What's up, everyone? 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 do they
get to where they are today? How do they make decisions both at their companies and in their
personal lives? And what exactly makes your businesses tick? Today, I'm talking to Christine
Spang, the co-founder and CTO of a very cool company called Nihilus. Christine, welcome
to the show, and thanks for joining me.
Hey, Cortland. Thanks so much for inviting me to be on the show. I've heard about IndieHackers
for a long time, so it's a real honor to actually be on the show.
And I've heard about Nihilus for a long time, and I was actually a user of your desktop-based
email application back in the day.
Wow. Super cool.
Yeah. So can you explain to us what Nihilus is and how it works?
Yeah. So the basic gist of Nihilus is that email has been around for a really long time,
and it's essentially the lingua franca of business. When people are talking between
different organizations, they're communicating, they're organizing collaboration, meetings,
sharing documents, all sorts of things like that, they do it through email. And yet, because
email's been around for so long, it's been around for about 50 years, longer than the
web itself, it's become really hard to develop with over time. It's a global distributed
system that has many different client-server implementations. And while there are open protocols
for working with email, because there are so many different implementations, there is
a lot of kind of edge cases and complexity that you have to deal with.
So we built Nihilus in order to drastically simplify the experience of developing software
that works with email. So the basic product is a modern REST API that allows you to connect
to any email mailbox, as well as anyone's calendar and address book, all through one
really simple API. So if you used APIs like Stripe or Twilio, it's kind of like that,
but for email.
Okay, so for the non-developers in the audience, it's very difficult for a developer to build
an app that includes email integration or calendar integration, because it's just too
complex. And what Christine has been working on at Nihilus for the last few years is building
an API that any programmer can plug into, and that allows them to easily build an app
that includes email or calendar or contact integration.
What we've kind of like seen in kind of the software market and trends in the last few
years is more and more folks building business productivity tools that allow you to kind
of be better at some kind of job, but also need to pull like communication and collaboration
information. And the data for that is an email. So all these folks need to be able to integrate
with email and we make that release.
I wish you had existed, what, like eight or nine years ago, when I first started making
apps online, because the very first three things that I made were all intimately connected
with email. I made, I think the very first app I ever coded was an app that you checked
your Gmail instead of Facebook. And then after that, it was an app that you created advanced
filters for Gmail. So you could say, you know, if I get an email with this many attachments
or this many recipients, I want you to delay it until this time of day or something like
that.
And then I made an app that let you turn your emails into tasks and check them off. And every
single one of them I had to integrate with email and there was no API like Nylus. And
so I had to go do all that stuff myself. And it was a good learning experience, but it
was extremely frustrating. So I understand why a company like yours can exist. But let
me ask you here right off the bat, emails are notoriously difficult to work with as
a programmer. And then on the sales side of things, I think most people think of emails
as being free. So you've got this dual challenge of starting a company where it's really hard
to build what you're building. And also the people in your market aren't exactly used
to paying for stuff. Why do this to yourself? Why start an email company?
Yeah, funny story. So in the beginning, actually, the, the like product division for Nylus was
to eventually create an email client for power users. So the infrastructure side actually
kind of fell out of this initial product division of building an email client. But we actually
did realize that it was going to be difficult to build an email client, which is actually
why we started out with this kind of data abstraction layer. So the advice we got was
like, you need like 10 engineers for a year just to build like the basic version. And
we're like, well, we don't have 10 engineers or a year. So maybe we won't do that. So we
kind of took a step back and are like, what's a stepping stone that could help us get there
that might also be useful to other people. And that's how we ended up building this,
essentially, like middleware layer API that abstracts away all the complexity of dealing
with mail providers. And I can talk a little bit more about this. You mentioned earlier
that you were a user of n1 or Nylus mail, which actually is the email client that we
built. And this email client was originally built, backed by the data API is that we sell
today. So if I were to draw out the timeline of the company, it was like, original start,
we want to build email client for power users, decide that was too hard, started building
the data API is launched those as like an open source repo, which is an interesting
thing that we did to kind of get the word out in the beginning, because we knew that
we were going to have to like, get developers excited about what we were doing, because
we were essentially like, saying, Hey, here's like a new way to develop with email and trust
us to be a good service provider for you. So first, we released kind of the basic API
is an open source repo and GitHub and did a bunch of press around that. And then we turn
that into a SAS service, which is actually the same service that we run today. So we
first launched that in like, fall of 2014, I believe it's been a few years at this point.
And pretty soon after we had launched this, like, kind of SAS API, we started working
on this email client that was based off the API, and probably spent like two years total
working on that, learned a lot. And I would say this ties back to what you were talking
about in terms of like, it being a challenge to kind of monetize email, and that like,
the email client, it was a pretty challenging business model to figure out where we had
these developer APIs, and we had the email client. And we very easily got a lot of people
to like download and try out the email client. But because people expect email clients to
be free, no one really wanted to pay for just the base email client. So we were building
these essentially like plugin packages into the email client that were essentially to
like, kind of make email, the email client have really tight integrations with other
products. That was our long term plan for being able to like monetize that email client.
But as you can imagine, building like three major products as a tiny startup is incredibly
difficult. And we just saw a lot of churn on the email client, like people would try
it. And then they, you know, there were kind of like early adopters who would go on to
the next big thing afterwards. And people who didn't want to pay for the base email
client. And it was a real struggle for us to kind of also build products on top of that,
that we could sell for more money.
Yeah, I bet. So what did you guys do after you decided to pivot away from the email client?
Yeah, so I basically went back to our roots. All of that time when we were working on the
email client, we were still developing and selling the email data infrastructure API's.
And we had a few companies come on board in the early days that started out super small
and had been growing all of that whole time. So we essentially like took a look at the
business metrics of our two different products for the data API's and the email client and
found that the business metrics for the email client were really bad. You know, we have
lots of people download it, try it. And the churn within like two months was like 90%
or something like that, which is really hard to turn into any sort of sustainable business
because your customers trend down, turned out towards zero over time. So you just would
have to spend like infinite money and marketing. But at the same time, looking at the metrics
for our our data infrastructure API's, it was kind of the opposite story. Actually,
we found that when people started using the API's, they would start out small. And other
usage would grow over time. So they would connect more mailboxes to their applications,
they would get users and we would then be powering those users as well. And so it's
almost kind of the opposite situation where we found that that product is really sticky.
And people will build build the API's into their product to power their email features
and their usage would increase over time. So the the way that we charge for the API's
is essentially like per connected mailbox. So any email address that is connected to
an application through Nihilus, we build a developer of that application for that mailbox.
And yeah, just looking at the metrics for that API is that it started out super small,
but it's very steadily growing. And the growth metrics that we were seeing there were really,
really promising. So essentially, what it came down to was we decided to shut down development
on the mail client. And we essentially spun it off as its own open source project. And
one of the original developers on that mail client still maintains it. There's a fork
called mill, which if if you want to continue to use Nihilus mail, I recommend you use the
fork because we're not developing Nihilus mail anymore. So we spun that off and completely
stopped developing it and refocused completely on the data API's, which just made much more
sense as a business. That transition was complete about a year and a half ago, I would say.
And how are things going nowadays? Can you share any numbers around the amount of revenue
you're generating or the number of customers you have or the size of your company?
Yeah, for sure. So kind of just the things is that we've now been around for about five
years. The team is about 35 people. And a lot of that growth has been recently. So I
would say that about a year ago, we're about 15 people and now we're 35. So it's quite
a lot more. We are making millions of dollars in revenue each year. I won't get into exact
specifics there. But we have about 200 paying customers that are using the platform. So
those are all other businesses that are using us to power different features in their applications
or internal tools. There's all sorts of different use cases, not just kind of people building
other pieces of software. Anytime you want to access any of the data or automate things
in email, the Nihilus API's are a good fit for that.
Nice. Congratulations on all of that. It's got to feel, I imagine, really good to be
in a position where you're generating millions of revenue, you probably feel very secure,
where not too long ago, the mail client you're working on wasn't really working out the way
that you planned. Did you imagine at that point in time that things could have taken
a turn like they have?
That's a good question. It was definitely pretty rocky for a while there where we weren't
really sure what the future of the business was going to be. But I'm kind of a person
who takes things one week at a time and I don't give up until it's obviously totally
not working and because we never reached a point where there was no way forward, it just
worked out. But it does feel good. I would say that there are almost more challenges
over time as you grow a company because there's just so many more moving parts and complexity.
We now have an entire sales and marketing department, which in the early days of the
company was all engineers. So that's been a kind of new thing that's been really interesting
and also it's tricky in terms of your culture will change over time as you add different
sorts of people and have to figure out how to work well together. At this point, I'm
basically a full-time manager. I rarely write code on our product anymore. I think that's
a really healthy thing. If you start a company and you expect to grow it, you should want
to learn the skills of management and want to get good at them because that's the way
to have the most leverage as a founder of a company once it's beyond 20 people.
That's a tough lesson to learn, especially as a developer who used to all the productivity
sort of coming out of yourself. If something is going to get done, you sit down and you
do it and it can be hard for a lot of first-time founders who are developers to realize the
power that lies in delegating and having other people who you trust to get things done and
how much more effective you can be if you let them do those things and you work with
them.
Yeah, for sure. I feel like before a year ago, it was still at a point where I could
do some things myself and that was fine. But doubling the company in the past year, it's
completely changed. But also in a good way in that we hired a bunch more engineers and
now I actually don't feel like I need to hold up the product and the system because there
are a lot of really smart, competent people that I'm working with who are honestly better
at many of the things that I used to do. So it's really exciting to see.
Let's go back to the early days where you were doing a lot of coding.
Yeah.
Before then, how did you first learn to code? Because a lot of people listening in want
to start companies and they're in a position where they don't know how to code and they're
wondering if they should learn or how they can best learn. What's the story behind how
you got into programming?
Yeah, totally. So the basic gist of it is that in high school, well, even before high
school, I started out being into computer games and all sorts of different computer
games from Warcraft and Starcraft and Privateer and all these kinds of things. And essentially
I was trying to find games that could let me escape into other worlds. And eventually
this led me to this sort of online game called MUDs or multi-user dungeons. I don't know
if you've heard of them, but they're basically like tech-based games that you play across
the internet. And so in high school, I started playing this Lord of the Rings themed MUD
called Shadows of Isildur. And I have this habit of ending up in charge of things just
through force of curiosity, I guess. So I got really into this game. I played a lot.
Eventually the people who ran it were like, hey, help us run the game. So I started helping
run it, kind of building areas of the world, using the in-game tools, running storylines
and plots, because it was a very role-playing intensive game. And eventually I wanted to
be able to do things in that role that involved changing the game mechanics itself. So basically
I had to learn to code. And the game engine was written in C. And I don't really recommend
C as the first language, but I essentially started teaching myself C in high school in
order to work on this game engine. And the game engine also only ran on Linux. So I had
to get my brother to help me install Linux on my computer. And somehow we managed to
not brick our Windows installation while doing that. It was before the days when the partition
editor in the Linux installer is completely foolproof. So if you press the wrong button,
you can wipe your whole hard drive. It was super scary.
Well, it sounds like you really wanted to make changes to this game. And you're willing
to jump through hoops, learn how to code and risk bricking your entire computer to do it.
Which I think is great because for a lot of people it's difficult to learn how to code.
There's lots of frustrating periods where you ask yourself, why am I even doing this?
And if you don't have that sort of drive, this thing you want to work on to learn, then
it's easy to just give up.
Yeah, totally. But it's kind of funny, through this experience of wanting to contribute to
this game, I got introduced to the free and open source software community surrounding
Linux. So the distribution that I installed when I was in high school was this distribution
called Debian, which is a really popular Linux distro that's also kind of the foundation
of many other Linux distros. Through that, I learned about open source and the free software
where it came from. And that ultimately led me to want to go to MIT because I heard that
free software came from MIT. This sounds really awesome. I want to go there. So that's essentially
how I ended up going to MIT is because I started teaching myself to program and then discovered
free software.
So let me ask, when did you start learning about entrepreneurship and startups and running
a business? Because that's something that's very tangential to learning how to code. And
most people I've talked to who've ended up starting a startup have spent some time reading
about it and dreaming about it before they got started. What's the story there for you?
I kind of consider myself to be a bit of an accidental entrepreneur. So I basically ended
up in startups through a free and open source software in that, like when I was in college,
I essentially got all of my college internships through my connections in like the open source
software communities, including my first job out of college, which was this startup called
Ksplice, which was started by a few people that I knew, computer club, or the student
information processing board, which was the full name of this club because it had been
around for so long that they called computing information processing back in the day.
I joined this startup that was started by some friends of mine. And that was like my
first experience with any sort of entrepreneurship. It was a really interesting, super cool company
in that it was totally bootstrapped. So like they never raised any money for Ksplice other
than they won the MIT 100K entrepreneurship competition, which was like one way they got
some initial funding for the company. And then also we got some like small business
research grants from the government. And other than that, like Ksplice was totally bootstrapped
company that built itself up through revenue and eventually. So I was there for basically
like a year and a half, including the few months that I spent working there as a senior
at MIT. And then the founders sold that company to Oracle. So I kind of got to see like the
whole arc of like a lifetime of a startup in one kind of iteration through Ksplice.
And I would say that's like my first experience with entrepreneurship.
Did that inspire you to start your own company after that? Or did you feel that, oh, that
was a cool experience, but I still want to keep on the path as a developer and maybe
go into the industry?
Yeah, honestly, I never really thought of myself as a founder. I had a friend also from
MIT who I remember having a conversation with about like what I was going to do after Ksplice.
And he was like, you know, do you think you think you'll start something or join something?
And I was like, I don't know, I'll probably join something. And he's like, yeah, starting
something is stressful, which is pretty funny looking back in hindsight, because I would
agree that starting something is stressful.
But here's what happened. So basically, at Ksplice, founders sold the company to Oracle.
I stayed at Oracle for basically the two years of my retention. And kind of like six months
before my retention was up at Oracle, I was trying to think of like what I was going to
do next, because honestly, I was like super bored. And I felt like if I stayed at Oracle
for a few years, it was like a pretty cushy job. But I didn't feel like I was like learning
that much. And it just seemed like a place where I could like stagnate and get left behind.
So I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next. And I was also a time in my life
where I had stayed living in Boston for a couple years after school, working at Ksplice.
But I didn't necessarily want to stay in Boston forever. And in that past three years, a bunch
of friends of mine had moved away. And I kind of felt like it was a good chance for me to
try living somewhere else, because I would have to rebuild my community in Boston if
I was going to stay there.
So I wanted to check out the Bay Area. And I had a friend of mine from college, this
guy, Michael Greenwich, who had this email idea he'd been kicking around for a while
because I'd been trying to build some stuff with email as his undergraduate thesis at
MIT, and it was really hard. So we've been like, we were pretty good friends in college.
And I've been talking to him about that. But I was also like talking to companies about
potentially just getting a job. So essentially, I took a week off from work in April of 2013.
And I flew out to San Francisco. And I interviewed with two companies, Stripe and Meteor. This
was actually the first time I'd ever done a technical interview anywhere, anytime, because
I'd gotten all my jobs through connections previously.
So needless to say, I think it was pretty bad at interviewing at the time. And I didn't
get an offer from either company. So I basically was just like, what the heck, might as well
just start the company with my friend. And I don't know, it didn't feel super risky at
the time, given that I was like, well, I want to move across the country. That's a big change.
And I was 24 and didn't really have a lot of possessions or responsibilities. I think
the most expensive things I owned at the time were like a laptop and two bicycles.
So did you guys have any funding? Or were you living off your savings?
So in the beginning, we were just living off of savings. So my co founder, Michael had
been consulting for a while and just kind of doing part time contract work. And essentially,
I moved across the country, did like super cheap, shipped like books via media mail,
which is like the super cheap way to like send books across the country. And I'd also,
I have three siblings. And in college, I lived in a big 30% co op. So I had a lot of experience
with like living with a lot of other people and just like kind of keeping my expenses
really low. So I essentially moved in with a bunch of roommates in Oakland, and I was
living off of savings for the first three or four months, which wasn't that difficult
just because I like wasn't spending a lot of money on much.
So if you can think back to those days, you move in with all these roommates, you and
your co founder are gonna start this company somewhat out of necessity because you didn't
get any job offers. What was your overall goal here? What was sort of your best case
scenario for what could happen?
Yeah, I mean, honestly, at the time, like, I approached it with the attitude of like,
this is a fun experiment. And no matter what happens, it'll be an interesting story to
look back on later in life. I didn't really expect it to, to be still around, to be honest.
I didn't really have like a dream of like the future. But I was excited about kind of
building an organization from scratch that seemed like something that was really fun
that I would really get a chance to do somewhere else. And to like, have a place that I could
like, imbue with like, the culture that I wanted, and essentially like, create a place
that is a place that I would want to work. And hopefully also like, make something in
the meantime, that helps people build stuff that they would be able to make before. I
don't know, it seems like a good way to make a mark on the world that you wouldn't be able
to do at a company. So it's kind of how I was thinking about it.
Yeah, it makes perfect sense that after your job at Oracle, where you were super bored,
that you would prioritize creating a company that would actually be fun for you to work
at, and or others would enjoy working as well. What was it like in the early days of Nihilus
when you first got the company off the ground? And how did you make decisions as to what
to prioritize working on first?
So for the first three or four months or so, essentially, we were mostly kind of like prototyping
things and like iterating on the idea because it's hard to get people to give you money
if you like can't really even describe to them what your goal is. So the early days
were a lot of kind of conversations around like what the long term goal was and like
how to communicate that to people how to communicate the problem. And talking to lots of people
that were potentially like having that problem to kind of help the ideation phase and also
like starting to write some code to see like what an initial product would look like.
So like my background is all in kind of like back end systems engineering. So I started
out by like writing our initial like IMAP sync engine. So it was like three or four
months of like working out of my co-founders apartment and like every single cafe in the
mission. And I can tell you which is the best cafe to work out of or at least was five
years ago.
Oh yeah, which one?
It's a house coffee at 24th and Folsom that places the shit.
All right, I'm gonna write that down.
Yeah, it's house like the German way, H-A-U-S. And they're really great because one, everybody
else there is working. Two, it's pretty quiet. And they just play like chill electronic music
in the background and three of those like power and Wi-Fi. So I felt like I learned
a lot about like working out of coffee shops and that it's like super annoying to have
to like find a seat and deal with bad Wi-Fi and like buy like a coffee every three hours.
So I was really glad when we stopped having to do that.
So how did you guys get out of this phase where you're scrimping at coffee shops and
you guys are burning through your savings and trying to get this product out the door
to the point where you reached, I don't know, like some first stepping stone of stability?
And it turns out it's really hard to hire people if you don't have any money. So we
started talking to various seed investors. And I would say that basically like in December
of 2013, we raised like a million dollars or something like that. And the way that we
did that was like through our network, essentially. So my co-founder had run this entrepreneurship
event at MIT, so had gotten connected to various people in the startup community that way.
And just by asking around, one of the great things about Silicon Valley is that there
is this like large community of people that's like willing to kind of take a bet on a team.
And even if like the idea is like in its early stages, give you some money to work on a problem.
And I think that's something that's really unique about this area. That's pretty great.
So we essentially had this like early formation of an idea and like the pitch that we were
giving people was like, it's really hard to develop with email, we want to make email
better. And so a bunch of folks gave us some money. And we got this like tiny little studio
office in the mission, which had no windows. But it did have a skylight, which made it
not quite a cave. But essentially, we like managed to fit like six desks and an IKEA
couch in here. And like, it was just like the place we would go to like crank out code
every day.
So you've got some funding, you've got an office, you're no longer having to buy coffees
every three hours at coffee shops. What did you do to get your first few users in the
door?
Yeah, I alluded to this a little bit before with like, really focusing on open source
and kind of generating developer interest that way. So we hired our first couple employees
in like January and February of 2014. So essentially, we like raised this money and then basically
kind of used our network to find other people with few responsibilities who could live cheaply.
And we paid ourselves all a flat $75,000 a year, plus equity in the company. And we got
this really cheap office and spent like six months like writing the first version of like
our API and our like IMAP sync code and released that in summer of 2014 as this open source
repo on GitHub, which was like super scary. I remember flipping the bit on the GitHub
repo that made it public. And like worrying that I don't know, words of internet trolls
were going to show up the next day and tell us our code was terrible, which happens sometimes.
It does. But it turns out that most of the time, like if you don't go and actively tell
other people about the thing that you're working on, just no one even will find it or notice.
So that would happen to you?
Yeah, kind of. I mean, we flipped we made the repo public, I think in like January of
2014. And essentially no one found it until we like did a press push and are like, hey,
we are working on kind of the future of email. And here's what it looks like. And you know,
we got an article in TechCrunch, talked to a bunch of reporters. And we essentially needed
to like, get attention. There was no way this thing was going to work if we didn't manage
to like talk to other developers who are having the same problem and make sure that like what
you're working on would solve their problem and get initial customers. So I think it was
like a really key part of how we got the company off the ground.
I'm curious about how your mindset has changed, if at all, since those early days, are there
any things that you believed back then when you first started Nihilist that you don't
believe anymore?
Yeah, I really thought in the early days that we could like, reinvent all parts of corporate
America from scratch. And I definitely don't agree with that anymore. It turns out like
a lot of best practices that exist with like running companies are like there for a reason.
And that like, everything seems super simple. And like, you don't need to have like structures
when x people in a room, but even going from like six people to 35. It's like communication
gets a lot harder. And there's all sorts of kind of things that you need to do to kind
of get everyone aligned and like rowing in the same direction. And you know, in the early
days, like, I could literally go to work whenever I wanted. Like, we weren't having to I didn't
have any meetings, like I could work on Saturday, I could not work on Tuesday, and like nothing
would really change. Because it's just like, you know, following your own rhythms. But
like, as you add more people to your group, like, you have to get more disciplined about
like, you know, when you're working and when you're available, and you can't just kind
of like, follow your follow your like whims into as to like, what you want to be doing.
So I kind of thought like we could just reinvent everything. But now I really feel like you
should pick a couple things that you want to change about your company and like just
do everything else by the books.
Were you ever tempted to just stay small, sell your API that you'd built, keep the company
clean, maybe not raise any more money, and then continue being able to take Tuesdays
off and not have to worry about meetings and do all that good stuff?
Honestly, not really, just because honestly, just like building the technology for this
product has been very challenging. And I really want to be able to hire more people to work
on it because having more people makes it better. So I think like if I'd wanted to do
that, it should have picked a different problem domain. And this is like the kind of business
where like, you can make like a whole area really better for everyone. But it's going
to take a lot of work and you're going to have to like build a significant organization
to do it. So kind of should have signed up for a different problem if I wanted to keep
it small. But I think it's really exciting to build a bigger business. And I think there's
pros and cons of like raising venture funding, but there are a lot of things that it unlocks
that are really exciting.
Yeah, that's really something to think about how the product you decide to build and the
business you decide to create really influences whether or not you need to raise venture funding.
How did you guys transition from deciding you wanted to do this API to building Nihilus
N1, your email client?
I mean, it was a bit tricky, essentially, like in the first year. So our employees one
and two were both back in engineers. And then we actually met this awesome guy in a coffee
shop, his name is Ben Goto. And his background was in building iOS applications. And we brought
him on pretty shortly after. And he essentially was like building various different like front
end applications as we were building the API in order to make sure that the API design
was good. So essentially, like he started building the email client, as soon as we had
the API in a pretty good place. And we sort of developed like two teams over time where
we had this smaller team that was building the core of the email client. And like the
majority of folks working on the back end infrastructure. And eventually the the client
team got bigger. But we were essentially just like working on both of them at the same time.
But the mail client started out as like a very small experiment with two people working
on it.
That's such a difficult place to be in where you guys have really these two projects operating
side by side, one of them is beginning to grow pretty fast. And the other one is the
one that you started off with. How was that for you? Was it stressful trying to decide
how to prioritize and split your time between these two projects?
Yeah, for sure. It was super challenging. And honestly, like, looking back at it, I
almost would consider it to be a strategic mistake to try to do both of those things
at the same time, in that the email client was, you know, we considered it to be like
the future of the company at the time. So like it was kind of the exciting shiny thing
to work on. And yet, like the back end had to be like rock solid and scalable in order
to enable that to happen. So there was definitely some like, kind of weird cultural things around
like what was exciting to work on versus not and also like, especially as we were starting
to scale up back end team being really overworked. So as I mentioned earlier, like infrastructure
and back end stuff has always been my interest and what gets me excited. So I wasn't that
unhappy to have the email client not work out. And it's been really, really helpful
for us as a company to be super focused on one product. And like, if I were to start
another company, I would never try this again to have like two major products that were
both like pretty complex and to try to resource them with a really small team.
Yeah, I bet it's, I think one of the most common things you hear people tell founders
is to focus because in any company, the number of things that are tempting to build is always
growing every time you build anything, it enables you to build a bunch of other things.
And it's really hard to say no to those things. And it's hard to prioritize. What was it like
to transition out of building the email client and back into focusing on the API full time?
Yeah, totally. That's a hard decision to make as well.
Yeah, I mean, part of the reason to like, do a startup is to like, think big and dream
big. And one reason that people do it when they're young is because you don't know what's
not possible. So like, when we were building these multiple products, we thought it might
be possible. And it turned out to be completely crazy. But I would say that like, we probably
hung on to the email client for a bit too long, in terms of like, not deciding that
it was a bad business. We did kind of a bunch of iterations on like things to try to make
it work. We actually ported our email sync engine to JavaScript to ship it in the front
end so that the email client wouldn't have to be storing tons of data on our back end,
which is really expensive. So about 15 months ago, my co founder left the company. And this
is also the time that we stopped working on the email client. The mail client was really
always kind of Michael's vision. And I think that was definitely a factor in kind of how
things shook out there and that it wasn't working out.
That's a lot of change to handle not only dealing with shutting down this product that's
absorbing your entire company, but not doing very well, but also losing your co founder.
How did you deal with that?
It was really stressful. And honestly, like the relationship I don't think was great for
me or him for a while before that, for various reasons. I mean, essentially what happened
was like my co founder left and then like, the whole company really came together. And
we talked about like, what was going to happen next. And folks thought that I could be CEO,
or we had basically our first business development hire this guy, Gleb Poliakov, who had been
to the company for about two years at that time, we had hired him after raising a series
A in 2015. And we also thought that Gleb could do a good job as a CEO. And basically what
we did was like Gleb and I sat down and had a conversation. And I really wanted to stay
focused on technology. And I also thought that that Gleb skill set just would allow
him to ramp up much more quickly to be a really effective CEO. And that what I really wanted
was for us to make a decision that was going to be like the best thing for the company.
So we decided to make Gleb CEO. And I think that's actually worked out really well for
us. But it was pretty transformative for me to like go through this experience of like,
you know, it's all having to come together and, you know, to have the team really back
me that really helps my confidence level. And for us to just like figure out something
that was like super difficult. Most companies don't really make it through a transition
like this. And I think that's something that's really unique about our team that folks really
kind of trust each other that like we're now kind of battle hardened. And that we've kind
of like reaffirmed that we want to be working together and are excited to be working together.
And that's like a really powerful core for an organization. So I feel really good about
where we're at right now. I think that like, you know, we're stronger than we were before
and also like way more focused. And yeah, I've learned a lot about myself through the
whole process. And I also like wouldn't really trade the experience. Like, obviously, people
make mistakes. And like, there are some things that I would do differently in the future,
but I'm not really sure that I would do them differently in the past.
Yeah, I think there's definitely something to a team going through something difficult
together and in some ways staring death in the face, like we might not make it through
it and then making it through it and coming out the other side far stronger. And it seems
like that's what's happened to you. Because since then, you guys have grown from 15 people
to 35, your new business is doing millions in revenue. What are some of the bigger things
and decisions you made to emerge from that pivot and build an even better business than
you had before?
Yeah, for sure. I also want to give a quick shout out to our series a investor at ABC.
They were super fantastic with with us throughout the whole transition. And I definitely don't
think we would have gotten through it without their backing and support. So definitely want
to give credit where credit is due. Yeah, I mean, like the first thing that we did basically
like after like the first part of the transition was over was we took everyone to like a whole
company offsite. So it's like 15 people at the time. And we actually did this super scrappy.
We just used the house of our VP of engineering in the Oakland Hills, because we just wanted
to get out of the office and he was very gracious to offer his space. So we just like sat down
and kind of like, went through the process of like writing down who we wanted to be as
a company. And one of the things that came out of that was our open source company handbook,
which you can read on GitHub, github.com slash nylon slash handbook, which iterates what
our values are, what the mission of the company is, a bunch of like company policy things.
And I think that day was really important for like, changing a bunch of things about
the company that we wanted to be different and getting on the same page about what we
were about. And just kind of orienting that like, hey, we just went through this pretty
challenging phase. And we're like coming out the other side and we want to be all kind
of moving in the same direction. So that was like the first thing and I think that was
really important. I guess like the other thing was like, you know, engineering had to transition
to everyone working on the back end. So we had to do kind of a lot of teaching and mentorship
and also started ramping up hiring again. And that was definitely like a challenging
thing to start doing again. And I think that like, this process of like, starting to articulate
what we're about, has been really helpful with ramping up our hiring again. One thing
that we did in the past year that was really useful was work with, I think it's a friend
of yours actually, who introduced us, Lin Tai, who has his website key values. Yeah,
which is awesome. You should totally check it out. And talking to Lin really helped us
kind of articulate what was unique about us as a company and like why people would want
to join. Because I think that like, when it comes to hiring, in the early days, the easiest
thing to do is to like really milk your network and just like hire your friends. Because you
know, when you're a tiny company, and you can't pay people anywhere close to a market
salary, it really helps to have a direct connection to other people to get them to jump ship
because it's scary and risky. So we kind of had exhausted our network in the past. And
I think when you get to the point where you can't just go to your friends anymore, because
you've already asked all of them, you have to work on building the brand of your company
to extend beyond your network. So the first part of that is figuring out what's unique
about you and writing down and then sharing that. So these various different parts of
the process are really helpful. And obviously, it works pretty well in that we have hired
a whole bunch of people in the past year and have grown the company a lot. And I also think
that we've succeeded at kind of staying true to the core of who we are, by trying to find
folks that are values aligned with the company. And that's pretty cool.
That's super cool. I mean, you said online that your main goal as you scale Nihilus as
a business is to grow company culture that you're proud of. And to see that you've been
able to do that, especially emerging from a super hard time is really impressive. I
mean, it's hard to grow a good company culture in any condition, let alone the situation
that you guys find yourselves in. What are some things you've done to create the culture
that you're proud of? And what does that culture look like exactly?
Yeah, for sure. I really believe that kind of the roots of culture come from the leaders
of a company. So a lot of what I do to like help grow the culture in the way I want is
to kind of act in ways that I want people to replicate. So one of those things is basically
giving people a really high level of trust by default. I have been described as earnest
by many a person. And I'm the kind of person who believes what you say and who, if you're
in charge of something, I will totally let you fail at that thing if that's what you
need. And I think that giving this high trust by default kind of helps establish that as
a quality that exists at the company. And I also think that having high trust and psychological
safety is really the core of a well-functioning team. So that's really what I keep coming
back to time and time again. There's a few other things that I also try to do that I
think are really important. One is just being really reliable. Show up on time. Do the things
you say you're going to do. Be kind to people. Don't hold back when there's things that need
to be said. But also try to deliver things with kindness. And also one thing that I learned
from my family growing up was how to be kind of gritty and tough and not give up when problems
are hard. I think that one of the most meaningful experiences in life is to work with other
people through a hard thing and accomplish something that you didn't know is possible.
In some sense, that involves kind of suspending disbelief of we can't do this and just kind
of grinding through things even if it is really difficult. So yeah, that's kind of how I think
about it.
You mentioned earlier that before you became a founder, one of the things you heard from
a friend was that it can be a stressful thing to do. And we spent some time talking before
this episode about how stressful this job can be. How stressful do you find it to be
the founder of a 35 person company to have sort of the burden of this company's success
in these people's careers on your shoulders? And how do you cope with that burden?
Yeah, for sure. I would say the stress level is definitely a thing and it varies a lot.
Sometimes I'm super stressed and sometimes I'm a lot less stressed. The things that are
really important to me are essentially what it comes down to is making sure to take care
of myself. And I think with many things, there's a spectrum when it comes to self care and
working hard where there's such a thing as using self care as an excuse to be lazy, but
there's also such a thing as working too hard that you're neglecting, taking good care of
yourself and it makes your work suffer.
And to me, one of the promises I made to myself when starting this company was that I wouldn't
sacrifice my physical or mental wellbeing to make this company go because you only have
one life and I don't want to make it shorter. And so I make sure to get at least eight hours
of sleep a night. I think exercise is really important. I'm really into rock climbing.
And one of the things I really like about rock climbing is that I find that it very
effectively induces a flow state. So when I'm rock climbing, I literally can't think
about work. And I do think it's really important to disconnect from your work, especially if
it's really stressful. You can't be thinking about all the time. And often by disconnecting,
you can make your mind relax in such a way that you can solve problems that you wouldn't
solve by sitting in front of your computer and directly thinking about them all the time.
So to me, work life balance is not about the number of hours that you work. It's about
making sure that you are getting what you need that's not work. And for me, that's
some disconnect time, lots of physical activity, meaningful relationships with friends. And
I think you have to know some people that you're close with that are not in your company,
because otherwise you can't disconnect.
That's funny, you mentioned being in a flow state, because that's something that a lot
of software engineers will commonly tout as one of the benefits of programming, one of
the things that makes it so enjoyable. You were an engineer, you came into this company
more as an engineer than as a founder, really. What's your advice for software engineers
who are listening, who are considering starting their own companies? What can they learn from
your story and your experiences?
Yeah, I mean, like, one thing that I would take away is that like, you know, you don't
need to be someone who's always like dreamed of being a founder in order to be a founder.
Even like one thing that I want to accomplish through this company is to like, be an example
of someone who's like a little bit different from like, kind of the standard person you
imagine starting a company, especially as a woman, like, there's not like a ton of women
founders out there. And I think that if you have an idea that you want to work on, like,
totally go for it. One of the best ways to like, create an environment that's like a
good place for people who don't look like the status quo is to like, start something
from scratch, because it's like easier to mold something that doesn't exist than to
try to change the trajectory of something that's already flying in some direction.
I could not agree more. And I think that, you know, you're already a role model for
a lot of people listening in, including myself. So thanks a ton, Christine, for coming on
the show and sharing your wisdom. Can you tell listeners where they can go to find out
more about what you're up to at Nihilus?
Yeah, so we have a blog, which both posts about kind of company events that we run and
also about various different pieces of our technology. You can also follow us on Twitter
at Nihilus. And if you're in the Bay Area, you should totally come by our developer series
of events. We have a group on Meetup called Nihilus Developer Events. And if you come
to one of these events, you will probably meet me and I'd love to say hi.
Great. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, Christine.
Thank you, Courtland. It's been a pleasure.
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