Dux-Soup: From Side Project to Bootstrapped 7-Figure SaaS – with Will van der Sanden [419]

This is a machine-generated transcript.

[00:00:00] Omer: Will welcome to the show,

[00:00:02] Will: Omer. Thanks for thanks for having me.

[00:00:04] Omer: My pleasure. Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?

[00:00:10] Will: Yeah, absolutely. It's a, it's a quote from actually from an animated movie or, or you can't, it's not really cartoon, but it's see a need, fill a need.

[00:00:17] It's from the robots movie. And I actually came across it when I was just starting up with Dux-Soup and I thought, yeah, that's, that's exactly it. So yeah, that for me, there was. Very inspiring.

[00:00:30] Omer: So you need fill a need. Love it. Nice and simple. So tell us about Dux-Soup. What does the product do?

[00:00:35] Who's it for and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?

[00:00:39] Will: So, Dux-Soup is a is a piece of software that helps you to find customers on LinkedIn. It's targeted to especially B2B sales development people who are looking. To reach out to people on LinkedIn and do that at a scale so that you, by automation, you can reach out to many people and you basically are, are able to well pick out the those responsive prospects that you can then continue the conversation with in a in a, in a usual sales role.

[00:01:11] Omer: Cool. Give us a sense of the size of the business. Where are you in terms of revenue? Cus excuse me. Give us a sense of the size of the business. Where are you in terms of revenue, customer size of team?

[00:01:25] Will: The size of the business. Well, I'll give you some context. So we've nearly hit 10 years that we are running.

[00:01:31] And we've built a customer base of around 80,000 and annual revenue of current revenue in the seven figures. And we're doing this all at the moment with 20 plus employees, though not all full time, but yeah, it's a big team that is working on this now.

[00:01:48] Omer: And so the business you said founded 2015 you haven't raised any money, right?

[00:01:53] The business has been bootstrapped.

[00:01:55] Will: It's been yeah. Fully bootstrapped, no no external money at all. No.

[00:01:59] Omer: Great. Okay, so let's let, let's talk about where the idea for this, this business, this product came from and. I, I know it wasn't a straightforward journey. You, you had some other attempts at trying to build startups and products before you got here.

[00:02:20] So may maybe kind of tell us a little bit about that, that journey and some of the things you worked on before you, you came up with the idea for Dux-Soup.

[00:02:28] Will: Yeah, sure. So my, my background is in in software development and especially product development. And in that role. I worked at a, yeah, at a number of software companies or startups that, well, that where I saw a repeating sort of problem occurring.

[00:02:45] And those companies where I was part of the initial team that actually built the the initial product, initial offering that we were building and building and we would never really get the traction. So that, yeah, these businesses, they all ended up fling out even though I always felt that the products, the products that we built were were solid.

[00:03:04] But yeah, we just, we couldn't sell it or explain it.

[00:03:09] Omer: So, so that was, you were part of a, a startup and, and, and trying to get this thing off the ground. Yeah. How long were you, were you working on that?

[00:03:17] Will: This I I think about four years in one company and then another four in another one in a similar sort of yeah, similar context.

[00:03:27] As a sort of head developer of a, of a small of small team.

[00:03:32] Omer: Right. And then you also had an idea for another product and you spent some time building something yourself.

[00:03:39] Will: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as, as a, yeah, as a developer and especially when working in the in the product development and, and you know, that you've built and you can build stuff that is that can do some things that customers would really, would really like.

[00:03:52] It is just, it's well variable. I find it quite frustrating. And it drove me to try another product once the previous one failed, and always sort of keeping in mind how the other products ended up failing but always still believing that, surely, yeah, if the technology works then and the product does something useful, then we should be able to get this off the ground.

[00:04:13] So yeah, that was a a number of times where really we, we, we found that we built something that did something that was a bit more technical very often. So it wasn't like a, the product was not easily understood by the customer. And yeah, there was, was always a struggle, always always pushing uphill an uphill struggle to get this first to get this explained.

[00:04:37] And then even after the, in a first sale of a one customer. The next customer would have to go through the same the same cycle of explanation and yeah. That meant it. Yeah. You, you were just, yeah. You were bound to fail because there was was just too complex.

[00:04:53] Omer: What, what was the product that you were building at that time?

[00:04:55] Will: The the one that I talk about now is, the last one was is called Swivel Script.

[00:05:00] Omer: Oh, what did it do?

[00:05:02] It was, you've gotta explain it to me now, right?

[00:05:05] Will: It was basically a tool that allows you to to script together different web applications using JavaScript on the, on the desktop. So you could basically optimize processes by automating some copying and pasting and making sure that the, that the, well the user of the system was always presented with the right application at the right time.

[00:05:22] Okay. The, the, the end users were generally speaking people working in the, in the customer service center or call center. And those those people tended to use quite a lot of different applications and there was a lot of. Well, it was a, a, a, a steep learning curve for them to to know which one to use.

[00:05:42] And so there's a lot of training involved and then a lot of room for error to, well, to get the right system to copy the data. So it seemed like a slam dunk to to come up with a solution there. But it turned out that yeah, that it was, yeah, it, it didn't succeed. Lemme put it that way.

[00:05:59] Omer: Yeah. So I, a lot of, you know, I talk to founders who are non-technical and they'll say, you know, my problem is I, I don't know how to code. And then I took to founders who are technical, who are developers, and they say, my problem is I know how to code. And so often I, you know, it's easier for me to build something than to go and spend time talking to potential customers and, and doing the validation stuff.

[00:06:24] Did you go through a similar process? Like, did, did you spend time. Talking to customers, trying to figure out what, specifically, what to solve or, or did you get to like, I understand the problem, I can go and build it, I'm just gonna go and do that. Like, which kind of approach did you take?

[00:06:40] Will: It was probably more the, I know the problem, I can build it approach initially although I was always always quite often in well in a customer facing sort of role as well.

[00:06:52] But then the customer that you ended up talking to was tend tended to be the end user. While the actual customer that you're trying to sell to is, tends not to be the end user, at least not in the, the sort of software that I was working with the Swivel script. So, I would say the the, yeah, it's definitely, well, the, the benefit of being able to code yourself is that you can more quickly try different approaches, try different products.

[00:07:15] You can throw 'em away when you are just when you only the, the thinker and not the developer, then there's gonna be a lot of confusion or yeah problems explaining what you want to the, to a developer. And well, if it's a co-founder, then you should be, you should be able to, to do that as well.

[00:07:35] I mean, clearly lots of people do that like that. But it, it's, there's a big benefit I find. Well, obviously being a developer. Yeah, you can just quickly try new ideas and then try 'em out and throw 'em away if it don't work. Yeah. Without, yeah.

[00:07:49] Omer: You, you, you also said you had a really hard time explaining or communicating the value prop to customers.

[00:07:56] Yeah. Yeah. And it was an uphill struggle all the time. Having gone through that experience, and then also now having gone and built Dux-Soup. When you look back at that, what was one lesson you feel you maybe learned about the, just generally how to, how to do a better job at, at communicating with customers about your product?

[00:08:16] Will: I think the main, I. Well, yeah, one of the main things really is that to not just build a product but you really need to think about and build the entire and I know it's a bit of a, a cheesy term, but the customer journey. So from the customer hearing about your product to go to your website to try new product and then telling other people about it.

[00:08:39] And so there has to be as yeah, as barrier free as possible if Yeah, by just putting a, a product out there that people can download and then have no idea how to use and. It's so complex and so feature rich that they require training, that it's just not where you wanna start, at least not yeah, not in my experience.

[00:09:03] Omer: Great. So you, you had a number of, I guess, you know, false starts trying to either working on somebody else's startup or your own products to get that off the ground. And then where did the idea for Dux-Soup come from?

[00:09:17] Will: Yeah, so what we found in we're talking about the, the products at that time, as I said before, the I was always looking for products that could be of interest to to customers.

[00:09:26] So it turned out that especially LinkedIn was popular for this list building exercise or just generally finding leads. It was just. Was the start of the whole social selling wave in at that time. So yeah, I decided to basically just tweak the products or make it focused on just doing LinkedIn.

[00:09:46] And when doing that, I was looking at the the other products in the market that were, well, obviously fulfilling that particular need and, I found that yeah, there were, there were some basic automations that people needed, and so I added those, which was not a massive a massive amount of development.

[00:10:01] And before I knew it, I yeah, I had it all in the Chrome web store and it was ready for people to to try.

[00:10:08] Omer: So this was a Chrome extension, because that's an important distinction as well, that, you know, I were talking about this earlier, that LinkedIn doesn't have an API and so it's not particularly easy to go and integrate with the platform.

[00:10:23] You have to kind of have these, these workarounds. How easy or hard does that make your job in terms of building this product?

[00:10:31] Will: It definitely makes it challenging. The there are a number of factors that are at play as, as I said, I would. Yeah. As there is no API. Well, there was an API at some point, but that API is being cut into basically being a, a pretty pointless API.

[00:10:45] And that's combined with the fact that there was a clear demand for people to run some sort of automation on LinkedIn. That just me meant, well, it was an extra technical hurdle for the competitors to to take, which. Well, for me, what made it also more interesting of something to try because jumping in a, a really crowded marketplace is obviously a lot harder to to get noticed than when there's when it's clearly not super straightforward.

[00:11:10] So yeah, build, building the initial development especially around the detection or antide detection elements. Yeah, the more several aspects of the product that were really just built. To work around or with LinkedIn so that people would not get banned. That was a big big part of it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:26] Omer: Okay. So you've got this, this product in, in the, the Chrome store. Did you start charging for it right away? Was this a free tool initially? How, how did you get started in initially with, with that?

[00:11:40] Will: No. So initially it was it was free the, well, there was a free version with basic functionality that was already quite useful and that people could pay for additional, basically, additional features.

[00:11:50] It was the, the, the pre the freemium model that the people use. And it just meant that for people to try out the product and get a feel of what it does that was really, it was really just a matter of a few clicks. To go from learning about Dux-Soup and then actually trying out to see if it would do what they what they were after.

[00:12:10] And, I think that was quite key in the in the uptake, initial uptake that the barrier to actually just trying out, trying out a product was really, really low on purpose. There was things also around making the, using the Chrome Web store Chrome was a big pretty much the standard already done.

[00:12:26] People already had Google accounts, so there was like a whole sort of ecosystem that duck have just all worked in and that the audience was also working in. It just meant that it was a really yeah, a really a, a low, a low barrier to work, trying it out.

[00:12:41] Omer: So putting into a product into a marketplace like the Chrome Store is great for distribution.

[00:12:46] If people can find it. What was your experience with that?

[00:12:50] Will: Yeah, people generally didn't find it really fire searching for or searching in the web store or searching Google even. I think most, most people found it because they, they heard fire. Well, at that point I was working with an influencer called John Nemo, who was really, well, he was very active, great guy. I mean, he was super, super active on all yeah, you know, that these, some of these influences they, that they can be really overwhelming, but it's, it's really good for getting the word out. And he was really excited about Dux-Soup and it was that combination also with the fact that.

[00:13:24] The people who tried it out generally became immediate advocates as well, because at least for those who downloaded and tried it, it did what it said on the tin. And they would just tell, like, call, like, oh yeah, if you, if you want to do some, some work on LinkedIn with getting data or or working with some bit of automation, you try this.

[00:13:41] It's it's really easy and, so most of the initial growth really came from that, from this sort of word of mouth and also the influencer marketing where, yeah, where in different, different geo, geographical, geographical regions. We suddenly started out seeing all this uptake.

[00:13:56] Omer: How did you meet John? How did that relationship come about?

[00:13:59] Will: I really just went on LinkedIn and posted about about Dux-Soup and yeah, the, when the exec, it must have been just, yeah, me reaching out or talking about Dux-Soup in the context in different, in different groups on LinkedIn. Sort of the same principles that we teach our own customers on how to get your, your message in front of the right people.

[00:14:24] It's, yeah, but then it was, it was, it was a lot more manual. But yeah, it must have been one of those groups, I think probably. And when, where, where John then yeah. Picked it up and I got in touch.

[00:14:33] Omer: So this wasn't, did you have to pay him or was this he was just interested in the

[00:14:39] Will: Yeah, it's I mean, I think you find it in many markets where there's always influencers who are always on the outlook or on the lookout for, that, that, of that work and do something that people are really looking for and that is not really super commonplace. It's also for the influencer that they are showing that, well, if you, if you listen to what I'm saying, that at least you show you, you can see what's hot, you can get a competitive advantage.

[00:15:04] And so these guys are always looking for product. So he saw that there was a, a clear value in, in telling about Dux-Soup? Yeah, for, for that reason. I think that's great. So it was like a,

[00:15:14] Omer: I think that's the best thing, right? To find somebody who's naturally interested, who wants, you know, want, wants to be kind of part of the journey and, and, and, you know, provide feedback and test this thing.

[00:15:24] I mean, you can't, you can't ask for more. I, from what I understand, from the point where you got started with this business to hitting the first million in a RR, it was about a two year journey. Were you, at what point did you start working on this business Full-time. When did you realize that this was more than just a tool that you'd built for your wife to something that had some business potential?

[00:15:47] And given your, your experience with several false starts that we talked about earlier, what gave you the confidence that this was a thing that you were gonna jump in with both feet and, and commit to?

[00:16:00] Will: So the I think it was about half, half a year in from the initial release to actually, yeah, going at it full time.

[00:16:07] And so it was also, I mean, just to come back on sort of the fit with the ecosystem what's, what's so nice again, in lowering the barrier is by fitting in with the Chrome Web store, you automatically had the and easy way for people to pay for the product. That basically we, you had to do some work to obviously to integrate with that.

[00:16:24] But lots of people had already the payment details in Google. Which meant that prompting a customer to to subscribe after they used it. Then for people then to purchase. It was really, again, as barrier free as I could get it. So, and that just meant that yeah, you slowly saw people subscribing over these initial months to, up to a point where I think I reached probably about 5,000 a month, 5,000 euro.

[00:16:52] At this point yeah, given the also the, the way that the uptake went, I thought, well, I'm gonna have to try this one. It's it seems to be sticking. Yeah.

[00:17:00] Omer: Okay. So the, the, the payment infrastructure you talked about, so that was like just built into the, the store and it was like Google Payments or whatever.

[00:17:09] Yeah. And could you, you could, could you, you could actually set that up for subscriptions as well?

[00:17:13] Will: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:14] Omer: Okay. That makes life a lot easier, doesn't it?

[00:17:16] Will: Yeah, no, absolutely. It's obviously for people yeah. If you, if people need, need to be able to buy a product and in those, yeah. If the system of the ecosystem already provides you with a way, with a payment agent, then yeah.

[00:17:29] That that makes it a lot easier. Yeah. Right.

[00:17:32] Omer: Okay, great. So six months in and you're like, okay, there's enough revenue here now to, to give me a strong signal that this is, this business has a lot more potential. I'm gonna go in and, and work on this full time. It was just you at the time. You're still obviously bootstrapping, self-funding the, the, the business.

[00:17:53] What was the next step? How did you continue to, to grow, get to, you know, the first $10K. Was it just doing more of the same, working with influencers like John and, and you know, trying to get this word of mouth out there, or wa was there anything else that you did?

[00:18:10] Will: I think there was the well generally getting the a, a web presence, there was a, more than just a WordPress website that was quite a, just to give the the brand a bit more of a, of, yeah. Of a, of a status. And also make it more recognizable for for the customers that this was actually a company that behind this this product. But I think the, the main, the main. Part of the growth was really I did all the support myself at that time as well, so I would hear of all the, the, the, the things that were wrong or people that people were asking for.

[00:18:41] And then, yeah, just a matter of making sure that I. Well, you take away all those, all those things that don't work. And you, you add things that do work and people ask for, obviously within, within having some vision yourself of where you, where you're aiming for. And so that's, yeah, we, that and that way the, the, the pro edition which was the, the, the paid version at the time just got richer and richer and more and more scenarios and, yeah, more people ended up being willing to to go for the paid version because of that. Yeah.

[00:19:09] Omer: Now, Dux-Soup wasn't the only product around at the time that did this, had this kind of functionality? What do you think was it about this product that was resonating? With, with people. Like what, what else was, were you seeing going on?

[00:19:26] And was LinkedIn Navigator around at the time as well? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

[00:19:29] Will: Yeah Navigator was there. The, the other products were generally really expensive between eight times and, and maybe even 15 times of what we were asking. They tended to be quite, invisible in who was behind the the product as in which we meant it came across a bit sketchy.

[00:19:48] And the support was pretty abysmal in my experience. And the yeah, I would say that, but the actual products were tend tended to be not so not so user friendly and as is what Dux-Soup was was offering. So, it was, it was multiple. And, and what we also found is the, the Dux-Soup brands just came up, just was, was really friendly.

[00:20:08] People really liked the brand in in being a positive. And while some of the other brands were a bit more clinical or technical that just, yeah, that also helped, I think.

[00:20:18] Omer: Why did you call it Dux-Soup?

[00:20:19] Will: The well, the name was actually well, it was my wife who came up with a name.

[00:20:23] She she was googling it when we were looking for a name and there, there was an expression in English, or actually I think it's an American expression by, these. Yeah, it's a comedian, but if you google for the sentence easiest as Dux-Soup you'll find the the sort of reference that I'm talking about.

[00:20:39] And it's yeah, it means something that is seemingly easy to do. And then the the duck, the CK was turned into an X because of Excel, because there was still a main, yeah, main part of the of the value proposition in being able to get all this data into a, into a spreadsheet.

[00:20:56] So.

[00:20:57] Omer: Got it. Okay, great. So the, the, the Chrome Store is helping you with distribution. You've got influencers like John the word of mouth, also going into a market and being the cheapest is probably not the best strategy, but at this time, when you're getting started, you have a new product. You know, it's, it's a, it's a gap.

[00:21:19] It's an, it's an opening there. And you, and you took that. Yeah. Tell me about, you also tried like your own list building to, to reach potential customers and doing cold email and stuff like that. How, how did that work for you?

[00:21:33] Will: Yeah. We tried buying some lists. Basically this was actually the, for the for the swivels script Pro product as well.

[00:21:39] But also as part of the getting the word out for Dux-Soup buying buying lists of companies or contacts that could be of interest. And yeah, and also hiring a marketing company to send out emails and then track the clicks and stuff like that. But. And I, I ended up doing some of sales calls or calls, calls myself as well, which was not my yeah, not my favorite thing to try, but you gotta try these things, I guess.

[00:22:05] But yeah, the, the, the end result was always very, very yeah, very much nothing. And I think a lot of it is because it's because of the cold approach. You just, some people might even have an interest or show some interest, but then they, they have no commitment in in continuing. So when something else comes up on the, on in the day-to-day work whatever, whatever you've built up in this on these calls or in the emails just is gone in a second.

[00:22:30] So that yeah, so that definitely didn't work for for us. Just also quickly on the pricing, I think what's also worth, well, one of the things I, I've noticed over working on Dux-Soup is that because obviously you, you always, you always a resource constraint in, where you can put your time and how you build your, your product and your business.

[00:22:51] But I think the offering of offering a, a, a product that only does a few things but does it really well at, at a low price but it does give you it give you, it, it gives you a reason why it's so, why the price is so low, because it doesn't do a lot. But if it does something that. That is actually very useful for, to a lot of people.

[00:23:08] Then it does give you an entry to, to that market. And once you, once you're there, then you can, and that's basically what we built as well here. The and that's sort of the, the years after the the next edition which is a more invol, well, a more complex product with more features that, that you can sell at a higher price.

[00:23:25] But. Just to get a foot in the door without having any, any sales teams working for you. I, I think the, well for us, in any case, the approach of, yeah, like said, having a, a really focused product like that really got us into that market. So.

[00:23:42] Omer: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I was talking to somebody the other day who was saying, you know, I want to get into this market, but I, I get so put off by these.

[00:23:49] Big established players that have these, you know, rich feature set and you know, where do I start? And it's like, well, if you're, if you're trying to compete with them and launch a product that has all those features, you are probably taking the wrong strategy. Right? There's probably a, a segment of people who only need one or two features.

[00:24:09] And if you can figure out what those are and do those, deliver those really well, and. You know, carve out your own niche. It's gonna be a much smarter way to go. And then, yeah, eventually over time you can add more features and grow and, and, and charge more as you deliver more value. I want to talk a little bit about those first two years, because I think people listening to this might be like, oh, you know, yeah Will had this idea. Two years he hits, you know, seven figures hits the first million.

[00:24:37] Give us a just a taste of what it was like in those two years, you know? You don't have yourself funded, you don't have a team?

[00:24:48] Will: I don't have a team, no. It was basically, so the, it was well. Well, obviously it was a lot of hard work, so I mean, everyone will tell you this.

[00:24:56] So what I found is really be because there was a clear tool coming from customers. The work was really not an issue at all. There, I mean just having a, an audience that is actually. Trying your products. I mean, that just, that's d was just pure gold. So then just gave me enough energy to to do those long hours.

[00:25:15] Always. Also yeah, all the weekends we were always working, developing, doing supports, bug fixing. I also ran the service, basically. Yeah, all the whole technical side. My, my wife did a little bit of work on Twitter at that time. So I said that it wasn't just me, just to be clear and no, but, but that was really helpful as well.

[00:25:34] Just just ping a few people here and there. And yeah, I just found that the, yeah, just building, doing the support calls at a set time, doing some troubleshooting and doing some external, some development. And you just fill your day with lots of different sort of slices of work. Then yeah, just seeing that, that you, that the, that the the traction is still growing and growing. It just gives you plenty of energy to to run those long work days and also yeah, to take the laptop on your holiday. I mean, my family. They, they were actually quite surprised in the last, well, the years after that I wasn't working when I was on holiday because I was always working on holiday as well.

[00:26:11] But it was really just to keep the keep the show running and it's really a small, a small price to pay for yeah, for the years after that. So definitely. Was it, yeah.

[00:26:20] Omer: How long was it before you were able to hire your first employee?

[00:26:23] Will: Yeah, it was very intense. It was yeah, the, it, it was really a matter of just yeah, dividing your time into because yeah, because you're doing the, all the different roles, right, of the business and as a developer you tend to. Well, it's easy to just do the development, but if nobody's doing the support, then yeah people will be un unhappy because there will be bugs because you're also doing the testing, right? So it's right. Yeah. Everything, you got your, you got your hands full, but there's, there's all these balls.

[00:26:52] You gotta spend a bit of time with, with all these with all these areas.

[00:26:56] Omer: So were you like, were you like doing support calls and saying like, yeah, I'll, I'll let our development team know about this.

[00:27:02] Will: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but also on the support side, right? Because it just shows how the technology.

[00:27:09] That was available there was also made it really, really facilitated doing all this. For example I was using the Chrome remote support feature to do remote troubleshooting. Right, because people were running this extension locally. And as you probably know that when people run stuff locally, there's always things that are slightly different and right.

[00:27:29] But being able to do all that, just on, on my laptop from anywhere. It just meant that I could, I could actually put it in time regardless of, of yeah. Family commitments and other things that I needed doing.

[00:27:40] Omer: So so, so who was the, who was the first person you hired as an employee? What role was that for?

[00:27:44] Will: Support. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It was the, basically to take over and professionalize the support at that time, it, it was just a big in email or a email box. And can Lee can Lee was also a big, a big part of it. But no, but yeah, to professionalize that and to especially take out the first the first line of support to take that away from me so I could, yeah, to spend more time on things that were more, more valuable or they will bring more value to the company. 'cause obviously, and the thing is the was quite interesting, the sort that the initial 10 or 20 customers, then it's then having just this conversation over email it that, that you really, you really under understand where they're coming from.

[00:28:27] But at some point when it's like a hundred or 200 a day, you can't have this conversation with the, all these people. And then you need to take a step back. Which was quite, yeah, that was quite a big moment to be honest. Yeah.

[00:28:39] Omer: Great. Okay, so you, you've gone through this journey where, you know, we, we talked about the, the, the attempts to build different businesses and products and they didn't work out.

[00:28:50] You came up with the idea of Dux-Soup through helping your wife and then grew this business and eventually. Through just persistence and wearing every hat and working 12 hour days. Eventually you got to the point where you found traction product, market fit, and then you got the attention of LinkedIn.

[00:29:11] What happened with that?

[00:29:12] Will: Well, I think that is a, that that's something that that especially I would say five years ago was a big a big part of this of this journey to make sure that the product that you build does not cause trouble for your customers, right? 'cause that's, yeah, people, I just tend to be really careful with their LinkedIn accounts and they put a, a lot of value in that. So if, if the if the customers would have a problem with LinkedIn, then I would have a problem with the customers and. The thing would all would collapse in one in one, in one go.

[00:29:42] Right. So that was a big part of of my time in making sure that the software that yeah, that was out there was as LinkedIn proof as I could get it. So, yeah. And as, as you probably have noticed I trying to find me on LinkedIn is also not a it is not possible because of that, because yeah, LinkedIn got in touch and they.

[00:30:01] Decided that yeah, that they were gonna remove my profile. So.

[00:30:04] Omer: But why was that? Just like.. Yeah, absolutely. So, so, so did they, did she contact you and just say, look, you, you, you can't, you can't do this, this. You can't build this product.

[00:30:15] Will: Yeah. They, they came to me and said, they said, well, you can't, you can't do this for this and these, and these reasons and all these reasons were not on void.

[00:30:21] But well obviously a, a lot of legalese that you get. So I, I did end up getting, getting a local lawyer just to look at stuff as well. But all, all these were the things that they were throwing at me were all not really relevant. But the one thing that they could do to stop me is to, yeah, to remove my LinkedIn profile.

[00:30:41] So so it was either that or remove Dux-Soup. So yeah, I mean, I think right choice there.

[00:30:47] Omer: I, I, I mean, so I mean, I, I don't know, you know, the full details of this, but if you are running this product and you know, is, was it, was it like arguments about, like you violating terms of use or something?

[00:31:01] Or did you feel like. You know, you are, you are, what you're doing is, you know, is you, you, you are kind of doing things the right way. Like how do you feel about that in terms of why there was pushback from them, presumably because they prefer everybody was using a. Navigator anyway. Right. Rather than any, any third party tool.

[00:31:22] But, but yeah. So just tell, tell me about that. And it's like, you know, I just wonder, it's like, is this the kind of thing that still keeps you up at night even though you've still been in this business for like 10 years now?

[00:31:30] Will: No. No. It doesn't keep me up at night. I mean, we've been doing this for now for a, a good, a good while.

[00:31:35] And we have, yeah, if after so many years you don't have, trouble then you clearly do something right, but the. What I wanna say is that with, with LinkedIn their their stance on this subject is really quite two-faced. And so on the one hand they are selling licenses to Sales Navigator, right by the truckload list.

[00:31:54] And Sales Navigator is getting more and more salesy with InMail, automatic InMail follow-ups. And then on the other hand, they're obviously trying to get. The, everyone to create a profile on LinkedIn, because without this fully well, the full network of professionals on there the network does not have value.

[00:32:12] And then they can't sell sales navigator or recruiter. So mm-Hmm. They, and so they, and then they, they mentioned that terms of in terms of service. But even that when you, when you look at it, you can't, even if you were to follow them by this, the their rule by the, by the rules, you can't even systematically browse LinkedIn.

[00:32:33] As in, to be honest, if you look, read their rules, you can't use LinkedIn for, for sales basically. That, that, that's what the rules say. So yeah, that's, they're so extreme in, in the way that they stipulated and. Because they clearly also want people to use to actually use sales Navigator. It, it just doesn't really seem like a very honest principle that they have there.

[00:32:55] It's, it's more, I guess they don't want their network to be polluted with robots talking to each other. Right. Which is fair enough. But a bit of automation just to make sure that the sales people are spending time with communicating with, customers who are showing interest instead of spending their time on manually doing sending lots of, lots of connection requests.

[00:33:17] I mean, it's, it's obvious that the sales people would prefer to do the. The, the part of the process where they add the most, most value, which is convincing someone who is, who is showing some interest, not Mm-Hmm. In, in, in going through lists of loads of people to find the ones with interest. That part you can actually automate.

[00:33:36] And that, and that's basically what Dux-Soup does.

[00:33:37] Omer: So one of the things I've been seeing with we talked about this earlier, that, you know, with, with LinkedIn is like, I'm getting more and more crap in my DM's from people and I've noticed a quite an increase in the last five or six months, and I think in large part it's to do with AI and how easy it's becoming for a, you know, people to kind of do kind of prospecting. If, if someone's looking at Dux-Soup and saying, Hey, will, I think, you know, you, you guys are kind of making it easier for people to send this kind of spam and, and stuff like that. What's your response to that?

[00:34:15] Will: Well, response is that the, so the, the purpose of using Dux-Soup on LinkedIn is really about it's not.

[00:34:22] To spam people. It's really, first of all, to make sure that you, you targeted the audience that could be of in, could have an interest in your product or service. I mean, there's no point in sending I mean sending thousands of, in emails or whatever out to people that are never, ever going to buy or have a need for what you're trying to sell 'em.

[00:34:41] So it's always, we always tell our, tell our customers that make sure that you target the relevant audience. And then it's really just a matter of very often that it maybe you got the wrong person at the wrong time, or some other reason why they either not picking up on the on the initial sort of interest that you want to get out of them.

[00:35:01] And, and that's fine because there were, there were lots of other reasons why people, or not at that point want to talk to anyone about that particular service or a product. But if you already start out with a, with a scatter approach, then yeah, then you're gonna be annoying. Lots and lots of people unnecessarily and yeah, probably also getting your own LinkedIn accounts into trouble because when enough people complain about about being approached.

[00:35:25] Someone who is offering services that are of no interest and they don't know this person. At some point LinkedIn will also close their accounts. I mean, that happens still. So yeah.

[00:35:34] Omer: Yeah, yeah. I agree with you. You know, I think it's, I think LinkedIn is a great, great platform. There's, there's so much potential there.

[00:35:43] And. I, I think, you know, I've connected with some, you know, amazing people because of, of LinkedIn. But I. Yeah, it's, it's definitely gonna be this, this, this ongoing challenge between increasing noise and then how do you do a better job at being able to connect with the right people whether you know you're a buyer, seller, or whatever.

[00:36:10] Yeah. So it's it's a kind of fascinating space. And yeah, it's, it's an interesting relationship that you have, like building this business on that platform and, yeah.

[00:36:18] Will: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It's yeah, it, it's a big, it's a big challenge because obviously it's, it, it's always evolving. It's always changing.

[00:36:24] We, we never get they never tell us when there's a new update that with the new feature or that, that when they remove a feature, which also happens, right. So yeah, no, it's a, it's a moving a moving targets and it, it can be a bit of a challenge to to use it as a base. For products that you want to sell to customers, but that also makes it an interesting sort of field to work on.

[00:36:43] For, for myself, I find. It's challenging.

[00:36:46] Omer: Well, 10 years, almost 10 years in, you're at your end 10 year anniversary next year. Yep. You're still working on this business. You're still enjoying waking up and, and, and helping customers, so Absolutely. That's, that's, that's, I think, what matters the most. Right.

[00:37:00] At the end of the day.

[00:37:01] Will: Yeah. Well, it's it's still it's still a yeah. Because it's, it's an every, every evolving landscape of, of how people yeah. How they go about trying find customers and they it's just all, there's always, there's always new areas that you can work on. It's so.

[00:37:16] Omer: Yeah.

[00:37:17] Cool. All right. We, we should wrap up. So let's get into the lightning round. I've got seven quick fire questions for you. Yeah. Great. Okay. Okay. What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received?

[00:37:28] Will: To stay critical of your offering and to avoid tunnel vision?

[00:37:34] Omer: What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

[00:37:37] Will: For me, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is even though it's not business relevant, it's, it is very inspiring in many ways.

[00:37:45] Omer: I, I, I love that book too. What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

[00:37:50] Will: I would say listening to your customers.

[00:37:53] Omer: What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

[00:37:57] Will: To, to divide, to plan your day and to divide your day into specific work as in, into specific tasks. Don't just go on email and, and be scattering. Just stay focused. Do this for a couple of hours, then this for a couple hours, and, you get the most done. Yeah.

[00:38:13] Omer: What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?

[00:38:17] Will: Yeah, commuter traffic, entertainment. It's something I've been yeah. Looking at when, when, when commuting. And there must be, yeah, there's a ton of ideas I have in how you could make that commute more more enjoyable.

[00:38:28] Omer: So, so entertaining people while. They're stuck in traffic, commuting to work?

[00:38:33] Is that what you're saying?

[00:38:34] Will: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so to to, to turn the actuals being stuck in traffic, into a, into a into a sort of a, into a game area by using GPS and augmented reality and other things. So yeah, I think there is, there is something there.

[00:38:48] Omer: What an idea. What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

[00:38:51] Will: That I've been I've been learning how to, or trying to learn how to play the guitar since I was probably 17 in a number of times have tried it and filled. But yeah, I'll I'll keep on trying.

[00:39:02] Omer: I've, I've got a guitar right here. It's probably like similar. It's been, I, I we're talking about well over a decade and I'm, it's difficult. I'm still like on like a first couple of chords or something, so it's, it's been really, really a terrible, terrible thing. And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

[00:39:20] Will: For me music both well to just listening or Spotify, especially in the, but live, going to concerts and and going on holiday traveling with my my family.

[00:39:29] Absolutely.

[00:39:30] Omer: Cool. All right, well, well, will, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure kinda unpacking the story and, and kind of sharing that journey over the last nine, almost 10 years. If people want to check out Dux-Soup, they can go to ducks, which is dux-soup.com. And if folks wanna get in touch with you, it's not on LinkedIn, but what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

[00:39:55] Will: Well, you can email me just it's will[at]dux-soup[dot]com.

[00:39:59] Omer: Awesome.

[00:40:00] Will: So yeah, I'm always happy to talk to anyone in the, yeah. About possible. Businesses or just other things as long as you don't try to sell me anything.

[00:40:08] Omer: All right, cool. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, and I wish you and the team the best of success.

[00:40:12] Will: Thank you. Thank you for having me over. Good pleasure.

[00:40:15] Omer: My pleasure. Cheers.

[00:40:16] Will: Cheers.