speak with those users, and we still do that now is we just build out our product based on what those users need, but with the end goal that we have set on as well.
Omer (21:35.800)
Okay, so the product launches in February 2020.
Holly Stephens (21:42.280)
Yes.
Omer (21:43.400)
What happened when you sort of eventually finally turned the lights on and the products are here now?
Holly Stephens (21:49.320)
Yeah, so yeah, February 2020.
So 14 months ago from when we're recording this now, the one thing that we did at that point was that we said we are just going to go after the mass market and we're going to get to users really easily through going to business owners and creators because we didn't want to spend money on marketing.
I'd spent a lot of money on marketing in corporate roles and we didn't have that to spend.
We were still bootstrapping this through our income.
And so we just said, okay, let's go to business owners, creators who need this product and let's just get feedback.
Let's keep this product free for as long as we can go for.
And then we just saw people starting to use it and we have like this Slack channel of our users signing up and then signups were coming and people are using it.
But then we had so many bugs that came through as well.
When we launched, we knew it wasn't perfect, we knew things need to be changed, but we had to work through these bugs.
The team had to keep building at the same time as fixing and that is just what happened.
And we just need to keep growing at the same time and respond to customers on social if something wasn't quite working.
So yeah, when we hit 2020 February, we launched that product.
But then what quickly happened was that Covid hit and more people needed our solution.
So not only did business owners and creators use it and people who started to do their own online courses when it was then becoming like March, April time I believe and we started to see more business accounts coming onto subly and universities and schools as especially because we're kind of mostly based in the uk, our user base, US and Australia.
And as Covid started to snowball further, more people needed to subtitle videos.
And so, yeah, that platform then just kept growing and obviously as that kept growing, we got more bugs and we just had to keep working through them.
And um.
And so, yeah, that, that's how we kept working.
We just every single day get a bug needs to be fixed by the team.
We keep growing.
At this point, I was still full time at my corporate job and needed to keep marketing within fundraising because we kept getting more growth.
And so you just.
It just snowballed from February 2020 and then onwards.
Omer (24:14.050)
How many people were signed up by February 2020, like on your landing page, like before signing up for the product?
Holly Stephens (24:22.780)
Yeah, so there was around a thousand people that had already subscribed to our service and they really wanted it.
Omer (24:28.780)
And do you remember how many of those people roughly actually signed up when the product was available?
Holly Stephens (24:34.940)
I remember actually panicking within that first week that we'd only had around 100 signups.
I can't remember if it was that existing database or it was new people that found us, but I was panicking at 100 and then now we got to 60,000.
So, yeah, I can't quite remember that.
Omer (24:51.100)
Yeah.
And because it's like, wait a minute, it's like the product is free, we're not even charging them.
Why aren't they all signing up?
Right.
And so what do you think was going on?
Why do you think, you know, only 100 people kind of signed up Initially,
Holly Stephens (25:05.180)
for us, I think it was that our product was.
We just, we just put something out there as quick as possible and.
And it was called a completely different name and the website didn't look very professional.
But we, when you went into our product, it was still very clunky, there was still bugs and there wasn't probably enough social proof either of people using it.
But as more users came on board, more people used it.
Our business just started.
It just started to evolve naturally and I think that was probably.
That's where it just began, was that we just need to get something out there and get people using it and.
And then you just have to be.
And you also just have to be patient, like it's not going to be perfect when you first launch it.
And we had to understand that.
So, yeah, I just think it might have been the social proof that people really needed as we were growing that business.
Omer (25:56.430)
You also raised a seed round around that time, right?
Holly Stephens (26:01.070)
Yes.
So between February 2020 and then up until June 2020.
Yeah, we raised our pre seed round,
Omer (26:10.010)
which was how much we closed.
Holly Stephens (26:12.330)
210k pounds at that point.
Omer (26:15.690)
And were you charging for the product around that time or was it still free?
Holly Stephens (26:20.330)
It was still free.
And what we wanted to do when we first launched, we really wanted to charge straight away.
But I remember speaking to our investors and shareholders and getting their advice of should we just charge straight away now or shall we keep building and build a little bit more polished than what it is and then charge off that point?
And they all agreed to it and they could see that we had enough Runway to go for 12 months at this point, and we just wanted to get more user feedback and just keep it free for that reason.
So, yeah, we decided to keep it free up until June 2020.
Omer (26:55.150)
Did you have any challenges raising money when, I mean, I guess around that time you didn't have a huge number of signups.
It wasn't like, hey, you know, we've got, you know, 10,000 people signed up and you weren't making money either.
So how easy or hard was it to raise that initial funding?
Holly Stephens (27:13.240)
With that initial funding, it wasn't me necessarily going to VCs or angel investors.
What I was doing at the beginning, especially because I wanted to keep.
I would like to bootstrap it as long as possible and make revenue as quickly as possible and build a sustainable business.
I actually reached out to a lot of people in my network or I'd seen people I want to speak with.
So, for example, I wanted to know more about how subtitles can be applied to radio stations or out of home.
And I started to network with people in that area and just ask them for coffee and just say, can I get your perspective?
And then they would really like the idea.
And then they were like, what?
How can I help?
And it wouldn't be necessarily that I would like your money.
It was more, I really need your advice.
And that relationship then evolved and they would be helping me and they'd intro me to their network and as they built that relationship with me and that trust and they could see all these different areas it could be applied to, then they said, hey, I think you might need to be funded.
How about I chuck in some money to help you get this off the ground?
And that's how all our investors came on board.
And it was from those investors that introduced us to their friends.
And it was also my existing relationships I built with people that I'd worked with in the past who some of them I'd met through Founder, Institute, Accelerator, and they became advisors to me and they're like, hey, I really think you've got something going here.
I really would like to invest in your business.
And it was all built on relationships and just, and just getting the help from them.
And that very early stage, that is all I needed.
I needed a really good team and network around me who can get this off the ground with me.
And so I didn't take loads and loads of meetings at that pre seed point.
It was probably seed round that we've just done where I had to get more data and get more proof points and more case studies and do a full pitch deck for investors.
But at that stage at pre seed, it was all built on relationships.
Omer (29:19.050)
And so I know you're just kind of finalizing the details of that, the latest funding round, but overall, how much will you have raised at this point?
Holly Stephens (29:29.370)
Yeah, in total from grants as well that we utilized and from pre seed and seed round it's around 1.2 million pounds.
Omer (29:37.690)
Okay, great.
So I think there's some good lessons there.
Right.
So when sometimes people are trying to get their, their idea off the ground and they, they, they believe they need funding, it's like, okay, I need a, I need a pitch deck and I need to start going and pitching to investors.
And what you did was, was a little different that you just focused on going and talking to people, getting feedback, building those relationships.
And I guess you guys didn't actually need the money at that point.
You still had some, I mean you'd been going for quite a while just working like nights and weekends and mornings as well, right?
Holly Stephens (30:17.750)
Yeah, I, I don't think I saw the light of day for many months as I was getting up so early in the uk.
It was super cold at that point in dark in the mornings and leaving work as well and working through the night as well.
So definitely didn't have a social life.
But I, yeah, I did it, I did precede a little bit differently and most of the time when I was speaking to people, I never presented them a pitch deck.
And actually going into this seed round now, it was only when speaking to institutional investors and VCs that I needed to send them a pitch deck.
And still then when I'd go into those meetings, I wouldn't necessarily present in the pitch deck.
They have all the notes that they need, they have all the stats.
They at that round in seed round still just want to know, are you the right person to invest in?
Can you build this business?
What's your traction to date?
What are your numbers?
Is there a big growth potential?
What's the market size?
And for VCs, they need to be able to earn that fund back as well, their whole fund.
So, yeah, for us, it was done completely differently.
And I'm not sure if that's the same what other founders might find, but it was again, all built on relationships as well.
Well, for this seed round as, as
Omer (31:31.520)
well, I want to talk about the growth and how you've got to like, 55, 60,000 users in a relatively short amount of time, considering it was just over a year ago where you said you were freaking out because you only had 100 people sign up for the free product.
So before we get into that, just at what point did you start charging?
Holly Stephens (32:00.990)
We first started charging in July 2020, and we did that through a founding membership campaign.
So did a really quick offer that only lasted a week to see if we could monetize our business and see if people would actually pay for our service because it was still free.
So we charged and we did a founding membership campaign which gave Those founding members 90% off six months when we actually launched the subscript.
But we didn't start our subscriptions, our main business, until October of 2020.
Omer (32:37.840)
Okay.
Okay, great.
So let's start talking about how you kind of continue to get the word out and how you've grown the business over the last year.
So I guess part of this was just some of it was just happening from word of mouth and having a free plan gets rid of some of the barriers, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get customers.
So what did you start doing to.
To reach more people and get the products in front of them?
Holly Stephens (33:11.910)
Sure.
So one of the main things that we were doing, we knew the importance of community and building that community and building that momentum and just keep, keep building that.
And that was one of our biggest growth strategies, was not only were we speaking with the community and the users, they were also loving the product, so they were referring it to their networks as well.
And sometimes you don't know how big that network might be.
Some of these community advocates, we will call them, is that they were posting into Facebook social media groups that they were part of and telling them about the tips and tools they would typically use.
And one of those would subly to subtitle those videos.
So ours is all around referrals from that community.
And we just kept asking the feedback.
So they trusted us even more to then tell their community themselves.
And that was one of the biggest things that we did.
The second thing was actually we weren't afraid to just keep releasing content that would be from me doing LinkedIn posts and using our product and having subtitled videos across my LinkedIn.
That might be that I'm doing four videos a week, but I wasn't afraid to just get the product out there.
So it's just people kept hearing about us and they would refer us and they would tag us in those LinkedIn videos, or they would tag us on the Twitter videos that we were posting.
And it was just relentless posting across those channels and using our product and showcasing it so that people wouldn't forget it.
And then we would also do content around building our SEO and our backlinks and posting about our business and around subtitling.
It would all be around content creation.
So the biggest thing we did was community.
The second piece is content marketing.
We've only just started to test digital marketing and paid marketing.
That's only been kicked off in the last month, but we are still seeing a lot of our users come through search now searching subly or they've seen us on LinkedIn.
So it just shows that what we're doing at the start to build that community and that momentum really did work.
Omer (35:19.620)
So what kind of things were you posting?
I think that, I mean, a lot of founders would sort of think about, yeah, okay, social media, figure out where my target customers are.
Let's start getting some content there.
But pretty quickly, I think a lot of people run out of stuff to talk about and post.
And so was this kind of more sort of educational content?
Were you creating a lot of videos or just generally just being active, talking about a bunch of stuff like, what was the strategy, if there was one, on how you were using LinkedIn to reach customers?
Holly Stephens (35:56.310)
So we were doing different things.
I remember at the start it was, I was posting around how we got subly off the ground.
So people were starting to believe in our journey and wanted to follow us.
And I would talk around the challenges that we had getting off the ground and how to build your own community and all those things that people want to learn about.
So, yeah, it's a bit of education, a bit about the subly story as well.
And then as we were speaking more to our customers and our users, we might post around how they're using subly.
So it'd be a mix of education and product.
But we still test to date.
So, for example, you'll sometimes see me on LinkedIn saying about a product launch that we've launched, and I actually was testing last week using loom to do a screen recording and then add subtitles onto it with our product and different use cases.
So it really varies, but it was really delivering well at that start was we were so early in our, in our journey that people just wanted to get on board and be part of something.
And that was delivering really well.
And that's how we started to build that community around our product.
Omer (37:02.310)
How often were you posting on LinkedIn?
Holly Stephens (37:04.230)
Oh, I was maybe doing four posts a week.
Sometimes I do two a day because I wanted to test the different times and how they would deliver.
I might even do the same post, but post at different times.
Well, with a different message.
So it was constantly testing throughout.
Omer (37:20.000)
And I'm curious, were you just posting this content on your own profile?
Were you kind of finding LinkedIn groups to post in?
Were you targeting particular hashtags?
How were you sort of approaching that?
Holly Stephens (37:35.760)
No, so I was just posting on my own profile.
And look, I haven't got a big following at all on LinkedIn and it has been built now over the past 12 months, but everyone was kind of commenting on my posts.
I think it was kind of that personal approach that everyone was liking and really being very supportive of what I was doing.
And I can only thank the people that did tag me in post.
But people knew at least maybe one or two people that they could tell.
And as people were liking the post, people more people were seeing it.
Whereas people don't necessarily follow the company page, they were following my journey.
So, yeah, it was all around just people in my network and on my own personal channel that were recommending our products and just getting on board with it.
Omer (38:19.020)
Yeah.
And I guess in many ways Subly is a great product for social media because every time you share a video, it's an opportunity to show people what it can do, Correct?
Holly Stephens (38:32.460)
Yeah.
And so it was a really easy product to get out there through social media more than anything else.
And also it was easy for people to just see the problem, the pain point as I was showing it.
And actually you sometimes only see the process of someone posting and even that is time consuming for creators and people out there.
So actually just people understanding that that problem really did get them to comment more as well.
Omer (38:59.370)
So when you look at the number today, the 55,000 odd users that you have, did the majority of them come from what you were doing on LinkedIn and sort of the community?
Were those like the two, two sort of drivers of customer acquisition or user acquisition?
Holly Stephens (39:21.880)
Absolutely.
So the main one was referrals.
Yeah.
So from the community and then referring us for our product.
We just built a brilliant product around that use case.
And the second piece, now we're seeing more is actually it's coming through Google search and people just searching subly or searching for how do I add subtitles to my video?
Some of the top ways that people are using us and searching for us.
Omer (39:48.880)
And have you been creating content like articles on the website or has it just been sort of like just optimizing for certain landing pages?
Holly Stephens (39:58.800)
A lot of it is around looking at some of those key search terms that we should be commenting on.
So produce content around that specific area.
So how do you translate videos into multiple languages?
Or there might be specific use case that we've seen that one of our users have asked us about.
And so we'll start creating content around it.
So it would be a mix of search terms and what we should be really covering content around.
Omer (40:22.780)
Yeah, and I love how this all started by you putting together the.
That landing page.
I think many people, most people would, if they had the idea they might have taken a very different approach and maybe spent 18 months going into a bunker and building a product and not telling anybody about it until they're done.
And you sort of started by, you know, just talking about a product that didn't exist.
And, like, how long did it take you to put together that landing page?
Holly Stephens (40:55.680)
The landing page took about 24 hours to get off the ground.
And it was so clunky.
And all it was was a simple.
Yeah, simple landing page.
I built it.
Yeah, 24 hours it took me.
Omer (41:07.780)
I love that.
I think there's.
There's always this fear of, you know, getting things as close to, well, not perfect.
But I think we all have, like, a certain mental bar that we want to kind of hit.
And in many ways, that's what also slows us down.
I mean, I'm just kind of guilty of that, where it's like, okay, well, I want to do this, but it's like, well, it's got to be like this, or I can't do that until this looks at least as good as something else.
And I think just kind of looking at what you did is.
I think it's just a reminder in terms of a lot of those things don't matter.
Just if you've identified a problem that people care enough about, it doesn't matter how beautiful the landing page looks.
Holly Stephens (42:02.560)
Yeah, correct.
And I'm completely with you on that one, Omar.
And the one thing that I.
With this idea, I knew it was a big problem, but I didn't know how big this problem was.
And in different people it could help.
And just by holding onto that idea, Even for me, it was like a week.
And I could see from my experience where it could be applied.
But holding that onto that idea, I would have had so many regrets if I wouldn't have released it and just put it up on a landing page.
And that took a lot of courage.
Just say, look, just get the idea out there.
People may say, oh, Holly's launching another idea again, or maybe this one might not work this time.
Or people could be really negative to me around it and say a few jokes or that little idea that you want to launch, do you think it's going to go anywhere?
And I just had to stop thinking about all those negative comments and jokes around it and just had to get it out there.
And I would have really regretted it if I wouldn't have done that.
And I think that can go for so many different people who just want to get.
Have an idea.
I would just say just get it out there and just see.
See who wants the idea as well.
And then don't spend all your savings and all your money building something that people don't want.
You've already proven that people do want this, and there's a clear market, and your users and the data from that business that you're building will then tell you how the rest of your business is going to go.
Omer (43:28.310)
Yeah, yeah.
Great points.
Okay, so you did the founding.
The founding members campaign and offered people a discount for about six months.
And then when did you actually launch a subscription plan?
Holly Stephens (43:41.990)
The subscription plan didn't launch until October 2020.
Omer (43:45.760)
And how did that go down when you flipped the switch and turned that on, Were you freaking about as well in terms of.
Holly Stephens (43:53.200)
Yeah, I was freaking out again, Omar.
I was like, there's only 10 customers.
And that was like in the first hour.
It was very much incremental growth.
It still is.
And sometimes you see a fluctuation in subscriptions.
When we switched on our pro yearly pricing on our pro plan, which is the only one that we currently have launched, we saw kind of 37 people sign up for the yearly very quickly.
And it's just over that time, we are going to see that incremental growth that is going to happen with the subscriptions.
It's not one single thing that is working that we know right now.
So subscriptions.
Yeah, October 2020 was when we launched, and we're still learning all those pricing points and we're still speaking to our users of how much they think we should pay.
They should pay for the product.
Just a lot of learning for us right now.
Omer (44:44.710)
Yeah.
And I think the opportunity here is massive.
I mean, no surprise to anyone in terms of how big online video continues to grow, but this just feels like a really important kind of part of video content that I think has been missing and has been really hard for people for a very long time.
Holly Stephens (45:12.480)
I agree.
And when that first idea started, it wasn't just thinking around for creators and business owners, it was this is needed by teams all around the world.
As video is consumed even more, as there's more podcasts coming out, people are going to need this transcribed and subtitled and actually only 25% globally speaking UK into English.
So when you start to look at those figures, they're going to need to translate all of this content as well.
And it's just a huge problem that needs to be solved and it hasn't been done in the right way.
And that's why we think this opportunity is huge, that we can conquer.
Omer (45:56.230)
Yeah, yeah.
Kind of reminded me of I interviewed Melanie Perkins from Canva about, I think, like, really early days.
This is about six years ago and you know, they'd raised a few million dollars and sort of got the thing off the ground and it seemed like a great idea, but just at that time I just had no.
Didn't realize how big the opportunity was there as well.
I mean, I don't know what Canva is these days, but it's like hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue now.
Right.
I think.
Yeah.
Holly Stephens (46:31.220)
And I love that you've referenced us against Canva as well.
It's one of those companies that we really do benchmark ourselves against in terms of conversion rates, user growth.
We're always kind of tracking towards the unicorn that is Canva.
And what Melanie and the team have done is just phenomenal.
And I would love subly to be where Canva is six years on, but yeah, it is around.
There is a huge opportunity right now in video and online content and audio content and really working towards businesses and teams as well that need this more than ever.
Omer (47:05.430)
Well, when you're a unicorn, I hope you'll still talk to me.
Holly Stephens (47:09.110)
Of course, Iva.
Of course.
Omer (47:12.470)
All right, we should wrap up.
Let's get on to the lightning round.
So you listen to the show, so you know the drill.
So are you ready to go?
Holly Stephens (47:23.350)
I'm ready.
Omer (47:23.990)
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Holly Stephens (47:27.680)
Best business advice is go with your gut on hires with investors.
If something doesn't feel quite right, trust your gut instinct every single time.
Omer (47:36.720)
What book would you recommend to our audience?
Holly Stephens (47:38.800)
And why Atomic Habits by James Clear and also subscribe to his newsletter.
Get a lovely little snippet on a Thursday.
It's one of the best books I've read.
Omer (47:49.440)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?
Holly Stephens (47:53.770)
This is really difficult for me, so I'm going to go with three.
But it's the courage to start the idea, the sheer resilience that you need, and the perseverance to keep going.
Omer (48:02.330)
That's a good combination.
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Holly Stephens (48:07.370)
I think getting that phone out of where you're working and where you're sleeping is the best thing that I've done.
It's too much of a distraction.
And also turn off all your notifications on your phone as well.
Omer (48:18.650)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Holly Stephens (48:23.110)
I would actually love to bring all of the systems together of Stripe of HubSpot and just making it easier for when you're at this sort of stage of a company, identifying your customers and the right customer Personas and how to target them better through using all that data.
I just, I think it's really difficult to do right now.
Omer (48:45.750)
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Holly Stephens (48:50.750)
I actually had elocution lessons for my accent in the first year of university because I had a really strong accent.
Omer (48:57.870)
Really?
Holly Stephens (48:58.990)
Yeah.
Omer (49:00.110)
What kind of accent?
Holly Stephens (49:01.630)
It was a very strong Birmingham Brummy accent.
And some people used to laugh at my accent when I was presenting and I was very conscious of it.
Omer (49:09.350)
Oh, wow.
Holly Stephens (49:10.150)
Decided to have elocution lessons.
Omer (49:11.870)
Yeah.
I lived in Birmingham for about four years and it was.
I moved up from London and all the kids would say, like, you know, you speak posh.
And then.
And then I picked up the Brummy accent a bit and went back to London and people were like, you speak funny.
And it was like, oh my God, you can't win.
Holly Stephens (49:28.610)
I know, I know.
I can't win.
I can't win.
Omer (49:30.770)
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Holly Stephens (49:33.970)
For me, it's around just being consistent with spending time with partner, family, friends and just not overdoing something.
So not over going into health or fitness, it's just really maintaining that balance.
I spent a lot of time neglecting and sacrificing my friends and family when I was building the business, and so now it's really just maintaining that balance.
Omer (49:58.340)
Awesome.
So if people want to go and check out subly or try it with your videos.
Go to Getsubly.
That's S u B L y dot com.
And if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Holly Stephens (50:12.200)
Come and speak to me at Holly Stevens on LinkedIn or just send me a note on any of the social channels I'm on.
Omer (50:19.000)
Awesome.
Holly.
Thank you.
Holly Stephens (50:20.600)
Thank you, Omar.
Omer (50:21.480)
Thank you for sharing the story.
It's been fun and I wish you and the team the best of success.
Holly Stephens (50:26.840)
Thank you so much, Omar.
I've loved it.
So thank you so much for having me on the show.
Omer (50:30.280)
My pleasure.
Cheers.
