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.
This week's guest is the co founder and CEO of a SaaS business based in Aarhus, Denmark.
The business has been bootstrapped from day one and they're currently doing around $55,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
In this episode, we talk about how the founders came up with the Idea for the SaaS product while doing freelancing work for a client.
How the first version of the minimum viable product was developed and shipped in under seven days.
We talk about a major mistake they made by trying to focus too on a too broad a market for almost a year and what that cost them in terms of time and money.
We talk about how they got traction and achieved success by niching down and focusing on a segment within the market.
And we explore what they did to get traction that helped them go from zero to almost $700,000 annual run rate.
All right, today's guest is the co founder and CEO of SleekNote, a SaaS product that helps e commerce sites get more email opt ins without affecting bounce rates and sales.
The company was founded in 2013 and is based in Aarhus, Denmark.
SleekNote currently has around 700 customers and generates $55,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
And the business has been bootstrapped from day one.
So today I'd like to welcome Mogens Muller.
Mogens, welcome to the show.
Guest (02:13.220)
Thank you.
Thank you, Omar.
Omer (02:14.700)
Now, I probably did a terrible job with the pronunciation of your name, so.
But I know that's kind of like the Americanized version, but just everyone's benefit.
Why don't you just tell us how you actually really pronounce your name?
Guest (02:25.920)
Okay.
Okay, great.
It's Mons.
Muller.
Yeah.
Omer (02:30.080)
Thank you.
All right.
Guest (02:33.920)
Thanks for having me.
Sure.
Omer (02:35.840)
Yeah.
So let's.
Let's tell the audience a little bit more about SleekNote.
What exactly is the problem that you guys are trying to solve for e commerce sites?
Guest (02:51.280)
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Well, basically SleekNote is an opt in tool for e commerce websites.
What we saw is that email marketing often is one of the primary sales channels at these ecommerce websites.
But still, these ecommerce managers and webmasters, they are struggling, growing their subscriber lists and often they tried different opt in tools and created maybe some subscriber boxes themselves.
But often they see that these aggressive pop up opt in boxes hurt their other conversion rates or Maybe their bounce rate.
So this is often where they end up and contact us because we've created this opt in tool that really takes this pain seriously which both provides a lot of new email subscribers and don't affect other important conversion rates and bounce rates.
Omer (03:49.980)
So what exactly is it that you guys are doing which, which allows them to do this?
Because opt ins, you know, kind of makes sense in, in a lot of places and, and online sites.
But in the, in an e commerce business I think there's a whole set of different challenges that, that come along with trying to introduce an opt in in there.
I mean even somebody like you know, folks here would be sent, you know, familiar with going and shopping on Amazon.com and that's a very, a very smooth process from finding a product going through to check out.
And if you suddenly had opt in forms in sort of the process, I can imagine that hurting their sales quite significantly.
So what exactly is it that you guys are doing that gets around this problem?
Guest (04:36.790)
Yeah, well, first of all it's pretty easy for our customers actually to see of course how the performance of the optin is on the website.
But also we are trying to track not only the conversion rate from you know, shown opt in box to subscribe, but also the conversion rate, the overall conversion rate of this box.
So will it have any negative effect on the other conversion rate if you show this box to the visitor?
And sometimes and you know a normal pop up box is quite good.
Often we see there's no problem in a normal pop up box if you do, if you are, if you are very careful in writing good content in it and if you provide something that is relevant for the visitor.
Other times one of the boxes that a lot of our customers have a great success with is this we call slide in boxes where there is a little teaser bar in the bottom of the website and after like 10 seconds and just slides up very smoothly and then of course you can close it again and instead of just completely removing from the the screen on the website, it's still, it still keeps showing in the bottom of the website in this little teaser bar.
And we, we see on our customers website that this, this combination of something sliding up and still being down in the bottom of the website like, like you know, a little chat software teaser bar.
This is very effective both for opt ins and without hurting other conversion rates or bounce rates.
Omer (06:15.670)
So yeah, now I want to start kind of go back to how you came up with the idea for SleepNote.
But before we do that I want to kind of Start off by asking you, is there a favorite quote that you have that drives you?
Is this something that what gets you out of bed every day?
So it's something I like to ask all my guests.
It kind of helps to just better understand kind of what, what makes them tick.
So is there a quote or something else that's kind of important to you that really drives and motivates you to do what you do every day?
Guest (06:50.640)
Yeah, yeah, it's a great question.
Well, basically it is to, well, do what I love, to work with smart people and well, to keep making progress, like personally and with my company every day.
That's really what drives me.
And if I should pick a quote, I actually have a favorite quote.
It's from a Danish guy, it's a guy called Martin LeBlanc from a company called Iconfinder.
And I can't remember it exactly, but it's something like if a user interface.
Oh, sorry.
A user interface is like a joke.
If you have to explain it, it's not that good.
And I really like that one because, you know, usability and you know, creating user friendly interfaces, that's like everything we do, it's in every process, in every project, every project that we do in sleeknote.
So yeah, I actually have that.
We have it on the poster in our office.
So I think it's a great group.
Omer (07:58.260)
Nice.
I like it.
All right, so.
So let's talk about where all of this began.
So where did the idea for SleekNote come from?
Guest (08:08.650)
Well, actually my background is that I've been freelancing before I started SleekNote and I worked with conversion rate optimization for a lot of the biggest e commerce websites in Scandinavia.
And one of these websites gave me this challenge that they needed more email subscribers.
And they tried a lot of different things.
They tried, you know, buying it from different competitions and on, you know, different websites, third party websites.
And it was, they never got any like real value out of these.
So they wanted to get more email subscribers from their website.
But it was very important that it didn't hurt any of the other conversion rates.
They tried to do some regular pop up boxes and they created these themselves.
But what they saw in their KPIs and also when they tried and split test it, they saw that the bounce rate increased and the sales conversion rate decreased when they showed this pop up box because I think it was just annoying for the visitors.
So I got this task as a freelancer for this ecommerce website that I should come up with something that works better than this normal pop up and this was when I, you know, brainstormed a lot on different solutions and I came up with this thing that I just described to begin with with this combination of a slide inbox and a little teaser bar in the bottom of the website.
So, so we implemented this for this customer.
It was actually a travel agency.
And they, you know, afterwards just, I think it was 800% more email subscribers or something like that when they implemented it.
Omer (09:55.120)
Nice.
Guest (09:55.840)
And all the other KPIs and key numbers were the same.
So what we did afterwards, I got the permission to write about this on my web blog.
I have a blog in Denmark where I write about stuff or I did when I was freelancing.
So I wrote about this case and the day after I published it I had around 50 emails from other webmasters and e commerce managers who wanted something similar on their website.
And the only answer that I couldn't give was that, well, you have to contact your, you know, the CMS or the E commerce platform that you use and hear if they can develop something.
But I could hear on them that that wasn't the answer they were looking for.
So when this actually kept going for the next two weeks or so, I got all these emails every day because they read about this blog post.
So, so when, when I, when all these emails, when all these webmasters they kept emailing me, I, I really couldn't, you know, just ignore it anymore because I have this, you know, this, this, this startup inside of me.
I've, I've always wanted to really like have my own startup and I've, you know, I have had my own e commerce website early on and I've been freelancing on my own but I wanted to build something else and this was the opportunity.
So I teamed up with an old friend who was great at developing.
I can't write any code myself so I needed a technical dude on the team.
So I talked to him and asked him if we should try and create something from this needs that I saw on the market.
Yeah.
So that was actually how it started and then we just took it from there.
Omer (12:01.900)
Okay, so remind me again, so when you sort of implemented this for the travel agency.
Guest (12:10.620)
Yeah.
Omer (12:13.740)
What exactly were you doing there?
Sort of in terms of technically what did you do?
And, and were you able to leverage any of that in terms of building the product?
Guest (12:26.460)
Yeah, well, I came up with some mock ups on how it should be implemented and then we contacted the business that built this travel agency's website and had them implement this idea that I got and I Think I can't remember.
We paid something like $5,000 or something like that to implement this for this one trail agency and that was cool with them because they needed to test this out.
But the webmasters and the e commerce managers that contacted me afterwards when I wrote this blog post, they wanted an out of the box solution.
They didn't want to wait for their developers to build this and wait for in the developing pipeline or in the backlog and it will take half a year or something like that.
They wanted something right away out of the box that they can play around with themselves.
So what we did with the travel ng was really a hard coded version that we couldn't change any text, we couldn't change the image, we couldn't customize it anyway.
It was just how my mock up was created.
That was how the pop up or sliding box looked like.
Omer (13:39.540)
Okay, okay, got it, got it, got it.
Okay.
So you guys get together and you decide that you're going to go and build a product.
There's clearly a need there and people are telling you that almost on a daily basis.
How long did it take you guys to build the first version of the product?
Guest (14:00.260)
Yeah, yeah.
Well, what we did afterwards when we teamed up, I actually used my network and I tried asking people if, you know, I actually, I think I used Twitter back then and asked if anyone wanted a box like the one from the travel agency.
And of course there was a lot of people who wanted that.
And I also also wrote to some of the guys who, who emailed me and then I think I had around a hundred websites, e commerce websites who wanted their box implemented.
So we choose to, I think we selected 10 of them because we wanted a, you know, a proof of concept.
We wanted to see this work not just in the travel agency, on the travel agency website, but we wanted this to work in different industries before we really like decided that this was what we're going to focus on and you know, quit our jobs and all this stuff.
So, so we, we chose these 10 websites in different industries and then we created hard coded subscriber boxes like the bugs that we created on the travel agency.
And then we just tested it and split tested if it had any, you know, negative effects on all the conversion rates and bound trades and all this.
And afterwards when we have made all these tests, we saw that the numbers were almost the same as the travel agency.
So it didn't have on all websites as big an effect, but it was still around like 4 or 500% more email subscribers than they got before on a daily basis.
So, so, so that was really like the proof of concept that we, we needed.
And, and when we, when we saw that, when we saw these 10 websites and they were successful, every one of them, and they started like tweeting and writing on social media that they love this tool, what we created for them, then we decided to, you know, really saying like, this is, this is what we're going to do, this is what we're going to build.
And then we actually decided to build the app.
So until then we didn't have anything else than just hard coded HTML boxes, subscriber boxes.
So we didn't lock ourselves in a basement and develop for a year or so.
We created these boxes in I think a week or two weeks or something like that.
Omer (16:25.970)
Okay, okay, got it.
So today sleeknote is a, a product where people can go in when they sign in, they can create opt in forms and then integrate with their site and, and publish and whatever.
But in those days none of that existed.
And you guys were just going in and saying, okay, let's just go in, you know, at the client side, let's go and look at the HTML, maybe some JavaScript, whatever that is.
And let's, let's kind of just build a hard coded opt in form for each one of these proof of concept sites.
Guest (16:59.870)
Exactly, exactly.
And a very important thing for me back then was to of course, you know, validate if you know, what we, what we built here worked for our customers and our clients and it worked in different industries, but also to validate if it was valuable and if people actually wanted to pay for it.
Because in my world it's very easy to contact a lot of companies and websites and like have them to say, I love your product, I want to pay for it, maybe sometime in the future or something like that.
That's the easiest thing to do.
But there's a huge difference between, you know, getting a positive signal like that and actually getting money from them.
Actually, you know, they use their credit card and pay for your service.
So even though we only had this hard coded beta product where they couldn't change anything, we charged them, we charged these first 10 beta testers for using our product because I was sure that it was going to provide them a lot of value.
So I think we charged them like, I think like $20 or something like that per month.
So of course not a lot, but enough to validate if it's valuable enough for people to actually pay for it.
Omer (18:22.250)
Was there anything proprietary about the opt in forms?
I'M trying to sort of figure out was it what your secret sauce at the time was or was it basically sort of leveraging your experience and background in conversion optimization and just an idea in terms of this is how an opt in form should work.
So is there anything that you had at the time that somebody else couldn't copy?
Guest (18:57.290)
No, not really.
Not really.
And you know, this is around about three years ago.
So this was before you heard about Sumome and other companies like that.
So yeah, everything here was extremely easy to copy.
So what we were actually going to build here was the true value of the product that you can actually customize it and you can choose when it should appear and you can do a lot of tracking on it and split testing and all this.
But we were about to build that afterwards.
But to begin with, for three years ago, it was only like a very hard coded subscriber box that we have seen a lot of great results with in this very specific way of showing it.
Yeah.
Omer (19:48.650)
Did you guys ever maybe, you know, either as co founders or as yourself ever think about building an opt in tool that was kind of broader, like, kind of like the Sumo mes and things like that?
Because kind of looking at where you are guys right now it seems pretty smart that you focus on e commerce sites.
But I was just wondering kind of what the thought process was as sort of as you kind of went through from idea to building the product.
Guest (20:16.710)
Yeah, it's a great question actually what we did afterwards when we have created this, this app and we got some customers using it.
We, we actually focused a bit broader.
We you know, said well why should it only be e commerce websites?
So used it, you used our product.
So we actually like tried and, and get everyone on board because we know we got a lot of customers from newspapers, we got, got a lot of customers from consultancies and all this stuff.
But what, this is actually one of the mistakes that we, we made early on because we could see that these, these clients, these, you know, consultancies and news newsletters and all these.
We, we couldn't really advise them as good as we could advise these ecommerce websites.
And what we've really essentially built was something very valuable for e commerce websites because you know, these other websites, very simple websites, they can just use an WordPress plugin for free and that would work just as great as our tool.
So, so, so actually we tried, we started very narrow with this e commerce websites because that was where we tested the product to begin with.
And then we thought well now we're going to conquer the world and we'll try to, to get everyone.
But then actually for I think it's around a year and a half ago we, we decided to like focus on this one target group and to be honest also because we saw more competitors in the market and we saw that these competitors were good at targeting, you know, other niche websites.
So, so we, our team, me and my co founders and the people that we, that we hired were all E commerce, you know, experts.
We had, we had a lot of knowledge and both in developing e commerce websites.
I have advised a lot of ecommerce websites and this is, this was like what we knew and what we really loved.
So, so it was obvious for us to, to focus on that and yeah, so that, that was actually, that was actually a mistake that we did and we focused on that for a year or so.
Yeah.
Omer (22:39.660)
Do you think you guys would have made more progress by now or had more growth by now if you had decided not to do that and stuck with just focusing on e commerce sites?
Guest (22:56.490)
Yeah, that's a good question.
Honestly I don't know but I do know that the kind of clients and the kind of customers we have today are willing to pay the price and we decided pretty early on not to you know, be a very, you know, the cheapest product on the market because we wanted to be different from the other tools and both by having some, some other features and you know, another value that we provide but also by off by having another price than you know, $5 or I don't know this the sumo me price today but we, we decided pretty early on to, to charge.
I think today our cheapest pricing plan is $69 per month because it's, it's just we could see that if just the price alone is actually a quality parameter for our, when our target group is about to choose which tool they're going to use.
So, so if a like an E commerce E commerce manager is about to choose a tool for you know, getting more opt ins on their website, they often don't choose the cheapest one because they, they want, they want to be sure that they're doing that they're making the right decision and they can't be judged for choosing.
They can be judged for choosing the, the wrong tool but they can't be judged for choosing not, not the cheapest one.
So, so, so we decided to you know, find a price that we of course thought were fair but, but also was different than from our competitors.
So we actually decided to charge quite a bit for our products early on.
Omer (24:53.120)
Okay.
So after the proof of concept, you guys are, you know, you have enough evidence there that both you can solve this problem for more than just one client.
Right.
And so that's a validation for you in terms of the product and the solution.
And you also have some validation there that people are willing to pay for this.
Guest (25:15.210)
Yeah.
Omer (25:16.010)
So did you, at that point, did you guys then say, okay, are we gonna.
We're gonna go and actually build this.
This product and it's gonna be kind of like this platform where people can do all of these things and we're gonna integrate with all these platforms?
Or did you.
Well, what did you do?
Guest (25:33.770)
Yeah, we created a minimum viable product.
We decided what.
What are we.
What is possible for us to create so that our customers can.
Can create these boxes themselves.
And, and then, of course, we wrote a long list with everything we wanted in the.
In this.
In this new app.
We wanted to, you know, split test, we wanted to do e commerce tracking, we wanted to do all kinds of analytics and all this.
But.
But we, you know, we.
We just did the most important stuff and that was to be able to create a box to change the text and to do, you know, simple integration with mailchimp and maybe campaign monitor or something like that.
And then, and then what we did was that we opened up for, I think we made a limit of 50 beta testers.
We didn't want to, like, get a lot of new people in from day one because we know that our product was buggy.
We know that there was a lot of things that didn't work.
So, so we actually, we.
I communicated through my.
I think it was my Twitter profile again, that we are now opening up for 50 beta testers.
And within, I think two hours, we got these 50 beta testers who wanted to try it out because we actually created this kind of urgency that it's not for everyone, it's limited.
Everyone can't just use it.
Right now we only want 50.
And, and we got 50 very, very quickly.
And then we got, I think around.
I think around 60 more who we wrote on a waiting list so that we can contact them.
And they actually wrote to us that they wanted to also pay these.
I think it was $20 when we opened up.
So we actually, like, did.
I don't know if other companies do it like that, but it was a great feeling to have customers almost from day one when we opened our app, and I actually have around 60 more customers that were just waiting for us to get this product done.
Omer (27:35.410)
Were you Charging for the beta users to use the product.
Guest (27:38.770)
Yeah.
Omer (27:39.410)
Okay, good.
Yeah, it seems like it was just too easy.
You know, you came up from at least how we're kind of hearing the story, right, because you came up with the idea, you solved it for one customer.
You did a proof of concept without wasting a lot of time and proved that you could solve the problem for other people and that you could generate some revenue.
You built a minimum viable product, you got beta testers really quickly.
And even if we look at the general sort of growth trajectory for a bootstrap business to go from, from 0 to $55,000 in monthly recurring revenue in three years is pretty good going.
And we talked a little bit about the mistake in terms of maybe not focusing as sort of sharply as you should have, but tell the listeners about maybe some of the other challenges that you faced along the way.
Guest (28:48.870)
I'd love to.
Well, to be honest, in the first year or so we were extremely lucky and, you know, just riding on a fantastic wave and everything just happened for us in the first year or so.
But later on we've got some challenges.
First of all, today we are almost only in Scandinavia.
We have customers in the US and Austria, Australia and other countries and continents.
But that's very few customers.
So a challenge for us is to scale our product to new markets.
And what we've got a great success with in Denmark and in Scandinavia is that web agencies often recommend their customers to use SleekNote because they can see it, you know, generates a lot of value and all this.
And because a lot of, we got a lot of clients in Denmark and Scandinavia, the agencies contacted us and, you know, heard if we can, if they could be a reseller of our product.
So that was fantastic.
And then we, I think for about a year ago we thought, okay, now we're going to the uk we, we will try and if we can, you know, approach this new market because it's a lot bigger than Denmark and a lot of potential clients.
So we thought that we can just contact all the web agencies in the UK and, you know, get them to recommend SleekNote to their customers and to their clients.
But, man, were we wrong.
That didn't happen.
We traveled over there a couple of times to some meetups, trying to set up some meetings with some of these agencies.
But, you know, none of them wanted to just hear about our product because we didn't have any clients on the market.
So that was really a wake up call that, you know, things just went extremely easy in Denmark.
But it's just A whole nother game.
When we enter a new market where nobody has heard about us and we have got no clients.
Omer (30:57.210)
That's interesting.
So it was because in your market in Scandinavia, you already had a, you know, a consulting freelance business.
You had clients.
So you had a track record there of.
Guest (31:10.610)
Yeah.
Omer (31:11.010)
Oh.
And you know, and you didn't have any of that when you went to the uk.
So that's, that is really interesting because I kind of get that if, if you were kind of going to the UK with an idea, but.
And people are like, well, you know, we don't know about this thing and whatever.
But you already had a product by then, right?
You had a product paying customers, you had revenue, and even then you weren't able to break into another market.
Guest (31:38.050)
Exactly.
We were sure that they were going to love it, but they didn't.
And you know, all these web agencies, they have so much else to take care of and selling another SaaS product is just not interesting for them.
Even though that we could provide some kickback or something like that, it was just not interesting.
So what we found out is that it works the other way around.
We need to have the customers in the market before the partners is going to contact us and sign up and recommend it to their customers.
And we've seen that now in Norway, for example, where we have a lot of customers today, that was also a new market for us because we only started in Denmark to begin with and then we wanted to approach Norway and then we, because I sometimes do some presentations at E commerce events.
By these presentations, we got some of the biggest, some big clients in this market.
And then afterwards the partners contacted us.
So yeah, we just found out that we can't just contact partners directly.
That's not working.
So now we're trying to figure out how we can get the end users, how we can get our customers, and then afterwards try and find the partners.
And that's not easy.
And that's actually one of the biggest challenges we have right now.
It is to get off the borders in Denmark and try and get some customers in new countries.
So, yeah, we're trying right now to, to do some, a lot of content marketing and, you know, some online advertising.
But, but that's, that's actually the, the, the biggest challenge for us.
Omer (33:28.190)
Okay.
And at some point you guys also joined forces with another startup.
Guest (33:37.790)
Yeah.
Omer (33:38.510)
And I know you had some challenges there with, with losing a co founder, so I wanted to talk a little bit about that too because, you know, I think most people who've kind of gone through this experience will sort of say finding a co founder is like getting married.
Right?
You really need to make sure that you find the right person.
In many ways.
You need to kind of think about not just how great it can be to partner with somebody, but also what you're going to do if things fall apart and how you're going to clean up the mess.
So I don't know exactly what happened with you guys, but I'd love for you to kind of share that with the listeners as well and sort of just.
It would be great to sort of just learn some, some lessons or some insights that maybe you have from going through that experience.
Guest (34:28.040)
Sure, sure.
Well, just to, just to rewind a bit.
When we created this beta product, we got some customers and then me and my co founder, my technical co founder Patrick, we decided to, to contact another technical guy called Esker who joined the team.
Then we were three guys at our company.
Then we were contacted by three other guys, also Danish guys who worked with something similar to our product.
But they focused instead of email subscribers, they focused a lot on social media.
So in this opt in boxes you could like on Fate, you could like them on Facebook and then, you know, participate in a competition or something like that.
So they contacted us and, and said, hey, shouldn't we like maybe join forces and hear if we can, you know, see if we can do something together?
And yeah, we had some meetings, I think we had like five meetings or so where we just talked to each other and heard each other if we could do business together and if we had a good team.
And what we found out was that we actually, even though we thought it was a bit weird to team up with our competitor, we could see that our teams had a great match.
They were one really fantastic front ender, graphical designer and front ender.
Then you had a back ender and they had an online marketing, you know, nerd who knew everything about SEO and AdWords and all this.
And we were two backenders and then me, who were, you know, the CEO guy with the strategy and the KPIs and all this stuff and the network.
So we saw these two teams had a great match and then we negotiated for, I think around a month or so and then finally decided to, instead of competing on this little local market in Denmark, for the few customers that are around in Denmark, instead of competing for them, we decided to team up so that we can create a tool that could compete with, you know, all the great tools that would be around the world.
Yeah, so, so, so we went from three to six co founders back then and that's around two years ago now.
Omer (37:06.870)
How did things change with six cooks in the kitchen?
Guest (37:15.670)
Yeah, yeah, it's, it, it wasn't easy.
We were, everyone was, you know, very, you know, we really wanted this to go easy and we wanted to be nice to each other but, but, but we didn't knew each other so, so everything we needed to, to decide, every little thing, every like front end detail, every little strategic thing, we just, you know, discussed every one of us and we, everyone had a meaning about what we should do.
So things went pretty slow the first couple of months because we wanted to make sure that everyone were involved in every decision.
Afterwards when we get to know each other, eventually things began to get a lot easier.
But in that process, as you mentioned, we lost a co founder and.
Yeah, and that was of course that's not a nice thing.
It wasn't one of the guys from our old team, it was a guy from the other old team.
But still, it's just not a situation you hope to be in where you have to say goodbye to a co founder which has worked his ass off to create this product.
Omer (38:39.750)
Well, what happened?
He just didn't want to be involved with the business anymore or you guys fell out or what?
Guest (38:45.690)
Yeah, well, well actually the, the thing is that we had this agreement that when the company had the enough revenue to, to pay the salary for, for every one of us, we should, we should take the decision and then join the company.
So to begin with it was the first, there was the two backenders who were full time on board and then we have decided that afterwards it should be the front ender who, who went full time and then afterwards the online marketing guy and me and the last backender.
And when it became this last guy's turn to, to join full time, he couldn't, he couldn't quit his, his, his, his other full time job because he was so, you know, happy for it and he just got this, actually he just got this full time job so he wasn't ready to go full time on this startup and of course also to a way lower salary.
So yeah, basically he wasn't really ready for the startup life.
Omer (39:50.110)
So what problems did this cause for you guys?
Guest (39:54.510)
Well, it did cost a lot of energy and time because you, you know, there was of course some negotiation there on how this should end.
Luckily when we teamed up we did do a kind of, I don't know the English word, but some kind of co founder agreement where we had Some lines about what should we do if someone wants to sell his stocks and what if he dies and all this stuff.
Omer (40:31.800)
Did you, did you guys get legal advice on that or did you just come up with something yourself?
Guest (40:38.200)
We got professional advice when we, when we emerged.
Omer (40:41.400)
Yeah, I was going to say it's like only a lawyer would think about when somebody dies and stuff like that.
Guest (40:46.120)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
And it is kind of weird to, you know, discuss how you are going to divorce when you actually marry.
But, but that's just the case that, that, that is actually what you, you need to discuss.
Even though it's, it's crazy because someday it will become reality.
Someday, you know, one co founder will, you know, find something else to do or wants to sell his stocks or something like that.
And you must have, well, if I can get, give just one advice from, from our experience here, you, you must have that on, in some kind of document that you have signed everyone and get some professional advice on that because you can't do it the right way yourself unless you are a lawyer.
Omer (41:33.370)
Yeah, I agree.
That's very good advice.
All right, it's now time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
Guest (41:47.370)
Great, great.
Let's do it.
Omer (41:49.130)
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Guest (41:55.060)
Yeah, great question.
Focus, focus and focus.
I got that advice from one of our mentors called Thomas Kowloon from a company called Pixels, who's been extremely important for us.
That's, that's actually us.
Another practical tip, to find a great advisor to help you.
An advisor who had, you know, opened the same doors that you are about to open.
But he's just opened it maybe one hit or two years ago.
But he told me to focus because at the time I started this company, I worked as a freelancer.
I had this e commerce website.
So I have, you know, all these things that I wanted to do.
But, but, but his point is that if you don't focus on, you know, one thing, you're never going to succeed in anything.
So, so you're going to be, you know, a little, a little bit thing of everything.
And you can't do that if you want to really succeed.
And I often combine this with another quote and I don't know it exactly, but it's something like find your one thing and do that thing better than anyone else.
So yeah, focus and find your one thing and do that thing better than anyone else.
Omer (43:09.410)
What book would you Recommend to our audience and why.
Guest (43:15.120)
Yeah, if I can only choose one book, it must be the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Effective People by Stephen Covey.
I was introduced to this book, I think, around 10 years ago, and I really make sure to read this at least once every year.
It has just deeply shaped how I try to work, how I try to be as a colleague, as a leader, as a husband and as a dad.
It's.
Well, it's phenomenal.
Simple as that.
Omer (43:45.940)
Yeah, it's a great book.
I haven't read it for a long time.
Maybe that's a cue for me to go and reread it again as well.
Guest (43:52.020)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Omer (43:53.540)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Guest (44:00.900)
Truly to try and be a good person and.
Yeah, to be true to your core values.
It might sound simple and fundamental and something that everyone will be, but at least I see again and again that it's not the case.
I see so many entrepreneurs not treating their customers well.
They are not treating their partners well, they're not treating their colleagues well.
For example, when you're trying to, you know, hiring people, really try and provide honest feedback and tell this guy why he didn't get the job, or when you're finding people, try to help them as good as you can finding another job.
If, if you, if you care about this, this guy or when you make a, a mistake to a customer.
I see this a lot.
These entrepreneurs often, you know, or companies in general, blame their contractors, blame their servers instead of just being honest and say, sorry, we screw up.
You typically see this, this, you know, this character of a, of a leader or an entrepreneur when hits the fan and, and you experience some, some, some rough times, and this is when it becomes clear how true they are to their core values and also, you know, clear how.
Who I admire the most.
Omer (45:17.400)
Yeah.
Have you.
Are you familiar with the book called Good to Great?
Guest (45:21.960)
No.
Omer (45:23.080)
I think it was written by Jim Collins and they did research into a number of companies that were performing extraordinarily well at the time.
And they looked at what, what these companies were doing that was different to everybody else, what was driving this, this incredible performance.
And they found these kind of commonalities and they kind of.
He wrote about them in this book and one of them was about the traits of a leader in those great companies versus the good companies.
And they describe this concept of the mirror and the window.
And they said that in, in, you know, typically what you see with a lot of leaders and sort of, you know, especially sort of narcissistic type people is when, when things go wrong, they look to blame everybody else.
And when they have things go well, they look to take the credit.
But when they, when they looked at these kind of great companies and the leaders in those companies, it was the opposite that when things went wrong, the leaders would look in the mirror and question what they did or didn't do which caused that situation.
And when things went well, they looked out of the window and found other reasons whether it was people, luck, circumstances, and gave that credit for their success rather than taking it for themselves.
So it's, it kind of ties together with that.
Anyway, so anyway, we did track.
Let's get back to the light.
Guest (46:58.830)
Yeah, that's fantastic.
I'm going to read that book.
Omer (47:02.350)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Guest (47:07.310)
Yeah, first of all, I use my calendar a lot.
I really schedule everything.
If it's not in my calendar, it's just, it's not going to happen.
The great thing about this, well, actually there's many great things, but first of all, it prevents me from doing a lot of impulsive work and ideas that I might think in a quick and weak moment are important.
But actually when I compare it to all the other things on my to do list and in my calendar, it's not important at all.
It just seems like a great little thing to do right now in this moment.
Therefore, when I get this new idea, which I get all the time, I write it down or, you know, do a quick memo on my phone and then the next morning I prioritize this new idea and schedule it some time in the future.
By doing this, I'm sure I always do the most important tasks first.
Yeah, well, it's actually, I think it's actually also a check chapter in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Something around do the most important things first.
And then, yeah, I really try to do that.
Yeah.
And beside that, actually I'm also if there's time for the fund of another tip.
And it's not, it's not really a productivity tool or hack, but it's really about investing in yourself and invest with time, the most precious resource that we have.
And I see that many entrepreneurs and people in general, they run around all stressed out like lemmings from one email to another, from one phone call to another, day by day, week by week.
But very few people actually stop up and say, hey, maybe I can do this smarter.
Maybe I can invest in my time and upgrade my skills and do this task in a smarter and more Effective way.
Personally, I've scheduled and blocked out one day every two weeks in my calendar.
And this day, I mute my email, I mute slack and incoming calls, all distractions.
And then I invest in upgrading myself.
And this could be like, for example, to take a course in Excel, to take a read faster course, or to read inspiring books, or to think about where we are as a company in three years, et cetera, et cetera.
It's so.
So it's.
It's really like forcing.
It's really about, like forcing myself through my calendar scheduling to think about strategy, vision, how to work smarter.
Yeah, that.
That was a little bit long, but I hope it's okay.
Omer (49:47.950)
I really, really like that idea.
It reminds me that I know one other person told me about something similar that, that he did, and, you know, it's not always easy to do that, but I think particularly as.
As entrepreneurs and leaders, I think
Guest (50:07.660)
if
Omer (50:07.780)
you don't make the time for that, then you kind of ultimately pay the price and you kind of are kidding yourself.
And I guess that goes back to the 7 Habits book as well, right?
In terms of sharpening the saw.
Guest (50:20.780)
Yeah, exactly.
Omer (50:23.420)
So what's a new or crazy business idea that you would love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Guest (50:30.940)
Honest, right now, I really try not to find new business ideas because hence what I told earlier about focus and focus and focus.
So if I see one, I actually try to forget it.
I know it's not really, really entrepreneurial, but.
But it's.
I just try to forget it because.
Or else my head will just spin with this new idea all the time.
So I really try not to find new ideas.
Right now.
Omer (50:58.820)
That's actually really good advice.
And I've been there, where you kind of have an idea and you start working on something and then you have another idea which seems just as exciting and you don't want to let go of it.
So you then end up trying to juggle two things at the same time and maybe another third one comes along, and with each kind of level of excitement comes a whole bunch of frustration as well.
So I've never actually heard anyone say that, but I think that's actually good advice.
Try to forget the idea as quickly as possible.
Guest (51:33.770)
Yeah.
Or write it down and sleep on it and, you know, take a look at the idea again, like a week after and see if it's still that good an idea.
Because often it's just in, you know, in a moment, you think it's the most fantastic idea in the world.
But often when you sleep on it and, you know, do something else and you get back to it.
It's often not that good an idea.
So, yeah, do that.
If you don't want to, just forget it.
But right now, I just try and forget.
Omer (52:01.290)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Guest (52:07.130)
Well, I have a huge and maybe a bit weird passion of old electronic music.
Like, very, very old.
So I listen to pioneers like Kraftwerk, Jean Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Mike Oldfield, all these very old guys from Germany and from France.
So I have three older brothers.
They might have influenced me in my music taste.
So, yeah, that.
That was.
That was the fun fact.
Omer (52:34.050)
Do you break dance and body pop as well or something?
Guest (52:40.610)
Cool.
Omer (52:41.090)
All right.
And what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Guest (52:47.970)
Well, I have to say my family, my wife.
My wife Karina, and my two small kids, Augusta and Winston.
I work a lot, so.
So when I don't work, I try to spend as much time as possible with my family.
And when I'm not working and not with my family, I try to exercise, you know, lift some weights and.
And run and.
And do some cycling.
But, yeah, my family, I. I try not to.
To have a whole lot of passions.
I try not to get any ideas and.
No passions.
I'm really boring.
Omer (53:21.270)
Mogans, I want to thank you for joining me today and sharing your story of SleekNote with us.
I think you guys have a great story.
You've.
You've done incredible amount in the last three years, and I'm looking forward to seeing you guys continue to grow and hopefully break into more markets outside of Scandinavia.
If folks want to get in touch with you or find out more about SleekNote, what's the best way for them to do that?
Guest (53:53.330)
They can find me on Twitter or, you know, just write me an email.
Mm.
Sleeknote.com so that's a double M. Yeah.
And I'll be happy to, you know,
Omer (54:05.130)
answer any questions and check out sleeknote.com for more information about the product.
Cool.
So thanks again, and I wish you all the best.
Guest (54:17.040)
Thank you, Omar.
My pleasure.
Omer (54:18.560)
Take care.
