Omer (00:11.840)
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 a founder who sold her first company, a charity platform, at the age of 19.
After going through the rollercoaster ride of building, growing and selling a startup, she said that she never wanted to do it again.
But a decade later, she came across a problem that frustrated her and decided that she was going to do something about it.
There are a few interesting lessons in this interview.
Firstly, we talk about how with her latest startup, she began building a product that had unnecessary complexity and how she wasted a lot of time and money.
I think that's an interesting lesson because it shows that even with the experience of having done it all before, how easy it is to get sucked into building too much into your product and not getting it to market quickly, quickly enough.
We also talk about how she then radically simplified the product so she could get to market and start getting real feedback and data.
And there's a valuable lesson in how simplicity can really help you not just launch faster, but it can actually help you market your product better.
Many founders try to simplify their pitch down to 60 seconds or just a sentence, so people will get it.
Well, my guest went further than that and came up with a very creative way to help potential customers understand what the value of her product.
And thirdly, she's in a market where there are other products that pretty much do what her product does.
And it's tempting to focus on price or adding lots of features as a way to differentiate yourself in the market.
Well, my guest decided to focus on what her customers really wanted.
It wasn't really her product.
What they wanted was a way to make money and she made it easier for them to do that using her product.
So, three useful takeaways for me.
And I think you'll get a ton of value from listening to this episode too.
All right, Today's guest is the co founder and CEO of Download, a mobile app platform that enables media companies, brands and influencers to easily and affordably create beautiful native mobile apps.
The platform can transform any website or web medium, whether it's social media, channels, photos, videos into a fully functional app in a matter of minutes.
And it only costs about 15 bucks a month.
The company has raised $14 million to date and is based in New York.
Previously, my guest sold her first tech company, a charity platform that she Started in Australia at the age of just 19.
And if that wasn't impressive enough, she's also the daughter of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating.
So today I'd like to welcome Alexandra Keating.
Alexandra, welcome to the show.
Alexandra Keating (03:33.750)
Thank you.
Thanks so much for having me.
It's great to be here.
Omer (03:36.150)
Cool.
Now, the first thing I like to always ask my guests is what gets them out of bed, what drives them to do what they do.
And, you know, some people like to share a quote.
So is there a quote that resonates most with you?
Alexandra Keating (03:47.350)
Yeah, I mean, it's something I say a lot, but it's not necessarily something that gets me out of bed in the morning.
But I say that I'm easily satisfied with the very best.
And I think that that just sort of talks like my standard of everything when it comes to everything we do at Download and everything in my life.
Omer (04:04.290)
Give me one example of that.
Alexandra Keating (04:06.930)
So if someone was sort of asking me, what do you think of these designs as like an ad for Download, just as an example, I would most probably just stare at them and be like, what do you think?
And they'd be like, I can't tell if you're happy.
And I'm like, I'm only happy when I'm satisfied by the very best of things.
And so I think it's a little.
Omer (04:26.990)
You.
Alexandra Keating (04:27.070)
A little bit more insight into my personality.
But.
But yeah, it's something that I do say.
Omer (04:31.390)
How many times a day do you end up saying that to your team?
Alexandra Keating (04:34.670)
Multiple times.
Omer (04:37.710)
Right.
Okay, so let's.
I want to talk about Download and sort of share the story of how you got started, but tell me a little bit more about the product.
I explained it a little bit to the audience and what it does, but just tell me a little bit more about the problem that you guys are trying to solve and how Download is different to maybe other solutions that are out there.
Alexandra Keating (05:06.970)
Yeah, sure.
So I think they sort of work hand in hand.
Previously, I was at Thrillist Media Group and this would have been like, I don't know, three, four years ago now.
And we sort of decided to start building mobile first.
And as we were recruiting engineers, whether they be from Amazon or Gilt or wherever they were, everyone was essentially building the exact same technology, but individually and spending months and months and months doing so.
And it sort of made sense to me at that point, both on a content and a commerce level, that there was an opportunity for an enterprise solution.
But enterprise based businesses really aren't that interesting because ultimately everyone wants to build their Tech in house once they get to a certain point.
And then I kind of realized that, well, every single person needs to go mobile first and so why should they?
Every time like a new screen comes out, you know, whether that be the phablet which came out recently or the watch and TV and obviously we're in a multi screen society now ultimately I just don't think that everyone should have to rebuild everything every single time.
That was sort of like the first point.
And the second one was anyone who had already built their own thing, they seemed to be just sort of shrink wrapping their desktop into fit into a phone and it's like, well, we use the devices differently.
Like if you tried to shrink wrap Uber mobile web as the app, it would function terribly in the same thing as Facebook.
So why is everyone else trying to do that?
So it was very obvious to me that there was something, there was a solution that was happening at the top tier years ago which was going to trickle down to everyone.
And the second thing was that screen is going to continue to evolve and people want to be able to work on that screen and rather than trying to launch the company, be like, hey, go mobile.
With mobile web, we decided to sort of go app first because it was a much greater sort of go to market strategy and then now we're bundling mobile web into that in the coming months.
And so yeah, that's pretty much it.
Omer (07:05.960)
Okay, yeah, no, I'm interested about that because I don't know what the statistics are, but I think I read somewhere that people only tend to use a certain number of apps on their mobile devices.
And so it was interesting to sort of understand why you decided to go down the app route here.
Alexandra Keating (07:30.930)
Yeah, so I think it's sort of like a good, better, best experience.
So there's a couple of different things.
So it depends what the business is and what they're trying to do.
For YouTubers and people like that who have a lot of video content, going native is really important just because of the speed of the video delivery.
So your best users who want to consume a lot and want to do it quickly and want to flick through videos, obviously doing it natively is really, really important.
For media companies it's pretty much the same thing as well.
You get more page views per session and more sessions per user just again because of the speed of quickly loading and caching all the different articles.
And then there's different things that we can do.
If it's lighting up things, if it's a restaurant article about Balthazar or something like that chances are that user then wants to take an action and they want to be deep linked into other apps on their telephone.
So it's really going back to that good, better best.
Just to give you some sort of context, an app is the best experience for that device because it is much faster.
Users stay longer, they come back more regularly, but there are fewer of them.
So depending on what you're doing, it either makes sense or it doesn't make sense.
The local restaurant owner, I don't think needs an app.
Right.
It just doesn't make sense.
No one's going to do that but media companies and bloggers who, you know, whether blogging about lifestyle or fitness or food, definitely do because like they're really important.
Users want to go build recipes out or they want to reference those videos when they're working out.
So everyone kind of has their own little thing as to what they want users to do on that device.
Omer (09:08.349)
Tell me a little bit about how product actually works because from what I understand, you can get a, a new app created or I guess ready for submission into the app store in minutes.
Alexandra Keating (09:23.000)
Yeah.
Omer (09:23.720)
And so I guess you guys are doing some kind of.
You kind of like scraping an existing website or is that generally.
Alexandra Keating (09:30.760)
Yeah, exactly.
So I think that's more of a go to market strategy, just for me, because that's the sort of background I come from in a sense, like trying to convince someone to be like, hey, you can get your own app.
Originally, like when we're starting the company, like, oh, wow, like how does that exist?
And I have to maintain multiple CMSs.
And it just sort of seemed like a really emotional decision for them.
Even though we really knew it was easy, we'd have to kind of convince people how easy it was.
So then I just decided I wanted it to literally be like, just give us a URL and we'll just spin up an app and then if you want it, you can have it, you know.
And so I really built that tool just to get people in the door and then once they sort of had the app, then they would go through into our CMS and they'd start see users and they'd want to build more functionality and do like a bunch of other really cool stuff.
So the whole premise of take your content and have it here is really a go to market strategy.
Omer (10:22.840)
Okay.
Okay, makes sense.
So you had this idea, you've seen the need for, for something like this.
What did you do to get started with this business?
And I think I want to kind of set a little bit of Context here as well because from, I think I read somewhere that your, your first startup, which I can't remember the now.
Alexandra Keating (10:45.380)
Go fundraise.
Yeah, go for.
Omer (10:46.700)
Yeah, go fundraise.
After you sold that, you, you sort of decided that you didn't want to go in and do all that all over again just because of, you know, how difficult and intensive it is, that experience of building and launching a startup.
And it was about a decade before you decided to launch this business after selling your previous company.
So one, what was it about this that got you so excited and sort of ready?
Because as a second time founder, I guess you have a much better sense of reality and perspective.
And unlike some people, you know, it's a long, for the long haul, it's not something.
And a lot of people, they start out and they think, you know, I'm good, I've got this idea, I'm going to build a startup and then I'll do that for a year and then go and do something else.
And the reality is that a lot of these businesses take multiple years, if not a decade plus to really become what they are.
And so this time I guess you knew what you were doing.
And what was it about this business that excited you so much?
Alexandra Keating (11:58.900)
Yeah, I think that most people will tell you the same thing.
Entrepreneurs.
It comes out of a pure frustration and seeing a gap in the market.
And I have that for multiple different things.
And obviously there's lots of different companies I wanted to sort of go build, but I was kind of waiting for the one thing that would haunt me for a long period of time and that also I could see it becoming sort of like a huge entity and a platform.
And so it really had the scalability as well component to it and it just sort of made sense.
And I got really frustrated that no one else was doing it when it was so obvious.
And so like, you know, even if you look at the web, like in 97, you know, there are only a million websites and everyone was like, well, I don't need a website, people can just find me through yellow pages or whatever.
It's sort of like the next generation of that and we're sort of here, but none of the tools are really there to support everyone, so there's a huge gap in the marketplace.
And then once I started to talk to people about going mobile and what that sort of looked like, I realized that there was a huge amount of information even in relation to the desktop world that they just didn't have.
So like how to negotiate an affiliate fee.
Most of these blogs and youtubers representing and pushing brands all day.
They don't really know how to do that or what's the value of a CPM to them and how do you go and sell it and who are the best networks?
And there's not really any sort of anyone in place being like, this is how you do it or this is what you should do.
And so I was like, well, I can kind of pretty quickly say not only can we provide like a tech solution for them, but we can start to put parameters in place for these guys to really start making some revenue for themselves and building their own businesses.
And then that became really cool and powerful, you know, to be a platform for someone to create revenue and build their own business.
Omer (13:42.470)
Yeah.
So what did you do to get this business started?
Did you think about raising funding from sort of day one or.
Alexandra Keating (13:52.630)
Yeah, so this is really about more of a Fritz and I story.
So Fritz is my co founder.
So at the time I was really trying to build commerce first and he had a CMS based product that he had built for his wife.
She was a blogger and she needed an app and so he'd built her this cms.
And I was telling him, I was like, oh, it's not in the content, it's in the commerce.
Because commerce experiences on mobile web are just shocking.
And it's just an easy win off the bat where media companies are a little bit more hard to sell initially.
And so Fritz is like, well, I've already gone and built this thing and I think it's pretty scalable and I'd love to do this with you.
And so eventually we sort of just joined forces and so Fritz and I just started like sort of hanging out and working together and.
And then the money came sort of like after that I think like we kind of wanted to solidify what it is that we were before we started wanting to go out and sort of tell our story.
Omer (14:50.940)
Do you think, you know, being who you are and your father, Paul Keating has, do you think that that has helped or hindered you in, in, in the success that you've had with building your business?
Alexandra Keating (15:04.000)
Yeah, I think in the States it doesn't really matter.
It's like someone would have to like try and figure it out, you know, it's not something that I sort of tell people.
I think it does in like certain circumstances when people have mentioned it to me because they've sorted out on their own or someone told them, it sort of come into the conversation much later where they were like, hey, I Can't believe that when I figured that out.
That's so crazy.
You know, even a lot of people that download don't even know who work here.
So like, it's sort of like one of those things.
I mean, I don't really think about it.
I can see that there are benefits in networks, but it's Australian networks primarily, not in the States.
But I imagine it would give some sort of validation to someone if they were doing a business deal and when we were first starting out, maybe that would warrant some sort of stability for them in doing a deal with us.
But yeah, it's not something I really talk about and not something that I really.
That affects any relationships in the States.
In Australia it's very, very different.
But download isn't really in Australia, right?
Omer (16:08.040)
Yeah.
Okay, so you and Fritz get together and you sort of start building the first version of the product.
Did you guys do any kind of validation before you decided to build it, or were you really just following your own hunch and belief about what was needed?
What was the sort of the process that you went through to go from idea to like the first version of the product?
Alexandra Keating (16:38.170)
Yeah, I mean, I think that we went too deep on the CMS and this sort of goes into like the biggest mistake that we meant, like we made first on, like we started making unnecessary development on a content management system that was like quite complex in how you needed to use it for what it was.
And I think it's just because we overthought it, you know, and.
And then I quickly changed gears to this sort of like one click app solution and then that sort of like opened the floodgates and just put people's content into the content management system.
But yeah, there was a lot of unnecessary time spent building a CMS product which has now actually paid itself off because we do need the CMS product.
But initially it slowed down my go to market.
Omer (17:22.780)
So it goes back to what we keep hearing people like Paul Graham at Y Combinator talk about, which is do things that don't scale as opposed to trying to build all those features and functionality pretty early on when you don't need them.
Alexandra Keating (17:39.480)
Yeah, I think that that's a great mistake made across entrepreneurs in general is that you kind of get your vision in your mind and you just keep every day just trying to make that work rather than sort of looking around.
And I think that sort of hits you in two parts.
One, it's really hard to do a market analysis or look at the data when you don't have any clients at all, and you're just starting out.
But I think the sooner you can get into beta and the sooner you can get people around you telling you what they want, the better.
And just keep releasing in beta.
There shouldn't be any sacred cows in a business.
I mean, there certainly isn't any at download.
We change features all the time, we chuck out things all the time and just keep looking at the data and reiterating.
Omer (18:18.490)
So I'm curious, when you said that you guys spent too much time and effort on the CMS functionality in the early days, what was the impact of that for you on the business?
Was it just spending too much time building unnecessary functionality or was it.
Alexandra Keating (18:41.570)
Yeah, I think it was just a time thing, really.
I think that was my first thing.
And the other thing was, you know, I didn't, you know, obviously you want to keep your burn rate as low as possible.
And so we didn't really bring on any sort of creative lead until like six weeks before we decided to launch, which was pretty crazy.
And so then a lot of things, it was great instead of saving money and it didn't really matter what the brand represented at the time when we launched, but what it did sort of affect was like, now we want to go back and rebuild a bunch of things from like a UX UI perspective that we would have gotten right from the first instance.
And so I would say to anyone else, creative is really important.
It's very important to our brand now.
And now we have a great creative team.
But I would have hired that person earlier as well rather than waiting.
And they also take a really long time to find and bring on, which I also didn't think.
I was always like, engineers are the tough hires, but creative people are actually much harder to find.
Omer (19:44.540)
That's interesting.
Yeah.
Okay.
So one thing I was kind of curious about was the kind of a big part of the focus for you in terms of customers has been media companies and some of these bigger brands.
Yet when I look at the pricing, it was like, well, you can have, I mean, your sort of entry level plan is like costs nothing, right?
I mean, I could go and turn my ConversionAid.com website into an app just by going there and without paying anything.
And then sort of the next plan up is like $15 a month.
So what was your thinking around pricing?
Because, you know, when I think of media companies and I spent, you know, 10 years at MSN and worked with a ton of media companies when I was over there.
And to me it seems like you could have charged A lot more for this product.
Alexandra Keating (20:41.600)
Yeah, I mean, I really think that for me, it's really just about like, I want to be the touch point between content creators and their users.
And so it sort of made sense to obviously do that at scale.
I also think the people on the head are going to continue to like, at some point work themselves out of contracting outwork.
And so I think those two things combined is like, I wanted everyone to be able to use it.
And then if I'm going after sort of those users, what is it realistically that they can afford if they're sort of like a hobbyist at what they do?
And so the price points I sort of looked at was really like much more around what are the other software tools that they use?
What are the plugins that they pay for with Gmail?
Like, what are these other things that these guys use that help them get their business, business off the ground?
The second thing I wanted to do was get a high return on investment for every user because as soon as they start to make money on the platform, then your retention sort of made.
Right.
And so entry level guys can start to make money off just from advertising.
And then it's pretty easy to kind of get you 15 bucks to pay yourself off.
And so as long as they're feeling like it's net positive to them and we're really helping them make money, then we're actually building a sustainable platform, both from a loyalty and retention perspective and then in terms of using word of mouth and whatever and growing the platform from there.
So I wanted it to be achievable.
I was more looking at it from their business needs and then secondly, making sure that our cost could support it.
Omer (22:15.170)
What are the ways that a content owner can monetize and generate revenue using the download app today?
Alexandra Keating (22:24.530)
Yeah, so there's multiple different ad networks that we've sort of found that they can plug and play into.
It really depends on what their business is and what they do.
But just sort of in general advertising, which is usually pretty premium and animated and high quality, we sort of do that rather than like smaller banner ads.
Secondly, premium content's huge.
Like, you know, we have some people on the platform that are making $30,000 a month.
And I think that it's really funny.
Like, I remember when New York Times started selling their online subscription and, you know, every media outlet was talking about it and here we have all these sort of like young influencers who are like, do you want to check out my workout video for the day?
It's 50 Cent.
And then they have 10,000 people doing it through, sending a push notification and driving them there.
So that's the second thing that they can sort of make money from is premium content and being really smart about that.
So the recipe guys, the beauty people.
Yeah, the fitness people, they're pretty catching onto that.
And then some people sort of create exclusive content to the app.
So if it was a chef, it would be like a Thanksgiving, here's 20 dinners for Thanksgiving.
And people would pay $5 or whatever to have that or a, a regular subscription to get access to those sorts of things.
And so what we try and do is as soon as we sort of find someone.
We recently started to build an account management team at Download.
We look at who these users are and be like, oh, okay, they're trying to make money through doing this.
We're going to give them some tips around pricing or how to go about it or how to send good push notifications to engage the users to do that.
So that would be the second thing.
The third thing is obviously commerce.
That works in two ways.
Whether you have your own Shopify and you want to create your own app, obviously that's your own revenue and you'll most probably be able to get your users to return back more regularly.
And that will just sort of pay itself off there or through affiliate revenue.
So we go and we've sort of helped a lot of them sort of reestablish their core fees and kickbacks that they get from these different referral programs.
And so just making it a lot easier and a lot more of a beautiful experience to shop on these different products that are recommended during an article.
So they get revenue through that.
And then we also, they can go into sort of like network advertising, in which case we syndicate ads across the network and they all send push notifications, driving to it for a high impact for like, very high brands, which are exclusive campaigns that get sold into download and they all get a cut of that.
So there's multiple different ways, really, and different publishers will have different things that they need.
Do have like a lot of gallery owners and real estate companies that are using the platform.
And obviously for them it's just about building greater relationships with their clientele and using the data.
If someone shares, I don't know, a painting from one of their galleries with their wife, that information goes back to the gallery and the gallery can be like, hey, we have that artist coming in.
Do you want to meet them?
You already kind of know that that guy's really into that artwork.
So we've had a lot of people, people who've sold out through the platform, which is really cool.
Omer (25:29.220)
I'm trying to kind of go back and think about this.
But was kind of making kind of creating transparency and sort of easier analytics something that was important to you?
Alexandra Keating (25:41.780)
Yeah, and I really found that out as we started doing more and more deals with these YouTubers was just like how much there's a black wall between them and YouTube.
You know, like they don't know the value of like their media.
They don't know like who it's getting sold to, at what rates, how that compare to the rest of the market.
They don't have any of the email addresses or any direct relationships.
It's really hard for them to sell products because it's all hyperlinks at the bottom of their post and they have no creative freedom.
And I'm like, well, and the platform works, obviously.
So I was like, okay, great, these people want this, let's just give it to them.
It's all about full transparency.
And so, yeah, that's really important to me.
And I guess I've also been on the media commerce side of the business every day we were updating based on the data throughout the day of how people interacted with the homepage.
And there is a lot of answer in that data.
And we want people to have the tools to be able to do that.
Omer (26:38.030)
And so anybody using Download to build their app today, does that enable them to build direct relationships and capture emails and things like that with their own viewers and audience?
Alexandra Keating (26:52.290)
I think that's a tricky part for me because there's so much you can do in the onboarding.
I actually light up a lot of the really cool features that I think people might like and then if they don't want them, they can choose not to.
Because you have such more real estate on the phone and you're busy customizing and then you're like, oh, cool, I can do this.
And I don't want them kind of getting lost in that experience.
So I kind of onboard them to all these different features that they can have based on how they are going through the download process, rather than trying to communicate everything that they can do at once.
So I would normally not until they've sort of launched.
I wouldn't even start to push ad networks or anything to them before that.
It's really about them feeling like this is a really great experience for a brand perspective for their users.
Omer (27:38.100)
Yeah, I really like this kind of idea of just give us the URL and we give you, the app, it's kind of something that is really easy for people to get.
Whereas if you sort of say, okay, we can help build you an app, there's so much baggage that comes with that.
And I think you alluded to that earlier where people are like, oh my God, that means this and that and it'll take forever and I'll have to deal with this and so on.
But when you can kind of boil it down to URL app in minutes, it's really simple.
And I think there's a really valuable lesson there for, for any startup in terms of figuring out how do you simplify your value prop in such a crisp way that people can just get it?
Alexandra Keating (28:26.250)
Yeah, I mean, essentially it's like someone, it will even just be like, oh cool, I want to see what it looks like.
And then we basically push them and be like, hey, you could just submit this and then your app would go live, you know, and so it's as you're eliminating any decision making process.
And so then it's all about like, hey, can I just get you to try it?
You know, and the easiest way to do that is just like, give us a URL.
So I mean, like, I think like we've just been doing all our ad campaigns because we haven't really spent a dollar on actually we haven't spent a dollar on acquiring any users.
Right.
So we're doing internally our big campaign at the moment.
It's all about go mobile.
Right.
And we're just like, give us you.
It's these ad boxes with URLs and that's go mobile.
And so like, that's what we want people to think.
It's like, you're on your phone, if I ask you to do something like, oh, you know, what restaurant do you want to go to tonight?
The first thing you're going to do is pick up your telephone.
So why would.
If you're building like your experience you want users to come from, then you should build that experience for where your users are, which is on a phone, you know.
Omer (29:26.550)
So how did you get the word out about a download when you launch?
If you guys haven't been spending any money to acquire customers, what were some of the things that you were doing to?
Alexandra Keating (29:42.390)
Yeah, so I was like cold emailing a bunch of people by automatically spinning up their apps.
And I was like, if someone can go from not hearing about me to seeing screenshots of what their app potentially could look like and then they could play around with it instantly.
So what we would do is we would send them an email with screenshots and then they'd have a link to download our publisher app with a little code and they pop in that code and all their content would be there.
Omer (30:09.090)
I love that.
Alexandra Keating (30:09.970)
So someone could go from never hearing about the company to suddenly playing with our product to actually pushing it.
And that is literally the weakest form you could do.
And they're doing that and they're doing that in good numbers.
Then we obviously have a business.
And so that was really our beta test case.
I love that my marketing guy just heard me and just started nodding.
It was pretty funny.
Omer (30:36.930)
Yeah.
So instead of kind of going out and saying, oh, hey, build you an app and it's easy and just give us your URL, it was like, no, here's your app, right?
Alexandra Keating (30:44.910)
Yeah.
But on really cold email, I don't even know.
We basically ran around all these different really random websites, were trying to find email addresses and just to sort of see how people reacted and what their emails were.
And a lot of people thought it was spam and all sorts of things, but a good percentage of them went through and actually did it.
And so that's how we knew.
Omer (31:06.650)
I think important lesson is that a lot of entrepreneurs and startups will spend a lot of time trying to build their idea and the product and maybe just making a bunch of assumptions about what they think is needed.
And then they realize that once they launch, maybe things aren't quite the way they expected or they inevitably have some surprises once real customers or users start using their product.
So did you have that kind of aha moment when you sort of launched the.
The product and had real users and customers using the product?
Was there something that you kind of was like a surprise or something that kind of challenged an assumption that you guys maybe had.
Alexandra Keating (31:55.240)
Had.
Omer (31:55.480)
And I'm trying to sort of get to like, you know, you know.
Yeah, you don't learn until you launch.
Right.
I feel like that's stealing that from
Alexandra Keating (32:05.020)
that happened the other day.
So we do these hackathons internally and they're just.
I mean, it's so great.
It's really cool.
Everyone sort of.
There's so many things you can do with the platform.
So internally it's really cool to see that, you know, what everyone's thinking about the growth of the company and how they see it.
And the girls here who run the customer service side of the business were like, when are we going to launch?
Like the next tier, the pro tier.
And we have all these people, you know, who are, who just want push notifications and, and they're ready to pay for it on their own and we could do this.
And I was like, oh, that's just a marketing thing is the only reason we're holding it back.
I could totally go do that.
And so we very quickly, within a day or two, set it up so anyone could send push notifications from their handset to the audience en masse.
And then people overnight, even then the next day we had all these people who had already signed up.
And I was like, did we even tell anyone that we'd turn that on?
And there was so much demand from a user perspective to have it that these people went and found that feature on their own.
And I was like, are they using if this then that, like, how are they coming back to the site regularly?
This is crazy.
But yeah, so there's a lot of things that like we didn't know that people would spend a lot more money for or want to spend money on that we weren't like that.
We were holding back.
And honestly, for no good reason, which was also, obviously we changed a lot of processes internally because I was like, hang on, we're too small to have like none of this dialogue running back to us.
But either way it's good it came out anyway.
So that's basically something that happened, was a big aha moment which is like, oh, hang on, there's features here that we have that users really want that it's really easy for us to give to them that we didn't even know that they were dying for.
Omer (33:43.030)
Yeah.
All right, so give me a sense of the size of the business today.
Can you disclose any numbers, either revenue or users or apps or whatever?
Just give, give this listeners a sense of what the business is sort of like right now.
Alexandra Keating (33:56.260)
Yes.
I mean like we don't disclose revenue.
Our partners is really hard because again, I think we've got like 3,000 that have come through the site and then other stuff is really partner wide.
So we work with a lot of hosting companies and media companies where we actually power the mobile across their sort of networks.
And we don't necessarily count them as individual users.
We sort of count them as like, you know, I don't know, strategic deals which hopefully we're going to be doing less and less of and people are going to start coming to the website.
So I don't know publicly, I could say like 3,000 or something.
I'd be cool seeing that.
Omer (34:34.120)
Okay, well, what's the vision for download?
I mean it sounds like you got a pretty Good product already.
It's something that people get, it's very easy to use.
What does the future look like?
Where do you want to.
Where do you want to take this business?
Alexandra Keating (34:48.729)
Yeah.
So I want to be the mobile solution for basically anyone that doesn't want to go and develop their own site.
Right.
And in the future case, I don't think anyone will have to have a website they can go and build with the download CMS first and their content will live everywhere.
So I think that that's on a basic level.
I would love for every restaurant owner, every landscape gardener, every blogger, every social media personality to have a download product so their content could look good and function well on every different device.
And then secondly, have people build with us first so that their content looks good on every different device.
And then thirdly, create powerful networks to really help them drive users and drive revenue for their business in a meaningful way and not taking advantage of their sort of ignorance when it comes to it.
Omer (35:40.750)
You're going to conquer the mobile world, right?
Alexandra Keating (35:43.230)
Yeah, the multi screen world.
I don't know how long we're going to continue to refer to it as mobile.
Omer (35:49.630)
All right, it's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like to answer them as quickly as you can.
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Alexandra Keating (36:01.470)
Oh wow.
It's really hard to be quick with this.
Yeah.
If you're just never give up.
Basically just keep persevering.
Omer (36:09.950)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Alexandra Keating (36:13.390)
Passion of the Western World Mind.
Actually I think it is great answer on my behalf.
It was the first book that I read that got me into changing my degree at university and got me really into sociology and psychology and I don't know, it was like a life changing moment for me.
But I can't remember the name of the book, which is amazing.
Omer (36:35.950)
What's one attribute or characteristic of a successful entrepreneur in your mind?
Alexandra Keating (36:41.470)
Transparency.
Omer (36:43.470)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit creating lists?
What's a new business idea or a crazy idea that you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Alexandra Keating (36:55.710)
The home battery unit.
But my mates at Swell are already doing it.
Omer (37:00.760)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Alexandra Keating (37:05.240)
I managed a band for seven years.
Omer (37:07.480)
Did you really?
Alexandra Keating (37:08.680)
Yes.
Omer (37:10.280)
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Alexandra Keating (37:15.160)
Yeah, I would say music and cooking.
Omer (37:18.040)
Cool.
Alexandra, I want to thank you for joining me today.
It's been a pleasure.
Now, if folks want to find out more about download, they can go to.
Alexandra Keating (37:30.870)
Yeah, Download me.
It's download without the vowels.
Omer (37:36.150)
Okay.
I was looking for a catchy way to explain that.
Great.
And if they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Alexandra Keating (37:44.230)
Yeah, they can just.
I'm.
Alexandraownload me.
Omer (37:47.510)
Awesome.
Thanks again, and I wish you all the best.
Alexandra Keating (37:50.870)
Thank you so much.
Omer (37:51.990)
Cheers.
