Omer (00:09.280)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode I talk to Espen Fries Jensen, the co founder of User Flow, a no code platform for building onboarding guides and product tours.
I originally interviewed espen on episode 291, shortly after he'd exited his previous startup, Cobalt, an application security platform.
Cobalt was a VC backed company where Espen and his co founders had raised $37 million and built a team of over 200 people.
But with User Flow, Espen and his co founder Sebastian decided to take a very different approach.
They wanted to bootstrap the business and see how far they could get without fundraising or hiring a bunch of people.
In this episode we catch up on their progress and how they've successfully bootstrapped User Flow into a multiple 7 figure ARR business.
We talk about the challenges of entering a crowded market and figuring out how to differentiate and position your product.
And we chat about how focusing on building a great user experience and going all in with product led growth has been critical in helping them grow quickly while staying small with a team of just three people.
So I hope you enjoy it.
Aspen, welcome to the show.
Esben Friis-Jensen (01:36.570)
Thank you.
It's a pleasure.
Omer (01:38.009)
Do you have a favorite quote?
Something that inspires and motivates you?
You can share with us.
It's going to be different from last time.
Esben Friis-Jensen (01:42.730)
Yeah, I think last time when I talked about quality at speed, which was copalt value.
But the one quote that always stuck with me was our.
When I was an accelerator with cob, Adam Draber said be the cockroach.
Which basically means that if you just stay around long enough, you're going to succeed at some time, at some point.
I always like that quote.
Omer (02:04.150)
Someone said to me the other day, I'm really impressed that you're still doing this podcast after like eight years.
Nobody keeps doing it for that long.
And I was like, when you just said that, I was like, I'm the cockroach.
Yeah.
Esben Friis-Jensen (02:15.510)
And it seems to work.
Omer (02:17.350)
All right.
So when we last spoke, you had just exited from Cobalt.
That was a business that you guys had raised about 37 million, I think growing the team to about 200 people.
And then you had started to work with your co founder Sebastian on User Flow.
And the, the history behind this was that this was a product that Sebastian had been working on for a couple of years.
There wasn't a huge amount of traction in that time, but definitely focus on the product.
When we spoke, you guys had been working together on this for about four or five years.
Months.
Yeah.
And so you were taking a very different approach here.
You weren't going to raise money, you were going to focus instead of outbound sales, you were going to focus on a product led growth model.
And you guys were really like, okay, we want to see how far we can get without raising any money.
So how far have you gone?
Esben Friis-Jensen (03:04.630)
Yeah, no.
So back then it was just me and Sebastian and I think we had help from one freelance designer.
So the biggest change is that we've hired that freelance designer full time.
So we are now three people and we're still bootstrapping and yeah, things are going really well.
So so far so good and are still growing I would say in revenue wise in a way that you would expect from a VC backed company.
And so that's really good.
Omer (03:31.710)
So when we spoke you were saying we've got a good trajectory, we can hit a million.
ARR.
Where are you guys now?
Esben Friis-Jensen (03:40.270)
So we hit the 1 million almost I think one month after the episode went out.
So yeah, that was a great milestone.
And since then we've been growing basically 3x or close to it.
So yeah, it's been fun and we are continuing to grow like between, yeah, 5 or 10% every month.
So yeah, it's good.
Omer (04:00.490)
So for people who aren't familiar, tell us about user flow, what does the product do, who's it for and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?
Esben Friis-Jensen (04:08.170)
So the product that we give is basically like a no code builder.
So it's a software as a service platform where you, without being a developer can go and build in app onboarding, checklists guide, so basically tool tips and so on as a layer on top of your own software.
But it's done without code.
So you can be a customer success manager or product manager or a UX designer who's building these kind of things.
So yeah, we're basically putting the task in the hands of the people who are normally owning that kind of stuff.
And that of course makes it possible to iterate quicker on building onboarding and also saves expensive developer time.
And I would say the main use cases, why somebody builds this kind of onboarding is that you want to convert maybe users in a free trial or freemium or you want to retain users over time so onboard them better in general but also when you introduce like new features and stuff like that.
Omer (05:09.010)
Okay, great, right Now, a lot of the times when founders go into a new market, there's one extreme of this, which is they go in and they say, oh, there's no competition here.
This is a completely, you know, green opportunity or whatever you want to call it.
And that maybe is not a really good place to be because if there isn't anybody else in that market, you're going to have to create demand.
And that's like super, super hard.
On the other end, you can go into a market where there are a lot of players, which is basically the situation with User Flow and what you guys have done.
It's a crowded market.
And then so that's great in the sense that there's proven demand, there's a customer need and so on, but there's also a lot of competitors.
And so you have to spend a lot of time really figuring out how you differentiate your product, where you fit into that market, what's the niche, persuading those people that you are a better product to choose.
So let's start there.
And when you guys looked at this market, how did you figure out where it made the most sense for you to sit?
Was this based on really thinking just about what you knew about the product, the opportunity and the vision that you had, or was this also by looking at competitors and seeing some of the potential weaknesses there and then using that as an opportunity to craft your positioning here?
So how did you figure that out and where you sat in this?
Esben Friis-Jensen (06:29.220)
Great question.
So first of all, I mean, with User flow, it's a highly competitive market, there's like 20 plus competitors.
Some are better than others, but so we knew that when we went into the market.
So it was my co founder, Sebastian, who originally got the idea.
Actually back then he was building another product for building like reusable kind of video recordings of a platform.
So you can say similar kind of support use case, but in a different kind of way.
And what he had done was he had, as part of that product, had built a product tour inside the product that guided the users to use that software he had built.
And a lot of people were asking, how did you build that?
Did you use some kind of third party tool?
And then he got that kind of aha moment that maybe I should switch to building this kind of product where you can actually build these kind of product tours.
And then he went out and looked at the market and saw, yeah, there are a lot of players out there, but he tried to build flows with them and guides with them, and he found it super hard to use so the UX wasn't up to par, at least not to the level that he expected.
And he's a really strong developer, so he should, you know, I would argue that he should understand like most tools out there, and he was still struggling a bit with some of those tools, so he decided to approach it in a new way.
One thing we do very differently is like we have a Kanban kind of interface for building, so that's more in the technicalities.
But basically having a focus on making it easier to build these kind of guides was the first kind of differentiator.
So that's how back then he approached the market.
Let's build a builder that can actually make it easier to build these guides, but still keeping a high level of sophistication because customers expect that high level of sophistication.
But it shouldn't be, you know, and no code builder should really be used by non developers.
Right?
So it doesn't work if, if you need a developer to actually build.
Omer (08:26.430)
Okay, so let's dig into that a little bit more.
For you guys, adopting a product led growth model has been super important for you both in, in terms of proving that you're building a better product with a better ux, but also with a team of, until recently, you know, two people, you don't have a lot of resources to, to think about onboarding customers and support and stuff like that.
So when you think about the product led growth model, what does that mean to you guys and for user flow?
Esben Friis-Jensen (08:56.600)
So product led growth is a mindset, right?
It's really always think product first in everything you do.
That's super important.
And that's the mindset we have, right?
So it's basically everything from how do we convert more trials, we should get the product to better onboard them.
So use user flow and user flow use email, automated email to onboard users.
But also just ensure that the UX of the product is super nice.
So the first experience becomes super nice.
So that's one thing.
The other thing is like whenever we have a support question, if we get it like 10 times or even less, so then we try instead of saying okay, we need to hire more support people, we fix it in the product itself.
So I would say close to 50% of our product development time is spent on fixing UX challenges so we can make it easier for our customers.
And then the second half is spent on developing new features.
So it's really by having this really hyper focus on the product and also staying close to the users of the product and understanding their Needs that we are growing and are able to scale without having to hire a big sales or customer success team and so on.
Omer (10:10.360)
Okay, great.
So when people are coming to the site they can either start, I guess the two main call to actions are start a free trial or they can view a demo which is basically you give people a 15 minute video where I think Sebastian takes them through what the product is all about.
People can book a demo if they want or they can go ahead and start a free trial.
So when you talk about product led growth, to me the whole idea of making it easier for people to schedule demos and stuff like that feel, feels like counterintuitive to what you're trying to do.
So why was that something that you needed to offer that and make that pretty prominent on the homepage?
Esben Friis-Jensen (10:51.440)
Yeah, I wouldn't say it's super prominent.
Primary call to action is still start a free trial.
So that's, and that's what most of our users do.
And then this secondary call to action is view a demo.
It's not schedule a demo, it's like view a demo, so go watch a video.
But then yes, we do offer the last opportunity we do.
I mean it's basically allow understanding your end users.
And there are some end users who still prefer a demo and we don't want to block them.
But we are definitely serving self serve end users which are becoming more dominant.
A lot more.
The other thing we're actually doing now when somebody requests a demo is I send a bit longer video to them first.
So I'm still pushing everything I can to avoid that demo scenario because I know a lot of people say that demos are highly customized to the user, but in all honesty, now I've been in two SaaS companies, 80%, 90% of a demo is a demo, right?
It's not.
Especially when you have very similar icp.
So similar ideal customer profile looking for the same problem and that you solve by having really good messaging on your website, right.
You, you ensure that all your public marketing and messaging attracts the right audience.
Then when you get that right, icp, it's almost always the same problem they're facing and they're looking for the same solution.
And that makes demos kind of generic.
So that we're really trying to see, okay, how far can we get without doing an actual demo.
And then if the users still want like, then it's at least a meeting where you ask more sophisticated questions and you don't spend time on that, you know, baseline demo presentation of your platform.
Omer (12:39.870)
Okay, great.
How long is the free trial for
Esben Friis-Jensen (12:42.670)
right now it's a 14 day free trial and sometimes we allow to extend it, but yeah, that's the default.
Omer (12:49.470)
And then what is the aha moment?
So we talk a lot about this in terms of we want new users to use the product and get to a point where they can connect the dots, they can understand the value of the product and how it helps them and, and hopefully convert from a trial into a paying customer.
So I know that's an area that you guys have focused on as well.
So tell me, tell me a little bit about that.
Like what, what is that aha moment you're trying to get people to?
And then what are some of the things that you're doing to make that easier and get more people there?
Esben Friis-Jensen (13:22.450)
Yeah, so for userflow, the aha moment is really how easy it is to build the content, as I said.
Right, like that's the initial aha moment.
Okay, I'm a customer success manager, or I'm a product manager, but I can initially build all these things.
I can build flows, whatever, right?
And it's easy.
So that, that's the number one thing for us and that is what wows the audience.
And then over time there are other aha moments like the level of sophistication, version control, whatever.
But that's the initial kind of aha moment.
The way we drive towards that is that we have, we use you as mentioned, user flow and userflow.
So we, the first time a user logs into a trial, they get a welcome message and then a flow that immediately guides them to build their first flow themselves so they can go and basically build a flow right away.
One thing that's a bit special is in order to release user flow for end users, you do need a JavaScript snippet to be installed in your application.
And you often see these products where something similar is needed, some kind of initial integration or whatever.
But what we've done to remove that friction for the free trial is we built a Chrome extension so you can actually go and build and preview content in your own app without installing that JavaScript snippet.
So then you can actually try the product on your own app before you involve the developers.
So we are allowing customer success of product managers to completely independently experience the wow effects.
Right?
And I think that's, that works really well.
Omer (14:58.370)
So basically if I have to install JavaScript, I've just deployed the product to all my customers, whereas if I'm using a Chrome extension, I'm the only one who's basically seeing you know what's going on.
Esben Friis-Jensen (15:11.330)
You could of course install the JavaScript snippet and only for that user or only for staging environment.
Right.
But, but it's really about, we don't want the customer success or product managers or whoever it is trying the product that they need to involve a developer to trial the product.
Right.
That would be bad because then you're already kind of creating friction.
Right.
And you want them to experience the value before they need to do anything with developers.
Omer (15:38.370)
How did you figure out this idea of using a Chrome extension?
Were you seeing a lot of problems, people getting stuck or.
Esben Friis-Jensen (15:44.050)
I think it was just an, it was like a.
No.
We all, some of our competitors also have this.
So that was like a no brainer.
But it's just a thing.
It's such a big barrier to, to getting started that you don't want that.
Right.
So if you can somehow load that Chrome extension, it's really nice.
Right.
So I think it was just a no brainer.
I still see tools where they are very focused on getting that initial integration or initial thing done.
And to be honest, I would maybe rethink that a bit.
Is there something you could do either with dummy data or something where you could let them experience that value without having to do that?
I think especially analytics tools have that challenge, right.
That they often need some kind of source.
Right.
Could you make that easier?
Could you show them value without telling them to do that?
Right.
Because the other fear somebody has with this kind of stuff is I don't want to, I'm just in a free trial, I don't want to send my production level data to this free trial.
Right.
Then they have my data.
Right.
I don't like that.
So, so it's things like this, these kind of fears you need to remove.
Omer (16:52.220)
Now you mentioned earlier that you, you guys spend a lot of time fixing UX issues and really the UX is super important to you and I think the fact that your first hire is a full time designer backs up that.
Right?
It's not just, you know, lip service.
You actually do really care about the user experience, the product design, so on.
Can, can you give me a couple, maybe, you know, one or two examples of the kinds of UX issues that you're fixing or something that you, you guys recently worked on or, you know, very proud of because it, it was a significant issue for customers and you were able to unblock them.
Just give us an examples of, of the kinds of things that you're fixing.
Esben Friis-Jensen (17:32.200)
It's a lot of different things.
I Think one way is just like discovering the features, right?
That that's a common UX thing, like navigation, like how do you build your navigation?
Make sure it's simple, these kind of things, right?
That's something where we have a good core.
I think that works well.
But something there is with userflow, it's a builder.
And a builder needs to have a great UX because it's something you are using a lot and you're really in the weeds with it.
It's not just like a menu or something that you click.
It's really like a builder where you're connecting different elements and you're like dragging and dropping and these kind of things, right?
And one thing we're for instance very focused on is this whole both allowing to use the keyboard and the cursor, right?
Like this is a one thing.
For instance, like many tools, you can just use your mouse to move things around or whatever.
But actually using a keyboard is often much more user friendly, right?
You see that often with, if you, if you work on a like let's say a Google Docs, you can do everything with a keyboard almost, right?
Like you can delete images, you can whatever.
And we wanted to create that same experience with UserFlow where it's like, it just feels natural that the way you delete is clicking backspace for instance, on an element, right?
And these kind of things.
So those are things we're very focused on.
How do you create that smooth experience where you can both use the keyboard and the mouse?
And then more specifically, challenges we faced is like we have that Kanban interface and in order to connect elements that different steps, you need to like connect the steps with a.
Like you click on one and then you connect it to the next.
And we did see by doing like user research and we used a tool called logrocket, we were able to see that some users were having challenges connecting the steps.
And of course we use userflow on user Flow.
So we have a guide that tells them how to do it.
But there are, you know, users who don't want to do those kind of guides and they just dismissed it and then they tried on their own and they were not able to do it.
So one thing we did there was to make it easier to see how those connections should be done, right?
Like it was about like highlighting if they didn't create an connection, then highlighting at the right place where you need to add a connection.
It was about making some kind of coloring that could better highlight where they do the connection.
And these kind of Things, Right.
It was really like small science projects.
Figure out how do you make it easy.
Right.
And that's something our designer that we hired, he's extremely good at.
And then Sebastian and I are really good at testing it, right.
Like stress testing it and, and really looking at it as well from a UX perspective.
But our designer, he's super strong at getting that initial idea that we can then thrash basically.
Right.
Like say, okay, this doesn't work, let's not do that.
Like that becomes too much or whatever.
And then we end up with a great solution.
Omer (20:28.170)
Yeah.
I think the keyboard shortcuts thing is interesting.
Esben Friis-Jensen (20:31.210)
Yeah.
Omer (20:31.850)
Not only does it help you to focus more on streamlining the workflow, making it easier to use the product, you also make it more appealing to power users who want to work in that way.
A few months ago, I switched to Superhuman and I was so resistant for so long because I was like, I am not going to pay 30 bucks a month for an email client to just to use Gmail.
It's stupid, it's a waste of time, blah, blah, blah.
And then I started to use it and went through, you know, you get these daily emails on the onboarding about, hey, here's a keyboard shortcut for this, Here's a keyboard shortcut for this.
And by the end of the first few weeks, I realized I was hardly ever touching my mouse anymore.
And unfortunately, like, you know, I tried very hard not to like it, but I ended up liking it.
And I think it's primarily because of those keyboard shortcuts and doing those things every day.
Not only does it save you time and get things done faster, but there's just this task completion feels more seamless just by doing that.
So I think I totally, totally understand.
And I think you, you know, even if people don't want to use keyboard shortcuts, if you're thinking about designing a product that way, the chances are even the mouse click experience is going to be better and more streamlined as well.
Esben Friis-Jensen (21:42.880)
One of the big design things you always bring, there's like, you know, familiarity that's.
And I think that's where this, the most used interfaces in the world is like the document, right?
Like a Google Doc or whatever.
And it's just there you have a lot of familiarity with how you copy paste text, how you select text, how you move text around, and everything can be done with both a mouse and a keyboard.
And I think it's that same familiarity you want to create in other tools.
Right?
Like have both capabilities to make it easy.
Omer (22:15.240)
Let's Talk about pricing.
I know one of the challenges that you guys had was you were getting people, most people were gravitating towards your startup plan, your, your middle tier plan or your, what you call your Pro plan.
Esben Friis-Jensen (22:27.160)
Yeah.
Omer (22:27.640)
Wasn't as successful in attracting people, converting people.
Tell me a little bit about what was going on there.
What was the challenge that you guys were facing?
Esben Friis-Jensen (22:35.560)
Basically it was that the Pro plan wasn't strong enough compared to the startup plan.
We didn't have enough differentiation really.
We did have usage space.
So you can like, you got more monthly active users on Pro and that's an easy one.
We still have that.
I think usage based pricing is becoming a dominant factor in all product led growth businesses.
And we have that and it works very, very well.
So that part was there, but we were seeing, we were not seeing enough of users with a low level of MAUs, but maybe more kind of.
They were larger businesses but they were selecting startup because the differentiation was not good enough.
So that's something we really in 2021 put a lot of focus on.
So how can we make better Pro package stronger?
We kind of agreed that we didn't want to make the startup package weaker.
So we kept the startup package as it.
As it was basically more or less.
And then we looked at, okay, what can we bring into the PRO package?
What new features can we develop that will make the Pro package?
And some of the features we launched in 2021 was surveys.
So now you can, you know, do NPS surveys, you can ask questions as part of guides, you can do all sorts of things.
So that was a big one.
Right?
You can almost save an entire other tool by using our service.
And then another one was no code event tracking.
So you could basically now set up like basic, no code event tracking where you tag an element and then track certain events.
So those were some of the things we added to Pro.
At the same time, we actually increased pricing on Pro a bit to make it also a more expensive package.
But we could justify it by adding those extra features in there.
And that had enormous effects.
Suddenly we were seeing a lot more people signing off for Pro and it quickly became a very dominant package.
So yeah, that was the right choices we made there.
Omer (24:31.770)
So the starter is at $200 a month, the Pro is $600 a month.
What was the pricing of the two plans a year ago before you started to make these changes?
Esben Friis-Jensen (24:40.330)
I think startup was maybe also 200, maybe 150, I don't remember.
And pro was around 400, something like that.
So yeah, we increased the pricing a bit.
Omer (24:50.950)
How did you figure out what features to add into the PRO plan?
Esben Friis-Jensen (24:56.390)
Yeah, I think it's really about what are those features that give superpowers, right.
Compared to what is core?
You don't want to, like, if something is core, you should not put it in the Pro plan.
Right.
Like, because then you will annoy users.
So to be able to build a core onboarding, everything you need to do that you can basically do in the startup package.
But as soon as you want to do those superpowers, like surveys, like, I want to ask questions as part of my onboarding so I can better personalize it.
You know, I want to have more than one checklist, so I can, you know, have an advanced checklist or a checklist for a specific other user and these kind of things, those kind of superpowers.
That's what we added to Pro.
Right.
And that is what basically the users then found attractive.
I want to give one small thing we didn't do.
We always kept old legacy users.
And I think that's the SaaS rule of thumb.
Right.
And I think the senders rule, or whatever you want to call it, you should keep.
I think that's good SaaS practice.
Keep your old users on whatever plan they own.
Right.
From the past.
But then when, as soon as they want to change, maybe have some of these new pro features, then they need to change to the new model.
Right.
But don't change their plan and pricing.
Keep that legacy there until they make an active decision to move on to a new package.
Right?
Omer (26:18.090)
Yeah.
I don't know.
Some people have very strong feelings about those.
Right.
Whether you grandfather them or you should raise prices on them.
Esben Friis-Jensen (26:24.410)
Yeah, I think grandfathering is fine because at some point you're going to make the packages strong enough that they're inevitable to switch.
Right.
And then you have them.
That's what happened with us.
They started switching.
We still have a few on some legacy plans.
Right.
But the majority has switched to the newer plans because of certain features they wanted.
Omer (26:45.650)
So the, the features you added in, you know, these superpowers you.
You described by being able to run surveys or figure out NPS or these event tracking, the no code.
Event tracking, yeah.
How did you figure that out?
Was it just like you guys just sat down and said, let's make a list of things and we'll go and work on this?
Or did you run surveys and ask customers or did.
How did you figure it out?
Esben Friis-Jensen (27:07.420)
I mean, we stay close to our customers.
So almost all our features are Based on customer requests.
I don't think.
Yeah, no, except for the UX things where we figure out ourselves that, okay, this is a UX thing where we are seeing an issue and the customer might not necessarily be telling us directly, but we are seeing the issue and then we want to fix it.
But all the other features is something customers are coming to us to ask about.
And this can be driven by certain needs they have.
It can also be driven by them looking at our competition and saying they have this, you don't.
Whatever, right.
So you do both competitive analysis, but you also listen to your customers.
And I think that's one of the fantastic things about being a small team, right.
Is we are still super close to our customers.
We still lock everything.
We act like we're a big company.
We lock everything in a list, we keep track of how many customers have requested this.
So we have a good kind of way of looking at and prioritizing, but that's the way we do it.
So we basically look at, okay, when we get a request, we log it and then we keep track of how many have requested this whole time.
Omer (28:13.890)
Okay, great.
Let's talk about.
You introduced a new feature called Resource center which you said has been pretty successful in terms of attracting users, expansion, revenue, that sort of thing.
Tell me, what is the feature?
What does it do?
Esben Friis-Jensen (28:27.890)
Yeah, no, so I mean with userflow before the result you could do, you know, checklists, flows, hotspots, whatever, so you can better onboard users and also announce new features and do things like that.
But what the Resource center is is that it goes a bit beyond the initial onboarding and feature announcements and these kind of things.
It's basically like an always on widget.
So you can say today or in the last five, 10 years, the chat providers have been owning that bottom right corner.
Right.
And I think it's time that changes a bit.
We want to see if we can take over that right bottom right corner with our Resource Center.
So it's an always on widget where you open it, you can have a search into Knowledge Base, you can have a search into all your in app flows.
You can also connect your chat so you can open up like an intercom or something from our Resource center.
So it becomes like this widget that's there to always help the user.
And initially we had, just like any other feature, we had gotten requests for this from customers and it was a.
Some of our competitors had it already, some didn't.
But also our customers were requesting it a lot.
And initially just like surveys and no code event tracking.
We kind of were thinking, okay, let's see, maybe it's one of the next features we need to add to pro.
So we started building it and then we released it for a couple of like, beta users.
And we don't like to.
My co founders don't like the word beta because whatever we release is always complete.
So it's not a beta.
It was, but it was like a test group of people, but.
And basically the feedback was just insane.
Like, with both service and no code event trackers, we had gotten good feedback, but with this, it was just like, wow, right?
It was like, can you do.
You know, it's great when somebody starts.
The first thing we did actually was before we even released it to that test group, was that we built it into our own app.
So we use userflow and userflow and we added it to our own app.
And within a day or two, we got like 20 requests asking, how did you build that thing in your app?
Right.
Like, can we get that as well?
And then we just like, okay, this feature is really sought after.
And then we actually decided to not make it a pro feature and make it a core feature instead, because it was something we could see.
This is something everybody needs.
It's not a superpower.
It is a superpower, but it's a superpower everybody deserves to have for their users.
Omer (30:58.290)
Yeah, no, I thought originally it was kind of like an expansion thing.
And then while you were talking, I just noticed that it's part of the startup plan.
So everybody gets access to this.
Esben Friis-Jensen (31:09.420)
Exactly.
Omer (31:10.060)
Why was this?
I mean, if competitors were doing this, if this was something that people were asking you for, why was it such a surprise?
Esben Friis-Jensen (31:21.180)
It was.
I mean, our customers ask about a lot of stuff, right?
They ask about resources and they ask about, you know, surveys.
And some customers are not even thinking about this.
Right?
There are some customers who ask about it, but there's like a lot of customers, I would probably say beyond 50%, who don't even think about asking these things.
Right.
They're just happy with the existing things you have, and then not until they see the new stuff, then they get excited.
Right?
And with surveys and no code event tracking, yeah, there was some excitement, but with this, it was just like everybody, all those users who maybe hadn't asked about it, they were excited about.
Right?
And that was the difference.
So I would say we probably had the same number of customers requesting surveys or requesting no code event tracking, but it was those last.
The ones who didn't ask about it, they received it much better than those other features.
And I think that's kind of the reaction you like.
And then what always happens when you add like these kind of super feature or new features, then it becomes something.
Okay, then we also need this.
Right now you need to integrate with Intercom, but we use Help Scout and we use HubSpot and we use whatever and suddenly it becomes something where everybody just expects that it works perfectly with their setup, even though that feature was not there at all like a couple of months ago.
Now it's like a thing where they expect that all those things are there.
And that's something we like as well.
Right.
That challenges us to further expand on that product.
So it's awesome.
Omer (32:58.340)
How do people find user flow?
You're not doing any outbound.
Where's the bulk of your traffic coming from?
Esben Friis-Jensen (33:03.780)
So I actually have an outbound email campaign running, but it's not very successful.
Not something I'm paying a lot of attention to, but I just have it for fun of it.
But yeah, no.
So when I joined Sebastian, he was very dependent on ads.
That was the primary source of new.
And then of course word of mouth and word of mouth and ads are still big sources for us and they've only expanded.
We've also invested more into ads because it works.
But the thing we added it, the first thing I added to that was SEO.
And the way we did that was starting this focus on thought leadership within product led growth.
So basically we are, you know, product led ourselves.
We are very like, that's how we grow our business.
But also the product that we're giving is something that helps you do onboarding for as a product led growth business.
So we are a vendor in the product led growth space.
And that made it the perfect kind of thought leadership area for us to be in like where we could speak about how we think about product led, how we approach it.
And then we can also think about how you can do things with user flow to approach it.
And that's been really successful.
So been writing blog posts about product led growth, been in podcasts, media, whatever, and that has helped grow our SEO.
I think I read a book, I can recommend this.
The product led SEO by, I think it's called Eli Schwartz, which the way he thinks about SEO is really, and that really hit me is like it's not about like all these technical things.
Yes, those should also be there.
Right?
Like you need to have the baseline in order.
Like your pages should be working.
But basically it's much more about acting with writing stuff with Authenticity and integrity and these kind of things.
That is what drives traffic.
Omer (34:56.050)
So was that the book that you use as sort of a framework to figure out what to write about?
Because that's always the hard thing, right?
It's just like, what do you write about and how do you keep writing about it and keep publishing interesting stuff?
Esben Friis-Jensen (35:08.770)
Yeah, no, for me it was really easy actually because I was so passionate about product growth.
And I think that is what it's about.
Right.
Like people can initially see if it's fake, right?
Like maybe some can get away with writing content that's kind of weak and still that drives SEO.
But for me, it was really a true passion for product led growth and understanding things like how to build good product led onboarding, what tools to use in product led growth.
And that kind of passion and interest in the space allows you to be much more authentic about what you write.
So I think that's important.
So find that area that fits well with your business, but that you're also passionate about.
Otherwise I don't think it's going to work that well.
Omer (35:58.360)
You said you don't sort of necessarily sort of think about this in the traditional sort of SEO way, but are you, are you still doing keyword research and using that as a guidepost for the kinds of things you write about?
Esben Friis-Jensen (36:10.840)
No, we don't use it for the.
I don't use it for my articles.
I don't think about what words I put into the articles.
I just, you know, rely on what I write is when I write with that theme of product led growth, you know it's going to work because product led growth is what people are searching for.
Product led onboarding.
But we use it a bit for ads.
Right.
We also used.
One thing you can always do with SEO is competitor pages.
That always works well.
That's something I can recommend for.
SEO is like alternative pages, you know, these kind of things.
But that's again, the technical baseline.
I think the biggest SEO driver for us has been that I've been authentic about the content I bring to the world.
And also because of that I able to go on third party channels instead of writing a bunch of stuff on our own blog, which to be honest, nobody reads the blog.
Let's just be honest about that.
Or not a lot of people read it.
You can go on these third party channels where they have a lot of readers or listeners and so on.
So I think that is what matters.
So it's about having that story.
I know you probably know Andrew Castegu.
That's one of the things he's super passionate about.
Nobody tells the story better than the founders.
Right.
And that's basically the recipe we've been following.
Omer (37:34.540)
So basically it's kind of more like guest posting, finding sites that already have an audience and then pitching, being very
Esben Friis-Jensen (37:42.670)
proactive, being in the community, being on all the community channels of that and keeping an eye on what areas are there, what channels can you go on.
Right.
And community wise is one new thing we've done and that's the latest addition is we started a community called product led Stack and we're going to try to see if that works.
It's a strategy that many product growth businesses are following that they start a community.
It's super hard because it needs a lot of like work to kickstart.
And how do you drive engagement?
We decided not to make it user flow specific but instead make it continue on this thought leadership within product led growth and make it more product led tooling specific.
So focus on what tools in general do you need in your product led stack.
So far it's, we have I think 200 members, but it's, it's growing, it's fun.
So let's see how it goes.
Omer (38:37.760)
Where's the bulk of your traffic coming from?
Is it SEM, SEO, word of mouth?
Esben Friis-Jensen (38:42.880)
Word of mouth?
SEM and SEO are the three major channels.
Word of mouth is so hard to track.
Right.
Because.
And it's the difference between SEO and word of mouth.
It just becomes kind of one big bulk.
I wouldn't say there's a good tool for tracking where something comes from there.
But SEM is easy to track.
Right.
So I can see SEM pretty easily.
Omer (39:04.050)
So word of mouth, you don't have an affiliate program or anything like that?
Esben Friis-Jensen (39:07.330)
Yeah, we, we had like a, we had like a bit of affiliate.
But no, we don't like give money.
It was mostly for like a few consultants were supporting some customers.
But no, not a customer referral program.
Yeah, it's word of mouth.
And yeah, we can see from G2 you can, you can empower your word of mouth by being on G2, Capterra and these kind of sites.
Right.
Which people are, are looking at.
But we see that more.
It's sometimes an initial source, but it's also much more a credibility thing that we show to people who are evaluating user flow.
Right.
That they already found us, but then they can go and look here and see we have a lot of happy users.
Omer (39:47.930)
So now on the SEM side, I assume that's just AdWords, right?
Esben Friis-Jensen (39:52.530)
Yeah, yeah.
Omer (39:53.490)
So I mean it's rare for me to talk to a founder who's using AdWords and saying yeah, it works.
So what are you doing there?
What kind of keywords are you targeting other than user onboarding software?
And what's it costing you Ballpark to acquire leads through there?
Esben Friis-Jensen (40:10.220)
Yeah, so I think SEM works because we're in a competitive space and it's a problem that a lot of people want to solve.
So it's product led onboarding or user onboarding or SaaS.
User onboarding, whatever is something a lot of people are searching for on Google and that, that helps.
Right.
So we have a solution based campaign focused on that.
We have like everybody else have alternative campaigns.
Right.
And all our competitors have that as well.
So, so those are the two main things.
And we get the, the most from solution based, but we get the highest quality from alternative, of course, because they already knew about a competitor and, or whatever did that.
Right.
But cost per conversion?
It depends.
I would say we've been experimenting a bit.
Sometimes we increase our budget to see how far can we go up before it starts diminish in value.
Right.
So I think we found like a, a good, like $300 per conversion and a conversion for us is a free trial.
It, that's, that's a good level.
Sometimes we try to increase it and then we end up on like 500, 600, 700 and maybe that's not as good as we want it to be.
So we're trying to find that budget balance where it's like making sense.
Right.
So, so yeah, but it works for us.
And you can say with, let's say if it's $300 per conversion, it's we, we just need them to pay for almost like a month.
Right.
Then, then it's almost paid back.
Right.
So.
Omer (41:31.770)
Right.
But, but that's, that's $300 for a trial.
Esben Friis-Jensen (41:34.730)
Yeah, trial.
Omer (41:35.490)
And then how, how many trials do you, do you need to convert into a customer?
Esben Friis-Jensen (41:39.930)
Probably I think it's like 30, 20, 30%, something like that at the moment.
But it's still, you know, then we have the pro plan which is, you know, 600.
So it's like, yeah, it pays back and it hasn't been a problem for us.
So I would say that's, I would say all our competitors also net.
So it's like I don't think I'm giving away any trade secrets.
They all know what's going on and they can see it.
I think it's such a big market, like there's room for 20 competitors apparently, which is interesting to me.
I've never seen that in any other market before.
But there's such a demand for our product.
Right.
Omer (42:15.070)
All right.
So I think we should wrap up, get onto the lightning round.
You've done this before, so I'm going to ask you seven quick fire questions,
Esben Friis-Jensen (42:21.790)
see if I succeed this time.
Omer (42:23.630)
Yes.
All right.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Esben Friis-Jensen (42:29.070)
I think last time I say stay focused on doing one thing really well, which I'm still a strong believer in.
But the other thing is just product led growth.
Right?
Like do product led growth and jump into it.
It's it works and believe in it and take a risk on it.
That model, it's super strong.
Omer (42:49.900)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Esben Friis-Jensen (42:52.700)
So now I mentioned Product Led SEO by Eli Schwartz.
So that's definitely a book I recommend.
But also Product Led Onboarding by Ram Lee John and Wes Bush is another great book.
They made the product led growth book but I think last year they did a follow up book which is more focused on product led onboarding, which is the space we play in at Userform.
Omer (43:15.290)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?
Esben Friis-Jensen (43:19.770)
Last time I said grit.
I think this time, and also given the market we're currently in, adaptability is super important for a founder.
Like how can you change your mindset in a tough situation?
With Cobalt we did a pivot, for instance when we were in a tough situation with User Flow.
We are constantly re evaluating how we should approach things.
We never, you know, we never stress.
Right, you should never stress, but you should be adaptable.
You should take things in a calm way, but be adaptable and be open for new things in the market.
Omer (43:54.980)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Esben Friis-Jensen (43:58.820)
So I'm a bit big structure nerd, but I think the one thing I'm a big advocate for these days is synchronous videos, for instance, with loom.
It's something I wish more people would do because it actually it saves a lot of meetings.
Right.
Because one would always say I can't explain this in text, I need to explain it in a meeting.
But now you have a video.
So just explain it in a video and send it and then you give the recipient a lot more time to think about the issue and give the right answer.
Maybe in a video as well.
So I think asynchronous Videos is here to stay and will only grow more.
Omer (44:36.600)
I think I talked to somebody about this before, and I was like, you know, the one thing that would be really cool is if it was like, you know, like, you have a limit for tweets.
You had a time limit on how much you can talk, because some people talk too much on video, man.
Esben Friis-Jensen (44:50.400)
That's for loom to solve.
I agree.
Right.
Like, sometimes when I get like, some videos, it's like it starts with a long intro of something that doesn't matter at all.
And then in minute number eight, that's where they actually ask the question.
Right.
And yeah, but it's.
I think it's still better than sitting in a meeting for 30 minutes or having to schedule a meeting to solve something you could have sold or email or chat.
Omer (45:13.070)
Yeah.
What's a new crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Esben Friis-Jensen (45:16.990)
I'm still looking for somebody to create that software as a service, CRM.
I wrote an article on it.
I'm constantly looking at the market.
It's still not there in my view, but yeah, it's.
That's an area I'm super interested in.
Is this how, especially with product LED growth, how will the.
How will the tooling change?
How do we need to do our CRM?
And also on top of that, how will the SaaS organization change?
Do we need to simplify the SaaS organization?
Does sales and customer success need to merge, for instance?
Which is something I believe, but these kind of things.
And it all comes back also to tooling then, because today you only have these, like, five different tools for as you have a customer success tool, a marketing tool, sales tool, but you only have that because of a very complex organization, really.
Right.
So if you simplify the organization, you can also simplify the tooling.
Omer (46:11.740)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Esben Friis-Jensen (46:15.100)
So last time I think I mentioned I was born in Tanzania, but yeah, the one fun thing, over the last few years, I've been living in Airbnbs every month in different places in the US and one month in French Polynesia, basically working remote.
It's been fantastic.
So, yeah, I did it before the Airbnb founder did it himself.
I think he started doing it this year.
Right.
But yeah, good.
I could be an inspiration to him.
Omer (46:38.850)
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Esben Friis-Jensen (46:41.810)
It's exploring the nature.
Hiking or biking.
That's really what I enjoy.
I'm currently in Utah, most fantastic place in the us Highly recommend everybody to go here and.
And go hiking in one of the national parks.
Omer (46:55.990)
Well, thank you for joining me again and for the update.
And congratulations on getting into multiple seven figures with User Flow.
If people want to check out User Flow, they can go to userflow.com and if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Esben Friis-Jensen (47:11.230)
LinkedIn.
Aspen, Fritz Jensen on LinkedIn.
Omer (47:13.270)
Okay, we'll include a link to that in the show notes.
Great.
Thanks, Aspen.
It's been great.
Enjoy the rest of your time in Utah and I'm sure we'll be catching up again soon.
Esben Friis-Jensen (47:22.590)
It sounds good.
Yeah, great chatting.
You.
Omer (47:24.990)
Yeah, same here.
Cheers.
