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 took to John Fagg, the co founder of Skeda, a reservation and scheduling system for spaces such as meeting rooms, sports venues, professional studios and more.
In 2013, John and his co founder were running a sports facility in Melbourne, Australia.
They were struggling to manage reservations and bookings, so they looked around for the right software to help them but couldn't find a good solution.
So they decided they would build a tool and thought they could also sell it to other businesses.
But neither of them could code and had no idea how to go about building a software product.
John persuaded another friend who was an engineer to join their team.
The only problem was that he was doing his PhD in Germany at the time, so they had to work remotely across different time zones to build the product.
But the founders had no idea what they were doing.
They didn't have a background in starting a software business.
So even though they managed to build a product, finding customers was painfully slow.
It took them well over 18 months to find their first 10 customers.
Also, it didn't help that they were all working part time on this side project.
They tried a bunch of different things to get customers, including sending handwritten letters in the mail, but nothing seemed to work.
It looked like this would be nothing more than a side project that never went beyond a handful of customers.
Right, we've heard that story before.
But a couple of years into working on this business, they made two key changes and as a result, within six months that opened the floodgates for them.
They suddenly had more traffic to their site, more people signing up to try the product, and many of them were converting into paying customers.
Today they have about 4,000 customers, are doing multiple seven figures in annual recurring revenue and are a team of 15 people.
And their business has been bootstrapped all the way.
In this interview, we cover exactly how they overcame the struggles of finding customers and we deep dive into the two big changes they made that turned things around for them.
I hope you enjoy it.
John, welcome to the show.
Jon Fagg (02:40.490)
Great to be here.
Omer (02:41.610)
Do you have a favorite quote?
Something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?
Jon Fagg (02:46.650)
I don't actually have a quote.
I'm not a massive quotes person.
But I think the.
Just thinking about, I think the thing that really motivates me is really just liking to build things.
And that's been something that I've shared with the rest of my founding team and then the wider team.
It's just a lot of fun to build things with interesting people.
Omer (03:09.930)
So tell us about Skeda.
What does the product do, who's it for and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?
Jon Fagg (03:17.530)
Well, essentially it's a space management software tool.
And what we're attempting to do is really just reduce admin time for organizations who have spaces.
And when I say spaces that could be anything from a desk to a room, a court, a field, really anything physical space, and try to make that process as self service as possible for the end user.
So it's really people and space and scatter tries to sort of sit in between and reduce that complexity.
Omer (03:53.050)
So basically anybody who has some kind of physical space that can be used by others can use Skeda to manage booking and scheduling of that.
Jon Fagg (04:05.780)
That's right, yeah.
I think that's one of the things that's probably been our main feature in some ways is that it's a very flexible tool that can be used across all kinds of verticals and we see all kinds of weird and wonderful things on the platform.
Omer (04:20.660)
That's interesting.
Tell me a little bit about like why is there a need for a product like this?
There's no shortage of scheduling tools out there and probably somebody could cobble together a calendly or something like that to solve part of the problem.
But how much more can somebody do with Skeda that they couldn't do with a more horizontal product?
Jon Fagg (04:43.370)
Yeah, so I mean there is definitely no shortage of scheduling products or calendar tools or all kinds of things like that.
I mean there's especially a very large market for appointment scheduling and that's something that is something that we definitely don't do in any way.
But the space scheduling probably falls into a few different verticals where there's this space scheduling for particularly for real estate, or there's space scheduling specifically for co working spaces or for sports facilities or all kinds of specific things.
But what we found in the very beginning, many years back, but is still the case now, is that there was a space for a tool that was able to be kind of flexibly molded to do what your space does.
And that's something that.
Yes, get has been.
Yeah, I think that's probably been its main success is its ability for someone to customize it to exactly how it works.
Because there's.
Yeah.
Under the surface of managing your local community hall, there's a lot of complexity about your individual process that kind of needs to be represented in a software platform.
Omer (05:58.020)
Yeah.
And you have like a variety of customers, like, you know, just going to the SKEDA website, Harvard University, Krispy Kreme, Mercedes Benz.
So, you know, pretty diverse in terms of customers.
What about size, kind of customer size and what percentage of your customers are kind of larger organizations versus an individual with, you know, a farmer with a field or something?
Jon Fagg (06:20.500)
Yeah, yeah, we love the farm with a field.
And that, that has been really our.
The core part of our business is being able, you know, deal with that level of customer and help solve their problem.
Right.
And then, you know, really move up to.
To larger organizations.
I think that's probably been the, you know, the story of the last 12 months with the pandemic is that, you know, we originally had a bit of a hit with people not knowing what was going to happen next and all the uncertainty and, you know, people just not using venues or spaces that they had for a period of time.
But what we.
What we saw after that was especially a real.
Quite a large increase in the amount of people essentially needing to manage people in space in ways they hadn't needed to do before.
And so that was a pattern we really saw across all different sizes.
But it's certainly seen as move much more into the workplace sphere.
And that's quite a large part of our offering now that really wasn't previously.
Omer (07:27.420)
Got it.
So I want to get into the idea, like how you guys came up with the idea for this business.
But before we do that, can you give us a sense of the size of the business in terms of revenue, customer size of team?
Jon Fagg (07:39.180)
Yeah.
So the number of customers.
We have about 12,000 of our customers, but we have about 4,000 of those are paying customers.
We still like to all call them customers.
We like to treat them the same and look after them.
But yeah, so we've got about that split.
And yeah, in terms of the size of our team, we're at 15 people right across the team.
And in terms of revenue on ARR, we're sort of multiple seven figures.
Omer (08:09.810)
Got it.
Great.
Yeah.
I think it's interesting that you call your free users customers as well.
Where was it?
I came across somewhere that they said that there's only two industries that call people users and it's either software companies or drug dealers.
Jon Fagg (08:25.890)
Yeah, I think I saw that come across as a.
The funny observation.
Omer (08:31.150)
Yeah, cool.
So we've got a size of the sense of the size of the business.
It was founded in 2013, so you've been in business for about eight years.
Jon Fagg (08:40.830)
Yep.
Omer (08:41.310)
Where did the idea come from?
Jon Fagg (08:42.830)
Well, it actually came from so part of our founding team, a couple of us had an existing business together and you know, one of the, our endeavors was relatively unsuccessful and a very difficult business for various reasons.
But it was actually to do with a sports facility and we needed to try to find a tool to manage that and manage, you know, who can book the soccer field for this amount of time.
And we just didn't see anything in the market.
And that's where the idea came about that we thought maybe we could build something.
Omer (09:20.730)
And what happened to that business?
Jon Fagg (09:23.530)
Yeah, so that business, we eventually, you know, we did, we learned a lot of things along the way and we managed to pull it together and actually make it into something that was, was, you know, a viable enterprise.
And then we, yeah, we, we sold it at a certain point in time.
It was a, certainly a very difficult business to run and one that, you know, sort of took a lot, took a lot out of us.
But yeah, we did sell that in the end.
Omer (09:47.670)
Yeah, I mean, you guys are not typical, you know, tech SaaS founders in terms of some of the businesses that, that you've run.
So when you, when you sort of identify that there was a need for a product like this, at what point did it become we need this tool to, we could build this tool for other people?
Jon Fagg (10:08.380)
Yeah, well, it wasn't, it certainly wasn't that ambitious at that point in time.
As in we, certainly in the beginning we were only thinking about this as being a sports focused tool.
I think we realized that it could have application outside of, you know, indoor sports facilities, which was the particular user case we were in.
But we knew that it could be applied to tennis courts and, you know, other sports fields and things like that.
And we, we understood that therefore that market was, you know, there's a lot of tennis courts in the world.
So it's, it's.
We already had an idea that it could be, could have reasonably broad application.
But yeah, it was only as we actually got into the detail of building it that we realized that actually it has a lot of much broader application and then found that, that those markets were also not that well served, just like the sports market.
Omer (11:01.070)
So when you started building it, was it initially just for yourselves?
Jon Fagg (11:04.590)
No, we always had the idea that it would be a product for other people.
Yeah, we didn't, it wasn't just for us.
Omer (11:11.550)
Okay, so you've got this idea and then how did you get started?
Did you validate the idea.
Did you go and talk to other people running similar types of businesses?
Did you just start building something?
Jon Fagg (11:27.400)
Yeah, well, I mean, first I had to, you know, find the smartest person I knew that I went to school with.
And I thought, you know, try to.
Try to convince him that it was a.
It was a good idea and that we should embark on this little adventure together.
And that's turned out to be a great decision for both of us.
And then once we sort of had that idea and we, you know, carved out some time to really try to try to make it happen, we really just went for it and started to build it.
I think we'd had.
We had enough validation in the sense that, you know, we needed it and we were in that business and we also, you know, we had another business at the time as well, so we're reasonably connected with, you know, similar types of things and were aware that that that need was.
Was broader than just ours.
So I think we.
I think we, in a sense, had the validation before we.
Before we started.
Omer (12:20.320)
So you have two co founders, right?
Ryan and Sam.
Jon Fagg (12:23.440)
Yep.
Omer (12:23.960)
Who built the product.
Jon Fagg (12:25.040)
Sam definitely built the product.
And for the first, well aware now into eight years, and for the first, about five and a half, nearly six years, he did every line of code.
Omer (12:38.560)
And tell me about, like, the first version of the product, like, what did it actually do?
Because it's probably very different to.
Or it was very different to what you have today.
Jon Fagg (12:50.560)
Yeah, it's funny because we actually did it just a couple of months ago.
We put together sort of.
We call it the Playbook, which we now give to all of our new team members who are starting with us.
And it kind of begins with a bit of an overview of the company and where, how it started and, you know, it's kind of various iterations and yeah, it was.
It was very funny to go through the product as it was and the different logos and the designs.
And so we were trawling through all those things and yeah, it was a really trip down memory lane, but I mean, it looked.
It definitely looks a lot different than it looked now and it did a lot less, but in its core element, we were still very excited about it and thought that.
And it was a reasonably big change to what was available at the time.
I think it mainly isn't.
It focused very much on the.
On the visual element of booking and just.
Just trying to make that as intuitive as possible to the user.
But it is funny to look back
Omer (13:49.540)
on what it looked like now once you launched the product.
It Took you.
We always talk about the first 10 customers and how important that milestone is.
It took you guys quite a while to get your first 10 customers, right?
Jon Fagg (14:05.170)
Yeah, it did.
Yeah.
We were a good 18 months or so before we got our first 10 customers.
And I think there were obviously certain points in time there where it was.
It was unclear whether we would get to that figure.
I think we always thought that it was going to be successful to some degree in that it would work, but that was certainly a relatively long period of time to get them.
Omer (14:34.270)
And so what was going on?
Why did it take that long?
Jon Fagg (14:39.470)
Well, I think in some respects we just had no idea what we were doing to get 10 customers.
As I said, we were very, very GRE software.
We didn't have any background in starting a software product or acquiring customers or, you know, we were aware of all those practices in a grassroots business which we had, and we had, you know, relatively refined methods for that.
But to acquire sports players in a, you know, in Melbourne is quite different than trying to get customers for an unknown software product.
So, you know, to think of some of the things we did back in the day to try to get those customers is.
Is.
Is.
Is very funny now to think of the.
The actual letters that we're sending out to.
To organizations.
Omer (15:27.710)
At one point, you were sending letters out in the mail.
Jon Fagg (15:30.470)
We were sending letters out in the mail.
I still have it sort of burned in my memory of Ryan sitting at the table, sort of, you know, licking the steps to.
To deliver, to get the letters.
Omer (15:46.910)
Like, where did these first 10 eventually come from?
Jon Fagg (15:50.750)
Yeah, so we had.
Our first customer, actually was a tennis facility here in Australia, in Western Australia, and they're still a customer today, which is great.
And, yeah, that was through a contact of ours who knew about our little project and sort of put in a good word for us.
So we're always indebted to that for the first customer.
But, yeah, from there we.
We managed to.
Yeah, I suppose a few of our letters or, you know, electronic letters that we migrated to after that, they, you know, managed to just.
Yeah, through contacts and through calling people.
Remember, we.
We actually physically went and visited a number of venues and talked to them.
We had one.
One particular case, which is.
Which is quite funny, which we often refer back to today, that we went into a sports facility here in Melbourne and we're telling them about the product and, you know, telling them that's going to be great for the business and showing them how it worked.
And then at the end of it, sort of get to the price of what does it cost?
And we were like, oh, so it's, you know, $49 a month.
And he's just sort of looked at both of us and he's gone $49 a month.
Gee, you're not going to be the next Bill Gates, are you?
So we thought that was really funny.
I mean, he was, you know, it was, it was, it was accurately assessing our situation at the time.
Omer (17:14.560)
That's awesome.
All right, so we talk about about a year and a half to get your first 10 customers, and then you made a change which kind of opened the floodgates for you.
Like, what did you decide to do differently?
Jon Fagg (17:34.000)
Well, we sort of made two decisions almost concurrently, which, which combined to.
To really get things moving.
And one, just have a period of time where we just concentrated on actually improving our search ranking.
And that was something that we just hadn't put any time into before.
And once again, an area that we just knew nothing about, but we just dedicated to a period of time and it didn't turn out to be that long, but just really focusing on what it is that our product is doing.
And so therefore, how should we be positioning it?
What keywords should we be using and attempting to start being visible?
Because obviously at that point in time where we're essentially completely invisible to the world apart from the venues we physically turn up to.
So we did that, and that's really started to have a big impact on the amount of people were coming to us.
And we were able to, given the competition, I mean, this is eight years ago, we were able to relatively quickly move up the rankings.
And so the amount of traffic that was coming to us really significantly increased.
But at the same time, we also decided to move to a freemium model.
And up until that point, we just had paid options with a 30 day free trial, and we just didn't have any volume of customers coming to us.
Omer (19:00.670)
Okay, so let's talk about the SEO piece first.
How did you guys learn what to do?
Did you just kind of figure it out yourself?
Did you go and get some help?
Jon Fagg (19:12.400)
No, this was one that we, yeah, we did just figure out ourselves.
I mean, it was a lot of the technical aspects of it.
Sam really sort of, that was a bit of a project for him to just sort of look into it, understand how it worked, what are the factors, what are the signals for Google and let's like, let's play the game, you know, and then, you know, that also involved a process of trying to understand our domain a bit more, which was a useful process to, to realize what are all the verticals that our product could work in.
And, you know, we need to create the right landing pages and the right copy and the right things that people are searching for.
So I think it kind of opened up a whole range of possibilities of what the product could actually do.
So that was a useful exercise, I think.
You know, SEO, if I think about it now as well, and it's the same, is that SEO is really essentially just making things easy to understand for people.
So it needs to be targeted, it needs to.
The content needs to match what people are searching for.
I mean, Google certainly now can't really be gamed in that sense that it maybe was once upon a time.
So it's just, it was an exercise of, I suppose, clarity of our own content and what we're actually offering.
And that, that certainly proved to be really useful for us because we, we, up until the last 12 months, we really, we didn't do any paid marketing.
So it was essentially all came from, from our search rankings.
Omer (20:40.460)
So I can see on the website that you've done a really good job in thinking about key landing pages and optimizing for things like, you know, a meeting room booking system and people searching for that stuff.
I don't see much in terms of content, you know, like a blog or articles.
Is that just kind of hidden away that I can't find it, or is it, is it really just about these key landing pages and the way you've optimized the site that that's kind of been the driver of SEO, because a lot of people will do that, but then they'll also spend a ton of time creating blog posts and articles and all that stuff.
Yeah.
Jon Fagg (21:24.490)
So when we're sort of talking about, you know, SEO in this sense, we really didn't, we didn't spend a lot of time ongoing on it.
It was really just a particular project to make sure that everything was organized.
And as you noted, really it's the structure of the site that we're really focusing on all the different things we do and then having specific pages and using the relevant keywords for all that.
But as far as sort of a broader SEO strategy, I'm sure there is definitely room for us to improve on that significantly.
Not to something that we wouldn't do in the future, but it just always.
We did very briefly have a blog.
We flirted with that for a little while, but what became clear, we killed that after a period of time.
We just realized that we just didn't have the bandwidth within our team to do anything of any notable sort of scale that would make a difference SEO wise.
So we just decided to not focus on any of those other.
So we haven't.
We haven't actually, in terms of SEO, we haven't, you know, spent a lot of time doing extra link building and all those things.
It hasn't been any of that.
It's more been just making sure the site was.
Was relevant, the content was well organized and structured to get that result.
Omer (22:45.040)
Right, but.
But SEO has been the biggest driver for you guys, right?
So you may not have definitely spent like a huge amount of time doing a bunch of things, but.
But what you did do has been kind of the main way you've acquired customers.
Jon Fagg (22:59.940)
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That still is the main way, and that's how we've acquired customers.
But I think what SEO did along with the freemium, was that it just created some volume in the product.
So we had more people seeing it.
So more people signing up for it because there was no barrier was removed.
More people actually using it, then more people giving us feedback and then improving the product, and then people then, you know, seeing value in it, starting to pay for it, sharing it with other people.
And then word of mouth suddenly became just as significant driver, probably as.
As SEO from there.
So.
But SEO and freemium sort of kind of kicked it all off.
Omer (23:45.170)
So was there anything that held you back from having a freemium model sooner?
Jon Fagg (23:51.410)
Probably just experience or knowledge or some idea of it that that was an option.
I just don't think that we'd really looked into it.
We just kind of went into it and then put some, you know, copied some pricing tiers from someone else and went into it.
We just didn't.
We just didn't really know any better.
I think that's probably the best way to describe it.
We have, you know, at one point in time, I can't think of them all, but they were.
They were all alliteration of Skheda super and Skheda Sublime or something like that.
You know, these.
These pricing levels that, you know, just meant basically nothing.
And, you know, no one was using the product that had these arbitrary prices on them.
And I think that, yeah, we then just moved to a model where we just said there's a free offering which is quite generous and very usable.
So it wasn't like it wasn't limited in a way that, you know, you kind of had to upgrade, and it still is.
And then we had just one other offering, just one premium $49.
That was it.
So it was.
We just sort of really cut back and made it quite simple for people to understand.
Omer (25:01.700)
And what happened when you introduced the freemium model?
Jon Fagg (25:06.820)
I mean, it didn't happen, you know, straight away, but from our perspective, it was an avalanche comparative to what it was before.
We just had just people signing up for the product, and there was just a bit of activity.
And that was very exciting for us because, you know, we just had this period where everything was a bit of a grind and we're trying to get customers and.
But then it suddenly just turned to being the people just coming to us and then asking questions about it and trying to make it work for their user case.
And, yeah, that was a very exciting period when it sort of started to be.
You actually started people, you know, to be using the product and getting their feedback, and then we could use all that to make the product better.
Omer (25:53.070)
So, I mean, it seems like freemium has turned out to be a good decision for you guys, and the percentage of free users that you're converting into paid customers is also very healthy.
But freemium is not always the right model for everybody.
Why do you think?
I mean, there's a lot of things that hold people back.
Like, you know, I'm going to end up supporting a whole bunch of free users that are never going to become paying customers.
What kind of support do I have to provide those people?
You know, is there any kind of virality into my product that ultimately, even if people are using it for free, they might help attract other customers or paying customers?
So what do you think specifically about freemium has.
Has made it work for you?
Jon Fagg (26:43.490)
Well, yeah, I think that the main aspect of freemium that certainly worked really well for us in the early days and still does work well for us now, is that we just get so much feedback from it.
So we just get so many people actually using the product and trying to mold it to their different user cases, and then the feedback that you then get, I mean, it's especially valuable in the early days because when there's no one's using the product, you're just making stabs in the dark about what is needed to be developed and getting that feedback early on.
And I think that our product does have the benefit that it does have an element of virality.
It's not like a customer app in that it can be viral like that, but it is used by an organization who then has another group of users.
So whether it's an internal group of employees or whether it's the actual public that are booking.
So it Naturally kind of spreads in that way that our free customer can be actually quite useful to you in bringing you other business as people interact with the platform.
So I mean, in terms of support, that's never for us has never been an issue that we've always been able to manage support and it's never proven to be a big issue.
I mean, I suppose if that ratio really got out of control, then it could be, possibly be an issue, but certainly we've never had any issues in that regard.
Omer (28:14.880)
Yeah, and I think we should also kind of set the context here that in those first couple of years you guys weren't working on this business full time, right?
Jon Fagg (28:24.080)
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, it was definitely a side project for us.
And you know, with less than 10 customers for a long time and being bootstrapped, there was only one option that there was a, a part time thing.
But we had, yeah, he had our other business that we were working on, Ryan and I, and Sam was, you know, after the initial six months of actually building it together, he was doing a PhD.
So you know, we were, we were relatively limited in our, in our time.
But I think in a lot of ways that sort of focused in our efforts, which I think has helped us in the long run, that we actually were only able to do theoretically the most important thing at the time.
Omer (29:09.370)
Yeah, I think that, you know, a lot of the times it's, it's easy to kind of tell yourself that, you know, I, I'll be able to do all these things when I get funding,
Jon Fagg (29:21.050)
but I just can't even imagine the mistakes, the much worse mistakes we would have made if we had extra money and extra people, extra time.
You know, I mean, the mind boggles to think of the things that we would have done if we had, if we had money.
So yeah, I think in our context, maybe considering especially that we were very green, I think it definitely worked well for us that it was a bit of a slower burn.
Omer (29:48.300)
And then at what point did the three of you go full time on the business?
Jon Fagg (29:52.460)
Yeah, well, Sam went full time after he'd completed his PhD.
So that was sort of another, I think three years after that and Ryan and I were still involved in the other business.
And it's really only been probably in the last two years that we've been full time.
Omer (30:12.860)
And did you tell me earlier that Sam built the product while he was doing his PhD in Germany, is that right?
Jon Fagg (30:21.980)
Yeah, well, I mean, I did tell you that I did choose the smartest person I knew, but yeah, he's a very clever cookie.
So yeah, he was, he's doing a PhD in, in, in data mining and he was, yeah, on the, on the side.
He was the only developer of the platform for, for the first, yeah, best first part of six years.
Omer (30:43.170)
So when you started off, the business was bootstrapped and in many ways that can be a blessing when you, when you don't have the resources, you get more creative.
You have to make some tougher decisions about what you will do and won't do.
So for example, you had to figure out SEO and you didn't really have the luxury of saying, okay, we're going to try and do paid advertising.
And then you've continued to bootstrap the business into multiple seven figures in revenue.
And has a conversation come up, have you been approached by investors?
Where do you kind of stand on that and how far do you sort of see this going as a bootstrap business?
Jon Fagg (31:30.410)
Yeah, I think in a lot of ways bootstrap, the element of bootstrap just kind of suits us.
It suits the way, you know, we've, we've come into it, our background and it also, yeah, it just suits the kind of the way that we work and the way that we like to work.
So I think that, you know, we definitely do get approached and where, you know, we don't read too much into that as in it's a business model of venture capital to know about what products are getting certain amount of hits and just inquiring as to how they're going and trying to cast the net wide.
But it just for us, we've managed to get to a stage where the business is generating the revenue required for us to grow, to expand the team, to continue to invest, in getting great people to join.
And so we just haven't really seen any need to get external funding and have been able to fund ourselves.
And I think, yeah, there's a lot of it that just really suits the way we like to approach it.
Omer (32:42.620)
So when you guys look back, I mean, obviously it's been a long journey.
You guys have already been working on this business for about eight years.
What's been the hardest part of building and growing Skheda?
Jon Fagg (32:56.880)
Yeah, it's just I suppose we have been essentially remote the whole time.
So we built the product together.
We were all together in the same country for that sort of six month period that we sort of built it from the start of 2013 to the middle of the year, basically July.
So yeah, eight years ago and.
But after that we have operated remotely.
Ryan and I have always kind of worked together in an office.
We're the only ones who are not remote within the whole team.
But Sam has always been overseas remote.
So I think one of the things that was probably one of the most difficult things in the beginning and has continued to be something that we've had to work on is how do you create that kind of creative magic when you're not in the same room?
And it is difficult.
There's a lot of things you can do remotely which are really useful.
And that kind of asynchronous communication that remote working allows creates a huge amount of space to just get things clear and just really be focused on what you're doing.
But a lot of the things that require creativity when you're trying to tackle a difficult problem and you want to come up with something new that's quite, quite hard to do in a remote environment.
So that's been a consistent kind of battle for us to be able to have the right amount of time to try to get the magic to happen.
Omer (34:30.670)
Yeah, and I think it's, I mean there's so much.
Obviously remote is kind of flavor of the year now.
Right.
So everyone is doing it and there's a lot more investment going into collaboration tools and I think.
But there's definitely this thing about being in a physical space together where ideas tend to, I don't know, sometimes flow a little better.
Jon Fagg (34:59.240)
Yeah, certainly we found, you know, some of our, we've always sort of revolved around and that's been a little bit difficult in that in obviously in the last 18 months when we haven't been able to travel.
But we've, we've always previously had, you know, basically two catch ups each year.
We, you know, call them our kind of little conventions where we, we meet up for a week, we're usually away somewhere and we just go through everything.
We reset, we try to reprioritize, we try to work out difficult product problems and just make all kinds of decisions while we're sort of of out of the headspace of just doing the day to day.
And those have definitely been some of our most productive times and completely pivotal in changing different things within the business or new product ideas or just some just clarity around what we should do next.
So they've been very useful and they've always just in person and just having time to flow into one conversation doesn't need to be ended by something.
It can just keep going and then it can also extend over dinner and to the next day.
Then yeah, you can get a Bit better flow.
Omer (36:12.260)
Cool.
All right, well, we should wrap up.
We should get onto the lightning round and I'm going to ask you seven quick fire questions.
Just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
You ready to go?
Yep.
All right.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Jon Fagg (36:30.020)
Don't assume other people know better.
Now they might, but they don't assume it.
Omer (36:36.110)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Jon Fagg (36:39.790)
One book that was just.
Has been very foundational for us is Getting Real by what was then 37 signals but base camp.
I mean, it's now 15 years old, but the, the advice there is, is gold.
So it's proved certainly correct in our, in our experience.
Omer (36:57.070)
Wow.
You, you that.
Yeah, I, I kind of forgot how long ago that book initially was.
Jon Fagg (37:04.830)
Yeah.
Omer (37:06.190)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?
Jon Fagg (37:10.430)
I think it's the ability to be motivated and dissatisfied at the same time.
Omer (37:16.590)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Jon Fagg (37:20.030)
Probably focused uninterrupted time, as in being able to carve out that time just to focus on something.
But it's always a battle to maintain.
Omer (37:32.230)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time.
Jon Fagg (37:36.550)
It sort of seems that the longer we go, the more ideas we have within the product.
So, you know, at the moment that that really takes up all the creative energy.
Omer (37:46.790)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Jon Fagg (37:50.230)
Well, I was mentioning about, you know, Sam doing his Ph.D. and you know, also coding the system and we have a lot of very decorated high achievers within the team.
But I was unsuccessful in completing my primary school teaching degree.
Omer (38:05.550)
You were going to be a primary school teacher?
Jon Fagg (38:07.790)
Well, allegedly.
I don't think, I don't think I ever really was, but that's what I, that, that's, that's what I was.
That's what I was studying at one point in time.
Omer (38:18.030)
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Jon Fagg (38:21.310)
Well, I've got three young kids who are under five who are a lot of fun.
So I think at the moment, for this particular season, I'm a.
More a facilitator of passions.
Omer (38:33.309)
Love it.
Great.
Well, if people want to find out more about Skeda, they can go to skeda.com which is s K-E-D d a dot com.
We'll include a link in the show notes and if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Jon Fagg (38:49.270)
Well, my singular social media platform is LinkedIn, so, yeah, that's probably definitely the best way to get me.
Omer (38:55.990)
Great.
We'll include a link to your profile in the show notes as well, so.
Great.
John, thank you so much for joining me and sharing the story of Skeda and what you guys have been up to for the last eight years or so.
One of the things I like about your story is you haven't complicated things a lot.
You kind of had a pretty simple kind of approach and you've kind of just focused on executing that.
So I think there's definitely a lesson for a lot of us because I'm very good at overcomplicating things or trying to do more than is necessary.
So I think there's some good, good lessons here on just being smart and pragmatic and how you go out and do stuff.
So thanks for sharing that.
Jon Fagg (39:48.700)
Yeah, I think just to finish, I think that one of the things that's really helped us do that is that we have within our founding team, we're very different people.
So it's always been a bit of a.
It's a collaborative effort and we've worked very well together, but it's.
It's a bit of a battle between people's ways of thinking about things, which I think helps us to get to quite a pragmatic result at the end of the day.
Omer (40:18.270)
Yeah.
Love it.
Great.
Well, thank you so much for joining me, and I wish you and the rest of the team the best of success.
Jon Fagg (40:24.110)
Thanks very much.
Omer (40:25.390)
Cheers.
Thanks.
