Nathan Gilmore - TeamGantt

TeamGantt: Bootstrapping a 7-Figure SaaS with Focus and SEO – with Nathan Gilmore [427]

TeamGantt: Bootstrapping a 7-Figure SaaS with Focus and SEO

Nathan Gilmore is the co-founder of TeamGantt, a software platform that helps teams visualize and manage projects using Gantt charts.

In 2009, while working as software developers at a commercial roofing company, Nathan and John needed a better way to share project timelines with their team.

Frustrated by having to export PDFs every time they made changes, and finding no good web-based solutions, they decided to build their own solution.

With full-time jobs and families to support, they could only dedicate 4 hours every Saturday morning to their side project. But they made each hour and week count.

Within six months, they had built a basic version ready for testing.

They created a simple landing page and used a $100 Google Ads coupon to test interest. It didn't take long for people around the world to start signing up.

A year later, they launched paid plans. Their first customer was a video company in California that signed up for their $29 monthly plan.

Growth was slow but steady as their SEO efforts started to kick in. A new customer every few days became one every day.

When they were making almost $3K in monthly recurring revenue, the co-founders made the leap to working full-time on their business and kept grinding away.

Their patience paid off. By 2012, they hit $10K in MRR and two years later reached their first million in annual recurring revenue.

Today, TeamGantt serves 6,000 customers across 180 countries, including Fortune 500 companies. They've grown to 21 people and generated seven figures in ARR – all while remaining completely bootstrapped.

In this episode, you'll learn:

  • How working just 4 hours a week forced Nathan and John to discover an unconventional approach to building a SaaS product
  • Why focusing on one core feature instead of building a full project management suite helped them compete with larger competitors
  • How they grew to seven figures through SEO alone and what made them finally narrow their focus after 14 years
  • Why they had to abandon their flat organizational structure and what happened when both founders were managing 12 direct reports each
  • Why choosing to focus on the construction industry after 14 years became a game-changing decision for their growth

I hope you enjoy it!

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] Omer: Nathan, welcome to the show.

[00:00:01] Nathan: Thank you, everyone excited to be

[00:00:02] Omer: here. My pleasure. Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you?

[00:00:08] Nathan: Yeah, there's, there's one I came across recently actually. It's, it's. The less, you know, the more you think you know, the more you know, the more you realize how little, you know

[00:00:18] Omer: I can relate to that.

[00:00:19] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:00:19] Omer: Isn't that what they call the, the, the Dunning Kruger effect or something?

[00:00:24] Nathan: Yes, yes. I, I just feel like it, it encourages learning and it, it always happens, you know, you start to feel comfortable and then as you. Dig in, you start learning something, a whole new world has opened up about some new skill you need to learn or, and then you go, oh my gosh, I actually don't know much about this.

[00:00:38] And you can be humbling. So, yeah.

[00:00:40] Omer: So tell us about TeamGantt. What does the product do? Who's it for and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?

[00:00:49] Nathan: Yeah, sure. So TeamGantt is easy. Scheduling for teams. So it's all about Gantt charts. And if you're not familiar with Gantt charts, it's basically a timeline view of a project.

[00:00:59] And it just helps people visualize it, gets it out of your head when you have a whole bunch of steps a bunch of tasks when they need to be done, and then you can easily communicate that to everybody else involved in the project. And ultimately, it just helps bring calm and clarity to teams, and it helps 'em get their projects finished on time.

[00:01:16] Omer: I remember using Microsoft Project back in the day with the Gantt Charts and but unfortunately I ended up spending more time in the app than actually managing projects. Right. So I think things have changed quite a bit since then.

[00:01:29] Nathan: Yeah, that is funny. So that's really the problem we wanted to solve is a lot of tools were complicated and hard to use, so we focused on simplicity and we also focused on taking it online to the cloud and and it's been a game changer.

[00:01:41] And it's funny, there's even still today, people. So that still use Microsoft Project, and when we expose them to TeamGantt, they go, oh my goodness. Didn't know how much things have changed. And they're very excited about it.

[00:01:53] Omer: Give us a sense of the size of the business. Where are you in terms of revenue, customers size of team?

[00:01:59] Nathan: Yeah, so we're we've got about 6,000 customers about 21 employees. As far as revenue, we're, we're well into the seven figures. We were across 180 different countries. And then we actually have a lot of teams, even from like Fortune 500 companies using us as well.

[00:02:15] Omer: And you are bootstrapped?

[00:02:17] Nathan: We are. A hundred percent bootstrapped.

[00:02:19] Omer: Woo-hoo. Yeah. Right. So let, let, let's start the story back I guess around 2009 which is when you and your co-founder John came up with, with the idea of building a product. What were you guys doing at the time and. How, how did this idea come about?

[00:02:38] Nathan: Yeah, good question. So so at the time we were both working for a large commercial roofing company.

[00:02:44] It was actually John's family's roofing company. And his brother was, was very tech savvy. He wanted more technology in the company. So I had left I was, at the time I was working at TD Ameritrade. I had gone to the roofing company. I was building software there, but then I went over to the roofing company.

[00:02:59] I was building software for them along with John. And while we were creating the software, we realized we needed a better way to be able to show everybody how long it was gonna take to do, to able show ownership and everyone in the company, this is how long it's gonna take us to build each module.

[00:03:13] And so we were looking around and. We couldn't find anything web-based. We couldn't find anything on the web 'cause we were always exporting A PDF. And then things would change. We'd have to export another PDF and it just felt ridiculous. We're like, there's gotta be a web-based version of this. There wasn't.

[00:03:29] So that's how the idea got started.

[00:03:31] Omer: Cool. Okay. So initially it was just for John's brothers business.

[00:03:39] Nathan: It was, it was something that we found a need for in the business, but we decided, hey, we need this. There might be other people that need this too. So it was a business idea from the beginning. And we started working Saturday mornings.

[00:03:53] So John would come over to my house. We had a, you know, down in the townhouse basement, we would just spend Saturday mornings and we started working on it slowly but surely, and we're take, we took it from there.

[00:04:05] Omer: One of the interesting things about your story was that you guys were only working about four hours a week on this, and my, my immediate reaction was, oh my God.

[00:04:16] It's like, how can you get anything done in just four hours a week? Why, why did you have that constraint? And, you know, what sort of progress were you guys, ma were you able to make in the first year?

[00:04:32] Nathan: So the reason we had the constraint was just because we did have other obligations in life. So we had our full-time jobs Monday through Friday.

[00:04:40] Then in the evenings it's, you know, it's family time. Saturdays at the time we had. So my wife was doing hair, so she would work on Saturdays and I used to golf on Saturdays, so I had to stop golfing. I had to give up golf to do this. So I stopped golfing, so that gave me some time that, you know, there was four hours right there I could apply to it.

[00:04:58] And then John was, at the time the church we were going to his father was actually a pastor there and they were building a new building. So John was involved in that. So in the afternoons he would have to go do that. I also had a baby that year, so I was taking care of the baby. So, you know, so we had a lot going on in life and it was like four hours was kind of all we could kind of sustain and, and do.

[00:05:19] Omer: Well actually when you think, when, when you describe all of that stuff, it's like four hours actually sounds like a lot now, right? To take out that time, dude. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So four hours a week, not, not a huge amount of time. How long? Well, first of all, how did, how, how did you spend that time?

[00:05:38] Was it just all about building the product? Did you, did you sort of focus initially on just that one business or were you already thinking about, you know, other potential customers to go and talk to and validate the idea? Or was it just, I. We, we sort of know enough about this one business. We know what the problems are, and we're just gonna focus on just building a product for that.

[00:06:00] Nathan: Yeah. So we, what we did is we always tried to look at each, each Saturday morning we go, what's the most important thing we gotta do today? And we try and get that done. And it was important to us in the early days to kind of do both. Start validating the idea, start getting the word out, but also start building it.

[00:06:16] So. Some, some Saturdays, you know, might be a little bit more on one or the other. You know, one of the first things we probably did was probably before we really even did too much working on the actual products was we, and this, we didn't spend much time on it. We built a landing page like ugly, quick, dirty, Hey, this is what we're doing.

[00:06:36] If you're interested, give us your email address. Right. So that was like probably one Saturday morning. We were just like, let's get that up. So we did that. And then we started working on it, you know, and then we'd. Focused on the product and we're like, all right, well, how do we get the word out about this landing page?

[00:06:49] So I think like one Saturday morning, because, because Google knew we had like incorporated new business, they sent us a hundred dollars Google ad word coupon that we could use. So we're like, all right, let's try this out one day. So we, we used that signed up for Google AdWords and spent a hundred bucks on ads to this landing page, and we actually had multiple people put their email address in and.

[00:07:12] That was like the first, that happened quick, maybe within the first month. And that was exciting. We're like, okay, people we don't know from different parts of the world all said, Hey, they, they're interested in this. So that gave us enough energy to go, all right, let's keep putting some more Saturdays into this.

[00:07:27] Omer: And how long did it take you to, to build the first sort version of the product that you could get out there in the hands of customers?

[00:07:37] Nathan: Probably about six months. Six months was to the point where we had a beta product, not something we were happy with. You know, not something we were like it, like I don't even, it might not even had drag and drop at the time, you know, which is important.

[00:07:51] But you know, it was something that, hey, someone could go in and create a Gantt chart. Not the prettiest thing, not the easiest thing to use. But you know, probably about six months is I think when we started getting some, some beta users using it.

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[00:08:50] Okay, so here's what I see with a lot of founders. At that point, you have the ones who take path A, which is what you guys did, which is not happy with this. Hasn't got a bunch of features, but we need to get it out there, get some beta users, get some feedback, figure out how to make it better.

[00:09:12] Then you have the founders who take sort of path B, which is, there's no way I'm gonna put this in front of people. It could destroy my credibility if it doesn't work perfectly and have all the, the features they expect. They're never gonna give me another shot. And so they continue down the, the development path building more and more.

[00:09:31] In some cases that may be justified because you know, the type of the industry or the nature of the, whatever the product does and so on. But you, on the one hand, admitting I wasn't happy with it. It didn't have a whole bunch of stuff that we, we needed to have in there. It was pretty basic. But what drove you to still get that out there in front of potential customers?

[00:09:57] Nathan: We wanted validation. Yeah. We wanted to hear from people, you know, because, and we wanted to hear a couple things, wanted to hear one, like, Hey, yeah, you guys are onto something. I, maybe it's not quite there yet, but we're willing, we wanted to see if people were even willing to try it.

[00:10:11] Is anyone even willing to. Spend the time to log in and add a task. You know, like, can we even get that far right? And if we can, and they hate it. Alright, good. We made progress. At least somebody showed they wanted to try it. Right? And then when we, when however far they get, if they get stuck, they go, well, it doesn't do this.

[00:10:30] Okay, well great, boom. That's what we need to work on next. Right? Like, so because when you're building a product, you can go 10,000 different ways, right? And you can. So many different features and different things to work on. If you, the sooner you can talk with customers, the sooner you can get feedback from them.

[00:10:46] The sooner you can learn, the more you know and the more you can prioritize smartly, especially when you only have a few hours a week. Prioritization and working on the right thing is incredibly important.

[00:10:58] Omer: So who are the customers, the beta users? Were they all from a, you know, a specific industry or were they from just like all over the place.

[00:11:07] And secondly, what were the main takeaways or learnings you got by letting them use the product after six months?

[00:11:15] Nathan: They were from, they were from all different industries. Because it's interesting, like Gantt charts are a lot like Excel sheets in terms of like, kind of everybody can use them. Anybody that has a project, anybody that has a deadline, anybody that has a timeline can use, can use the Gantt chart and benefit from it.

[00:11:30] So we, and we still to this day, we get people from every industry wanting to use it. So, so that was always interesting too. It was fun to talk to different people and, and hear how they're using it. And then we would learn specific things. Like one of the reasons we created TeamGantt was 'cause we hated PDFs and we hated the idea of having to print them out.

[00:11:47] Well, people would tell us, they're like, this is great, but how do I get a PDF? We're like, are you kidding me? Like you seriously want A PDF? You know? And that was actually really important to them. To some people, not to everybody, but some people, that was important. So we said, all right, well we're gonna have to build that.

[00:12:00] So we did, we, that was a feature we ended up building that. We never, we didn't want it, we didn't think it was important, but enough people told us it was. So we said, okay, we'll build that.

[00:12:09] Omer: That's interesting. It's like, wait a minute, we're trying to build something that doesn't do that. Right. It's, we've got something better for you.

[00:12:16] Exactly. Exactly. In, in hindsight, was that the right thing to do?

[00:12:20] Nathan: It was. 'cause, you know, there were use cases where it makes sense. So for instance, people were saying, well, hey, we need to do a client proposal. And we need to be able to put the PDF in with the proposal. It's like, okay, I get it. That makes sense.

[00:12:30] We weren't doing that, we weren't doing proposals. You know, but they also still wanted the web-based collaboration. There's a lot of benefits to being on the cloud, so they, they kind of wanted the best of both worlds and. It was, it was, I'm glad we learned about that and glad we did that.

[00:12:43] Omer: Were, were all these beta users using the product for free or did you, were you charging them?

[00:12:48] Nathan: Yeah, we didn't charge 'em, no. We, we set free, like we, we wanted feedback. We wanted to see people actually use it, know they were getting value out of it. So we, we did make that free. And that can be controversial. Some people wouldn't do that, some people would, but for us it was, we, we were fine. We didn't really think it was ready to be a paid product, and we were okay with that.

[00:13:06] Omer: And then how long did it take to get the product to a point where you started charging for it?

[00:13:13] Nathan: So then it was probably about another six months, six to eight months or so after that when it was in beta that we've, you know, got enough things worked out you know, got enough people saying, yeah, this is good.

[00:13:24] We're liking it, using it on a regular basis that we said, okay. We think it's time to put it behind a paywall and don't let people use it if it's if they pay for it. And then that was the next big moment. Well, now we know people use it, but will they pay? And that was the big next question.

[00:13:41] Omer: Were you guys still working the four hours?

[00:13:44] Nathan: We were, yeah. We were still working the four hours. Yep. We still had our day jobs.

[00:13:49] Omer: So the first, this is the first 12 to 14 months. You've been doing four hours a week on the Saturday mornings, building the product, getting the beta users improving it, and eventually getting out to, to launch and you start charging for it.

[00:14:06] How did you, how did you get those initial customers, like, had, had you built up a bigger email list? Like what had you been doing in the, in the last year that sort of prepared you? For this launch.

[00:14:18] Nathan: So that's, that's a really good question. That's important. Like you know, a lot of people will sometimes think you don't need to market something until you maybe figured out what you're gonna sell for sure.

[00:14:27] But I like the approach of start marketing day one, which is why we did that so that when we had something we were ready to sell. Now we had an, we had a group of people, so we had started doing SEO along the way. As we were building the product, we were also doing some SEO. And we had the landing page up and we had actually gotten to the point where we had 1300 people on an email list that we could then email and say, Hey, here it is.

[00:14:51] It's launched, it's ready. Check it out.

[00:14:53] Omer: Did the vast majority of those people come from, I. Just organic search, they just would, would find something and then end up joining the email list.

[00:15:03] Nathan: Yeah, they did. It was, it was pretty straightforward. I mean, we did, we took some best basic SEO strategies at the time and just built up some traffic. And so then by that time when we launched, we had the email list of everybody from the last year that had signed up, but then we also had people signing up every day saying they were interested. So we also had kind of a continual funnel built up there, which was great.

[00:15:25] Omer: And, and so how long did it take to get those first 10 customers?

[00:15:28] Nathan: So I remember when we launched we, we set it out and it was like, all right, starting today, people can only use it if they pay. And we just were, we were watching, we had something I. I guess it was on our phones at the time where we could check and just see. And so we just like refresh it during the day.

[00:15:42] Did anybody buy? Did anybody buy? And finally, later that day, one person we saw bought and they, they bought our mid plan. We had like a $10 plan, a $29 plan, and a $99 plan, something like that. And they bought the $29 plan. It was a video company out in California. They wanted to manage their video projects and, you know, so I think we probably high fived and we're like, all right, awesome.

[00:16:03] We're in business. We have a, we have a first customer, somebody we don't know. Found this, liked it, bought it. So so then it was like, you know, the next day we're checking to anybody else buy, and I can't remember the exact pacing, but it was something along the lines of like, it was every couple days we would get a new person buy.

[00:16:23] And then it turned into like, you know, and it was maybe that way for maybe a month. Then it turned into, we were getting about one person a day buying, you know, and then it turned into about two people a day buying, and it just slowly kept building up.

[00:16:36] Omer: Do you, do you think that was largely because of the, the SEO work that you had done over the last year?

[00:16:44] Nathan: Yeah. The SEO work played a big role.

[00:16:46] Omer: Yeah. So maybe just break that down for us. I mean, obviously SEO keeps evolving and changing in what you did back then. It probably wouldn't work today, but help us understand what, what you were doing. To try and build that organic traffic.

[00:17:01] Nathan: So we had an advantage for sure back then in that we were pretty much the only online Gantt chart.

[00:17:06] So we took, we took, you know, the strategy of thinking about, okay, well what, what, what are we, what are people gonna be searching for? So what are those keywords? We looked at like, you know, we would analyze, you know, what is, what are people actually searching for? We'd look at what's their competition for.

[00:17:23] So we'd, we'd think about things like, okay, so we're. You could look at us as project management. You could look at as project management software. You could look at us as Gantt chart software, online, Gantt chart software. So we went through these different keywords and ultimately we landed on, well, some things like project management software was too broad.

[00:17:40] Like we couldn't, there's too much competition, so we couldn't do that one. You know, but maybe Gantt chart software or maybe online Gantt chart software. So we kind of honed in on those. That's like, all right, you know, we don't have much competition for that. But there are people searching for it. So we then started building content around those keywords.

[00:18:00] And yeah, back then especially, we just didn't have a whole lot of competition, so it was pretty easy to move up in the the ranks.

[00:18:07] Omer: I, I mean, what you just said there, that kind of struck me, that for a lot of full blown project management tools, having a Gantt chart is like a feature and. What you guys did was you took that one thing and said, we're just going to go all in on this thing because if we can do this really well and make it easy and simple, there are a lot of people who could get value from this and maybe they don't necessarily need all the bells and whistles that come with the full blown project management system.

[00:18:42] Was it sort of that intentional and thought out and and is that what helped you sort of find your place? In the market because Yeah, I mean, may maybe, you know, online things, options were a bit more limited back then, but there's never been a shortage of project management software out there.

[00:19:00] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:19:00] There's always, there's a million of 'em. Right. Which is why we didn't wanna go with that keyword. 'cause you know, I mean, you, back then, you know, Basecamp was a big player, which of course they still are today. But, a bunch of 'em. And then, you know, Asana and Monday and all these others came along.

[00:19:12] You know, and of course you got Microsoft Project in that category. You just have so many. So yeah, we, we really did, like our name was even strategic, right? Like TeamGantt, that's also kind of defined the product from the beginning we're Gantt chart for teams. So that way, you know, a lot of these other tools, Basecamp, Monday, Asana, all these others that have come out like.

[00:19:33] A lot of them were project management, but they didn't even, they didn't have a Gantt chart or they're not, they don't, they didn't have one. Or if they later added one, it's more of like a, okay, we added one as a feature, as a thing, but it's not their specialty. So we just always made Gantt charts our specialty, and that's a big differentiator.

[00:19:49] And it's what we obsess over. It's what we put our time into. We focus so much on the, the user experience of the Gant chart. 'cause it's actually not an easy thing to make a Gantt chart easy to use on the, on a browser. It's actually a pretty hard thing. So we've really focused a lot on that and that really separated us from everyone else.

[00:20:08] Omer: It, it, it would be easy for a lot of people to go into this space like you guys did and say, we'll start with the Gantt chart. But over time we'll add more stuff and we'll become this full-blown project management software. And it sort of strikes me if when you, even, even the name of the product and the website is Gantt, it kind of feels like you're locking yourself in a bit.

[00:20:36] Right? Did you, did you have any idea how big. The opportunity was at the time, like what were you hoping this business might become back then?

[00:20:48] Nathan: Yeah, that's a good question. Back then, you know, it was like, Hey, can we turn this into something that pays the salaries of two people, you know? And, and then it was kind of like, we feel like we can do that and probably go beyond that, you know?

[00:21:01] And, and then as the business went, we kind of kept going, okay, they can be bigger and bigger and bigger and. I think it's, it's a good point too, what you were talking about, like the temptation of we, and we've had discussions about this. Do we switch and become like the project management software versus the Gantt chart software?

[00:21:17] And we would add feature, we have added features over the years to TeamGantt that takes it beyond just the Gantt chart to make it more collaborative and to add a lot of other things around comments and discussions and checklists and a lot of other things. It actually does make it pretty comparable to some other.

[00:21:33] Tools and some of our competition. But we still keep the Gantt chart front and center, and it's still all centered around that. And that's still the thing we put the most work into and the most love into. And it's still the thing that separates us from everybody else.

[00:21:47] Omer: Okay. So you, you launch the product, you're getting people signing up every other day and then sort of every day it's sort of building up.

[00:21:58] What was the. What was the reaction? Like? What, you know, how good or bad was the retention with those early customers?

[00:22:08] Nathan: You know, it was actually pretty good. I think when, what we, we used to model out spreadsheets at the beginning. 'cause we got to a point too where we're like, all right, when do we leave day job and go full-time on this?

[00:22:17] And so, modeling out these spreadsheets of, all right, if we keep adding a customer a day. What's that do? And I think those spreadsheets, I don't think we even put churn in there. I don't even think we, we were just like, people probably won't leave, you know? And so we didn't really put that in there. And, and it was okay for that first year or two, like the, the spreadsheets actually held unbelievably accurate to what we had predicted for the first couple years or so.

[00:22:42] And we did get some cancellations and whatnot, but it was like when the early days, the, the user base is small, the churn is like. Not, not a big deal. It's not till, it wasn't till like years later where that was like, okay, we gotta really start caring about that. So, okay.

[00:22:57] Omer: So you, you've got, it looks like, you know, the SEO work is, is paying off the work that you did with the beta users, you've, you've got to a point where.

[00:23:09] You know, you've got a decent enough product that when people are signing up and they're paying for it, you know, they're not, you know, leaving the next week or month or something. They're sticking around for a while. What else were you doing to, to try and grow the business? Because I mean, number one, you know Yeah.

[00:23:31] SEO is great as long as it keeps working and, and generating traffic. But then you're also bootstrapped, so it's not like you've got a ton of money to, to throw at this. And then I guess the third challenge with that is like with a horizontal product, it's like, how do you focus on, like, even if you were doing anything, like, I mean, I, I think you, you know, you told me you did, you did the a hundred dollars credit with, with AdWords, but did you do like, tried paid ads and, and see if you could sort of accelerate, growth a little bit.

[00:24:02] Nathan: We did, we've tried paid ads on and off throughout the years. We've probably had the most success with it in the recent years. But we're still working to try and get it to the point where it's really scalable. Just because we're still not with most of the subscriptions we sell right now, we're still not a real expensive, it's not a real super high LTV.

[00:24:20] So that makes, paid ads a little harder, but we are starting to niche down and create some higher end versions for like a specific industry, and that might be a, a game changer for us as we go down that road.

[00:24:33] Omer: At what point did this become more than a four hour week business for you guys?

[00:24:40] Nathan: So there was a point it was probably, I think it was somewhere in 2011, I guess. 2011 or 2012, I'm trying to remember. But we, we did decide, okay, hey, we, we got to the point where we saw like, Hey, this is starting to turn into real money. Not like a whole, not like a salary, you know, like maybe more like a summer job kind of money. Like, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a lot, but it was actually like thousands of dollars not hundreds of dollars.

[00:25:07] So we thought, all right, this is starting to go somewhere. We modeled out the spreadsheet, we could see, okay. It, you know, it could go this, this direction. So and we thought, you know, it could, could turn out to be a good thing. So we did some this did that math took a look at our save, you know, like my wife and I, we looked at our savings account, you know, what we had.

[00:25:27] You know, of course she was working too. She was doing, she was a hair hairstylist, which helped. So you know, we kind of looked at our runway even though we didn't have investment money. We looked at. All right. We could make it probably a year if I were to scale back or stop my job. And then John, for him, he went through the same things.

[00:25:43] Looking at, looking at that. So then we just decided, okay, we're ready to take that leap. And the nice thing was that working at the roofing company, they were family and they were actually super supportive of us doing this. And they let us scale back to like part-time which was nice. And then eventually.

[00:26:02] We said, okay, now we're, now we're ready to take the leap and go full time. And that was another kind of make or break moment where it was like we, we still didn't have enough money to like pay all the bills when we took the leap to full time. But we saw the trajectory and we knew if we could put more time into it.

[00:26:18] We believed in what could happen. And it was actually like we felt even though the, the money was low, it still felt like. We were pretty excited about what was going on. We felt, felt good with it, had some savings, had some, you know, and we were, we were able to do it.

[00:26:31] Omer: 2009 is when you came up with the idea and started working on this product.

[00:26:36] It sounds like around 2010 is when you started selling it. How long did it take to get to, let's say the first 10K in MRR?

[00:26:47] Nathan: First 10K in MRR probably 2012, probably 2012 if I had to guess.

[00:26:51] Omer: Yeah, something like that. Had you guys gone part-time by that? In the, in the roofing business?

[00:26:59] Nathan: We went part-time pretty early.

[00:27:01] And I think even we went full-time. I think it was, we weren't making much. MRR might have been I don't even know if it, like, maybe a thousand bucks, maybe 2002, $3,000 in MRR, maybe.

[00:27:13] Omer: Something like that. Okay. So. 2012, the 10 k, Mr. R is as a milestone. By that time, you guys are working full time on the business.

[00:27:25] Are people still coming in through organic search? Is that the thing that you're still looking at? And was, was generally traffic increasing? Was it about the same? What was going on there?

[00:27:36] Nathan: Traffic kept increasing, which was great. Yeah. We kept working on, you know, new keywords and, and putting more content out and that kept growing and then we kept making the product better.

[00:27:47] And so then our conversion rates are going up and the business was, business grew pretty fast for a while. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty quick growth.

[00:27:55] Omer: Okay. So at what point did you hit the first million in ARR?

[00:28:01] Nathan: I would say that would've been, I don't know, 20, 2013, 2014, somewhere in there.

[00:28:07] Omer: So, so walk me through that.

[00:28:08] Like what, like we're talking about like two years, two, maybe three years to get to 10K MRR, and then another year or two to get to what, 83K MRR or you know, whatever the number is. Aside from SEO and you, you sort of doubling down on that and saying, okay, more keywords, getting more traffic. What else contributed to that?

[00:28:32] Did you, did you play around with pricing? Did you start charging more for the products? Did you, you know did you get better at keeping people around for longer and improve your LTV? Like, just trying to figure out, like, what were you doing that helped you get to that fairly quickly after you got to 10K?

[00:28:52] Nathan: It was, it was all the above. Yeah.

[00:28:54] Everything you said really. Yeah, we would, we did do, we did SEO, we did do a little bit with trying to get some pr which was probably more, I mean, we would get a little boost from it, but it was probably more so a good SEO play. Like, you know, we would go, I remember like there was a TechCrunch reporter that was like down in DC one day, and so he was doing like a little get together where you just go pitch and tell him what you're working on.

[00:29:19] So I was like, all right, I'll go down to DC and. Meet him and tell him what we're doing and hope we can get an article. And so he ended up writing an article about us, which was, which was really good. We'd meet with like, there was some local publications that were doing some, you know, covering text scenes, like, you know, we'd meet with them and tell them our story.

[00:29:36] Just any, anywhere. There was a few other I think Forbes wrote an article so. We definitely worked that scene as much as we could. Especially in the earlier years when it's like, Hey, we're new. You know, we're doing some cool stuff, and people would write about it. So that helped. Working on SEO creating more content and then working just like super focused on the product and just talking to customers nonstop.

[00:30:00] Learning from customers, how's it going? What are your needs? You know, what can we do better? And just working on designs. We do a lot of user testing. That was big. So back in the day we used usertest.com and we would have just watch users try and use team yet and see them get stuck on something.

[00:30:16] It would go, oh my gosh, it's the most painful to watch when you're doing those user tests. But but it's so valuable. You're just like, oh, why? It's right there. Click that button, you know? But then, you know, you just have to just. Just go, all right, I get it. They didn't, they didn't see it, so other people probably aren't seeing it.

[00:30:31] Let's tweak it. And so we would just iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate, and just obsess over that stuff. And we just kept working on, and that would just improve the funnel improve optimizations and, and it made a big difference.

[00:30:44] Omer: You know, it was funny, you, you and I were talking before we started recording and you, you told me a button.

[00:30:49] You know, the, the lesson you learned about narrowing down on your ICP and you know, I asked you like, you know, when did you do that? And I was expecting you to say, oh, you know, about a year or two into building this business. We, we did that and you said something very different.

[00:31:07] Nathan: Yeah, we, we just, just in the last, you know, just this year we've decided to actually narrow down our ICP very recently, so our, our strategy has been for a long time, Hey, we, we basically put our hand up on the internet and saying, Hey, we're the Gantt chart people, you know, so if you need Gantt charts and you're looking for Gantt charts, we show up places, right? And directories, you know, that's another thing we do. We do integrations.

[00:31:31] I should mention that too. We build integrations with different tools. So we show up in their places and we're just showing up as the Gantt chart tool for a lot of different industries and. That has worked really well over the years, but now we do believe that to really get to the next level, to go up market to help work on churn, it does get to the point where, you know, hey, if we really under and being a small bootstrap company right?

[00:31:53] Like, you know, we can't study the whole world. We gotta, we gotta study a very specific ICP and make sure we do something really special for them.

[00:32:02] Omer: Yeah. So you, you guys have decided to focus double down on the, the construction. Yeah. Can you gimme an example or two of like some of the, the challenges you faced by not having identified that ICP sooner?

[00:32:19] I mean, you know, one of the things I talked about was like, you know, go to market and outbound. It's near impossible when you've got such a big horizontal product. Like where do you focus, who do you talk to? How do you reach people? 'cause it could be anybody who wants a Gantt chart. But I assume building the product, it also becomes equally difficult because you have so many diverse types of customers.

[00:32:43] The only thing holding them together is they wanna do a Gantt chart, but the industries could be night and day and, and the requirements could be all over the place.

[00:32:50] Nathan: Yeah, that, I mean, you're right. All those things are the issues. I mean. There were advantages to it because we could just open up and just handle so many people and all the floods coming in.

[00:33:00] It's great. But when you, you know, there is a point of, yeah, like when you, when we wanna really scale beyond SEO and different things, it's like, all right, we really do need to know who we're actually really targeting so we can use the right messaging. So we can build the right features so we can solve the biggest problems for those people.

[00:33:16] And every industry obviously has very different problems. You know, everybody has kind of certain common Gantt chart problems, but when you really step in, you really study a particular industry, you start going, oh my gosh, you have that problem, this problem, this problem, and if we did this, this, and this, that's gonna make a huge game changer for you guys in that industry then? Then it's like, okay, yeah, and we can just keep talking to those people and hear the common thread and it's like, all right, yeah, that makes so much sense. We can figure out where to reach them, what events to go to, where to advertise. So it's, it's gonna be a good thing for us going forward.

[00:33:45] Yeah.

[00:33:46] Omer: How did you decide that that was the ICP you were gonna pick?

[00:33:50] Nathan: Yeah, good question. So so we really looked at our customer base and we have. I mean, we have everything from software companies, agent creative agencies, universities engineering, manufacturing, construction. We have all kinds of people using us.

[00:34:06] But construction is actually our biggest market segment. They're the ones that convert the best. So the people that try our free plan, they convert to a paid, they're the best. They stay the longest. And it's also where we came from. It's part of our story. Like we, we were in construction. So it's, it's where we came from.

[00:34:25] We already know that industry we're connected to it. So that's, that's a piece of it as well. And there's a big need. There's a huge need in the construction industry like Microsoft Project's still their big tool. That, and another one called Primavera P6. And there's a lot of, you know, maybe dislike or just.

[00:34:45] You know, that's the, those tools can be powerful, but kind of hard and complicated is the trade off for that. So people are looking forward to like a simpler solution and a more collaborative one.

[00:34:55] Omer: Great. So, yeah, I mean, it's great to get that clarity and, and have confidence that these are probably, you know, the customers that.

[00:35:05] You know, are, are are the right ones for us to serve with this product, but then you also have a bunch of other customers from other places. So how do you, how did you decide to walk the line between focusing on one ICP, but not necessarily, I guess, alienating people who want to give you money? Right.

[00:35:24] Nathan: That's a huge part of it. Right? So so we're still gonna welcome everybody because that's still a big part of our business and. We're happy to help those people and our core product right now is fantastic for so many industries that we still absolutely wanna help them. And so like, if you go to our homepage, it's not gonna say TeamGantt, the construction software tool.

[00:35:42] You know, it's gonna be TeamGantt, the online Gantt chart. It's easy to use tool but we will have a construction specific edition of TeamGantt. And that's where we're, we're gonna be putting a lot of our newer features into and doing some special innovation there. And that'll be a different, you know, it's gonna be a different price point, it's gonna be a different level of features in there.

[00:36:02] So but our, our, you know main business model will still continue.

[00:36:07] Omer: Let, let's talk about events because this is another sort of a, I guess, a growth channel you've, you've started to look at and the, the example you gave me about that recent event you attended earlier, I think it's worth sharing because it's a good example of just, you know, things that start to happen when you focus on an ICP.

[00:36:32] Nathan: We left this event on cloud nine. We were so excited. So three of us went. We flew into Denver, Colorado. This was a big tech construction conference. 4,500 people there. And we went, we're like, all right, let's, let's test the waters, right? Let's, let's see how well we're received here.

[00:36:50] We built an integration to the company, putting it on. It's called Procore. They're a big company in the construction space big software company, and we built an integration with them. So that's part of the ICP is like, all right, let's focus, let's go find the biggest software company in that space.

[00:37:05] Now we'll integrate with them. So we built the integration. We went to show, showed everybody the integration, and people were, I mean, it was nonstop. People come and by our booth and going, yeah, we, oh, Gantt charts. We love Gantt charts. So right away we're like, all right, this is good. We're in the, we're in the, this is, this is our people.

[00:37:21] They're like, it's, we love ganter. Show us, show it to us. What's it do? And we show 'em we, and they're like, wow, that's so much easier than what we use now. And we're like, awesome. And, and then we're like, well, here, do you hate PDFs? 'cause you could just share this link and everyone has instant access to it.

[00:37:34] And they go, oh, what? It can do that. That's awesome. We're like, yeah. And then, and then by the way, since you're using like desktop software now and one project doesn't know about the other project. You probably have some resourcing issues. They're like, yeah, we do. And so we say, well, in the bottom of the TeamGantt, there's a resource view and every project knows about the other projects.

[00:37:51] And you can see if you've double booked somebody or you know, a crew or something like that. And they go, oh my gosh, that's a game changer. That's awesome. So so they were just, they just loving it. And these are a lot of like bigger, larger. GCs, subcontractors, you know, doing some, some big projects, some big business, and they have a lot of schedulers, right?

[00:38:11] So these are larger contracts for us. And just seeing the excitement and, I mean, we were just, it was nonstop. It was two days of nonstop people coming up to us. We walked away with 200 leads. We scheduled 40 demos like on the spot. I just did some today. I am still doing demos from that show back in November.

[00:38:28] And it's it's. It was really good example of narrowing down the ICP, finding the right people and just, it's like a great match for sure.

[00:38:38] Omer: Yeah. I think it becomes easier to reach them. You, you, your product development becomes more focused. Your messaging is more focused, and as you, I mean, you already had.

[00:38:50] A background in that industry, but when you, when you pick a market and can talk credibly about that and show them that you understand their specific issues, right. You know, just some, you know, some nerds who built some software and sort of came in and don't know anything about construction and you're trying to sell this to them.

[00:39:11] I think that's really important. So I think there's all these good things that, that start to happen from, from being clear about that. ICP. Let's talk about hiring. So you and John were the two people working on this for a while. When did you start hiring people?

[00:39:31] Nathan: Yeah, we started hiring, I think 20 would've been. Was it 2014, 2013, 2014, maybe 2014, I think. It was when we hired our first employee. So, and that was someone to handle customer success. And basically, you know, we were, it was that by that point we were getting a lot of emails like, Hey, we got a question about our account, or, you know, Hey, how do you add to dependency?

[00:39:50] Or, you know, these things. And it was like. That was kind of the first thing. We're like, all right, you know, we've been doing a lot of that ourselves, but that would be helpful if someone could answer those questions for us. And, you know, I would get back to product design and marketing and John could have more time for doing all the engineering, building out the software.

[00:40:06] So that was our first hire.

[00:40:07] Omer: And just kind of walk me through how, what that trajectory was like in terms of. Hiring 'cause by that time you've hit the first million in a RR you, you've got some sense of traction. You hire your CS person and then presumably as you're continuing to grow, are you getting more comfortable about building a team around you?

[00:40:29] Nathan: Yeah, it took a little bit you know, 'cause we were kinda like, what, what do we want this to be? You know, is this just just the two of us? Do we want somebody else? Or is it gonna be the three of us now? Is it gonna be, you know. How big do we want to go with this? And we did as we hired good people and we saw what they could do, and we saw them doing things really well.

[00:40:48] It was like, all right, yeah, let's, let's start hiring more people. And probably really around 2015, 16, 17, 18, 19, like we really started ramping up hiring, you know, I mean, at least a few people a year, three people a year, sometimes a little more than that. And yeah, started building the team out more.

[00:41:05] Omer: And you, you kept the org structure flat, so you were just like, hire people, come in, we've got a flat organization.

[00:41:12] How long did you do that for until you realized this is becoming a problem and and how big was the team at the time?

[00:41:20] Nathan: Yep. So once, so we actually stayed flat till maybe a little less than two years ago. And it was flat in the sense that, you know, probably about half the company reported to John and half the company reported to me.

[00:41:33] And it was too much. Like we, we definitely broke, you know, I think the limits should be like six to eight peop direct reports, and we might each had like 10 to 12 direct reports. I think we were probably, you know, we're 20 some people, you know, 22 people or something like that. And we're like, all right, that's, that's a little a little too much.

[00:41:52] And we weren't, you know, we didn't really know a whole lot about. Good management techniques. We were still like, yeah, let's be a startup where we all just work hard and do stuff and you know, should work out. And then we kinda learned from a few years of that we're like, all right, you know, these people that talk about the importance of, you know, OKRs and, you know, different things, it's, it actually, it really does matter.

[00:42:14] And we ended up getting some advice from a group we attend that they were like. Yeah, you know, you should look into this tool called EOS. So we did that. EOS is the entrepreneurial operating system, and that has basically a lot of like basic business principles kind of packaged into tools.

[00:42:32] And there's a good book, it's called Traction that talks about it. And then we even hired a, an implementer to kind of help us kind of consult and help us walk through it. Like how do you really kind of structure our business properly. How do you get the vision clear? How do you do quarterly rocks?

[00:42:47] How do you do a good accountability chart? How do you set scorecards up? Like all these basic business things that we were either not doing or half doing kind of thing. You know, and so now being almost two years into that you know, that's starting to really feel pretty good and making some good progress on that front.

[00:43:04] Omer: So I can, I can think of founders now who are. Maybe a little bit at an earlier stage to what you just described there. And they're getting traction. They feel like, you know, they've got something and, and strong product market fit at least potential. They're moving fast, they're hiring people and a lot of the things that you just described, they kind of sound like big company stuff.

[00:43:26] They sound like admin, they sound like overhead. Just explain like why that stuff turned out to be. More important than maybe even you thought at the time.

[00:43:34] Nathan: I think you kind of think everybody can read your mind and you realize they can't, you know, like for obvious reasons, right? They're not gonna read your mind.

[00:43:41] Everybody thinks differently, but, you know, and and you'll, you'll realize, you know, you kinda hit a point where you start, you stop getting the traction that you, you need. And maybe you thought like you'd just add more people to the company and the company will just grow more. 'cause you add more people doing more stuff.

[00:43:55] Then you realize, you know what? Like if everything's not organized and done the right way. You actually don't get that traction. 'cause people are kind of starting to go a little different directions or maybe they don't know their expectations are different than your expectations. And you know, it's just, it's just one of those things that I think a lot of companies in the early stages think that I thought that like, oh, that's, that's for corporate.

[00:44:15] Why we don't wanna become corporate you know, we're not gonna do that. But then you realize like, oh yeah, all right, there's a reason for that. And it, it's important and it doesn't feel like corporate, like it doesn't feel corporate-y what we do now. We're still nimble, we're still we still move fast.

[00:44:29] We can still you know, we're still a small-ish team, which is great. But now it's not like I don't have 12 people all, you know, saying, what are we doing and, and me not managing them well. And, you know, all that kind of stuff. It's like, it's way more organized and and it elevates other people.

[00:44:46] Other people are able to take more ownership of things. And do a better job, you know, of than what I would've done, or, you know, and it's just, it, it really does. It's a big transformation. It's a big way to kind of start shifting in your head how to think. But it's, it's important if you want, if you wanna scale, if you want, if you want to grow, it's important.

[00:45:04] Omer: Yeah. And, and I think that, you know for, for anybody, like in your position where. You've got a seven figure business and you are thinking about, okay, well how do I get to eight? You gotta have this kind of infrastructure, people infrastructure in place, right. Otherwise, it just, it's just gonna be a bigger problem with a lot more people there.

[00:45:26] Right.

[00:45:27] Nathan: And I think it's been said too, like, you know, it, it's, it's one type of company you get from zero to a million. It's another to get from 1 million to 3 million. It's another from three to 10. It's another from 10 to 30. It's another from 30 to a hundred, you know, kinda all these multiples of three.

[00:45:40] It's like you really kinda have to reinvent and change the company as you go. And it is true.

[00:45:46] Omer: Love it.

[00:45:47] All right we should wrap up. So let's get onto the lightning round. I've got seven quick fire questions for you. You ready?

[00:45:55] Nathan: Yeah. Hit me.

[00:45:56] Omer: What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received?

[00:46:00] Nathan: All right, so I'm a big fan of MailChimp and Ben Chestnut. They had exited for their bootstrap company, exited for like billions of dollars. I mean, he's one of the best, it's one of the best bootstrap stories ever. And I had messaged him on Instagram, just say, Hey, congrats on that. That's awesome.

[00:46:16] And he was like, oh, you're doing GaN charts. That's cool. And. We went back and forth a little bit and he was like, Hey, here's my advice. He said, just be more obsessed and hang on tighter and longer than your competitors. You'll win big. In the end. 99% of the world just gives up and it's there. It's times in business when you're going through these different changes, you kind of wanna give up.

[00:46:34] Sometimes it's hard and that would ring in my head like, don't give up, keep going, keep going. It's hard. Keep going.

[00:46:41] Omer: That's great. Love that. What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

[00:46:45] Nathan: There's a good book called The One Thing. I think especially with the bootstrap mentality, like it's all about focusing on one thing, the most important thing, right?

[00:46:54] And just dead set focus. What's the most important thing I need to do today or this month or this quarter, and really being focused on that.

[00:47:01] Omer: What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

[00:47:06] Nathan: Determination. Just not giving up. My dad would always say where, where there's a will, there's a way, and it's like if you just keep trying just.

[00:47:14] Stay determined.

[00:47:16] Omer: What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

[00:47:19] Nathan: I, I think all the way back to like getting things done with, and the element I liked of it was most important task. The MIT, so just, just at the beginning of the day in the morning, no, I. What is the most important thing that needs to be done today and obsess on that thing.

[00:47:32] Don't let the you know, urgent things creep in and take over. Like most important thing, get it done in the morning.

[00:47:37] Omer: I've got, I've got the answer to the question I asked you before we started recording. I was like, dude, like when, when you're working four hours in a week, how do you decide what to do?

[00:47:45] How do you, I. You know, make use of that time. And and, and the reason why every time I would sit down for a session would be like, oh, 'cause I've got, I've got three hours and I'm gonna do these 18 things, right? And then you're like, oh, I wonder why that didn't work out. And, and this thing about just what's the most important thing?

[00:48:03] What's the one thing getting that done? Will probably be a lot more important than the other 17 things on the list that I think are, are important to do.

[00:48:11] Nathan: 100% right. It's huge.

[00:48:14] Omer: Yeah. What's, what's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?

[00:48:19] We did about a year or two ago, we, we actually built a an A-frame cabin as an Airbnb.

[00:48:23] And that was a lot of fun. Loved the design process and, and work on that. Something my wife and I did together, it was a lot of fun. So if I had more time and, and another life, that's probably what I'll do to do more of those.

[00:48:36] You are all in on construction, aren't you?

[00:48:39] Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I didn't build it myself.

[00:48:41] You know, we, we did a lot of the design work, but of course we hired somebody to do it.

[00:48:45] Omer: What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

[00:48:48] Nathan: You know, I, I would say I love playing guitar, but what's kind of funny is I don't sing. I can't whistle. And I cannot remember words to songs to save my life.

[00:48:59] Omer: That's awesome. And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

[00:49:04] Nathan: Definitely family. We, we do a lot of fun stuff. And then it, it kinda depends on what time of year, but if it's if it's summertime, it'd be doing some boating being on the water. Spring fall it'd be mountain biking.

[00:49:15] And then during winter time it's woodworking. So. Bounce around. It's been a great conversation. Thank you for joining me and sharing the, the journey that you and John and the team have been on. It's always impressive when I, when I talk to founders like you who have. Got to where you are and bootstrapped all the way.

[00:49:34] Omer: It's not easy, you know, things don't happen overnight and it does take a lot of determination and, and, you know, persistence. And I think that that quote that you shared from, from Ben. Is is gold. It's spot on. It's the kind of thing that I think, you know, everybody should be reading every day 'cause there's always things that we wanna give up on.

[00:49:55] So I love that. If people want to check out TeamGantt, they can go to TeamGantt.com and if you don't know how to spell Gantt, it probably isn't the right place for you, but it's with a double T. And if folks wanna get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

[00:50:11] Nathan: You can send me an email.

[00:50:12] nathan@teamgantt.com or message me on LinkedIn or something and be happy to hear from you.

[00:50:18] Omer: Awesome. Thanks man. It's been a pleasure and I, I wish you and the team the best of success.

[00:50:23] Nathan: Thank you. It was, it was a lot of fun talking with you today. I appreciate it. I always enjoy your podcast. I've been a listener for a long time, so it a pleasure being on it with you.

[00:50:30] Omer: Thank you. Cheers.

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