What's up, everybody?
This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to the IndieHackers podcast.
On this show, I talk to the founders of profitable internet businesses, and I try to get a sense
of what it's like to be in their shoes.
How did they get to where they are today?
How did it make decisions, both of their companies and in their personal lives, and what exactly
makes their businesses tick?
And the goal here, as always, is so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and
go on to build our own profitable internet businesses.
Today, I am talking to Dominic Monn.
Dominic, welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
You are the founder of Mentor Cruise, which is a side project you've been working on for
a number of years.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about what it is and who uses it?
Yeah.
So what Mentor Cruise is, it's a marketplace for people in tech to find a mentor.
So if you're just getting into tech, if you want to reach for a promotion, learn something
new, or if you want to change your career into tech, it's nice to have someone in the
boat with you, someone who can kind of guide you through that process.
And that's what Mentor Cruise is here for, for people to find someone to get them through
their journey.
It's the marketplace right now.
So we have a list of 160 mentors that you can search for.
It's all about being in tech.
So there are design mentors, there are engineering mentors for different technologies, but also
mentors for people in management, product management, things like that.
And people can look for these mentors, get in touch with them, usually for a weekly fee
between zero to $50 per week, they get matched up with them formally, and start working together
with them on a long-term basis.
I love that.
So pretty much anything you want to do in tech, anything you want to get good at or any new
job you want to have, I can go on Mentor Cruise and find somebody who's already an expert
and then pay them to basically what, spend an hour with me just talking on video chat
or something?
No, that's the difference about Mentor Cruise is that it's for a long-term mentorship.
So you pay a weekly fee.
And during that time period, you have an open chat connection with your mentor.
You can organize the mentorship as you want.
So some mentors do provide like weekly video calls where you check in.
Some others do it twice per month or once per month to check in.
But the idea is that you can book a mentor and stay with that mentor for months, if not
even years.
We have a few mentorships now.
We've been going on for one and a half years.
And just to have somebody during the whole process, whatever you might want to have,
want to learn or what you want to achieve, that during that whole time you have access
to a mentor that you can write anytime.
Very cool.
I have a chess coach who I pay 30 bucks a week to be with.
I love the whole idea of having somebody who's an expert to help you out because it's a
forcing function.
I will be lazy most of the week and not really practice chess.
And then Wednesday is coming up and I'm like, oh shit, I don't want to be embarrassed and
not have done anything.
And so then I get my stuff together and it just motivates me to be better.
It's an excellent source of accountability.
I think that's the first ever observation I got from this is that mentors tend to give
you the resources that you could find on the internet to yourself.
But they're there for you to have someone to check in.
You have a source of accountability.
You have somebody who knows your process.
And I think that's why this kind of coaching thing is coming up more and more now.
Yeah, the internet is such a valuable source of information.
You can find pretty much everything, but it's missing that crucial ingredient, which is
motivation.
Just because the information is there, it doesn't mean you're actually going to find it.
And it doesn't mean you're going to motivate yourself to read it and sit down every week.
But somebody else can sort of light a fire under your butt and get you to do those things.
That's right.
So you said that we have a list of 160 mentors, but actually Mentor Cruise is just you.
It's your side project.
It's a one person operation.
And I think you're making something around $700 a month now.
Is that correct?
That's right.
What motivated you to start this side project?
So I started this a while ago, as you said, I think I got the idea in 2017.
And my background is a bit unusual.
I went through this apprenticeship program at a VF here in Switzerland for software engineering.
And kind of towards the end of that, I was getting into machine learning and started
to kind of teach that myself through courses and Udacity.
And Udacity has a thing where you get them for at least at the time, you got a mentor
with your course or with your degree.
So also somebody who checks in with you, somebody who keeps you accountable.
And I really like that.
So when I left Udacity, I lost access to that mentor.
I was going into an internship at a big tech company, which was quite demanding.
And I had to study, I had to learn and keep up.
And during that time, I would have really liked to have a mentor too.
So I got this idea of what if I built a site where anybody could go and find a mentor,
not just if you're in a course, not just if you're in school or if you're in a job, just
somebody who sticks with you, no matter what, if you change jobs or schools or whatever.
I love how that's basically on your own experience.
So you had, as you said, an apprenticeship, which is very much like having a long-term
mentor.
And then you had your mentor on Udacity.
So you also got like kind of a second shot at having a mentor.
So it's no surprise that you could build a mentorship platform, you kind of know exactly
what needs to go into it, because you've been in that position before.
Yeah, I mean, I think mentorship is immensely valuable.
Even when I went into my internship, I had a mentor again.
And I just think it's somebody who kind of went through whatever you went through.
So they can point out the kind of tripping wires and can help you get further quicker.
But the problem is always if you switch employers, if you switch schools, if you switch from
an apprenticeship or an internship, you're essentially losing access to that mentor.
And even if you have a new mentor, you need to kind of bring them up to speed.
So having somebody from a third party with you is quite valuable in my opinion.
So I've never been to Switzerland, where you live.
I'm curious what the tech scene is like there.
How do people react if you tell them that you're working remotely for a Silicon Valley
startup and that you're also building your own app on the side?
Yeah.
So there is a tech scene in Switzerland or in Zurich specifically where I live.
It's quite smaller.
I think the Europe hub is more in kind of the Nordic countries in Sweden.
But there are definitely a few interesting startups here there.
I think a lot of the startups are based around kind of financial tech or fintech.
That's kind of what Switzerland is known for, banks.
So a lot of the startups here are also trying to break through in that space.
But there's also kind of a world class university here, which provides a new source of people
that start startups.
So I think a lot of people here are in kind of the same boat as me where they're working
and kind of working on something else on the side.
But having this aspect of working remotely, as I said, I'm working remotely from here
for a San Francisco startup, I think is quite special.
So I think that combination is not as common.
But at least for me, I think it's quite nice because you get kind of both sides of the
coin where you're working for a startup, which is obviously very exciting.
But then you have this little thing on the side that you have during nights and weekends
where you have kind of full control and you can bring your creativity in that end.
I mean, essentially, if you're building a side project that is generating revenue, you're
really every employee.
So you're responsible for marketing, you're responsible for building this.
Yeah, you're responsible for product, you're responsible for sales.
So I think that builds a very broad skill set, which is probably quite in demand nowadays
too.
Yeah, it's super interesting as a founder to also work at a company because you see everybody
with these specialized skill sets, which you realize, as you said, you also have to do
all those specialized skill sets yourself when you're a founder, that maybe you don't
go quite as deep as everybody, but you have to go broad and you have to understand the
trade-off between when have I written enough code and when do I need to focus more on sales
and what's the interplay between these things that when you're just sort of one employee
at a company, you don't have to think that broadly.
Yeah, and I think that's super exciting and super valuable as well, especially if you
work in engineering and more of the technical side.
I think a lot of people tend to lose focus of the greater thing and just worry about
the engineering parts of it.
So if you have something on the side and you work on marketing and sales and design and
all that stuff, I think you're starting to kind of see things again from a bigger view.
How do you juggle having the time to work a full-time job and also have a side project
that's a full business for you where you're trying to generate revenue?
Because I think a lot of people want to do that, but it's really hard to work up the
motivation to find the time.
How do you do that, Dominik?
I think it's a matter of planning.
I think you have kind of the block of day work, which is kind of blocked out for the
company that you're working for, but there are a lot of hours around that and you need
to find a way to use the time that's available to you for the best reasons.
So as a remote worker, I don't have a commute, so I get a bit of extra time every day.
But even if you have half an hour or an hour every day, you need to plan every day, what
am I going to do with this specific hour?
And then you end up with a backlog and you end up throwing things away that aren't as
important for the things that are more important, and you tend to specialize or concentrate on
the things that are truly important to the app or to building that side business.
I think then the more time the better, but if you have an hour every evening and maybe
some time on the weekends, I think you can do quite a bit with today's tools.
I love that point about being willing to throw away things that are less important for things
that are more important, because time is sort of this fixed thing.
It's really hard to create more time, even if you're a super efficient planner.
At the end of the day, you still have this fixed amount of time.
And so you kind of have to shift the scope of what you're working on to match that fixed
amount of time.
And that might require being pretty ruthless about not building that feature you really
wanted to build or not sending that email you really wanted to send, because you just
don't have time to do it.
Yeah, that's right.
Do you remember what your planning looked like in the very early days of Mentor Cruise
when you were first getting started?
Yeah, I think that's quite different from anybody else.
But in the beginning, my to-do list for Mentor Cruise was always quite empty.
I had the features that I wanted, but especially after I had built kind of the MVP, I concentrated
100% on marketing.
And that's where I tried out a lot of things and kind of just reserved 20, 30 minutes per
day to try out a new channel, to post things on Reddit, to write something.
Nowadays, it's a lot more complicated.
I kind of have a user base now that has given me feedback.
I need to work on building new features.
I need to work on marketing and getting the word out.
So I think now it's actually quite more difficult to balance that.
What about the pre-MVP days?
When you were just first starting to build what would eventually become Mentor Cruise?
How long did it take you to get to the point where people could actually use it?
Well, way too long.
That's the first part.
Yeah, back then I was in my internship, so I had to commute a very long one, like three
hours.
Three hours?
Yeah, so it was like one and a half hours each way.
So there wasn't a lot of time.
And I also didn't understand what an MVP is, so I had way too many features on my plan.
So I guess the implementation part maybe took three or four months, and that was really
just like every day, one, two hours, or maybe if I went to sleep a little later it was three
or four hours, and then on the weekends.
And then it probably took me like one or two months where I was doing some pre-launch marketing
because it's a marketplace, so I had to get mentors on there before I was able to launch
this.
So I worked another month or two on just doing that.
Talked to Chad Pytel on the podcast a few months back.
He's the CEO of a development agency called Thoughtbot.
And they build all these different products for different clients and help them launch
their MVPs.
And every single client they have, they say the same thing.
You don't need half of these features you think you really need to launch.
Let's pare it down and get you just the essentials and you can iterate from there.
But then when they're building their own internal products and tools, they fall into the same
trap.
And they find themselves justifying that they need to put out this feature in their MVP
and that feature in and it's just really hard to keep the scope small early on.
But four months still isn't that long.
Especially working an hour a day, it seems like you were pretty successful at reducing
the scope.
Yeah, I think, I mean, one part of it is definitely also, again, that you have this new feature
on your plan.
And then when you actually have to build it in your one or two hours of free time, you
start asking yourself, do I really need to build this or can I build this?
Yeah, maybe a little bit more lightweight.
So one good example was, for example, an appointment scheduler.
So you want to be able to ask your mentor for a video call and then you want to be able
to schedule this.
So right at the beginning, I was planning on writing my own kind of scheduling thing.
And then I was thinking, well, there are other services that are calendly and all these things.
Why don't I just provide a link to that and let people do it themselves?
Boom.
And suddenly you've saved like two months.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think a lot of things started going like that, where I was thinking to myself,
do I really need to build my own chat?
Do I really need to build my own task management software and then start using software that's
available?
So one of the challenges with a business like Mentor Cruise is that it's a marketplace.
You're trying to connect these two different groups of people.
You have mentors on one side, mentees on the other.
And it's notoriously difficult to get a marketplace off the ground because no one wants to be
the first.
Why would you be a mentor on a platform where there's no one to mentor?
And why would you be a mentee on a platform where there's nobody to mentor you?
How did you get over that hump in the early days?
Yeah.
So I was aware of that difficulty, right, when I kind of planned this.
So my plan was before I even launched a platform, I should have at least like 30 mentors already
on there, like day one when I launched.
So as I told you, I was building the platform.
And then when it was about done, I realized, oh, now I need to fill it up.
So I had this very, very small landing page up.
It was basically just Mentor Cruise connecting mentors and mentees and then an email field.
And I was reaching out to people on Twitter.
And I think like probably a few hundred people actually, people who work in tech who are
more on the senior side, but also a lot of people who have a certain audience and following
and was DMing them and asking, hey, I'm building this platform.
You're able to make some money with it, but not too much.
Would you be interested on mentoring some people?
And a lot of people didn't answer me.
A lot of people didn't reply.
Some people gave me their email address, I think in the end, like 60, if I remember correctly,
like 60 people gave me their email address.
So at 60, I was kind of confident and launched this.
And on the first few days, I had about like 10 or 12 people actually going through and
creating their profile on Mentor Cruise, which isn't a lot, but I had 12 people on there
who were available and people could book them.
And yeah, the added thing is I was looking for people as a certain following.
So people tweeted it out, at least some of the 12 people had a bit of an audience.
So they tweeted it out, said, hey, I'm on Mentor Cruise.
Would you like to work with me?
And that kind of gave the first boost of people coming in.
Reminds me a lot of the early days of Indie Hackers, sending hundreds of emails, most
people not replying, and then I ended up launching with like 10 or 12 interviews or something.
But when you're early on, that's all that really matters.
It's like, you know, a dozen or something is probably all you really need to get started.
You can grow from there.
I was talking about doing things that don't scale on a podcast episode last year.
And somebody commented and said, I like the Indie Hackers podcast, except for when they
get into this really basic stuff, like do things that don't scale.
And I just roll my eyes.
And I think of it so differently, whereas for me, those are the fundamentals.
And the fundamentals in anything you do are the most important thing you can do.
And it's really easy to confuse, I think, being familiar with a particular bit of advice
because it's so cliche.
It gets repeated all the time, you know, solve your own problems, do things that don't scale,
talk to your users.
It's like, oh, I'm so familiar with this.
I must understand it.
But just because you're familiar with something doesn't mean you understand it.
Yeah, that's right.
And just because you understand it doesn't mean you're adhering to it.
Like you could know all this stuff and not actually do it.
So I really like that you kind of, you know, button down the hatches early on, and you
just talk to as many people as possible.
And you knew that even though marketplaces are hard to start, that as long as you sort
of focus on one side first, and you get that built up, you send a ton of emails and a ton
of direct messages, then you can sort of go to the other side and try to convince the
mentees to join the platform.
What happened with that side of the market?
Did people actually respond well when you first launched?
Yeah, I think a lot of people responded very well.
There was a lot of the followers of the initial mentors who said, hey, I wanted to talk to
you for a while, so let's get started.
There was also this Udacity crowd, which was kind of in the same boat as me.
So I knew that people would lose their mentors quickly, and then people started coming in
and either signing up as a mentor themselves or want to get continued mentorship from that.
And then over time, I built this base of mentors, so they were able to bring more people in.
And then also some SAO effect kicked in where people actually searching for mentors got
shown our website on Google.
And I think it's quite compelling if you say, I'm looking for a Python mentor, a machine
learning mentor.
When you actually see 10 people you can book right now, we're able to teach you that.
I think that's quite powerful and people started noticing that and kind of coming through those
channels too.
What do you think was the biggest single channel for helping you find more mentees for your
platform?
Oh, right now it's SEO and Google for sure.
What about finding more mentors?
Because I know you have considerably more than just those initial 12.
How have you continued to get more people to come on to mentor crews and agree to mentor
others?
Yeah, that's a great question.
A lot of it has been the same thing, really messaging loads and loads of people and seeing
if they're interested.
And I think with size, mentor crews got a little bit more credible.
So I see now before I launched or at the early days, I messaged 100 people.
I've written every message by hand and personal, by the way.
I don't really like spamming, but I messaged those people and out of 100 people, maybe
like 10 answered me and eight of those answers have been, no, I'm not interested, thank you.
And now when I message 10 or 20 people because I really like them and I think they really
do great work, then it's a little bit different than people see the platform and people like
it and I think that they're great that they're getting approached.
So I think it's a lot more attractive to people essentially.
How does your business model work because you're making 700 bucks a month.
I see you're just taking a small cut of what the mentees are paying the mentors.
That's right.
So that's the main channel right now.
We're taking 15% of average transaction.
There are a few more channels now coming.
We recently launched sessions, which instead of signing up for a mentor long term, you
can sign up with them and get like a CV review.
And we get a fixed price on top of that, not a percentage, but there are a lot of things
I want to discover in the future because scaling that little cut is really, really difficult.
And I don't really want to make it more expensive because it's basically taking away from the
money that people earn and that seems kind of predatory.
So exploring other revenue sources is something that's on my plan very soon.
Yeah, that's an interesting pool.
You kind of have, on one hand, you want to make as much money as possible yourself, but
on the other hand, your platform is more attractive if your mentors are making as much money as
possible.
And so it's like, how do you figure out the equilibrium point where you're sort of doing
the best in both areas?
That's right.
I like that Mentor Cruise is focused on consumers.
You're really selling this to average individuals, you're not selling this to businesses.
Some of the most common advices as a founder, you should sell to businesses.
They have the money and they pay for more things than consumers do.
But I do think there is kind of a group of things that consumers are happy to pay a lot
of money for.
And education and learning, especially if you're teaching somebody something valuable
that they think can make them more money in the future or give them a career, people are
happy to fork over thousands of dollars, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars to do things
like go to college or join a programming bootcamp or maybe even have a mentor.
How do you think about the fact that you're selling to consumers?
How do you think about trying to convince them that this is something worth paying for
when, quite frankly, most people don't pay for mentors and aren't really used to doing
so?
I think that was a big deal in the beginning because mentorship traditionally isn't paid
for.
I think that's closer to coaching and things like that.
So a lot of people were a little bit upset about that at first.
But essentially, that doesn't matter when people really want a mentor and they're lacking
the network, they're lacking people they can reach out to.
It's just very, very convenient to have someone saying, hey, give me $10 per week, which isn't
a ton of money, and I'm going to be with you at every step of the journey.
And yeah, at times, I think that selling to consumers is a little bit cumbersome, especially
at times when you have somebody, you know, spending $10 and then sending 10 emails because
they weren't satisfied and want a refund.
Yeah.
Yeah, then I'm asking myself, is this really worth it?
But as you said, people like to pay for development progress, education.
So there are people, you know, paying $200 to $400 per month, really, for a mentor.
And they say it's totally worth it and they would do it as long as they have that disposable
income that they can do for self-improvement.
You wrote a milestone on your NdHackerage product page for Mentor Cruise.
Last month, you said, I just wrote 120 emails.
And so you went into your database, you queried all of your power users.
These are mentees who've been signed up with mentors for six months or more who've paid
over $1,000 for Mentor Cruise over time.
And you wrote a personal unique email for each and every one of these people.
How did that turn out?
Did you learn anything?
Yeah, that was probably the most amazing thing I've done in the past few months.
And we were talking before about talking to your users.
And I think I was part of that crowd who said, oh, I know what talking to my users is, because
I'm sending surveys during with my email newsletter a few times and I get a few responses on that.
So I'm totally talking to my users.
But at some point, I realized that I'm getting all messages from people who are not satisfied.
People want refunds, people who give bad ratings, things like that.
But I never thought about reaching out to people who, where everything just goes smoothly.
So yeah, that's what I did.
I got maybe like 20 or 30 replies from those 100 plus emails.
I should probably follow up more with more people, but it was amazing to discover what
kind of people are on the platform and what they use it for.
And I think I was kind of missing that before because I tried to put everyone in a survey
or somewhere as a data point.
But if you send everyone email, you get the personal stories behind it.
And I'm not sure if it's another indie hacker milestone, but a few of kind of success stories
came out of that from Ryan Wilson, who's a pro basketball player or used to be a pro
basketball player in the UK.
And then after he got retired, he wants to get into cybersecurity and kind of got into
that with the help of one of our mentors.
And I'm talking to another long term mentee right now who's paid beyond $1,000 for mentorship
from two or three different mentors now who's an Afghanistan veteran and is kind of trying
to break into full stack development with the help of two or three of our mentors.
So yeah, those stories are just amazing.
And I think you don't hear about them if you just send an email newsletter or put everyone
in a survey or something like that.
It's interesting to try to think about who you're listening to in terms of your user
base because you mentioned that, okay, when you send one type of email, you're getting
responses from the disgruntled users who are unhappy and want fixes or changes or refunds.
And if you identify the best users, you get a totally different type of feedback and totally
different stories.
And I think it's hard to decide, should I be improving things for the people who are
unhappy?
Should I be fixing bugs and issues and sort of, you know, making the minimum experience
better?
Or should I be doubling down on the things that are working really well for the users
who are having a good experience?
What do you think is the best way forward for mentor crews?
Yeah, I think you need to listen to both sides.
But obviously, if somebody is disgruntled, somebody didn't like the service.
In many cases, it's something that you can't do anything about it.
You know, sometimes some expectations were met, sometimes something went bad.
So you need to listen for things that are reoccurring, I think.
And if you see that, you know, people cancel your service and leave your platform because
of this one reason every time, that's something you should listen to and something you need
to improve on.
But on the other side, if you talk to people who like your service, and they tell you,
hey, I'd really appreciate if you do that or this.
That's probably something that could make your service better for the people that are
already there and make them stay longer.
So both are very, very valuable.
Listen, Dominic, I am a fan of mentor crews.
I'm a fan of mentorship in general, and I think most people listening to this podcast
would probably be better off if they found some mentors too.
Can you let us know what your advice is for people who are in the position where they
need mentors, people who are just now starting side projects or considering starting side
projects so they're kind of where you were a couple of years ago?
What would you say to them?
Yeah, get someone in the boat with you.
That's my number one advice.
Be through mentor crews or through your network.
I think, you know, Indie Hackers is another great platform where you can get people to
be part of your journey.
And yeah, I think especially when you're building a side project, but also if you're changing
careers that are learning something new, it's a long process and you need a lot of motivation.
And I think not a lot of people who aren't in the same boat as you can give you that
type of motivation.
So yeah, get somebody who stays with you.
Get to know some people at Indie Hackers meetups or in the forums or, you know, if you don't
know anybody who can help you head over to mentorcruise.com and get somebody there.
Thanks so much, Dominic, for coming on the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Can you tell us where we can go to find out more about you and what you're up to at Mentor
Cruise or get in touch if anyone's interested?
Yeah, I'm pretty active on Twitter.
You can find me at dqmon, that's DQ-M-O-N-N.
I'm also on Indie Hackers.
I think my name might be DQ-M-O-N-N too, but you will see my face in the forums and I'll
also be in the comments under this podcast for sure.
And yeah, if you're looking for a mentor, go over to mentorcruise.com.
We have 160 mentors in tech.
So if you want to have somebody on the journey with you, that's a good place to go.
Thanks again, Dominic.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Quick note for listeners, if you're interested in coming onto the podcast to have a quick
chat with me, go to IndieHackers.com-milestones and post a milestone about whatever it is
that you're working on.
I mean, pretty much anything.
People have posted about launching or finding their first customers.
They posted about growing their mailing list or hitting $1,000 on Twitter.
They posted about getting to $100 or $1,000 or $100,000 a month in revenue.
The sky is the limit.
So whatever it is you're proud of, come post it on IndieHackers.com-milestones and the
rest of us will help you celebrate.
And what I will do is at the end of every week, I'll look at the top milestones posted
and reach out to people to invite them to come onto the show for a quick chat.
So once again, that's IndieHackers.com-milestones.
I'm looking forward to seeing what you post.