Hey, how's it going, Matt?
Hey, what's up?
Welcome to the show.
Let me introduce you, Matt.
You're Matt DeSouza.
You are an indie hacker and you tweeted on July of this year, you tweeted, I built five
Shopify apps and it makes me over $340,000 a year, which is amazing.
Yeah.
It makes me more today, but yeah, that was that.
Oh yeah.
What are your revenue numbers at now?
How much?
$450,000.
Wow.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I see you on your Twitter profile now.
You updated your bio.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
37K a month.
How long did it take you to get there?
It's crazy.
Like, was this like if you've been working on these apps for like 10 years?
Yeah.
Two years and a half, something like that.
Because I started-
Two and a half years.
Yeah.
I started in May 2020.
So that's it.
Wow.
That's amazing.
Do you have a team?
Do you have customers?
Did you raise money?
Like how much is this you?
How much are you being helped?
Yeah.
So I started alone.
So I was the only one in the project when I started.
Six months in, maybe a bit less, I hired the first person because I didn't expect that
growth.
So basically someone joined the team, but only for customer support.
And so today we are five in the team.
I have like two developers, one person for marketing and one person for customer support.
And there is me, obviously, I'm doing everything.
Doing all this in two years is insane.
But I have to say that, I mean, the 340,000 to 400 and what, 50,000 between July, what,
like six months?
Five months.
Five months is really insane.
Yeah.
You just gave yourself a hundred K raise in five months.
Yeah.
But basically that was complicated because I had the big growth like in the beginning
because in something like six months, I went from zero to 10 K per month.
So that was like huge growth and in less than a year, we were at 25 K, right?
I thought I was going to reach like, well, I don't know, like 100,000 in two years or
something like that.
And the only thing is that I was stuck at 25, you know, and I didn't know what was happening
and something.
And once I found why I was stuck, you know, I started to grow again and we're growing.
So that's cool.
How did it feel to get to 25 so fast?
I mean, going from like $0, you know, perhaps working for yourself, working for others.
And suddenly, you know, you've got your own sustainable business that's like crushing
it so quickly.
Like, did your life change?
Did your outlook change?
Like, how did that feel emotionally to start making so much money on your own?
Yeah, that was a bit weird because, you know, I've always said I was going to make money
with my business and stuff like that.
And in 2020, I was still like studying engineering.
And I told my, I remember I told my parents like, I'm going to be rich.
I'm going to have my own business and I will make more money than an engineer before the
end of the studies, right?
And yeah, they didn't believe me, which, you know, that's something, but I'm not coming
from a rich family.
So they just said, you know, it's not possible.
And when I remember, like when I wanted to have that business, I didn't want something
like making thousands, hundred thousands every month or something like that.
I just wanted something I could live, like something with which I could live enough to
cover my expenses and stuff like that.
And for all the people that were making that much money, I always thought like it was life
changing.
Like I was going to be completely different and it wasn't the case.
So I don't know if it's because, you know, it was so quick, but my life didn't change.
Like I'm still not buying anything.
You know, I'm still the same person.
I'm similar in that, like, you know, money doesn't really fundamentally change my life.
But were there any like inconveniences like, you know, sort of where there's stress concerns?
Like did you ever have to like cut back on stuff?
Yeah.
So first of all, it's not my first project, right?
I've created a lot of things in the past and didn't work, right?
But I still created a lot of things.
And with this Shopify apps, I started to have problems, but I call them rich problems.
So like, you know, you have thousands of users coming to your app and you like, you can't
do support alone.
Like you used to be alone on the projects and everything.
And right now I had like hundreds of messages and I didn't know how to how to do.
And so I had rich problems because I had too many users.
So that's one of the problems that I had because yeah, it will create a lot of problems that
you didn't expect and that you didn't have before.
When I started, you know, it was more about I don't know if I will make it.
I don't know if I will have something that will make money.
And so, you know, you couldn't go lower than where you were, right?
And today I'm scared about that just because now you have something to lose.
It means you can earn more because you can lose what you have.
And so that's something I'm always like, maybe tomorrow, like, I don't know, Shopify will
close my app.
I don't know.
And yeah, so I have a lot of stress regarding that, but I see everything that it created
and what it allows me today to do.
And you know, I say that it's part of the game and you have to do it like that.
So let's talk about what you're actually doing.
It's a little complex.
As I said from your tweet, you said you built five Shopify apps.
Maybe I'll start by explaining Shopify.
Most people know what Shopify is.
It's this huge $50 billion public company.
And it's an e-commerce platform, meaning that if I'm somebody who wants to sell stuff online,
you know, I knit ugly Christmas sweaters and I want to sell them.
I can sign up for Shopify and build an online store for myself and start selling my ugly
sweaters to people on the internet.
And obviously, you're not the one who created Shopify.
You're not even a Shopify merchant as far as I'm aware.
What you're doing is you're making apps for people like me who have a Shopify store.
And you've made a bunch of these things.
We're going to walk through them individually at some point.
But I'm curious, is that accurate?
Like, do you make Shopify apps?
Do you make money in other ways?
No, this is it.
I'm not a merchant.
I make money with Shopify apps only.
And usually I tell people like when I tell people I make money with Shopify, they think
that I'm a merchant, but I'm not one.
I create apps.
And you also have a newsletter called Building a Successful Shopify App as you have on your
Twitter feed.
It's got 1,200 subscribers.
Do you charge for access to that or is that free?
Everything is free, for the moment at least.
I mean, when I started to, you know, Twitter newsletter and everything, it's just because
back in 2017, when I started building Shopify apps, I didn't find a lot of content about
how to grow a Shopify app, how to build one, what marketing tips you can do, and stuff
like that.
And so, you know, I like to say that today I just want to be the guy I wanted to meet
when I started.
And so that's why I had this Twitter account sharing everything.
I created newsletter.
And recently we have a Facebook group where we share like, you know, live, regular lives
and stuff like that.
I'm trying to build on different platforms and share everything I've learned since I
started.
Why do you recommend that IndieHackers become Shopify app developers?
I've seen that.
Like, in your opinion, what's so good about developing for Shopify?
What is good about that is that, you know, when you're an IndieHacker and, you know,
usually you do everything by yourself, right, you can do everything.
You have to pick some stuff and everything.
And what's great about Shopify apps is that you don't have to worry about a lot of things
that are usually like a bit stressful and stuff like that.
Like you don't have to worry about taxes, payments, because Shopify handles all of that.
And you know, sometimes IndieHackers are not very good at marketing.
You know, sometimes they are developers, they are not great at marketing.
And what is great about that ecosystem is that you have systems, for example, you have
the Shopify app store where you can put your app and receive traffic for free.
So you know, when you're not good at marketing, this is a great way to start because you can
have installed just like an app on the, you know, on your mobile or something like that.
You can just receive traffic and start from there and you can make money even if you're
like one of the person developers.
And that's what I like about that because you can build something like you can build
a business as a one person.
And I know people who build Shopify apps and are making a lot of money just by being single
like one person to me, you know.
How technical do you need to be to be a Shopify app developer?
I mean, this is like real programming, right?
It's not too different than building like a web app or a mobile app.
It's not different than building like a web app or something like that.
What is great is that Shopify has a lot of documentation about that.
And I don't consider myself a good developer, you know.
I learned PHP when I was 13 and I never learned anything else, right?
So all my Shopify apps are built in PHP.
I don't use the last trendy language or something like that and I can still make money, right?
So you have to be able to build something, but you don't need to be the best developer
in the world to build something that is useful for people.
When you think of like successful Shopify app developers, who's killing it in the space?
I mean, obviously you're doing really well with you and your very tiny team.
Who do you look up to?
There is, for example, like Shashank from the app Pechaul.
He recently sold this app to a big company and like he made millions, you know, it was
a single app, you know, you build the app and then and now he has a team, he has everything
and but it started as a small app.
It's a Shopify app and you sell it for millions, you know.
So you build something on top of a platform and you still sell it for millions.
Yeah, I'm curious about that too, because you said that you just want to be, you want
to be the guy that you wish you had discovered when you first started building Shopify apps.
I think a lot of people change like, I wish someone would help me out and they start making
money hand over fest and like, I don't want anyone to find out what I'm doing or how I'm
doing.
I just want to be quietly low, do my own thing.
Why do you, why didn't you go that route?
You know, why not be Scrooge McDuck and hoard up your money and your techniques and keep
it all a secret?
Yeah, because I feel like, you know, I don't lose anything by doing that.
I mean, obviously I can create competitors, you know, but you know, what's cool about
the ecosystem and the app store and everything is that, you know, you get reviews, you get
installs.
So you're already ahead of everyone.
So you know, you cannot have someone coming and like stealing everything you have because
there are reviews, there is like everything you've built already.
And what is cool about that is that I share everything, but it also helps me get more
different things.
So for example, we do like our partnerships, right?
To get like born starts, we do our partnerships, core marketing.
And you know, today it became easier to get our partnerships sometimes.
Sometimes they already know me from Twitter.
And so it's easier to close that, to close the deals.
So all right, I'm helping people.
I may be creating like creating competitors, but I'm also helping my own business to scale
and do a few different things like that.
Yeah, we have kind of the same thing with any hackers.
I want to build in public.
I want anyone who wants to build a community or a media company or something similar to
what we've built to be able to see what we're doing, see how it works.
I think it's like very fun.
It's motivational.
People cheer you on.
Like I've seen some of your tweets, you talk about your revenue and you get all these retweets
and likes and support.
And you know, we did that five and a half years ago and we started any hackers, but
we've also, you know, had kind of the same like risks.
We've had some people start competing companies.
There's like lots of competitors, any hackers, there's lots of sites that interview entrepreneurs.
There's lots of sites that have lots of podcasts that have come up that do exactly what we
do.
But I think that just makes it better for everybody.
And in a way it kind of like has made any hackers more popular because a lot of these
other people are like pushing out their message and they talk about any hackers.
And so I like, I like building in public and I think it's worth it.
If you have a strong enough business that you're not going to just like crumple in full
because there's a competitor, then it's usually just a good thing.
So you're a pretty young guy.
How old are you?
I'm 25.
Okay.
So you're just like, you know, fresh out of school, telling them what to Shopify apps.
You made five apps.
You mentioned in your Twitter thread about five apps, how like the bulk of your revenue
comes from two of them.
I think you shut down the other three.
How did this, how did this like, what came first, the most successful apps or did you
start with one of the ones that you shut down?
No.
So I started in 2017 with my first app.
So I didn't know anything about like business or like marketing, the Shopify app or something
like that.
The only thing I knew was I was in an e-commerce group, like a French e-commerce group.
And two guys told me like, there were two marketers and they told me like, we need to
build that Shopify app.
It will work and everything.
And I remember because at the time, at the time what I thought was I needed the big ID.
Like I needed something so big and so good that everyone would buy it, you know.
And so they told me about that ID.
And I remember I told them like, your ID is bad.
Like no, like I can build it.
I can build into two days.
Like it's, it's very bad.
Like nobody will, will buy it.
But I had nothing to lose.
So I just say, okay, let's go.
Let's do it.
And so I built a Shopify app and I remember like I had my first like aha moment because
like in the first days we started to have users, you know, I had never had users in
my like in the past.
And so, you know, I built this app.
We grew it to $1,000 per month.
Then we didn't grow it anymore.
Like we were stuck at 1k and like I didn't know why because I wasn't a marketer.
I didn't know anything.
I just knew how to build something and they didn't know why, but the only thing is that,
you know, they didn't really care because they were making more money with their businesses,
you know?
Yeah.
And since they were not SaaS marketer, there are many things that you didn't know.
And the only problem is that Shopify changed a lot of things in the platform and I had
to shut down my app because it didn't work anymore.
And so, you know, at that time I thought that I was able to build Shopify apps that was
good enough.
And they said, okay, let's build another app.
So I built another app.
This time I built it alone and I didn't have users.
How did you come up with the idea for this app?
That's the problem.
Like I thought about an IG and said, okay, I think it's great.
I think I should build it and let's do it.
You know, so I spent time working on it, probably something like two, three months and nobody
wanted it.
So I said, okay, that's a problem.
Let's just build another app.
So I built a third app and it didn't work.
So same problem.
And that's when I said, okay, stop.
I think it's not for me.
Let's do something else.
And so I started, you know, to build all the projects and that's, I had three years already
with experience and stuff like that.
And so in 2020, I said, okay, let's build again, Shopify apps.
I have six months to build something.
I know e-commerce.
I know Shopify apps.
I know I can do it, but this time I will make things like properly, you know, instead of
trying to think about an ID, building it, spending time building it.
I will just do the proper steps.
So basically finding a problem, validating the problem, then finding all the users, building
it, getting feedback, and then I will grow from that.
And that was crazy because I found the problem.
I validated it with the Facebook groups and I said, does anyone want that?
And I started to receive a lot of DMs, like saying, hey, what is the name of the app?
Can I have that too?
And something like that.
And so I knew I had something.
So I built it.
So yeah, let's dive, let's dive into this because I think this is where a lot of indie
hackers get stuck.
I think coming up with an idea is one of the hardest parts, you know, an idea that works.
Even having an idea that doesn't work can be hard for a lot of people, but you seem
to have like a lot of those, you were just riffing and you had to slow down.
I'm kind of the same as you.
I have a million ideas, but I have to like be more considerate, like, okay, which, which
of these is actually good?
How do I go through like a good process of validating it?
So you said you found a problem, you did some research, like, how did you find the problem?
What was the problem?
And then how did you validate it?
So I knew who I was targeting, like Shopify merchants, you know, Shopify users.
And I already knew that because I was already in a few Facebook groups, like French Facebook
groups about Shopify, e-commerce and stuff like that.
So I knew where to find them.
And now I just needed the problems.
And so I just started to talk to people like, what do you do?
How was your day?
And just stuff like that, but at some point, you know, you notice something like someone
will say, hey, I had a problem today, or I don't know why, but this thing didn't work.
And at some point, you notice, you know, there is a little problem.
And this is why you can dig into and start asking, like, why?
What is the problem?
What do you want?
And what happens is I noticed three people who wanted to do something on Shopify with
bundles.
So, so it was something related to bundles.
So when you, you know, you create products, multiple products, and you, and you sell them
in like an opaque or something.
And so they, they wanted to do something that didn't exist.
So they told me, like, I didn't find an app to do it.
And I don't know why, like, and I asked them, like, if I build it, like, will you use it?
And they said, yeah, definitely, like, I need it.
And I, and I found three people for the same thing, you know, so, okay, it was maybe not
exactly the same thing, but the problem was almost the same.
And so I just say, okay, so if there are three people who want it and they say they would
buy it, like maybe there, there are more people for that.
And so what was, what was the problem that they had?
So the bundle, like, yeah, it's when you, like, when you have two or three products
that you pack and you sell them.
So for example, you say something like, buy two products and you get like the third one
for free or something like that.
So this is a bundle and usually it will like, you know, push people to buy more products.
And so you will make more money.
And the only thing is that the bundling apps that you had on Shopify were displayed below
the out to cart button.
So basically how it was on the page, you had like the title of the product, the price,
you had like, you know, the quantity of the product and the button to add to the cart.
Right.
And usually the building apps were below that so that you could buy two or more products
with a discount and stuff like that.
And what they wanted is to combine both of these elements.
So the bundles to remove a step, basically in the buying process and everything to increase
the conversions.
So that's what they wanted.
And with that, they wanted something like to be able to combine many discounts on Shopify.
And it wasn't something that was possible in Shopify and it's still not possible.
Basically on Shopify, you can't stack discount codes.
So you have to choose.
So let's say you have a discount code to get like free shipping and a discount code to
get like the third product for free.
All you have to choose.
You can't use both.
And so we created a way.
And so, yeah, they wanted-
So I'm looking at this now.
So like, if I'm like a store owner, I've got my ugly Christmas sweater store and you're,
you know, selecting a sweater, if I use what you've built, wide bundle, I basically get
like multiple options.
It's like, oh, you want two sweaters?
You want three sweaters?
Yeah.
And when I click two sweaters, then I can choose like the size and the color for both
of them.
Or if I want three, then I can choose the size and the color for all three of them and
I get my discount.
And then I see the add to cart button below that.
And so it's just like a much more seamless experience and that people could not do that
before you built your app.
Exactly.
And what I did is I basically created a mock-up on Photoshop.
So I didn't do the same mistake of, you know, spending time working on it and then nobody
wants it.
So I just said, okay, I will create a mock-up of what I have in mind and you will tell me
what you think about it.
And I even posted it into the Facebook group saying something like, does anyone want that
or something like that?
I don't exactly remember, but I know it's on Twitter, the screenshot, the exact screenshot.
And I started to have a lot of people saying, yeah, what is the name of the app?
I want that too.
I don't remember exactly how many comments I had, but I contacted everyone and I asked
them like, what do you want?
Is it what you want exactly?
What would you change in this design?
And I started to look to craft in my mind what the app would look like.
And I spent maybe one week building it, something like that, like a very simple version of the
app.
You know, back in the days, you didn't have to go through the approval process of Shopify.
It means that today, if you build an app, you have to show your app to Shopify and they
will tell you like, hey, this is okay, or you need to change that or something.
Back in the days, you didn't have to go through all of that, like you could build it and people
could just directly use it, you know?
And so I did it.
People started to use it.
They liked it before pushing it to Shopify and like pushing it to the app store.
I first improved the app with the few people that I had, maybe 10 users.
And so that's when I started to push the app even more.
So on the app store, asking for people to leave a review, asking them to refer friends.
And yeah, so I had a few problems with that.
For example, I started to track the data.
That was something I didn't do with my first app.
And I know that it was the problem, you know?
So with my first app, I reached like 1,000 per month.
I wasn't growing anymore and I didn't know why.
And so today, I know the reason why I wasn't tracking my data.
And because I wasn't tracking it, I didn't know what was wrong.
Like maybe it was the activation rate, maybe it was the onboarding.
I didn't know.
I just took guesses, like maybe it's that, let's change that, it doesn't change anything.
But today, I didn't do the same mistake.
So I installed a tool called Mixpanel, where you can track basically everything that the
user is doing on your app.
So when they install your app, when they use a feature, when they click on the button,
everything.
And so I noticed a few problems where some metrics were not good enough.
So for example, only seven persons were converting at the end of the free trial.
So seven persons.
And it was a bit low.
So I started to do some changes, changing the onboarding, improving the UX, trying
to change some stuff.
And at some point, I started to increase it, seven persons to 20 to 30.
And today, we are 40 persons.
And I know that this is not something I did with my first app.
And I did the same thing for many different numbers.
So activation rates, onboarding, everything.
Like people with uni installed the same day.
Like sometimes, I had many people uni installing the same days, the same day as the install.
And it was because they didn't understand the app.
So I'm trying to fix every metrics.
And at the same time, you're trying to get more people.
So doing app partnerships, trying to get people from the app store, trying to improve the
page listing on the app store and stuff like that.
At some point, you start to grow.
I think going from a 7% conversion rate to, what'd you say, 40% at some point is absolutely
insane.
And one of the challenges is that a lot of developers who are building apps, they have
the same situation.
Oh, man, no one's converting.
And they might even be measuring through mixed panel or Google Analytics, like, OK, nobody
is signing up.
What do I do?
And they'll do the same thing.
They'll just start making random improvements to their product, et cetera, et cetera.
And it's kind of a common trap.
They make their product way better, way shinier, way sleeker, add more features.
And then the conversion rate is still the same.
Why didn't that happen with you?
Why did your numbers actually go up?
Because this is something I think a lot of people want to know, like, how do I increase
my conversion rate that high?
What happened for you?
So, for example, for White Bundle, so what I did was simple.
First of all, I didn't have an onboarding.
So I added one.
So the onboarding will just show people how to use the app.
So you have to take them to the point where they will see the value of your app.
So I tried to improve and to add the onboarding so they could go quickly to that instead of
saying, hey, just use the app, just use the app the way you want.
So they have to figure out everything.
I just tell them, like, follow that path, the first step, second one, third one, and
then at some point you see the app and everything.
Then to know exactly what steps I had to add into the onboarding, that's something I did
using Mixpanel the same way.
I created two cohorts.
So cohorts are a group of people that are, you know, linked based on maybe something
they did or one attribute or something like that.
And I just created two group of people.
Like one group was the people who paid at the end of the free trial.
And one group was people who didn't pay at the end.
And then I checked everything that the people who had paid at the end did that the others
didn't do.
And so you will notice a pattern.
And for us, it was I knew that people who converted at the end checked on their page
how the app looked like.
So they clicked on the button to see how the app would look like after they added the bundles.
So I knew that these people did that and the other one, like, they didn't do it.
They stayed on the page, tried to change a few settings before checking how it appears.
So what I did is, okay, in the onboarding, everyone will have to click on the link to
see exactly how it appears.
Because I know that this step, since everyone who paid did that, or maybe mostly of them,
like, most of them did that, let's just make sure that everyone do it.
Like it will increase that.
So I did it.
And what's great about Mixpanel is, for example, you can say, I want to see, like, the path
that people took, like, from installing to is paying, like someone is paying.
And you can see, like, the most frequent tasks and stuff like that.
If you track everything, like, every action, you will see sometimes some patterns that
are bits, sometimes very simple, but you can't see it if you're not tracking your data.
For example, you know, I know that's from Facebook, but, you know, on Facebook, when
you, they found that when someone created a Facebook accounts, they had to follow, like,
they had to add something like seven friends.
So they had seven friends.
And they knew that this number was enough to stick people to the platform.
So they knew they had to follow, like, to get seven friends to stay on the platform.
And so they made sure that everyone, like, the first action they had to do was to get,
like, seven people.
And so that's something you need to figure out on your app.
And you know, once you got traction with Wide Bundle, like, what was your marketing like?
How did you how did you grow besides just improving conversions?
You started off in this, like, Facebook group talking to people and they're kind of like
kind of holding their hands.
How did you how did you blast it out to, like, the wider world and start really growing?
Yeah, what is great about communities is that when something is working for someone, they
will they will tell the others about it.
So we grew a lot through word of mouth.
So for example, what I did is when someone's when someone installs Wide Bundle, I asked
them, like, how did you know about Wide Bundle?
And so we track it like, did you make a search in the app store?
Did you found us in some place where the mouse, Facebook, YouTube can be anything?
So in the first place, it was mostly Facebook groups.
Today, Facebook groups are not what they used to be.
But back in the days, they were amazing for that because we had many people like sharing
knowledge and stuff like that.
Then obviously, the Shopify app store helped us a lot, you know, Shopify Shopify will put
you in front of more people because your app is getting reviews, your app is getting installs,
they see that you have a good app, and so they will start to show your app to more people.
So people can find your app by searching on the app store, but the Shopify will also push
your app to people that are similar to your current users.
And so what's amazing is that I had many French users, obviously, and so Shopify started to
show my app to more French people, you know.
And so today, like, maybe 40% of my user base comes from France.
I started to do, like, LinkedIn, so I started to post on LinkedIn.
Then we started to do some app partnerships, so with other apps to do co-marketing.
So like, you know, doing some emails, some articles, putting your app in the dashboard
so their users can find your app.
Then we did a lot of affiliate marketing, so basically paying people to, like, to record
a video on YouTube, on TikTok, so they can get our apps.
And I think that everything, you know, will help, like, the other channel.
So basically, someone will see your video on YouTube, they will see your app in the
Shopify app store.
They will see your app everywhere, and so they will start to install it.
And I think that's exactly what helped us get attraction, especially because we, like,
we had everything in the beginning, like, so quickly.
Like we started to have many videos, we started to have, like, many people talking about our
apps.
And so sometimes, you know, people would contact us just saying, I started to see your app
everywhere.
Like, I started to see it in some Shopify store, I started to see it on Facebook groups,
I watched a video about it.
And so, you know, they just try it because they see it everywhere.
So they, like, you know, a bit of fear of missing out or something like that.
The question that I've had in my mind since the beginning is, right now you're doing $37,000
a month.
And you mentioned that you got quickly or relatively quickly to $25K, and then you hit
that plateau.
So, like, how did you close that gap?
Like, what was the nature of the plateau, I guess, is the first question.
And then, like, what did you do to get over that?
Because that's, I mean, plateaus are the bane of every entrepreneur's existence.
So basically, in the beginning, we did everything that was working.
So we started to grow, so I did more of what we were already doing, right?
And then when I reached $25K and we had this plateau, it was mostly because the churn was
the same as the acquisition.
You know, I tried a few different things, trying to do more of what was already working,
so trying to get more partnership, because I was trying to get more in the acquisition
part, you know.
And I had this thought about if what I'm doing right now isn't working, maybe I should just
do something that I didn't try, you know, to get results you don't have, you have to
do things you never did, basically.
And so I started to focus on my weaknesses instead of focusing on my strengths.
And so that's why I started to focus on churn.
So I hired someone for marketing at this moment, and his job in the beginning was only to get
people in cool to understand why they were leaving or why they were staying on the app.
Like we put a strategy because we have a problem with Shopify apps is that people don't reply
to emails, like only a few people who reply to emails.
So what we did is that we caught people the moment they were in the dashboard, basically.
So when they are on the dashboard, we push a message to our Slack channel with some information,
for example, how long they've been here with us, how much money they've made with our apps
and stuff like that, basically many different information.
And the moment we receive the message, we go on our platform, so we are using Crisp,
and we can engage with them with the live chat that is in the app.
And we'll try to get them in a call that way, so we can understand more about their business,
what they do, what they like, and then we'll try to notice who are the people who really
love the app, who are the people who might live and why, and based on that, we'll say,
okay, what do we need to do?
What do we need to improve?
Who do we need to target?
Maybe you can target the people who really love the app unless the people who are just
like, yeah, your app is good, but it's just because they didn't find anything else.
And based on that, you will improve it.
So what we did, for example, is that we had like a 30% churn on White Bundle.
But we had like a lot of new users, so it wasn't a problem.
But we started to work on it.
And since I had someone dedicated to that part, we started to get like the churn that
was 30% to 25%.
And when you go from 30 to 25, it changes a lot of things, right?
Like 5% is a lot.
And so we started to grow again, and then what this person did was doing more of what
I was already doing, but I couldn't do more myself because I was alone working on everything.
This person started to get more partnerships, so with different apps, so doing more of them
because he could focus on it.
So we started to do more of that, more of affiliates, so basically more of what was
already working.
And so by focusing on like, you know, your weaknesses, so for me, it was churn.
And by increasing what was already working, we started to see a gap and we started to
grow again.
I love that.
When people think about marketing and when they approach marketing, like acquisitions
is kind of the thing that comes the most to mind, right?
How do you grow?
How do you do more and get bigger?
And one of the insights that you had was to think about how people were getting filtered
out, how people were churning and you focused on that and grew.
The really cool thing about your position is that like, since you're building tools
for Shopify merchants, you probably have some unique insights into the industry.
So I'm kind of curious about that.
Is there anything that you know about the Shopify business, the industry that other
people might not know?
Yeah, first of all, many people are opening Shopify store and close them right away.
I don't know why, but sometimes they stay only one month of the platform.
So for example, if we take our churn, which is like 25% out of this 25, 20% are for people
who just open and close Shopify apps, Shopify app, Shopify store.
So basically they are not users that you can like keep because they just close the store.
And this is something like many, many, and we see the same thing like with other Shopify
app owners is that we have many people who just closed their Shopify store.
COVID, it was crazy, like the number of installs, right?
But then we started to like decrease and today it's like, we started to grow again.
So maybe like the e-commerce will start to grow again because today it's not like, you
know, plus COVID, COVID was like crazy for e-commerce, but we started to see some more
traction to different Shopify store and stuff like that.
So maybe in the coming month, it will grow again.
So you've got multiple Shopify apps.
How much of your, you make like $37,000 a month.
How much of that comes from wide bundle charge, 15 bucks a month, 95% yeah, basically what
I wanted to do in the beginning was to build five Shopify apps to have like that pool Shopify
app where you can like upsell the app with, to do to the other users.
So I built wide bundle, we started to grow it.
And then I said, okay, let's build another app.
But the only thing is that when I saw the work that it was already for one app, I said,
let's just stick to what we have.
And right now we are focusing only on wide bundle.
So we don't have any app partnerships with wide review.
We don't have any affiliates.
We don't have anything.
So it's just the Shopify app store.
And so yeah, 95% is for wide bundle.
Makes sense.
And that's super impressive because you only charge 15 bucks a month for a wide bundle.
We have almost 3000 users.
Yeah.
3000 paying customers is insane.
Really conversion rates are like 1% or something for most SaaS applications.
And so to get that people wouldn't need, you know, hundreds of thousands of people to
try it.
Yeah.
You have really high conversion rates.
You're super popular.
Something that is great about conversion rate and it's due to them to the Shopify ecosystem
is that people don't have to add the credit card when they install a Shopify app, you
know, because the credit card is already on Shopify.
So they don't have to do it so we can charge them directly.
They don't have to think about it.
Secondly is that we, like it's a Shopify app, right?
So when people install the app, they feel like it's part of Shopify.
So we already have the trust from Shopify.
You know, we have Shopify brand, basically.
So you know, when you install your SaaS, you usually you're asking yourself, like, will
it work?
Like, is the team good enough and stuff and you start to ask stuff about like the business
more about like tool and for Shopify apps.
It's like you're installing something from Shopify.
So you already trust them.
You don't have any problem with that.
And so it increases conversions, right?
So super good reason to build Shopify app.
Listen, Matt, we've taken a ton of your time.
We've got one more question before you get out of here.
You've obviously had quite the journey as a founder from telling your mom you're going
to be, you know, a millionaire to like actually, you know, working your way there.
What's something that you think people who are just getting started to take away from
your journey?
Not necessarily the most broad advice, but something very specific that you found helpful
that you wish other new entrepreneurs with that.
Maybe two things.
Being an entrepreneur is like never give up basically because most part of your entrepreneurship
journey will be about failing and you need to fail to understand exactly what you need
to do.
Because even if someone tells you like this is how you should do it, like you don't really
know if you didn't fail before.
So this is the first thing.
So basically when you fail or when you don't have something like going, you just found
a way not to do something, but you can keep going.
And then if I can give an advice like more business specific, this advice that I think
would have saved me a lot of time is start with a problem, not an idea.
Beautiful.
Well, where can people go to find more about you?
Like Twitter?
Yeah, on Twitter, so D-S-M-A-T-I-E on Twitter.
And yeah, basically you will find me here and you will and on Twitter we'll find like
everything else.
Thanks a ton, Matt, for coming on the show.
Yeah.
Thank you for having me.
I'll see you next time.