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.
Today's interview is with Josh Pickford.
Josh is the founder of Bare Metrics, a product that provides SaaS analytics for Stripe.
Josh founded the company in October 2013 when he built and launched the first version of the product in just eight days.
And within eight weeks, he was already doing about $2,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
Just Josh, welcome to the show.
Josh Pigford (00:55.060)
Thanks for having me, Omer.
Omer (00:56.660)
Now, I gave the audience a brief overview of your business and product, but tell us a little bit more about you personally.
Who is Josh when he's not working?
Josh Pigford (01:06.740)
Sure, sure.
So, I mean, when I'm not working, I'm a dad and a husband.
Then I guess from a professional standpoint, I've been making stuff for the web at least for probably 10 years or so across the whole gamut of just about every business type that you can imagine.
Been selling stuff since I was a kid, but I don't know, that's probably me in a nutshell.
Omer (01:35.240)
Now, we like to kick things off with a success quote just to better understand what drives and motivates our guests.
So what is one of your favorite quotes?
Josh Pigford (01:43.960)
So I've mentioned this before, but Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, has a quote that says, if you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.
And I think that's super important early on.
I think the more you get into a product, the less kind of just trying to get something out the door, I think that quality becomes an issue.
But I think early on when you're just trying to prove stuff, you should not pay attention to so many little details.
And I think a lot of people fail in that regard.
Omer (02:20.450)
And I think your story with Bare Metrics is a perfect example of that.
So let's talk a little bit more about that before we get into the details.
Can you tell our listeners?
Just give the listeners a better understanding of Bare Metrics.
Who are your target customers and what are the top pain points that you're trying to solve?
Josh Pigford (02:41.520)
Sure.
So barometrics in its current state is basically one click business analytics, and right now it's on stripe as the payment platform.
So the pain point there is that getting a lot of sort of in depth business metrics can be really difficult.
There's a lot of data involved in trying to either Build your own thing or use Excel spreadsheets or try to use some other generic analytics platform is really difficult and kind of ripe for messing up.
And so barometrics kind of takes that pain away by you not having to do anything except connect your Stripe account.
Omer (03:24.320)
Now, how did you come up with the idea for this product?
Josh Pigford (03:27.840)
Sure.
So back in 2013, late 2013, I had two other SaaS products that were on Stripe, and I needed these metrics.
So I was trying to get things like month of recurring revenue, lifetime value churn, all this kind of stuff.
And I was having trouble using other analytics platforms where you had to do a bunch of integration work.
So I kind of started poking around, realized, hey, Stripe's got basically all the data that I need, so I'll just build it for myself.
Initially, I had not even planned on making it a public thing.
Like, I was just gonna.
It was gonna be an internal tool for myself.
And then started talking to some other founders who were on Stripe, and they were all kind of freaking out, saying that they wanted the same thing.
So I decided to put it out there and see what happened.
Omer (04:19.860)
Now, you built this product in what, eight days?
Just.
Just tell me about what sort of the.
The process you went through there.
So, I mean, clearly you weren't thinking of shipping this as a product.
Josh Pigford (04:31.620)
Right.
Omer (04:31.900)
This was just something you were doing for yourself.
Josh Pigford (04:35.060)
Right, Right.
So, I mean, you know, I mentioned I had two other products.
This was what.
What I did not want was a third SaaS product to keep up with.
You know, I was having trouble with the two that I had at the time.
And.
And so the.
The.
The whole point was just to get something together really quickly that gave me the numbers that I needed so I could kind of focus and grow those other two SaaS products.
And then it quickly took off, and barometrics, like, you know, within a few months was.
Had eclipsed the other two SaaS products I had.
So, you know, it was the obvious winner in that regard.
Omer (05:14.490)
Do you still have those other two SaaS products around?
Josh Pigford (05:17.370)
They still exist.
I don't have any.
They have new owners at this point.
Omer (05:22.010)
So within eight days, there's only so much you can do to build a product.
And really, at that point, I guess it wasn't really a product.
It was just a tool for yourself.
So can you tell me about some of the things that it didn't have when you actually made this available to other people?
Josh Pigford (05:39.760)
Yeah.
So Stripe's got all this data.
We import all your historical data.
I mean, you could have two or Three years worth of data in there.
But the first version only went six months back.
It was super high level.
There was a single dashboard of stuff and that was it.
You couldn't click through and view what the LTV was of all your plans or what growth rates were.
I had half the metrics it does now.
Really, really basic.
And it didn't get updated that often.
I mean like the data would sometimes be a couple of days old.
I mean, it was very much duct taped together.
Now.
Omer (06:26.490)
Were you embarrassed?
Josh Pigford (06:28.570)
Yeah, well, I mean, I've, I like live in a constant, perpetual state of embarrassment with most software that I, that I ship.
Not because I think it's bad, but because it's like there's always something that I, you know, it's sort of like, like a painter or whatever.
I'm sure you could work on a painting for the rest of your life.
I mean, like constantly making small tweaks and, and things like that or, you know, you notice things that no one else on earth would possibly notice.
So that's the kind of stuff that, that bothers me.
But I, you just kind of have to get over it.
Omer (07:01.510)
Okay, so you went to.
Within eight weeks you went to $2,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
Tell me a little bit about how you actually did that.
How did you find those first few customers?
Josh Pigford (07:13.350)
So first customers came from, I mean, word of mouth, via Twitter.
I didn't have some huge Twitter following or anything like that, but I just started posting tweeting about the process as I was building.
It kind of built up a little bit of buzz.
But I should clarify, I didn't have a landing page.
I wasn't collecting email addresses for a launch list or anything like that.
I was just posting screenshots of stuff.
So I launched it and people started telling other Stripe users started telling their friends about it.
The co founders of Stripe started tweeting about it.
That kind of spread the word pretty quickly, but that was pretty much it.
Omer (07:59.930)
So.
Yeah.
So tell me a little bit about how you were using Twitter.
So you didn't have much of a following, but how were people finding out about this stuff?
Were you, you know, we're using particular hashtags?
Josh Pigford (08:13.860)
No, that was, I mean it was really, really organic.
Like I, I wasn't searching for anybody that was mentioning Stripe and like reaching out to them or.
It was very much, I just posted some stuff and other people would retweet it or tell their, you know, founder buddies that they knew were on stripes that he should check this out, that kind of stuff.
I mean, it was, it was very kind of hands off in the sense that I, I didn't do.
I wasn't, I wasn't extremely intentional about trying to make that an acquisition channel.
I mean, that, you know, sort of amateur on my part.
But I mean, at the same time, I think that it points to the fact that you can.
Just because you try to make something happen doesn't necessarily mean that it will.
And a lot of times when you're not necessarily trying to do something, if you're solving a big enough pain, it'll kind of spread itself, I think.
Omer (09:10.240)
And were you with those tweets driving people back to some kind of content or blog post?
Nothing.
Josh Pigford (09:18.160)
I didn't even have a blog for the first three months.
I mean, it wasn't.
There wasn't a landing page.
There was the.
The.
At the time, Barometrics IO was the domain and like, that was all I was sending people to.
That was it.
Omer (09:33.070)
So no blog, no landing page other than the homepage for your website, no capturing email addresses, and you were just using Twitter as a way to just,
Josh Pigford (09:44.670)
Just generate some buzz?
Omer (09:45.910)
I mean, yeah, okay.
Josh Pigford (09:47.110)
I mean, it was.
It's like the, it goes against every kind of, like, launch strategy thing on the planet.
I mean, it's, you know, and I think that's.
But I mean, I'm.
I agree.
I absolutely could have done.
There are things that I could have done to make a little bit bigger impact.
But I think it speaks to the fact that just having this sort of complex launch sequence in effect doesn't mean that that's the only way to do it.
And I think a lot of times people get caught up in trying to do things like capture emails and build landing pages and all this kind of stuff, and instead of just solving a problem.
And so I think a lot of times, like, the product takes a hit because of that.
Omer (10:32.560)
If you were doing this again, you know, let's go back in time and maybe you're building biometrics again.
Would you take the same approach?
Would you.
Would you do anything differently to generate more buzz?
Josh Pigford (10:47.120)
I. I may have.
I don't know.
I just think like, the, the fact that I.
What I needed more than anything from a building a business standpoint was to prove that there was a business there.
And if I had spent, in the eight days that I spent developing it, like, there wasn't a lot of time to get something up as far as a marketing plan.
So it's.
I think I actually would have.
It would have hurt me to, like, wait longer to launch just so that I could, I don't know, build up some kind of buzz or something.
I don't know.
There weren't competitors in the space at the time.
So it was, I didn't have this sense of urgency to get something out there or anything.
It was just, hey, let's throw it out there and see what happens.
And I think given the time or sort of the industry at that point in time, I don't know that I would do anything different.
Omer (11:41.500)
Okay, so tell me about the day that you got your first customer.
How did that happen?
Josh Pigford (11:49.420)
I feel like maybe the first couple of customers were people that I knew.
I mean, maybe, yeah, a handful of the first few customers were all people that I knew.
I don't remember who our absolute first customer was.
There was, we got a few signups, I don't know, maybe five or six paying customers on the first day.
I think the one that stood out to me the most was we had a $249 a month plan.
And honestly I added that plan to sort of like a, well, surely nobody would pay this much for it.
And sure enough, on day one, I had a $249 a month customer who's still with us.
And so to me that's like the biggest thing that stood out to me about that.
That first day and first customers, you
Omer (12:34.810)
said you didn't have any kind of sign up or landing page or email.
So what were people signing up for at this point?
Josh Pigford (12:41.210)
I mean, the product that was pick a plan, put in your credit card and you get bare metrics.
Omer (12:49.010)
Oh, so you'd already productized it to that level by then?
Josh Pigford (12:52.490)
Within the, I mean, literally within the eight days that I spent on it, it was the, here's a working product and as soon as I launched the site, you could sign up and give me money.
Omer (13:06.770)
And so you said the first few people were people that you knew.
Did you, did you charge them from day one as well?
Josh Pigford (13:12.850)
Oh, sure, yeah.
I mean, that's like one of the things.
Like every, anybody who's got a SaaS product has two dozen buddies who also have SaaS products.
And you know, I think.
And everybody for the most part pays for each other's product too.
Like, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't.
We've only got a couple of people who have free accounts.
So basically everybody pays for stuff.
Omer (13:35.170)
I think a lot of people maybe may have kind of looked, you know, if they were a similar situation to you, maybe would have said, you Know, I haven't spent a lot of time on this.
This thing is rough around the edges.
Maybe I should get this thing as a beta and let people use it for free and get some feedback and some testing.
Josh Pigford (13:54.500)
I think that's the worst idea.
I think that's like awful mistake that so many people make.
I get the motivation behind it, but I think the problem is that people give themselves enough credit for the thing that they're building or they start beta testing it before the thing actually solves a problem.
But in reality, when you're building stuff for businesses, if you're solving any sort of measurable pain, you should be charging money for it.
You may not be charging the full amount that you want to, but the type of feedback that you get from somebody who's not giving you money is arguably useless feedback.
I mean, that's, it's not really worth anything because it doesn't mean anything to that user for that, for you to, to make this product better for them.
They're not giving you any money.
That's no skin off their back if they give you good or bad feedback, you know.
But getting feedback from people who are actually parting ways with their money is, is absolutely.
It's the most valuable thing you can get.
Right.
And so I think that's why doing like a free beta is just you're getting feedback from the people who you don't even know will actually give you money.
And so you end up solving problems for people who may not even be paying customers.
Omer (15:15.610)
Yeah, I think that's great feedback there now.
So tell me the price plans you had when you launched.
Josh Pigford (15:22.810)
They're the ones that are there now.
$29.79, $149, 249.
And then past that as gets into custom enterprise level stuff.
Omer (15:35.190)
So you had a few buddies who signed up.
You had somebody.
So how did the person who signed up for the $249 plan, was that somebody you knew?
Josh Pigford (15:44.390)
No, I did not know them at the time.
They found via somebody sharing something on Twitter.
Wow.
Omer (15:50.630)
Okay, so at this point, and so you got to $2,000 in the first eight weeks.
Where else did these?
Were all these people coming from Twitter if they didn't know you?
Josh Pigford (16:03.580)
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
That was it.
Because I still at this point still didn't have a blog.
There wasn't content that anybody was sharing.
The only method of anything, of spreading the word at all about Bare Metrics was Twitter.
Omer (16:17.020)
And then so what happens?
So you've got people signed up, they're paying you money, they start using your product.
What was the reaction?
Josh Pigford (16:26.300)
So their reaction was overall great, but there was a lot of feedback.
So two months in, I kind of had a better idea of how people were going to use it.
And so at that point, I actually scrapped the entire code base and design and everything and started from scratch and rebuilt it over about four weeks.
And so I think, what's an important thing?
And I wasn't necessarily trying to do this, but it worked out was like, I launched with such a basic version that still solved the pain, but it wasn't solving the pain to its full sort of capacity or ability.
So after getting feedback again from paying customers, I had a much better idea of what how people wanted to use a product like Bare Metrics.
So then I was able to rebuild it and solve that pain even better for those people and could convert more people who maybe were on the fence before or didn't think it was worth it, that kind of thing.
And I think if I had spent a lot of time trying making a lot of assumptions about how people would use it, I potentially would have built the wrong product and wasted weeks or months building something that people didn't really want.
So I think that's why it's so important to get it out in front of actual paying customers as soon as possible.
Omer (17:51.920)
So you took a really interesting approach here.
I mean, the first version of the product that you built, you really built it to solve your own problem.
Right.
I guess the fallback situation there was, you know, even if nobody else wants to use it, at least you're going to be solving your own problem and it's going to make life easier for you.
Josh Pigford (18:14.390)
Exactly.
Omer (18:15.430)
And then you went and rebuilt the product once you had paying customers and you were getting real feedback from real people who were giving you real money.
Right.
Looking back at those early days, what do you think was one of the biggest mistakes that you made?
Josh Pigford (18:35.830)
So I think early on, my entire sort of professional career has been rooted in the fact that I could handle basically any part of the process when it comes to bringing a product to life.
So the design aspects, the back end, front end, marketing support, whatever, I could handle the whole thing.
And so where I kind of got caught up, caught up early on was trying to keep it that way, thinking like, I don't really, I can keep handling this stuff.
And in hindsight, I should have, I should have, I should have hired people a lot sooner.
I think, like, built a team around the product a lot sooner.
I think that was sort of a big mistake on My part.
Omer (19:28.860)
So you, you, you built.
When you rebuilt the product, you did everything yourself there as well.
You didn't bring on any, any sort of, you know, contractors or anything like that to help you with stuff?
Josh Pigford (19:40.380)
Yeah, not until, I think around April.
So that was, let's see, it's about six months in.
Was when I first brought on somebody and he came on in a contract role though he's full time now.
But, um.
Yeah, but even then it was like I hired one person and it was still kind of slow going.
Yeah, that was, but that was a big mistake on my part.
Omer (20:05.030)
How did the revenue growth look like in those first six months?
Josh Pigford (20:09.430)
I mean, we were growing 30% month over month as far as revenue goes.
And yeah, I mean, definitely some months we were doubling revenue from the month before and yeah, it was just good fast.
Omer (20:26.200)
How did things change when you got some help on board?
Josh Pigford (20:29.160)
So, I mean, I think like once we, once we started hiring people, you know, I kind of go from being the guy that's I can wake up one morning, think of a feature that I wanted barometrics to have and build it that day and be done with it.
And then it started.
You know, I've.
Right now there's five of us on our team.
And so now it takes a lot longer to get something done.
But not, not in a bad way.
I mean, it's not apples to apples there.
It's like instead of me just throwing together some random idea and building it out and not giving it any more thought, now it's, let's think through what this really needs to solve for customers.
Let's design it well and make sure, think of all the different interactions that people will be having with it.
Let's build it out in such a way that we're not going to be like fixing.
Having to fix bugs on it for the weeks after we launch it.
I mean, I think there's a lot more that goes into building a really high quality product.
And so, but that's the hard part is like making that transition where you're just launching stuff left and right.
Kind of having to put a lot more thought into stuff.
Omer (21:39.950)
Yeah.
Okay, so you bootstrapped the business for the first year, I believe, and then you took about $500,000 in funding.
Josh Pigford (21:53.610)
Yep.
Omer (21:54.730)
Why did you decide to do that?
Josh Pigford (21:57.850)
So I think, I mean, I'm, I'm a huge supporter of bootstrapping, but I don't think that it's like bootstrap or take some kind of funding.
I think that it's important to Bootstrap to prove that there's a business there.
That's where I.
You get into a ton of trouble with investment money, is taking investment money to build something that you have no idea that you'll ever be able to make money on.
And that's what a lot of people do.
And so I built the first version or the early stages of the business.
I proved that people would pay money for it, and that put me in a lot better position from, you know, sort of a negotiating standpoint for raising money.
And then that money just becomes sort of fuel for the fire instead of fuel to prove if there's a business there or not.
Omer (22:52.970)
And what did you do with most
Josh Pigford (22:54.650)
of that money that was all for hiring primarily?
Yeah.
That's.
That's what we've basically been using it for.
Omer (23:02.890)
Okay, so you said you've got five people right now.
Josh Pigford (23:06.680)
Yeah.
Omer (23:06.880)
And then what do you.
What do you expect to grow to in the next year?
Josh Pigford (23:10.680)
We.
I don't know.
We may.
We may double that.
It kind of depends on.
On growth.
Like, you know, we're trying to build a profitable business here, so keeping a solid Runway in the bank is pretty important.
So we're not trying to hire super quickly, but, you know, it's one of those things where I've got.
There's enough work here to hire 10 more engineers easily, so I'll hire as fast as we can.
Omer (23:39.730)
Okay, so let's talk about the business today.
What's your revenue looking like at the moment?
Josh Pigford (23:45.490)
We're kind of bumping right up against $30,000 a month, and I think that's 350 some customers maybe somewhere around there.
Omer (24:01.020)
Do you sort of ever wake up sort of wondering whether Stripe one day is going to go in and ship a whole bunch of sort of analytics features which maybe eat into your business?
Josh Pigford (24:12.700)
No, no, I'm not worried about that at all.
I've got a really good relationship with Stripe already, so I. I feel like I have enough insight into kind of some of the stuff that they want to be as a business or don't want to be.
And what they don't want is to be like an analytics platform.
I think that they want to make payments on the web, like be the de facto payment processor on the web.
And so having an analytics side of things.
I don't know.
That might be something way down the road, but I just don't that.
I'm not worried about that from.
From our business.
Omer (24:53.510)
Okay, now, now when you launch the business, you said that there wasn't any competition.
Josh Pigford (24:58.870)
Right.
Omer (24:59.510)
Is there a lot of competition today?
I guess there is.
As you've been kind of going out and sharing your story and the success
Josh Pigford (25:05.430)
that you've had with their metrics?
Yeah, there's a, literally a new one that comes up every week.
Somebody will send me a link to or like a screenshot and you know, probably 75% of them are almost direct rip offs of bare metrics design elements, the text that they use on the sales page.
There's been a ton of stuff that's cropped up.
There's only probably maybe one or two real competitors that have come up in the past year.
But other than that, most people are just kind of copycats, which don't, just don't bother me.
Omer (25:46.470)
So when it comes to competitors, what's your sort of philosophy on that?
Do you spend a lot of time looking at what your competitors are doing and how you guys are going to continue to differentiate or, or are you sort of the kind of guy who just focuses on, look, I, I, I have a kind of a vision of what I want to build and I'm just going to focus on that.
Josh Pigford (26:10.280)
For the most part, I completely ignore competitors.
The only time that really even kind of come on my radar is when if we have a customer who's canceling and they're saying, hey, well, we're leaving to go to a competitor, which doesn't happen very often, but when it does, I want to have a better understanding about what the competitor, the problem that they were solving for this customer better than we were solving it.
And so that's kind of really the only time I care.
But for the most part, I think there can absolutely be multiple large players in a given industry because I think everybody's solving the kind of problems or the way that we're solving problems for our customers is different than our competitors would.
And we're not going to be the perfect solution for everybody.
I think when you start getting into the realm of worrying about what competitors are doing, the problem you get into is that one you're always behind.
So you're always having to play catch up if you go that route.
And in reality, you're solving problems for their customers, not your customers.
And I think everybody's customer base is slightly different.
And I think it's important for you to focus on your customers who are paying you and the kind of problems that they have and the way that they need those solved.
So for the most part, I do think you should just ignore competitors.
Omer (27:33.800)
Okay, that was part one of the interview with Josh Pickford of bare metrics.
