Hello everybody, this is Cortland Allen from ndhackers.com where I talk to the founders
behind profitable internet businesses and I ask them about their stories and about the
things that make their businesses successful so that all the rest of us can learn from
their examples.
Today I'm talking to Todd Garland, the founder and CEO of an online advertising company called
Buysell Ads.
How's it going, Todd?
It's going great.
How are you, Cortland?
I'm doing excellent.
So if I believe correctly, you started Buysell Ads in 2008 and today it's one of the most
successful online advertising companies, but I think that term advertising company is somewhat
vague because it covers a lot of ground.
So can you tell us exactly what Buysell Ads is and how it works?
Certainly so.
I mean, first things first, advertising is like a dirty word these days, you know, it's
almost like a four-letter word, but you know, like the basis of the web in terms of how
people make money is through advertising.
So it actually isn't the worst thing in the world.
Obviously we all love to hate ads that are horrible and the ones that follow us around
and annoy us, but there are a few of us who are actually out there trying to not be those
people and enable that kind of behavior on the web.
And so that's ultimately how I would actually explain what Buysell Ads is.
We try to promote authenticity through advertising, if we can call it that, and all that really
means is we work directly with advertisers and publishers, the people selling the access
to their audience, to find matches that are actually a good fit for both.
And so the ads come through as less of an obtrusion and more of a recommendation, if
you will.
Cool.
And how did you get started doing this?
Because I think, I mean, just like a little bit of a backstory, I once worked with a guy
who worked in advertising and we were co-founders, we considered pivoting into like an ad business.
And he spent the better part of a day just going over the entire field of, you know,
advertising and bidders and exchanges and networks and publishing and like all sorts
of stuff that like was way more complex than I thought I would ever be being an outsider.
And it just strikes me as interesting that anyone would wake up one day and say, I want
to get into the ad business.
So how did you make that decision?
Yeah, so I kind of stumbled into it, to be honest.
At the time, back in 2007, 2008, I was running a few blogs.
I'm a front end developer by trade.
So I think I might be able to consider myself ancient in terms of building for the web.
Because in that time period was when we were transitioning from like table based layouts
to CSS based layouts.
Back when like CSS Zen Garden was the thing you woke up to like see what was new the next
day.
And I remember thinking CSS Zen Garden was amazing.
Yeah, exactly.
So, you know, really, I was a publisher, I was running some hobbyist CSS related websites
sharing free code samples, using those to really just teach myself and learn the evolution
of the front end development on the web.
And advertisers would reach out to me and ask to put ads on my site and, you know, who's
going to turn down 100 bucks here or there?
Not me.
And so that's how I would make some money on the side through those sites.
And it got to the point where I was making maybe like, I don't know, maybe like $2,000
to $3,000 a month.
And it just felt silly to be chasing advertisers down for like 100 bucks here, 100 bucks there,
emailing them every month to see if they wanted to renew, coordinating payment, sending the
ad assets back and forth.
It just the whole process seemed silly for the amount of money that it was.
Not that I wasn't appreciative of that money from the hobby, but you know, I was focused
on a full time job.
I didn't want to be doing this kind of stuff.
It sounds exactly if I can interrupt, like exactly like what my experience was like running
Indie Hackers for basically like the first eight months of Indie Hackers' life, randomly
getting emails from people who wanted to advertise on the site, trying to find a good place to
put their ad, coordinating with them on the copy, emailing images back and forth.
And then after their ad would run, checking up on them and then trying to get them to
do another ad, et cetera, et cetera.
And it just builds up to an incredible amount of time spent just talking to advertisers
and getting their ads on the site.
So I can identify with you and this is what, like, you know, almost 10 years later than
you were going through the exact same things.
Yeah, yeah, no.
So I mean, it's exactly that.
And so really, I just set out to, in the most simplistic terms possible, build a shopping
cart that would allow you to purchase advertising on websites without having to talk to the
publisher.
And that's literally what the first version of Bycel Ads did.
You know, talk about, like, literally just having the basics.
Back when I launched the first version of Bycel Ads, there were no stats.
So you'd pay, you know, 100, however many, $1,000 for an ad.
And you couldn't actually see how many times the ad was viewed or how many people clicked
on it.
You had to rely on your own Google Analytics tracking.
You know, when a publisher would join the service and I would approve their site in
the admin panel, I would, like, you know, very quickly go to their site, manually take
a screenshot, manually resize it in Photoshop and manually FTP it to a server.
So like, you know, the actual initial product was, like, not as polished as it is today
without a doubt.
I think one of the most common pieces of advice that you hear people tell beginning entrepreneurs
is that you should launch with a minimum viable product, MVP, just like a super basic prototype
that's so bare bones that you're pretty much embarrassed by it.
Just to get your idea out there and test it on the market and make sure you're actually
going in the right direction before you end up spending, you know, months or years of
your life building a product that isn't any good.
And it sounds like you just did that on your own.
Did you, like, what made you so confident to launch a product that was in this kind
of shape?
Did you know about this advice back then or did you just kind of stumble onto that path?
Well, so the assumption that I was confident is incorrect.
But what I mean to say, though, is that, like, you know, it's really hard.
Like, it takes, it's almost like it takes a piece of you to have the courage to, like,
actually pull the trigger and launch a business.
I mean, everybody is human, like, you don't want to put your heart and soul into something
and then, you know, show it to the world and have it rejected.
And so I think it's, you know, for many people, it's a really hard thing to get to the point
even where they're willing to put their business out there and see if it's going to resonate
with folks.
And so, you know, I think the other piece of advice there is, like, you know, until
it's something useful, like, nobody actually really cares.
So it's like if people hate it, like, the worst thing that can happen is you don't hear
that they hate it because it's that bad that you don't even get any feedback.
You know what I mean?
And so, you know, I think when people are, like, trying to, I think that's one of the
most critical phases of a business, actually, is that initial just launch of, like, having
the courage to put it out there.
You know, when it comes to minimum viable products, having the courage to put something
out there that, you know, isn't your final product.
I mean, like, that's one of the things I love about the web is that you're not, like, I
mean, you're not in, you're like a different kind of artist.
You're not, you know, painting on this canvas and then eventually there is a point at which
it ends and you have to go either hang it on the wall or sell it to somebody.
It's a never ending canvas.
And so I think that's the beautiful thing about the web is, like, no matter what you
put out there, you can continue to improve it over and over again every day.
Yeah, it's like the opposite of being, like, a performance artist or a basketball player
or something where you basically spend all your time practicing and then you get one
shot on the stage and hopefully you don't blow it versus on the web, you know, you can
just continually refine it over and over and over and over until it becomes something good.
So it doesn't even matter if it's crappy to start with.
And in fact, it's probably, you know, another reason it doesn't matter is because there's
so few people, like you pointed out using it at the beginning that no one really cares.
Exactly.
So I think another interesting thing about how you started Bicell ads is that you were
really solving your own problem.
And I think the first thing to come to people's mind in that situation is, let me just fix
this for myself.
You know, I'm running these blogs, people are paying me, you know, paying me to put
ads on my site.
Why don't I just automate this process for myself so it's easy for me?
And it seems like you skipped over that step and just went straight to step two, which
is, why don't I make a business out of this and sell the solution to everybody else in
my situation?
How did you make that decision?
Yeah, so I mean, you know, I feel like I had a series of realizations along the way before
I got to that point in, like, a very general or broad sense, like, you know, I would have
these ideas, but they would turn out to be, like, really small ideas.
So for example, one of the hobbyist sites I was running, like, literally the entire
idea was to build CSS-based menus, release enough out there for free, where I would be
able to generate a lot of traffic, and then at some point release premium versions thereof
and try and make money.
And it's like, you know, when you think about, like, building a big business, that's, like,
on the scale of big ideas, that's probably, like, a negative five.
And so, you know, but I think that's that kind of progression.
Like, you don't have to, like, come out of the gate saying, like, I'm going to start
the next Uber and, you know, change transportation for the world.
You know what I mean?
Like, I think it's okay that you have a series of these smaller ideas that eventually you
keep thinking to yourself, well, that didn't feel quite big enough.
What's the next one?
What's the next one?
And I think a lot of, you know, younger folks go through that, and I think that's really,
really good because it forces you to continuously reevaluate, like, how you're, you know, sizing
up an opportunity, really.
And so, what was the question again?
I lost my train of thought.
Was there a phase when you were running, because you were running basically these two blogs
on front-end development where you're doing advertising, these two websites.
Was there a phase where you decided, okay, managing these advertisements by hand is too
painful, so I'm going to automate the process, and you wanted to build something like that
for yourself before you decided that you wanted to sell this to other people, or did you go
immediately into the realization that, hey, if I build, you know, this platform for managing
advertising, then I could sell it to others rather than just use it on my own websites?
Yeah, so, I mean, I use myself as a test case, but interesting fact, I actually sold one
of the websites about two months before I launched Bycel Ads.
Nice.
And so, at that point, I think I had, I was far enough along with the product development
where I was like, you know what, like, what matters more is me focusing on doing this
for other people than, like, trying to make it only work for myself.
At that point, too, I had had a landing page up.
This is, like, landing pages 101 from, like, the year, when was that, 2007, from, like,
2006?
Old school landing pages.
Yeah, old school landing pages.
It's like, the advice was, put a one-pager up that is pitching your idea short and sweet,
you know, not like, you know, so you're not scrolling, like, very, very short one-pager,
and just have a call to action at the email, a call to action at the bottom, which is,
like, you know, be the first to know about when this launches or learn more.
Put in your email address.
So, I had that live for about a year, and what I would do is I would go out and buy
ads from other blogs and sites directing folks to this page, and I, like, you know, was,
so I was collecting email addresses along the way, gaining confidence in that.
The idea had more depth than just for my own sites, and so by the time I was actually ready
to launch, I had a decent amount of validation where, like, I felt like this could actually
do something, you know?
Interesting.
So, can you describe that process of how you got, you know, these initial sign-ups and
you validated this idea?
Because it sounds like a lot of work went into it.
So, it might sound like more work than it actually was, especially in today's world,
because, you know, you can go to MailChimp or Campaign Monitor.
Both customers are out, so maybe I'll see if I can get them to pay me for that mention.
Just kidding.
And, like, you can spin up an email sign-up form within, you know, let's say 30, 40 minutes,
and you can go to, this is great, plug all the advertisers that work with us.
You can go to Wix.
You can go to Squarespace.
You can go to whoever else advertises with us that has those website builders, and you
can get something that's probably less than 10 bucks a month, and literally just type
ideas into a pre-formatted template, because, like, when somebody's looking at a one-pager,
it's not like you need to go through the process of having this amazing logo and, like, all,
you know, this amazing branding and all this kind of stuff.
You don't need any of that.
I mean, it needs to look good enough so that somebody believes it and will put their email
address into it, but it's more so the idea that you're trying to connect with the person
on than the brand and all this other stuff, right?
You don't have to come out of the gate being the next best thing from Silicon Valley that's
ready to raise a Series A. You can start much smaller than that and much quicker than that
to try and validate ideas, and so what I did was essentially that, just with, like, not
those tools back then, and then I bought some ads to drive traffic there with publishers
who had the audience that I believed would be most interested in the idea, and that's
literally the extent of it.
I actually never did anything with those email addresses, which is, you know, obviously stupid,
but...
You just collected them and...
Yeah, it was a dead end, but it was just me trying to validate the idea.
It wasn't a lot of money, right?
Like, I mean, I probably spent maybe, like, I don't know, $700 over the course of, like,
eight months or however long it was.
Yeah, I think you mentioned all these excellent tools that people can use to collect email
addresses, and I think because things like MailChimp exist and things like Wix exist
in Squarespace, you're right, like, the process of putting up the landing page is the easy
part, and as long as you don't get bogged down in irrelevant stuff, like spending weeks
coming up with the perfect name or the perfect logo, which you can always change later, then
you can just focus on driving traffic to that landing page, which I think is the hard part,
no matter what day and age that you live in, and it sounds like you had a cool strategy
where even though you didn't end up using the email addresses you collected, you...
What did you do?
You bought ads and directed them at publishers to get them to sign up?
I did, yep.
So I bought ads on publisher websites that were, like, you know, that other publishers
would frequent, and that was literally the strategy.
So this is, like, this is even before kind of the influx of inbound marketing and the
other techniques that are being used on the web today.
So kind of the progression of the story of Buy Slides is that actually after I started
working on the idea in 2007, I went to work for HubSpot full-time, and so I actually worked
at HubSpot for almost two years before I left.
And so, and the reason why I bring up HubSpot is, like, they were one of the main companies
that helped steward the idea and process and strategies behind inbound marketing that we
see prevalent on the web today.
And can you describe to us, like, what is inbound marketing?
Totally.
Instead of, you know, buying ads everywhere and, like, doing a lot of outbound cold calling
or cold emailing or intrusive strategies to get customers to come to you, instead you're
pulling them in with things you're doing on the internet that are creating value.
So perfect example, which is a lot easier to date than it was before, like, I mean,
you can immediately jump into conversations with intelligent people on Twitter, most of
the time, not everybody on Twitter is intelligent, let's get that straight, but you can put
yourself out there and put your ideas out there and get involved and you can get noticed
that way.
You can, you know, go on to Medium and start writing some posts on things that you're
passionate about where you can, like, either teach people something new or do something
that helps them provoke thinking or look at things differently.
There are tools out there where you can go and basically use these, the idea behind inbound
marketing of, you know, kind of sucking people into your world, per se.
So you're working at HubSpot for two years, acquiring all this information on inbound
marketing and how to drive customers to your website.
You're putting up on the side, you know, a landing page for Buysell Ads, which is this
idea you have for basically an advertising marketplace or an advertising network.
And then at the same time, you're driving traffic to that landing page by buying advertising
that appeals to publishers, which is people like me and Andy Hackers who have a website
where we need to host ads.
And what does your ads look like?
How did you know where publishers hung out and how did you, you know, devise ads that
will catch the eyes of publishers and convince them to check out Buysell Ads?
Yeah, so back then, people actually clicked on display ads.
What a quaint time.
Yeah, so this is like the ancient web where people actually paid attention to ads.
A lot of the stuff I could actually probably find in archive.org, but it was literally
as simple as like Buysell Ads, online advertising for publishers, or buy publishers for publishers,
be the first to find out when we launch.
It was literally something as like seemingly pathetic as that, really.
Super straightforward.
Yeah, it was just very straightforward, but again, like, you know, the core message that
we tried to hammer home on that initial Buysell Ads landing page before anything ever existed
is actually still true today.
It's like, you know, we are here to help quality advertisers get placed on quality publisher
sites and help everybody avoid the black hole that is online advertising today.
And so it's just this, it was this like very authentic, transparent marketplace that we
set up to create.
And that really hasn't changed.
Okay, so can you walk us through how at this time you built Buysell Ads?
Because I assume that, you know, on the side of having this landing page up, you're actually
going through the, you know, doing the hard work of building out the platform.
And like you said earlier, it was kind of bare bones.
But how long did it take you to go from idea to something that customers could actually
use?
And, you know, what was that process like?
What programming languages did you use that you hire other programmers to help you out?
Did you do it all by yourself?
Sure.
So I'd say it took about a year, which maybe today feels like a really long time.
But I don't think it's like horribly long, still today.
And you know, that's really just kind of pecking away at the idea off and on.
The interest, interestingly enough, the so I'm a front end developer by trade, I'm not
like an actual programmer or software engineer, I was using an Adobe Dreamweaver plugin called
Interact.
I believe it was this company out of Romania that was later acquired by Adobe.
But effectively, it was like a PHP framework embedded within Adobe Dreamweaver 4, if I'm
getting the version right.
And quite literally, that is what I built the first version of Bycel Ads on.
So picture actually showing that to a real engineer, a real software engineer, a developer
for the first time, and then thinking to themselves, like, what on earth have I gotten myself into?
And so, you know, I think the lesson there is that, like, there's nothing like noble
or required about having the best code that actually makes things work until you get something
out there that can be validated on some level.
So regardless of the fact that it was probably one of the worst built applications in the
history of the web, that didn't matter because the core problem that I was solving for people
is what was relevant there, not the quality of the code behind the app.
And so, you know, that first version was literally just myself.
It was PHP, MySQL, your traditional LAMP stack.
You know, I remember the first couple of weeks when you'd sign up on the site, it would send
you a welcome email and it would have your password in that email saying, like, thanks
for signing up.
And somebody emailed me and said, you know, like, you can't do that.
I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense.
You know, so I changed that right there, you know.
So, like, we weren't using version control, it was just me, like, manually editing and
uploading things on the server.
It was very, very, very non-developer-esque, I guess you'd say.
So...
Sometimes I forget how long ago 2008 was.
Yeah.
I mean, like, in terms of, like, building for the web, it's, like, light years ago.
Like, there's so many...
Like, today you could build that same exact thing without actually custom-coding anything
on your own, I believe.
Like, there are, like, companies and tools and software out there where you can, like,
visually build something of the significance that...
The limited significance that BiSlides was for version one without actually touching
code.
Without having to spend a year hacking it together.
I like what you said also about, you know, the importance of code quality or the lack
thereof.
And I think what it comes down to for a lot of people is just knowing what advice to take
and when advice is relevant.
So, for a lot of people listening who are considering building an Internet business,
you might be a software engineer, in which case you probably follow other software engineers
on Twitter, and you read software engineering blogs, and you have software engineering co-workers,
and you get software engineering mailing lists, and they're all talking about how to be a
good software engineer.
And they give you, like, these giant lists of best practices and exactly, you know, what
you should do.
And then when you go to start a company, it's really hard to put that advice in context
where, you know, being the founder of a company, it's not the same thing as being a software
engineer.
It doesn't matter that you write the most, you know, A-plus, bulletproof, beautiful code
on the first iteration of your product, if your product sucks, you know.
And I think a lot of people spend a lot of time worrying about little things like that.
In a way, it's a form of procrastination, you know.
You stick around the things that you feel comfortable doing and the things that are
easy for you, for a lot of programmers that's programming, for other people that might be
different things.
And then you don't actually do the thing that matters, which is like making sure your product
is something that people want and that they know about it and that they can use it.
Yeah, so another example I'd chime in there with is, like, fast forward from 2006, 2008
till today, the depth and variety of, I don't know how we want to classify them, but maybe
we'll just call them microservices that exist out there today, right?
Like, even look at somebody like Facebook or Twilio or Uber using something like Twilio
to send out text messages and manage some of their two-factor authentication or whatever,
right?
I don't know specifically what each company uses from Twilio, but the fact that they, like,
there are companies that have thousands of engineers but still don't think it's valuable
for them to solve some of these problems is very representative of how people should approach
how they manage the time that they spend building the app and trying to solve the problems of
their customers.
So it's like people don't use Uber to get, like, really fast text alerts when their cab's
going to arrive.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, it's not core.
Exactly.
And you have to abstract away all the things that don't actually matter to that core value
that your customers are getting from your business and let other people deal with that.
Even if you, like, it's a pet project or, like, you really want to do it, like, I can
remember back when we, at one point at Bisonlads, started building, like, a support application
because, like, I wanted to.
You know what I mean?
It's just, like, the silliest thing.
And, you know, there are so many things that we spent time building way back in the day
that have zero relevance to our business today, weren't our core competency, and we should
have pushed off to third parties.
And I think, you know, when anything like that is in question, err on the side of not
doing it if it's not core to your business.
Yeah.
And it's so tempting to do stuff like that, and it's so hard to resist because you can
come up with a million justifications in your mind for why you need this feature or why
you need to, you know, build your own homegrown solution.
Like, I built the indie hackers forum from scratch.
Why did I build the indie hackers from scratch?
I can't tell you.
I just wanted to, I just wanted to do it, you know.
But it's funny because it's actually, the more constraints you have, like, let's say
you're not a programmer, well, then you can't really be tempted to build something on your
own just to use your programming skills, right?
If you're actually paying someone else to do all your coding for you because you're
not a programmer, you're probably going to be a lot more judicious than what you have
them build.
Or, if you're low on money, you know, if you're a bootstrapper and you don't raise
a ton of money, you're probably going to be a lot more focused on finding customers and
delivering value.
So, I think there's something to be said for having constraints.
But anyway, so now you've launched Buysell Ads, back to your story.
You've got your first customers coming in the door, which apparently weren't people
from your email list because you just threw the email list away.
How did you find your first customers?
How did you get publishers and advertisers signed up?
Yeah, so I had maybe, I want to say like eight to ten advertisers that I'd been working
with on the sites that I owned.
And so, basically I went out there and looked for other sites where they were spending money.
And for the advertiser, the value proposition of them was that instead of contacting, you
know, ten, twenty, thirty publishers each month to manage these ads, you can now do
all of that through this one simple little tool called Buysell Ads.
On the publisher side, it was a very similar approach.
It was like, you know, instead of talking to eight to ten advertisers a month and trying
to coordinate all these different things and collect the money and all that kind of stuff,
you can do all of that very simply through this nice little platform called Buysell Ads.
And so, it was really that.
Like I went out, found publishers where my advertisers were advertising, tried to convince
them to use Buysell Ads.
When they'd say no, I'd try to convince their advertiser to use Buysell Ads to help kind
of leverage them into Buysell Ads.
And ultimately, once I got both parties at the table and using the application, I just
worked my butt off to make sure that they're incredibly happy.
Another thing I did early on, I don't want to say like because I was smart, I just kind
of like didn't, hadn't built the functionality yet.
As a publisher, when you wanted to withdraw money from Buysell Ads, you had to send me
an email.
And as an advertiser, when you wanted to cancel an ad on a publisher's site, you had to send
me an email.
And so, like, I mean, both of those things sound completely ridiculous right now because
like, you know, I don't know, it's like I don't want to have to do that to do that.
But back then, for whatever reason, that worked out really well, because that forced these
people to interact with me.
And once I was able to get them in an email thread, I could then ask questions to help
better understand how I could make the product and the service better.
It sounds like, you know, I'm not sure if you're aware of it at the time, but building
something, you know, this two-sided marketplace where you've got publishers on one side and
advertisers on the other, and it's not really a useful service unless you have both of them
is kind of a notoriously difficult problem to solve.
And it sounds like you solved it by kind of bootstrapping the advertiser's side of it
since you already had those relationships with your previous websites, and then basically
pounding the pavement and using connections and asking for intros to get the publishers
up to snuff.
Exactly.
I mean, you know, back in 2007, 2008, I mean, even today I'm still a nobody, but back then
I was like really a nobody.
And so it's like, why should you believe this guy who's in your email box with your money?
You know, it's a really like a provoking question like, how on earth are these publishers and
advertisers trusting me?
And I think the answer is that like they had a real problem they needed solved.
And you know, the risk of their money not being handled properly or something not going
right is a risk they're willing to take.
And so, you know, I think with any product or service that you're trying to start from
scratch, ultimately, like many times, you're asking your customers to take risks in working
with you.
And you know, you just have to take those things very, very seriously, and quite literally
stop at nothing to make sure that these people are seeing value.
That doesn't mean that, you know, the traditional like, you know, customers always write holds
true, like, there are times when you have to break up with customers.
But for the vast majority of interactions, like you just have to work really hard for
these people, and they'll appreciate it.
And what were your goals at this point in time, like, what was going through your head
as you started to realize that, hey, you know, people are actually appreciating what I'm
building, and they're using the product, and I'm making money, presumably, were you thinking
I'm going to, you know, grow this thing to build a huge business?
Or are you thinking like, Oh, this is nice, you know, like, I just want to keep going?
Yeah, so I mean, you know, admittedly, I have a very lemonade stand, like, outlook on business
where it's like, step by step, slow and steady wins the race kind of thing.
I did have a gentleman at one point who was advising me on the business once I'd left HubSpot
after about a year of running by Salads nights and weekends, you know, he was taking me around
to a lot of venture capital companies around Boston.
And it just like, for whatever reason, it just didn't feel right to me.
It was number one, a foreign concept, like, until I started working at HubSpot, I didn't
even know what venture capital meant.
That doesn't mean that even today, like, I don't appreciate the idea of dramatically
accelerating the growth of a business or having enough funding to really see through an idea
like I mean, like HubSpot, right?
Like these guys literally had to raise $100 million before they, you know, could be at
the scale or trajectory that would then return incredible profits, you know, I think even
today they're, I mean, I don't know, they're public, we could probably find out, but like,
they may or may not be profitable.
I don't even know.
My point is, is that, you know, with Bicell ads, for me, the slow and steady approach
wins the race has been kind of how we've always operated.
I don't have delusions about like building, you know, the next Facebook, like I'm accepting
of our place and our fate and our ability to make our own decisions being a bootstrap
company and grow at our own pace.
Sometimes that means slow, sometimes that means fast, right?
Like, I think 18 months ago, we were 16 people, today we're 32 and I think we have like five
or six positions open right now.
We very well could be 50 plus people before the end of the end of the year and that isn't
necessarily what I'd set out to create though, you know, like all I ever want to do is on
the advertiser side, help figure out how I can enable those companies to grow more quickly
through user acquisition and then on the publisher side, how can we make these guys more money
and reward them for the the authentic and genuine work they're putting into building
their own audiences.
That's really as simple as it is for me.
So it sounds like even from the beginning, you were just the idea of raising a whole
bunch of venture capital and trying to grow as fast as possible wasn't even really on
your radar.
But what was on your radar?
I mean, did you really want to be a founder?
What was motivating you because starting a business is not an easy thing to do.
And you know, obviously, you could have you were working other jobs at the time, you could
have just gone that path that you could have stuck with your website, were you motivated,
you know, to be your own boss, or to make a lot of money or to build like an enduring
brand or some combination of these things or something different.
I'd say it's a variety of things.
I mean, I think number one, just like a very primal instinct of like, wanting to feel overall
security in life, which in 2017 means having enough money to pay your bills and like, not
feeling the crunch of living month to month.
And so I'd say, you know, a combination of that kind of primal instinct that I've always
had since being a child to genuinely enjoying building software, like I love it, like, although
for the last, I'd say 18 months or so, I haven't I don't think I've actually committed code
for buy slides, which is really upsetting for me, because I love I love building stuff.
But you know, and then also just like, I don't know, I mean, I really enjoy the people that
work at buy slides, I enjoy working with them.
I like we're trying to create a company where we could all actually work here for our entire
lives.
And I'm sure that sounds stupid or crazy or like, oh, good luck with that, buddy.
But that's just what I like to do.
I love going home to my family at night, I love going to work and seeing and helping
people around me succeed as I can.
And learning from them what I can and that's just, I don't know, maybe it's not as heroic
as as many or heroic enough to turn us into a, you know, some huge business.
But like, that's just what I enjoy.
Now, I think that sounds not at all stupid or unambitious.
I mean, number one, it's not easy to build a company that stands the test of time and
is around for decades.
Even like I think if you look at like the top 100 companies from 100 years ago, it's
like a small handful of them still even exist and he's like the top 100 custom companies
like of all time, you know.
So even like for smaller companies, I'm sure it's much harder to stick around.
So in these early days, you know, you're kind of thinking, okay, I want to build something
that's gonna last.
I want financial security and we were just having a discussion about this the other day
on the Andy Acker's form.
It was a thread I made called What Motivates You?
And then someone asked me, you know, is it okay not to be motivated by like the mission
of the company?
Because I think the most cliche thing in Silicon Valley at least is every single person thinks,
you know, my company's changing the world and that's 100% of why I wake up at night.
And it's like, well, you know, if you stop getting that paycheck, would you still go
to work?
You know, would you still do this?
And the answer is probably no, at least, you know, for a lot of people.
But you know, there's also what you're doing with buy sell ads, like you guys actually
are taking a very different approach to advertising.
And somebody asked me this question, I want to ask you this question, same question to
you.
I said, do you think that you could have built, you know, a successful company by only focusing
on, you know, like the personal lifestyle goals of wanting to be, you know, financially
independent or secure?
Do you think that you have to have a mission driven company?
How does that apply to you at buy sell ads?
Yeah, so, you know, I think I can tie this up pretty nicely in my own mind anyway.
So this morning, ironically, I was writing a code of conduct for buy sell ads.
And all that really means is like, here's how I expect everybody in the team to carry
themselves and their interactions with each other, with people outside the company, in
any kind of public settings, yada, yada, yada.
And it wasn't because we had some like, something bad happen, it's because I felt as though
we're getting to the point, 32 people likely going to be many more over the course of the
year, where we need to have some kind of like basic foundation established of how we carry
ourselves as people who are inherently representatives of the company.
And so I look at it like this, right, like, I mean, let's be honest, the vast majority
of people, you're not changing the world, like, I hate to break the bad news to you.
It sounds lovely, you know, it's like, it's it sounds so great to say, like, I'm changing
the world, and maybe that feels good inside you, but I can promise you without a shadow
of a doubt, a million times more rewarding is quite literally just figuring out how to
improve the person, the life of the person next to you.
And so one of the things that I wrote in the code of conduct was like, first things first,
like, my my father wasn't in the military, but he went to military college.
And one thing I noticed growing up was that every single morning, his bed was made, and
it was made damn well, right.
And like, I never got the chance to talk to him about why he did that.
So religiously every single morning.
But what I have kind of been able to like, take out of that observation for my childhood
was that he every morning he woke up made his bed very nicely.
And that was his way of making sure that like, or of establishing a foundation for the day
from which you could then build upon.
And so I think the analogy there is that like, if you can't get your own life in order, like
you're not going to change the life of somebody else's of the lives of other people.
If you you know, you're not going to change the world unless you can get your own life
in order.
And so that's why I wholeheartedly believe that like, you know, I think it's fine for
a company to have this mission of changing the world.
But the vast majority of people on this earth are just not going to be able to participate
in something that grand.
And so like, let's just make that a lot more simple and like, I mean, try and change the
life of the person sitting next to you first.
Yeah.
And I think there's something kind of sad about a lot of companies trying so hard to
change the lives of like a billion people and failing and really like helping zero people
instead, you know, and instead, they could have helped maybe 1000 or 10,000 people, which
is still an awesome feeling, you know, even just teaching, like I teach my friends to
code pretty regularly and just teaching like one friend how to code and then watching them
get a job as a programmer or before they had like a worse job is like tremendously rewarding.
So another cool thing about buy sell ads is that I think, you know, people who are trying
to get into, you know, entrepreneurship and starting a business, one of the biggest hurdles
that they run into is, okay, I'm super, you know, jazz, I'm ready to go, I just don't
have an idea to work on and I can't come up with a sufficiently unique and cool and world
changing idea, whereas a lot of people that I talked to have been successful like yourself,
I don't want to say bad buy sell ads is a bad idea is obviously a great idea.
But what made the idea great was not its novelty, you know, people were buying and selling ads
before buy sell ads came through.
And so how did you how did you think about the competition when you first started the
company?
And what gave you the confidence to say, okay, this is what I want to do, even though, you
know, there already are existing players in this market?
Yeah, so a couple things.
So first things first, the best advice I ever received your comment about, you know, a lot
of entrepreneurs wanting to start a business, but don't know what to start, go work for
somebody else.
Let's say the idea for buy slides had never popped into my mind.
But from working at HubSpot, like I learned so much from those guys just in the two years
that I was there, that I guarantee you if it weren't buy sell ads, it was it would be
something else that I had learned more specifically, specifically HubSpot that I could have taken
and turn into a real business.
In fact, I think quite a few folks I've worked with have quite literally done just that,
like so many of them have now started their own company.
So if you don't know what to do, go work for somebody else, you'll learn a lot in the process.
And you won't regret it, I promise, unless you work for a crappy company.
But anyway, unless the company makes your life terrible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then you didn't hear that advice here, you heard it somewhere else.
But to the latter part of the question there, I mean, everybody loves David and Goliath's
story.
You know, obviously at the time in 2007, 2008, there was Google AdSense back then.
Adbright was the thing.
A lot of other ad tech companies, there was Federated Media, which was a thing back then.
And really, I just I've always enjoyed the idea of like being the little guy to take
on the big guy.
And so the idea of there being competition that could, you know, quote unquote, squash
me at any time, just makes the challenge all that more interesting.
And you know, like, even if I look at Buy Slides right now, today, like I could I could
tell somebody a couple of ways that could be a pest for us along the way.
You know, every big company has blind spots and things that they're not doing well, customers
that are being underserved.
And so, you know, the idea that these large companies are a reason not to start a company,
it's actually the exact opposite.
It's like, well, because they're large, that means they're vulnerable.
They're going to be moving slower.
And like, you know, they're not going to crush you unless you actually do something meaningful.
So like, if they do want to crush you, that's a great thing, because maybe their competitor
will acquire you as well.
So forget the big companies.
I like that quote, they're not going to crush you unless you actually do something meaningful.
In other words, if you get to the point where the bigger companies are taking note of what
you're doing, then like you're already, you're already winning, you know, that's already
a good place to be in.
And if you don't get to that point, then like, it's not because of the competition 100%.
Now along the way, we also had a lot of like smaller competition, very similar to us in
size.
And I don't know how to describe that other than like, you know, the second you start
following them is the second you've lost.
And if you notice them following things that you're doing, like, don't just don't let it
distract, you keep doing what you're doing.
Why is that?
Why is it that copying the competition means that you've lost?
So I mean, you know, if as long as we can avoid like the Facebook, Instagram references
and all that, or Facebook, Snapchat references, and all that kind of stuff, like I'm talking
like much smaller companies, like big and buy slides kind of size, like, let's say sub
$10 million in revenue.
Every company, every product, like you need some kind of vision at the company that is
consistently being communicated and driven forward.
In the second you get to the point where you're not getting a large portion of that vision
from customers you're working with and getting feedback from and instead turning towards
your competition, trying to take pages out of their playbook is the second you've lost
because like anything that your competitors are releasing is probably something they've
been working on for, let's say maybe two, three months at minimum.
And so bare minimum, you're at least two to three months behind in like a fast moving
space like tech for a lot of things.
At the very beginning of a company two to three months is actually a decent amount of
time.
It reminds me of like, my brother when he was young, he wanted he's pretty good singer
and he always wanted to be a singer and he always tried to sing like Michael Jackson.
And my dad would always tell him, if you attempt to sing like Michael Jackson, then like the
best that you can ever be is Michael Jackson, you know, assuming you perfectly you can never
go past that, you know, like, obviously that analogy is kind of weird.
Because like, it wouldn't be too bad to sing as well as Michael Jackson.
But like you're saying, if you're like a smaller company, you know, like, you're never going
to beat your competitors by just copying everything that they do, you'll just be behind them.
Totally.
And I'm curious, like, beyond the fact that you weren't worried about the competition.
What was it about buy sell ads that helped you stand out from the competition?
Because it's not enough just to, you know, not care, like you have to actually differentiate
yourself and be something that people choose over the competition.
Even to back up for a second, like, I mean, I definitely worried about competition over
the years, I definitely had times where I reacted to things that they would do, or I
would let myself get frustrated at certain things they would do.
I think it's totally natural for people to get emotional about those things and like,
have frustration and, you know, go down that path of like, trying to peek behind the covers
of the competition, you know, are there any examples like that stand out of like something
the competition did that kind of shook you up or changed changed your course?
I think anytime you feel like something you've done has been copied, it's like, it's a very
emotional thing as a founder, or is anybody writing code or like building something?
And so, you know, my best advice there is like, quite literally nothing you say or do
is actually going to matter.
I mean, unless you're in situations where there's like trademark or copyright or other
kind of like legal issues like that, or patent issues, like, literally nothing else other
than that matters.
And so those times where you feel, and I'll see this on Twitter from time to time, I feel
like I saw something this past weekend where like, there's a founder, like getting into
it with another founder on Twitter, and it's like, what are you actually going to accomplish
there?
Quite literally nothing.
So like, take whatever time you're spending, getting frustrated or hung up on things from
the other side, and use that time to focus on your customers without a doubt, like, nine
times that no, 10 times out of 10, that's going to pay dividends.
It sounds like you're speaking from experience, like people copied features or aspects of
buy-sell ads in it in the past.
Yeah, I mean, it's yeah, it's frustrating 100% and it's going to happen.
So like, if the thing you're doing is being successful, is becoming successful, that's
going to happen to you.
Just to give you an actual example, back in the very early days, like a buy-slide script
would start showing up on these websites where you could like purchase scripts is what they
would call it, you know.
So like, you could literally, and it would be in the buy-slide's design and everything.
I think in the first couple of years, things like that would annoy me, but eventually I
was like, that's just a sign of respect, we've built something here folks, this is great.
People want to be like us, you know, so, but that's just one example.
But those, like, getting hung up on stuff like that, it's a waste of time.
One of the things you mentioned earlier that was like really a kind of set buy-sell ads
apart from other people was your focus on publishers.
I think you said the ads that you put up initially was like for publishers, by publishers, etc.
How did you know that that was something that people would care about, you know, and how
did you decide to make that your selling point?
You know, that's a great question.
I don't actually know.
I mean, like, I, and I think, you know, one of the reasons why we were successful is because
clearly other people weren't focusing on publishers as much as we were.
A lot of folks who work at buy-sell ads are also or have also been publishers or have
sold ads on their own personal sites in the past.
So we have a lot of like, you know, built up experience at BSA in general with selling
ads for a living.
And then, you know, over time as well, like it evolved to be somewhere on the advertiser
side like, you know, where we're like genuinely involved in trying to make sure that these
folks are acquiring users profitably.
And I'm curious, like, is that something that, you know, is that still the same today?
Is that like what you would say the main selling point of buy-sell ads is or has that changed
over time as you've talked to, you know, different customers and find out what you can do better
than other people?
Yeah.
So I mean, it's definitely one of our core tenants today still.
And I think the best example of that is a company or a business like AdSense, right?
Like if you've ever been a publisher trying to interact with AdSense support, like, you
know, like, I'm sure you just rolled your eyes.
It's like there is no support, like, you have to go to forums and like ask people who aren't
even Google employees what's wrong, you know?
And so like there is this void for actually trying to help publishers do well with their
monetization on the web that like just wasn't being filled.
I mean, on the high end, a company at that time back in 2008, like, federated media was
definitely servicing the high end.
And so we kind of fit in in this like middle tier there where there really wasn't anybody
servicing those folks and that's still true today.
How that evolved over time was to also do the exact same thing for the advertiser side.
So throughout BySlides history, like, we've had some really great advertisers come through
where we've, you know, spent a lot of time working with them to help them acquire users
profitably from the publishers that we work with.
And like there have been some great success stories like, you know, for example, Wix,
you know, way back when they were one of our original advertisers after they first launched
the business, I think I'm going to say like 2009, maybe, and then, you know, companies
like Shutterstock, Fotolia, I mean, like a lot of companies we've worked with all along
the way, not that I'm sitting here trying to take credit for their success, but along
their path to success, we have been, we have taken part in helping them do things profitably.
And that's something we thoroughly enjoy.
Like I said earlier in the in the podcast about, you know, nobody clicks on banner ads
anymore.
I mean, that's kind of a lie.
You click on them, and, you know, we're still helping people acquire customers profitably.
But that hasn't been from just like being sedentary and continuing to do things the
way we've always done them.
Like we've had to, you know, help these folks figure out new strategies, strategies that
work in 2015, 2017, as opposed to 2008, you know?
Yeah, I think that's a perfect segue, because we're about running out of time here.
But I wanted to end by talking about the future, because you're obviously in an industry where
things change pretty rapidly.
And it's almost like this arms race where advertising changes, and consumers adjust
their behavior, and then advertising changes again, etc, etc.
And I think it's going in a good direction where like ads today are like less obnoxious
than they used to be, because you can't get away with field stuff.
But what do you see is like the future of the advertising industry and where are you
taking buy sell ads.
And then as a follow up to that, you know, I think a lot of listeners are kind of early
on in their companies, like how do you how do you see super early nascent companies using
advertising?
And, you know, do you have any tips for them?
So I believe the future of advertising on the web is like everything on the web more
authenticity.
I think the web is is amazing.
It's like, you know, I can't imagine like not being online for for, you know, maybe
more than seven days, right?
Or for like not being able to get online for for a week.
So I mean, it really comes out more authenticity, like I mean, look at ad blocker adoption rates,
they're literally going through the roof.
So consumers are voting with ad blockers, telling ad tech companies and publishers that
they don't want to be annoyed.
This kind of stuff is amazing for a business like buy sell ads, because we do everything
that is the antithesis of annoyed users, at least that's what we work towards.
And so, you know, I love seeing advertising, excuse me, consumers have that vote.
Is there like a
I've got like some music blaring.
I don't hear it.
It sounds good for me.
We pay attention.
Whoa.
Hang on.
I'm sorry.
No problem.
So you feel clean, sharp and not just ready, but super ready.
Oh, well, sorry.
Yeah, I think so.
That actually got interrupted because I had some tab open that started automatically playing
a video ad.
So how ironic, right?
Like literally as I'm on this podcast would be like, some advertisers money was spent
unwisely against me who's not even paying attention to the browser tab that's open.
So like, you know, I think the situation we're in with ad tech and advertising and making
money on the web through advertising is that it's still the wild, wild west.
I mean, I feel like I used to refer to 2008 as the wild, wild west.
I think it's even more so the wild, wild west now.
Things are starting to get cleaned up now because users are able to vote with their
attention through methods and tools like ad blocking.
You know, we've always felt as though companies haven't actually been out there building software
in publishers and consumers best interest for quite a while.
And that's what we exist to do.
I think it's fortunate with indie hackers at Stripe because there are some parallels
in terms of what we're trying to do for advertising that Stripe was able to do for merchant processing.
We're trying to bring publishers easier access to monetization by making it far more simple,
but at the same time really raising the bar for quality on both sides so that people are
getting like an incredible exchange of value there in the middle.
And that's our role is to be in the middle and help enable that exchange of value with
as little friction as possible.
So I mean, I'm sure people at Stripe are sick of hearing Stripe for X, Stripe for Y, Stripe
for Z for the last like five years now, but now I can assure you, I can assure you they
love it.
But that's I mean, it's similar to that, right?
Like we're trying to reduce friction, raise the bar for quality and have some fun in the
meantime.
Awesome.
And that's a good vision of the web in the future, more authenticity as users get more
control and more tools that allow them to filter out the stuff that they hate.
Can you tell listeners a little bit about, you know, where they can find you and learn
more about you and Bicell ads online?
Yeah, sure thing.
So Bicell ads is Bicellads.com on Twitter at Bicell ads, myself on Twitter at Totto,
T-O-D-D-O, or shoot me an email, Todd at Todd Garland.com.
And yeah, I mean, feel free to reach out.
Happy to chat with folks.
Awesome, Todd.
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Thank you for having me, Courtland.
Thanks for listening, folks.
Bye.
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