What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to
the IndieHackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making
a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these IndieHackers to
discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and the strategies they're taking advantage of
so the rest of us can do the same. I'm here with Spencer Fry, the founder of Podia. Spencer,
how's it going?
Doing very well. Thanks for having me today.
Thanks for coming on. Podia is an extremely cool company. It's very relevant to the movements
that we see going on today. On your website, you describe it as everything you need to
sell courses, webinars, downloads, and community. So it's kind of like this one-stop shop to
support creators and entrepreneurs.
Yep, that's correct. And do you mind if I ask, how do you measure Podia's success in
terms of revenue or growth or just good feelings? How's Podia doing today?
In all different ways we measure it. One of the things that's been really great recently
is that I've been measuring it based on how many of my employees have been buying houses,
which has been really, really cool. I think we've had four or five people buy a house
in the last two years. Wow. Yeah, and our team is only 27 people.
Cool.
Yeah, that's one sort of measurement that I like to use. But also, obviously revenue
is important. Headcount, the company, the number of creators we have, the number of
products they're selling, the amount of revenue they're making, the number of audience members
they have, et cetera. So lots of different metrics we look at.
Right. Yeah. On your website, you say you've got 50,000 plus creators creating on Podia.
And obviously to support a team of 27 people, you guys are doing pretty well. Can I ask
why don't you disclose your revenue? I know you've written about this online. In fact,
I love interviewing people like you because you have a blog. I've written so many different
articles over the last 10, 12 years. And it's been a little stagnant recently, but I got
to come back to it.
I know. I'm reading blog posts that you wrote in like 2010. I'm like, what do you think
about this? That was 11 years ago, bro. But 10 years ago, you wrote, disclosing your finances.
And I think back then, it wasn't that popular to do. Peli from Balsamic was doing it. I
interviewed him on the podcast. He was sort of a leader in the sort of transparent revenue
sharing space. I think Squarespace and 37signals. To some extent, we're sharing their revenue.
And in your blog post, you kind of weigh the advantages of sharing and the disadvantages
of sharing. And then your conclusion in the last section just says, don't do it. And that's
where you are today. You're not sharing your revenue with Podia. Why not?
So we do say that we're profitable because we are profitable. So I think that's almost
like a better benchmark than saying like how much revenue you make. I know plenty of companies
that are making 50, 100, $250 million a year, but also losing 30, $40 million a year too.
So for us, partly we don't share it because we're a private company and we do have a lot
of competitors in our space. And I think just, you never want to give them anything. You
don't want to give them any kind of like insight into how you're building your product, your
marketing, how well you're doing, because they might come to you and see your software
and say, Oh, look, they've launched these features. Maybe that's why their revenue is
spiking this quarter or whatever. So, you know, I just kind of play the behind the scenes,
you know, we're not, we're not going to say anything stands with revenue these days. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of nerve wracking to have competitors nipping at your heels and
copying everything that you do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to be honest though, at the same time,
I loved looking at other people's revenue. Right. So, you know, for example, like ConvertKit
displays their revenue openly on bare metrics. And, you know, I'll probably take a look at
that two or three times a year, kind of see how their, their year's going. I think one
thing that's interesting about that for us too, is that while we're not competitors with
them, we are both serving creators. So it's a nice way to sort of see how the market is,
is doing for other people. So yeah. So that's one company I do look at. Yeah. Nathan Barry
is super transparent. Are you on his mailing list? He's got two. I'm not. No, we are doing
Twitter, Twitter friends. He's got a mailing list where it's kind of like, just sort of
like, I don't know, the generic, like, Oh, here's like my insights and my favorite blog
posts, et cetera. Yeah. And then he's got like a semi secret mailing list that I can't
remember how you get on it. I think you have to be part of his normal mailing list and
every now and then he emails a link to that one. And I think it costs money. And that
one, he just shares everything. He's just like, here's questionable attack strategies
that I might be using. And here's, you know, exactly how much money I'm making and how
I'm thinking about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's just so addictive to read somebody
sharing like that much about their life. Because it's kind of things like everybody has money
and has to make decisions about how to spend it or how to earn it. And almost everybody
is just like holds that information very close to the chest. I think that's one of the reasons
why so many founders share the revenue today is because it's such an easy way to get attention
from readers. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's an amazing marketing strategy, you know? I
mean, there's probably a dozen people outside of my company who know our revenue. So I mean,
it's not that I'm not sharing it with anyone that I'll share with friends. Yeah, I'm sure
with friends. Typically, you know, I'm looking for some advice and revenue is always like
a part of the equation for any part of the business that you're working on. So it's not
that it's only me. And of course, all my team knows it and we share all of our numbers with
them and we share board meetings and board decks with them as well. Cool. Well, 27 people,
at least five homeowners, profitable. You can surmise that you're doing super well, you're
making millions of dollars with this product. And I know you've been, you've got a lot of
experience like this is not your first rodeo. You've been running internet startups, I think
since you were like 11 years old, which is crazy. Yeah. How does that happen? So a bunch
of different things happened in my life. The first one was that both my parents are professors
at Yale. And my dad took a job there, where we actually had housing on campus when I was
11 years old. So I immediately went from like an AOL dial-up modem into basically a dedicated
T3 line directly into our house. So some of the older listeners might know what that is.
But basically I had an incredible internet speed. And also the layout of our house meant
that I had kind of my own room really far away from my parents. So I could always be
on the computer, always be doing internet things and so on. And so I just got addicted.
And then pretty much most of my high school years I was working on different things, different
like products. How old are you? 37. Okay. So you're three years older than me. I'm 34.
So yeah, it was around the same time that I was on the internet. This is mid 90s. Parents
had no idea what kids could even get up to on the internet. Because I had the same setup.
Like I'd be in my parents' basement on the internet. I didn't have T3. I was on dial-up,
but we had two phone lines, which is really special. So it wasn't like bothering my parents
for me to be on the internet. I guess the younger people listening today wouldn't be
aware of the fact that like, yeah, you had to use your phone line and everybody used
land lines. No one had cell phones in the 90s. And so like, if you're on the internet,
no one else could be on the phone. But I had the same thing. My parents just left me alone.
I looked at a lot of stuff on the internet I probably shouldn't have looked at, but I
also learned a lot of stuff. And it was pretty cool. Because that was like the wild wild
west days. Everything else is new. Yeah, I miss it in some ways, but also I don't. How
did you get into startups as a kid? I mean, it's one thing to just be fucking around on
the internet. It's another to be like, I'm going to start a business.
I was also a gamer back in the day. I still play some games these days, but more back
in the day. And I started building these like fan sites. And that was kind of my first thing
that I built online. So like, I did all the design, I did all the code, I would do all
the updating, news, blog, etc. And that kind of got me starting to create. And from there,
I started my first small business with a friend of mine who is also in school with me. And
over the summer, we built a web hosting. And we were both pretty big on IRC and IRC shell
service, which probably no one knows about. But basically, it's like a way to have a bot
in a channel that kind of runs things. And so we were selling web hosting, we were selling
IRC shell services. And we were actually making quite a bit of money. I think by the end of
the summer, we were up at like, this is revenue I will share, but I don't remember exactly
something like five to 10k MRR. Like we were doing really, really well. But hold on. How
old were you? A teenager? This is, I was 16. But where things get interesting is that it
turned out that 90% of our revenue was from stolen credit cards. So you probably didn't
know that we didn't know that. And because by back then, you know, we were, I don't even
remember what we were using, but it wasn't like using Stripe or something like that.
And so by the end of summer, we just started getting thousands and thousands and thousands
of dollars worth of chargebacks, because also people weren't looking at their online banking,
they were having to wait for their statements to come in and stuff like that. So fraud was
way more prevalent. And so by the end of the summer, we actually shut the business down.
But that was kind of my first foray into like, wow, I could like create a thing and make
a bunch of money. And it was pretty amazing. What did your parents think of this kid who's
making $1,000 a month and dealing with chargebacks and credit cards?
I mean, they were they were impressed, I think, but they also, you know, even to this day,
you know, super smart people, retired professors, but they don't really do the internet thing
that much. So they're very kind of computer and novices. So they're still impressed with
what I do, but they can never describe it to their friends. So whenever I see them or
talk to their friends, they're always like, Oh, so you do this? I'm like, No, that's not
what I do at all. So yeah, they still they still don't grasp it that much. But they were
very impressed. And then when I got into college, I started kind of my first real business,
which was called typefrag, which was the first voice over IP software for computer game players.
So basically, what discord is today, we were doing that back in 2003, and ended up selling
the business kept going kept repeating starting a new company, selling it. And then I'm here
today. Cool. It's funny, like how, you know, none of your parents have people can be like
so intelligent and successful, but also like that is zero correlation with how tech savvy
you are, how much you want to like, get into new technology. I remember experiencing this
as a kid and saying like, making kind of a pledge to myself that I'm never going to become
obsolete. No matter how old and grumpy I get, I'm never going to stop you from my ear to
the ground with what the kids are doing. And now I'm 34. I'm not even on tiktok.
I was gonna say the same thing. Like, I'm not on tiktok. I don't understand all the
new memes. Like, yeah, definitely getting older. It's just at some point, it's just
like, ah, give up. I was talking to, uh, I have another podcast and I interviewed just
like successful people from different, basically different like areas with my buddy Julian.
And we talked to some Hollywood screenwriters the other day. And one of them is Mark Miller.
And he's like the guy who writes like all the comic book movies. He's got, I think he's
like the second most adapted screenwriter behind Stephen King, as in his like writings
have been turned into the most movies. And we were trying to set up like Riverside and
zoom. And he's like, can you help me install Chrome? And he called me and I was like walking
through how to install Chrome and like how to get on zoom. And it was like a 15 minute
phone call that felt like my dad in the nineties or something, but dude is super smart and
super successful. And so yeah, not necessarily a coalition there.
No, I mean, I think there's also one of those things where it's, it's helpful just to focus
on, you know, your craft and you know, you know, he's a writer. He doesn't need to know
zoom and Chrome and so on.
Yeah. So I want to stick with this topic of being like, I don't know, this kid ahead of
your time for a second, because I was also pretty ambitious as a kid. And I remember
what motivated me. And I remember for me in particular, it was the sort of positive feedback
loop that I think people underestimate. I have probably had like seven or eight conversations
with adults as a child that I remember to this day where people were very encouraging
and said like, Hey, you're really good at computers. Like you should keep it up. You
could do this. You could be this person. You could hit this goal. You can make this much
money. And as a kid, I really took that to heart. And even as an adult, I've noticed
that especially among young people, if you kind of give them words of encouragement or
set the bar a little higher than they might be dreaming of themselves can be really, really
impactful.
In fact, I just read a thing from Tyler Cowan, sort of a famous economist and blogger, and
he was saying one of his favorite strategies at his university was to take the most promising
kids who applied to the master's program and just sort of automatically give them PhD admissions
and suggesting that they can just like, Hey, push a little further. And like often they
do it because they're like, Oh, I didn't even think about this. Same thing with me and Andy
Hackers at Stripe. Like I joined Stripe. Patrick was like, what's your ambition for
Andy Hackers? And I was like, I don't know. I just think it's a really cool website. And
it's kind of cool to make enough money to support myself. He's like, what if you inspired
millions of people to start businesses? And I'm like, what if I did that? You know, so
I wonder what was motivating you as a kid, besides just the fact that you had this freedom
and this super fast internet.
I think it was mostly just motivating myself in that I kind of like getting lost on the
internet back then and sort of just, you know, having the lights off, maybe like a little
lamp on and just kind of dedicating myself to the next five hours of screen, screen time,
or maybe I say five is probably like 15 hours of screen time. But yeah, I mean, I just,
I love creating things. I love the idea of being able to build something from scratch.
And I still love that today. Like every single business I start, I just, I like having like
a piece of white paper and a pen and just like, okay, let's go. You know, so I really
just love that idea of just starting from something from nothing. And this idea that
you can continually iterate on it and make it better every single hour of the day and
how much work I put in, I see more benefit. So it's, it's really this amazing feeling.
Yeah. It's a solid feedback loop of, you know, you tweak some code, you click save, you look
at the website, it's different and you keep doing that over and over and over again. You
know, you make a feature, you release it, you add a pricing plan, you get money in your
bank account, super addictive to see that kind of result.
Yeah. And it's also, you know, every email you write, respond to every tweet you post,
every person you talk to, every customer you talk to, every single thing is just a little
bit additive and making the product and the company and the business better. And so it
all adds up and it just feels really good.
Yeah. That's a good point. Like this additive nature, like, cause I've worked service jobs
before and like, it is satisfying to like put in your hours and then, you know, get
a paycheck or to do something like teach somebody something and then have them pay you or, you
know, see them do better. But there's something that's really cool about knowing like, Hey,
if I write this code, it's going to keep running forever. And that's not like, you know, one
and done, like that just keeps going on and on and on. So it feels like you're building
something that will last and that will continue helping people and continue paying you. Let's
talk about some of your early startup successes. I guess we kind of already have your web hosting
business.
Yeah. You're also the founder of a company called carbon made. I assume you're familiar
with to be a Sven Schneider, who's a friend of mine. We've had on the podcast cause he's
got some police and I don't know, did he acquire carbon made at some point? So he he's after
my time. So, you know, when I sold the business, so I had two co-founders, we each own a third
of the business. Um, and I exited in, I can't remember the exact date, uh, 2010 or 2011,
something around that. And so I had, I left the business in at that date. And so two of
my co-founders continue to run the business. And then I honestly don't know anything that
happened since then. So I don't, I don't know who owns what, I don't know who's involved
in who isn't. Um, both great guys, super talented, amazing designer, amazing developer, but we
just kind of never really crossed paths again. Um, but you wrote something in 2009 and getting
going back to the early days of your blog, uh, it was a post about the history of carbon
made and you called it 100,000 users. And so can you, because you guys at that time,
I think it passed like 170,000 users and carbon made, which is such a big deal. First of all,
what is carbon made or what was it? And also number two, like not that many people were
writing encouraging words back then about how other people could start these online
businesses too. What made you so optimistic that people could start businesses and do
you still feel the same way today? Yeah. So first car made was the first online
portfolio for artists and designers to display their work online. You know, really the first
platform. In those early days, it was really interesting because no one had portfolios.
No one had, uh, or online portfolios rather. No one had a way to share their work digitally.
So you know, typically people, artists and designers would go to an agency or go somewhere
and they'd actually bring, you know, printed out pieces. And so for the first time ever,
we allowed them to like add a link to their email to send the portfolios out. So it actually
was a really fast growing business, especially when the financial crisis hit in, I want to
say 2008 when there were lots of people out of work. And so, you know, people are like,
Oh no, I need a portfolio so quickly. And they would Google online portfolio or free
online portfolio. And thankfully, thanks to Google, we were number one result for both.
So I forgot the exact percentage, but it was about 50% or more of our, our signups came
through SEO and primarily those two keywords. And so, yeah, so we started, we built the
business and I saw all these people, um, you know, getting jobs and getting work and being
very thankful for the product we were building. And so then I started to do maybe kind of
used to go to more like meetups back in the day in New York city. So I'm in New York city
when I'm in the early New York tech scene and I would just help other entrepreneurs
who were just getting started. And I really enjoyed that. I really loved talking to other
entrepreneurs. There's no one in the world. I love more than entrepreneurs, to be honest.
And so fast forward 10 years. And part of the reason why I started this company was really
just to help more entrepreneurs, you know, start their businesses, sell digital products,
sell courses, sell downloads, et cetera. So that's kind of been my whole life mission
is just to help that individual, you know, get work, get paid. And it started with carbon
made with getting work and getting paid. And now it gets, now it's with a podia with, you
know, selling courses, selling products, et cetera.
Right. So I have like my outsider perspective, three reasons why I think carbon made did
so well. I'm curious on your take if these are accurate. Number one, you're kind of solving
like a boring tried and true problem. You weren't trying to solve some problem that
no one had ever heard of. You're helping people make portfolios. And so people were actually
searching for that. It was a problem people knew they had, they knew the terminology to
search for. And so when they searched, you were there. Number two, timing. You were essentially
early. There weren't that many online portfolio makers. You caught a wave, you were a first
mover. And as a result, you captured a lot of the market. And the number three, quality.
Carbon made was the labor of love. It wasn't like you just threw something together to
be an opportunist. Like you guys made a product that you wanted for yourselves and that showed.
And so when people use it, it wasn't just like, ah, this kind of works, but it sucks.
Let me go find another one. They were like, this is awesome. And so that combination of
three factors, which I think almost anybody can do with any company if they're paying
attention to the market and the trends and they do something they actually love. I think
those three things are what made carbon made successful.
But so I totally agree with you. I think those first two were huge. Just being a first mover
got us ranking high, high in Google, which led to so many of our trials and eventually
pay customers. But I think the important one you mentioned was too, is it was definitely
a labor of love. And it was also a thing where any feature that we would ship, we had to
make sure that, you know, my co-founder Dave, he wanted that feature on his own personal
portfolio.
So, you know, it was very much like that was the quality control. You know, we're not going
to ship X unless that's something that's going to work for me and other people like me. So
that was really, really important, which is, you know, in hindsight is good and bad because,
you know, not every customer is Dave. And so some customers want other features and
so on, but it did help us really keep a very tight roadmap and make sure that we were shipping
only things that we felt very proud of. And I think that was reflected in our brand too,
where it's like, you know, what you're getting when you're signing up for us, you're not
going to get like this bloated portfolio product that, you know, does social and does all those
other things, which is actually really interesting too, because I think we didn't do social,
which other brands like Behance and others did. And they actually ended up passing us
in terms of like user account and so on and revenue. But that was a feature or that was
a specific decision we made is that we didn't want to do social because social doesn't have
to do with like the portfolio. And the core of the product was to serve the customers
that wanted a portfolio. So again, double edged sword.
I like having those constraints though. I mean, the point is like, okay, you don't,
you don't like have to be the best business on earth. It's okay if somebody passes you,
but if you're building the business you want to build and you have your own constraints,
like there's, there's kind of no rules, you know, there isn't necessarily some sort of
path you have to follow. There's in like, you know, if you really go the normal route,
like I'm going to go to college, then I'm going to get a job, then I'm going to, you
know, work my way up the ranks. Like there's kind of like, there's books written about
how to do that. Well, you know, there are people ahead of you. You can say, Oh, I did
this 10 years ago. Here's what you should do. But when you're starting your own company,
like you're the very first like online portfolio creator, that's of note, right? You can do
whatever you want. You could say, we're just going to do what Dave wants. And no one can
tell you that's wrong.
Yeah.
And we did a lot. But yeah, I mean, it's true. We were bootstrap business. We were, you know,
I think probably at the time I left, we were like 11 people full time, you know, quote
unquote profitable as well. Um, so yeah, we, we weren't beholden to anyone. Um, you know,
it's just ourselves in our little Soho office, which has a fame, fame history, by the way.
Oh yeah. What's the history?
Yeah. So well, the history is, um, so obviously you're familiar with Squarespace, but we took
over their lease in this small Soho office when they were, you know, 10 or 15 people.
Uh, so it was kind of fun. We, yeah, we, we took over their lease. Um, and then to come
full circle, the former CEO of Squarespace, Dane Atkinson is now on my board today for
my current company. So, and I actually met him during the lease transfer event. So, um,
yeah, just some, some New York city, uh, history right there.
It's interesting working on startups and just doing this kind of cool stuff because you
end up meeting a lot of people who end up building these huge sort of world changing
companies. And like my feeling every time is like, ah, why didn't I invest? You might
have much, very much money, like $5,000, $10,000 for that company. It would have been rich,
but it's cool to just know those people and to see that you were in the same time and
places that, yeah. So let's talk about Podia. By the time you started Podia, you are a startup
veteran. I mean, obviously you started companies since you were 11. You had done, um, a few
companies that you had like sold and bootstrapped and exited and it just all done very well.
Did you have anything resembling like a startup playbook before you started Podia? Did you
have like rules and guidelines and then like any sort of hard one knowledge that helped
you start Podia when you, when you first started?
You know, all the experience I've had in the past definitely impacts everything I do today.
When I was first starting out, I think what I knew most is what markets and what customers
I like to work in versus which ones I didn't. And I think that really helped me. Like I
realized that I really like working with individuals. Like I want to sell to an individual. I want
to make an individual happy. I want to help them achieve their goals. What I don't like
doing is working with businesses. And, um, I had, I had a brief startup that I did sell,
but not, not, not that much money right after card made that I worked on called uncover,
which was like a benefits platform for businesses. And so I had some experience working with
businesses and I was like, I hate this. Let me get out as quickly as possible. And so
when I was starting this, this new company, I realized I want to work with individuals.
I wanted to work in a market that would help other individuals like make money or become
entrepreneurial or that kind of thing. And then there's a whole history isn't into how
I started the company. So I mentioned, as I mentioned earlier, both my parents are professors
at Yale. And my dad actually had one of the first online courses on the internet ever
in 2010, which was a collaboration with, with Yale and actually has millions and millions
and millions of views on YouTube. Yeah. So if you search Paul Fry, Yale, you'll see all of his
classes. Um, and so I actually got really interested in hearing all of his stories
because he would get like multiple people every single day, emailing him and saying how much he
Oh, thank you for bringing this course to me. I'm in China or something like that.
And so I kind of thought about that. I'm like, Oh, this is really cool. Like, um, you know,
selling courses online allows you to reach people from anywhere and that kind of thing. So he was
definitely an inspiration. Also back to some old New York city history, but Skillshare,
the two co-founders Malcolm and Michael rented desks from my carbon made office. So I got to see
the early days of Skillshare. Um, I was also one of the first three teachers on the Skillshare
platform as well when they were still doing in-person teaching. Um, so yeah, courses were
something that got really interesting for me. Um, but I wanted to do my own take on it,
which was to really build out a centralized store where you could sell any type of
digital product, whether it was a course download, webinar, coaching, et cetera.
Yeah. This idea of, of liking, working with individuals over businesses, I think is very
common. I think it's like, it just kind of seems boring to work with businesses. Most of us don't
interface with businesses on a personal level in our daily lives. And so when we sit down to come
up with a company, it's just super common that I hear people say like, I want, you know, to create
an app that helps friends get together, or I want to create an app that helps you figure out local
sporting events so you can go join a league or something. But I think what you did was smart
because it's almost cliche now that like selling to businesses is easier. Businesses have a lot of
money. Businesses know how to make money and therefore businesses are willing to spend money
in order to make money. And so you can charge them higher prices and sell more stuff to them.
But what you did was you decided to sell to individuals, but also you're helping individuals
to make money. So you're not just selling to anyone. You're selling to people who are ambitious,
who see some future career or some future path where they can make a lot of money. And that,
I think turns them into good customers. Whereas the average individual is not really that good
of a customer. Like they don't really want to pay very much because they're not going to make
a lot of money from whatever it is that you're selling them. Yeah. So that's actually a really
interesting insight and something I've thought about for too, is that how to have a happy customer,
help your customer make money. Because people who make money are happy. So this is really amazing
feedback loop that we see too, where customer makes their first $100, $1,000, $10,000 and they
are so thankful and they're so happy to be a customer and they're happy to spread the word.
And they'll write me these long emails about how grateful they are about our product,
stuff like that. So it's back to that feedback loop. It's just tremendously amazing to serve
individuals. Whereas a business makes money and no one cares.
Yeah, I think maybe that's a good question for people to ask themselves when they're first
sitting down to come up with their ideas. Okay, let's say this idea works out. How transformative
is this going to be in my customer's lives? Are they going to be mildly happy or is it going to
be like they are on some new level of happiness and existence and accomplishment and they have me
to thank for that in part. And the closer you are to that goal, the happier customers are going to be,
probably the happier you're going to be because you're constantly making other people happy
and probably the more money you're going to make because you have something that's super
impactful to other people, even if it's simple. So the other question that I always have for people
who are starting companies and I want to know about your early days is the sort of question
around ideation because it's hard to come up with a business idea for a lot of people. In fact,
I would say most of the potential anti-hackers and founders that I talk to are kind of sitting
around waiting for a lightning to strike and a brilliant idea to come into mind. On the flip side,
they have a ton of ideas and they're not sure which one to work on. Which category were you on
if either category? And how did you decide that Podia was the right idea to work on compared to
any alternatives? I'm definitely the have a million ideas a minute person. I think the main
difference today is that I'm so happy with the company and the product, the team, the customers
that I'm not pursuing those other ideas. But I'm constantly coming up with ideas and just someone
says anything and I'm like, Oh, like, Ooh, how could I be a startup? So I definitely think you
need to be on the lookout. I think what's important. And when I was even working on this company,
another little known fact that I don't think I've really shared publicly is that I was starting
first working on this product called Playlift that never resoled a day. But the idea there
was going to be coaching for computer game players by professional gamers. And so it was this idea
that they could get coaching and they could pay a fee, but then that the gamers, the professional
gamers could also put in videos and sell those videos and quote unquote sell courses on videos.
So I started going down that route with the business. And then I realized quickly that
gamers don't want to pay because they're cheap, myself included or whatever. They don't want to
pay. So it's not a good market to be in. They're mostly kids. They're mostly kids.
And so I thought, well, exactly. So I thought, well, you know, if gamers, you know, maybe the
same similar platform could work if we just open it up and made it more broadly for any type of
creator. But I went down that business probably for four months before realizing that like,
actually we need to broaden this out. And we can't do the gamer thing for these reasons and so on.
But I think every idea I've ever started by month three, six, 12 is like pretty different than
where it started. And what is like the first step you take after you have an idea for something
like Pudio? I mean, you're like, okay, you try other ideas. Maybe they don't work. You're like,
okay, maybe Pudio will work. But at the end of the day, it's still you're just one guy.
I don't think you had any funding at the very, very beginning when it was just you,
no lines of code are written. I think this is another place where people get tripped up
because it's really easy to get paralyzed and say, oh, there's so much to do and my ambitions
are so large. How do you sort of wrangle that down into like a first step that makes sense to take?
Yeah. So I think that's something you were asking about experience earlier.
I've been around for so long that I have a really good sense of what each step needs to be in terms
of product development and kind of what step you need to take first to get to step two, step three,
step four, step five, et cetera. So I'm pretty good at figuring out like, okay, this is the minimal,
viable product that we need to build and just starting there. So thinking back to when we
began building this product, I realized like, okay, what are the core things that a customer
is going to need for them to be successful in our platform? Okay. So they're going to need
checkout because they're going to need to get paid. They're going to need some way to upload
content. So some sort of upload, we're going to need some way to store that content and they're
going to need like a customer list of some sort. And that was basically the bare bones. And I
didn't worry about reporting and worry about any kind of thing. And I just narrowed it down to like,
what are those items, what are those list items that this product needs to make that customer
successful? And I just built that. And I, knowing that, you know, there's all these other things
we're going to need to build, et cetera, et cetera, over time. But like, if you start with those sort
of core things that that customer is going to need to be successful and then just build from there.
That being said, one of the things that I always do in terms of thought exercises, I always plan
out, you know, 20 steps ahead, not so much like writing them each down, but like, what could this
product be if we had, you know, unlimited resources, developers, designers, et cetera. And then I'll
just kind of pair it all the way back. I might even print it out on a piece of paper and, you know,
just start red lining it for things that can come later. But I think that's also a great exercise.
Some designers I work with don't like doing it that way because they find like they're going to
get depressed when we don't actually build out their dreams. Others do like the thought exercise.
And for me personally, like that's always helped me just think about what it could be
before you pair it down. Yeah, you are definitely a planner. You have a post on your, uh,
your blog life plan from like 12 years ago and you have an entire plan for your life for the next
50 years. I know. I actually props or I was, I was starstruck when the founder of meetups
Scott Heiferman retweet or tweeted it out. Like, Oh, look at this guy. He was, and I was like, Oh,
it's so cool. It is cool. I think it's a super underrated to like, to make these far future
plans. Like obviously nobody knows what the life's going to be like in 30, 40 years, but it's funny
cause on here, like, I don't know that you were and your early twenties when you wrote this and
you could tell like, you're like age 33 to 40. I'm reworking on some unknown ambitious startup.
I don't know what it's going to be, but it's going to be happening on exactly where you are
at 37 working on podium. So like you called it. I think I have Apple CEO at 50, which is not
happening. You had it at age 40 to 50. So you got to get moving. Yeah. I got three years.
I think stuff like this is it's super underrated. Like so few of us spend any time at all,
like just sitting down and trying to predict the future, you know, like even people who are trying
to come up with business ideas, like I have no idea what to do. And it's like, why don't you spend
like 20 minutes to sit down and ask yourself like what you think the future is going to be?
Like make some bets. What do you think your life is going to be? What do you think you're going to
care about? And a lot of this stuff is pretty predictable. Like you predicted that by the time
you're in your late thirties, you would probably be married, you know, that's not that unsafe of a
prediction, right? It's probably like, it's probably likely. And you can like make plans
based on that. I think with your startup, if you sit down like, and say, okay, here's where I want
things to be here. So all things might go. It's easier to chart a course to get there if you
actually put in some time. And actually, I do that today still. So we have a 2025 plan for our
company. And you know, what are the things that we need to do to get to that date? And so our
ambitious goal is, is to be the only platform a creator needs to sell content on the internet by
2025. And so digital products and such. And so that's like our goal. And then we're trying to
figure out how do we walk back? Or how do we get there? And how do we set ourselves up there? And
again, like to that, the point earlier, it's just like every email you write every line of code,
every piece of design, every customer you talk to just helps build towards that, that goal.
So another thing that strikes me as interesting is about podiums. This is a very crowded market.
There are a lot of people and companies who are trying to empower individuals to make money on
the internet, the sort of creator economy movement. You mentioned Nathan Barry with ConvertKit
earlier. He's been a guest on the show. My buddy AJ, he makes card, which is kind of like a one
single page website builder is millions. I have a card as well. Super great site. There's John
O'Nolan from Ghost. I could just name like 20 people that I've interviewed in the last few
months who are kind of all pushing in the same direction, which tells you that like there's
there there, like something is actually happening and millions of people are moving in this direction.
But also it's like harder to stand out. You know, how do you get on people's radar? It's no longer
the days of like, you know, the early internet where people just search for online portfolio
and only one result comes up. If people want to make money online, there's a thousand things
they can do besides just podium. I mean, it's tough. I do think like it's less crowded than
people think. You know, there are definitely a lot of companies that work in this space,
but there's the space is so big, so many different ways to attack it. You know,
you mentioned email, you mentioned single site builders, you mentioned like our store platform
and Ghost blogging platform. There's so many different ways to attack this. And I also think
that it's still very, very young. I was talking to one of our investors yesterday during board
meeting and I still feel like we're at the starting line of what this market can be over the next 10,
20, 30 years. So, you know, I still recommend probably to my own detriment that the creator
economy is a good place for entrepreneurs to start companies. But yeah, I mean, it is vast.
It's growing. It's getting bigger. COVID obviously really accelerated it. You know,
I think people are becoming more tech savvy and, you know, they can use these tools more and so on.
So yeah, it's definitely growing for sure. So give me your, give me your vision of the future.
Because right now it's like, it seems like it's the biggest you could ever get on page news
constantly. The creator economy, this the creator economy, that where are we going to be, you know,
in your wildest dreams, five or 10 years from now. So I wrote an article on our website about my 10
predictions for the next 10 years, which I can share, but it's hard to predict everything. I
think what I know best is the digital product market. So for our market, there's a lot of
different things that I predicted in that article. The first one was that I think that community is
going to play a big part, a big role in the creator economy as things grow. You know,
quick plug for us. We just launched our community product a couple of weeks ago and it's doing
tremendously well. You know, other things were that I think more creators are going to collaborate
more. So right now it's a very much an individual thing where you're a creator, you sell a course,
you sell a download, you have a webinar and coaching. I think more people are going to
team up with others. They're going to work in groups. I think companies are going to form where,
you know, the three of us, the four of us work together to build this digital
creator product line or whatever. There's a bunch of other ones. I think live components are going
to become more and more of a thing. You know, we obviously saw that during COVID, but I think that
these tight, you know, week long courses or one day events, that sort of thing, it's going to just
continue to grow and become more and more popular. I think one of the issues with online courses in
general is that you buy them and then you have to self motivate yourself to do it. But when there's
that live component, you know, it's, it's easy to get like something on your calendar, you know,
go meet with that teacher, go meet with your classmates, et cetera. And then I think there's
going to just be a lot more collaboration between, you know, the audience, the people that are taking
those courses, station, those products. So that's like four of 10. Some of them are pretty, some of
them are pretty out there. I think also one of the big booms will be when Google and other search
engines start to recognize digital products better. So that's also my article, but basically,
you know, you search for a soap and you get like those big, you know, buy soap from Amazon or
whatever, like big tiles on Google. I think that'll come to digital products as well. So, you know,
when you're searching for courses and downloads and stuff like that, there get more prominence
in search engines, but should lead to more sales. So yeah, there's a lot happening right now.
And I like this, like the intersection of creators and entrepreneurs. I mean,
creators are entrepreneurs, but I think for the longest time, at least online and kind of
mantra has been like, well, you need to be a software engineer, at least know some software
engineers, and you need to make some sort of app or website, and you probably raise money
and charge a subscription fee with the creator economy. It's like, actually, you could have none
of those skills, do none of those things, basically just write our podcast, our creator
community and just like talk and share and teach and make money online that way. And there's so
many resources and so many tools for basically supporting you that you don't need to code
anything. And there's so many different ways and platforms people to find you that you don't
necessarily even need to be an expert marketer to get the word out, although that helps.
What are your thoughts on, you know, if somebody's listening and they maybe don't want to create an
app, but they do want to make money online as a creator, what are some things you think
creators need to know, sort of get ahead of the pack and have a chance of being successful and
making a living doing something like that? You know, this applies to creators as much as it
applies to entrepreneurs of all sorts. One of the things like I really believe in is this idea of
persistence. And, you know, a lot of people will start something, whatever it is, and then they'll
give up when the going gets tough. Even my wife who has a pretty successful online course that
launched six months ago, she did quite a bit of sales, but then things kind of just stopped for
her in terms of new customers. And I was actually just talking to her this morning and she actually
got, she woke up to a $500 sale and it was her first sale in four months. And I was like,
isn't that amazing? Like, isn't that super motivating? And she's like, yeah, I'm like,
I'm going to go back on this train. And I think people just need to stay persistent. They need to
continue to build it out again, back to that iteration. Like I really believe that anyone,
no matter whatever they're doing is just like be persistent, continue to improve,
you know, get better every single day, you know, read articles, read blogs, take courses,
you know, etc. Just listen to podcasts, just continue to educate yourself.
How do you keep going when things aren't working? That's the hardest thing ever.
When you're pouring your heart and soul into something and don't have any, you know,
$500 checks coming in the mail and you're wondering if it's all a waste of time. How
do you know when to quit? How do you know when to keep going?
I mean, it's, it's really tough. I always say, you know, keep pushing forward, keep pushing
forward. I was actually just talking to a friend of mine, another entrepreneur right before this
call. And he's just like, I'm so tired running my business. Like it's, you know, it's doing well,
like we're making good money, but I'm just like, I'm just so fed up with the customers.
I'm so fed up with the market. Like, I just want to give up. And I'm like,
look, this is how it goes. You know, you know, you get the good times, you get the bad times,
but eventually, if you can get through the bad times, you get back to the good times.
And so I was trying to like, pick them up, motivate him. And he's like, I know you're
right. But like, it's just really hard right now. And, you know, we have to do all these things to
get through. And I was like, go do those things. You know, like, you know what you need to do.
And in his case, it was like, they need to make some hires. They potentially need to raise some
amount of money to like, get them into that next stage, even if it's friends or family or VC or
whatever. So he knows what he needs to do. You know, we need another developer, we need this,
we need that. But yeah, it's tough. But I think, to your question, the first thing you need to do
is be like, all right, what are the, you know, 10 things I need to do to figure this out? And how
do I get through to that next hump or over that hump? And if you do all 10 things, you completely
exhaust them, and you're not getting anywhere, then I think it's safe to back away. And maybe
it's not 10, maybe it's 20, maybe it's five or whatever. But you know, I think it gets thought
exercises to be like, how do I get through this? You know, like, what are the things I need to do?
Again, so basically, it's planning. If you have absolutely no idea what your goals are,
or you have no hypothesis for what will make you successful, then it's really hard to ask yourself
at any moment in time, is this working? Because you don't even know it's supposed to work. But
if you do what you're saying, and you say, okay, if I do these 10 things, I should find success,
and then you do those 10 things, and it doesn't work, it's a lot safer and easier to be like,
I should quit this thing. Yeah. And I think even to, you know, one of those things might not work,
but it might unlock another question that you need to ask yourself. So, you know, you might add
another to do to your task list. So maybe it goes from 10 to 11 to 12 to 13. So, you know, you'll
continue to unlock different ideas that you can pursue. Was there ever a time where Podia wasn't
working? Seems like it's been a raging success the entire time. Yeah, I mean, for sure. So,
you mentioned this briefly, but it was just me for the first year. And I was getting kind of not
losing interest. I definitely had interest, but I was sort of getting slightly depressed about,
you know, where I was going to take this thing. And one of my tasks on my artificial list was
I needed to hire a contract developer to help me get through this next product development phase.
And so I did that. And that was one of the things. And then actually the funny story there is that
it was a three-week contract and he's still working for me today. Got him. Got him. Yep.
And that unlocked a prototype that we had, which unlocked some fundraising, which unlocked
another thing. But definitely those first few years were really trying. You know, we raised,
I think, 750K in year two or something like that, or year three. And, you know, we almost ran out
of money and we were able to lock in some more capital. But yeah, we had very few customers.
I think we had like 4K MRR in that year. Like you were doing very poorly, but we kept at it,
stayed persistent, kept on iterating. And, you know, now we're doing super, super well.
So what turned things around? Like if you could go back in time to the Spencer that was running
the $4,000 a month business and it was struggling and worried about running out of money,
like what would you tell him that would help Podio succeed?
I think what I finally understood, and it took me probably 15 years of my career to get there,
is how damn important marketing is. And now I probably focus more on marketing than any
other part of the business. Not entirely true, but yeah, we hired our first marketer and he ended
up becoming our CMO and he was extremely talented. I really fought for him, actually took the train
down from New York City to Baltimore to recruit him. He was not going to sign. And I took the
paperwork and I said, sign. It took me like four hours to convince him, but he did.
Well, I told him I would match his salary request, even though it was way more money
than we had at the time. And I told him I would give him a budget. I would give him resources.
I would be there to support him. I would never get in his way and all these kinds of things.
And it worked out. He also, I remember he sent me, I was like, send me all the questions you have
about the business. And he sent me like 15 questions and I wrote probably 20 pages,
single spaced answers. And he was like very impressed. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so that really
was a turning point for us. Cause you know, we were probably, I think we were three developers
myself and a designer at the time. And our marketing consisted of telling friends and,
uh, you know, a few different things. And he came in and helped us tell our story better,
helped us working on content, which has been a big driver for us in terms of growth,
helped us go through set SEO and, um, partnerships and affiliates and all these things. And
yeah, he, he definitely helped us turn around company. Put in, put in the marketing work.
Yeah. Marketing is so important. Super important. And it's like not, it's not that hard. Like the
things you're listening aren't rocket science. They're not like unheard of marketing channels.
But I think if you were, if you're the sort of prototypical Andy hacker who really likes
designing things and really likes coding things and building things and wants to make the very
perfect product, it's pretty easy to neglect all that kind of boring, seeming telling people about
it part. It definitely marketing is one of those things where it's just compounding and that the
sooner you start, the more benefits you're going to have in the future. But it is very
depressing in those early three, six months when you're starting marketing and you're seeing like
very few results, but it, you know, you got to start somewhere. Yeah. If you look at like
an exponential curve of a company growing like those first few months where it is compound
exponentially, it still looks really flat. And that's the depressing part you're talking about.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, we went from 4k MR to 5k MR, you know, and we're like,
but that's a huge jump or whatever. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta celebrate those wins.
So Podia, I think is the first business you've built where you raised money. I know you bootstrapped
at least two or three businesses. Yeah. Every company before this bootstrapped.
What changed? Why raise money? And what do you think other people should do who are
traditionally have been bootstrappers? How should they think about this?
So I wasn't planning on raising money for this company. I put in $30,000 of my own money to
start the thing, you know, hire that developer, et cetera. And then back to the great New York
city community, a friend of mine was like, Hey, you should meet this VC. His name is Nick. You
know, he's just starting this fund, but he's just a cool guy. Like, I think you guys should kick it
or whatever. So I met him at a beer garden in Brooklyn, which is very, very New York. And,
you know, we sat, we just hung out for an hour and then it's like, Oh, hey, are you working on
anything right now? And I was like, yeah, actually I am. And put on my laptop,
showed him some screenshots. We didn't even really have a working prototype at the time.
I was like, this is really interesting. Like, it's very cool. Like we're doing pre-state
investments. Notation capital is the firm. They're, they're bigger now, but at the time,
I think they're second or third investment. And then two days later, he sent me a term sheet
and was like, I know you're not thinking about raising money, but like, what about raising money?
And I was like, after a year of kind of struggling by myself, you know, not earning a paycheck,
you know, killing my savings, et cetera, I was like, I'll take this and I will use it to get
the resources that we need. Cause I feel like we have something here, but we're short, you know,
a few people to get to the next step. And so I kind of fell into it, but I'm really happy I did,
because I think if it wasn't for raising money, this company wouldn't exist because I would have
either, you know, given up or, you know, run a really small business and never been able to
build out the dream product that I was in my mind the whole time.
Right. Yeah. Sounds like you went through some tough times and your investors came through for
you. And I'm, for one, happy the podium is here today. You're profitable and you're getting your
employees to buy houses and you're helping the creator economy. And our customers are super happy
too. Exactly. And hey, you're making good episodes in the Andy Hackers podcast. Yeah.
When, when, when, when, when all the way around. Yeah.
Well, listen, Spencer, it's about that time. I always end the podcast with one question,
which is what's your advice for sort of struggling Andy hacker out there who's not sure if they want
to start a company or maybe they started and things are hard. What's something impactful to
you that you think they can take away from your story?
So I really like when we were talking about earlier about, you know, figuring out that,
that list of tasks you need to, to give yourself to figure out whether you have something. So I
really recommend that, that approach. I think that's really good. First, identify the problem
that you either want to solve or that you're having in your business and then just figure
out all the ways that you can potentially solve that problem. And then just go down the list and
check one after the other. So yeah. So I always saw entrepreneurs, persistence is super important.
Iteration is the most valuable thing ever. Compound interest is huge. Like these are the
things that I think more people should learn at an earlier age, but you know, you can certainly
like apply those to your startup and just keep, keep building, keep growing. And then as we just
talked about, like start marketing, especially today. And everything is so saturated. Just
gotta, gotta get out there. I love it. Well, listen, Spencer, thanks so much for coming on
the show. Can you let listeners know where they can go to find out more about what truck to a
Podia where they can find your excellent personal blog that you haven't posted to in a couple of
years, but it's, I've been tweet storming instead. I think that's the better approach. That's like
marketing and blogging mixed into one. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, twitter.com slash Spencer Fry.
I'm very available on Twitter so people can DM me happy to chat. My blog is spencer fry.com. But
yeah, there's a lot of old posts. I've got some gold from 2010 if you want to read those. And
then our website is a podia.com and yeah, shoot me an email, Podia. Yeah. The plural of podium.
Exactly. There's something to do every day. All right. Thanks again, Spencer. All right. Thank
you so much.