Rob: Hi Bill. Uh, so welcome to the, uh, inaugural episode of Trial to Paid Podcast. Uh, thank you for being my first guest. Really appreciate it. Um,
Bill: Thanks for having me.
Rob: you're welcome. You're welcome. So, yeah, so just to kind of kick things off as we can talk about your, your product and kind of your, your, your, your latest startup, um, Rybbit.
Um, but just to kind of kick things off, just something I thought I'd do with kind of people who come on the show is just kind of ask for sort of like a, a kind of guiding principle, sort of like a philosophy or sort of way of thinking about things. Maybe there's just a kind of way that you generally approach when you're building just to kind of keep you sort of on track.
Bill: Yeah. So one thing I keep in mind is that, I mean, I'm the type of person that like, I have to build something I am interested in and, uh, genuinely in. And, uh, and, and I feel like if I, if I can do that, then I'll be able to survive any like. Ups or downs because, uh, I tend to only build things that I personally want to use.
And I personally do, do, do use as well. 'cause when people say that, like, like for like a one person, startups like, uh, like personal projects and stuff, you don't really ever die unless you give up. 'cause it doesn't really cost you anything. Like there's no like operational costs or anything. It's most purely just motivation. And, um, for some people it's just that like, as long as you, if you can stay alive for like however long you'll be able to make it.
Rob: Yeah. And that's, that's just a really good kind of, kind of message there. It's like, uh, I'd say that's something that's taken me a lot longer to figure out. You can wear ahead of me on that. Um, I feel like I've kind of, I don't know. I've had some successes and built some things, but not necessarily. I dunno, building for myself, but that sounds a little bit selfish, but um, I think as you say, it's kind of ultimately not because if it means you stay the course, then it's kind of the right way to kind of approach it.
Bill: I think it differs, obviously, like for every single, for every single situation. But for me personally, like it's pretty obvious. It was pretty obvious when to start that. 'cause if I wasn't interested in doing something, I would, I, I just would not be able to do it. So like, I couldn't even start.
Rob: Yeah, totally get that. I think it's kind of like a d maybe different, bit different for me. 'cause to some extent I'm just kind of happy,
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: building, kind of happy coding, you know. But um, kind of having said that, when you're kinda doing the same thing for a long time, maybe building same thing or kinda, I maintain something for a long time and it gets a bit same, and you kinda think, why, why did I even start this in the first place?
And if that reason's not there, then that's when you know, okay, I need to do something else. So that's really cool. Um, right. So yeah, so we're gonna be talking about, um, Rybbit, um, I'm saying that right. Yeah. It's like the frog kind of thing.
Bill: frog sound.
Rob: Yep.
Bill: Uh, interesting thing is like a a a lot of people don't understand what I mean, so it's just a random name, name for them. But usually if you're a, if you're American or from the uk, it's, yeah. It's,
Rob: Yeah,
Bill: Mm-hmm.
Rob: yeah, totally. I mean, it's already like, it's memorable, so I haven't forgotten it.
Bill: Mm-hmm.
Rob: Um, it's easy to say. Um, so yeah, so we're gonna be talking about that and sort of just kind of, uh, by way of kind of brief overview. So it, as I understand it's a web analytics, um, product. I know you're kind of promoting it, sort of Google analytics replacement.
I mean, just like minus initial look at it. I think there's a bit more, a bit more to it than that. Um, because I don't much like using Google Analytics, so, um, but yeah, we'll, we'll get it, we'll get into that a little bit more detail in a little bit. Um, just, just wanted to give a little sort of, uh, preview there.
But, um. What I hope we could, what I sort of thought we could do kind of before we get into that is just kind of, um, I mean you've already given a little bit of a kind of, um, insight into kind of what drives you, but, um, it'd be really interesting just to kind of get a sense for your, just kinda like your backstory really.
'cause obviously, you know, you're, you're young if you don't mind message again, like early twenties, right?
Bill: Yeah, I'm, I'm more closer to mid twenties. I'm 24.
Rob: Yep, yep. So, you know, you kind of compared to an old dinosaur like me, you, like, you, you haven't been coding like that long. Um, I guess, I mean, when did you,
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: you, when did you sort of start coding?
Bill: I wasn't one of those kids that like coded when they were like five years old, like in high school, did all this programming stuff. I, I actually only started coding my first year of college.
Rob: Oh, okay.
Bill: So during high school, I like built WordPress websites, but I, I never learned, learned how to code. I just, I mean, actually in high school I thought it was scary.
Like I thought it was too, uh, I thought it was too dumb to code, which is
Rob: Whoa. Yeah.
Bill: which is sort of odd looking back.
Rob: For sure.
Bill: um, yeah. So actually the reason I did computer science in college was 'cause my mom told me it was a good field.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: uh, like, honestly, like of course like now I love what I do, but it, it didn't really come from, um, uh, it didn't really come from childhood passion.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: Hmm.
Rob: That's really interesting. So actually you, you literally didn't like write any code until your first year at college?
Bill: Yeah. I mean, I was pretty like, good at using computers and stuff.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: like, yeah, I, I I was pretty, uh, computer. Literate, but I did not know how, I did not know how to code at all.
Rob: That's really interesting. So did you feel like you kind of wanted to code, but you didn't think that it was something that you could do or that you would be allowed to do or I.
Bill: Uh, for some reason I just thought it was too hard
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: uh, the only reason I went into computer science was 'cause of the career opportunities.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: Mm-hmm.
Rob: But it seems like you found a little bit more to it now.
Bill: Uh, I think I got lucky because if I didn't really build my first pro project, I probably would just be just a software engineer. Like, just for, for, for the rest of my life.
Rob: Yep. Got it. Cool. Okay, so, right, so, so you got into coding first year of college and then, um, so would you say like when you started doing it, you like kinda light bulbs went on, you thought, this is really cool, I could build stuff.
Bill: You know, I, I was actually not that good.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: I, I, I, I wasn't the type of kid to get like 4.0 G based in college. I was like, just a very average student. Um, know, I sort of struggled on my classes. I, I wasn't the worst, but I was far from, I was far from the best. I think it's mostly 'cause like, I just don't learn well in a school environment. Yeah.
Rob: makes sense. And kind of what were, were you sort of strong in some other areas that made you think you might be good at, good at, I mean, to go, to go and do it in college, you must, like some math or something like that, that you were strong in or?
Bill: Uh,
Rob: Not that I think, not that I think you need to be strong in math to do programming.
I don't at all. I'm not particularly,
Bill: I was deep, decent at math, but I
Rob: yeah.
Bill: like, that strong or anything. Of course. Like I was like a good student. I went to a
Rob: Yep.
Bill: university. I mean, at that point I didn't really feel like I had anything like special about me.
Rob: Yeah. So it was literally like your, your, your parents just kind of. Suggesting it and nudging you that way.
Bill: it seems pretty sad. Like, I mean, back then I, I, I, I didn't really think that, that, that high of myself. 'cause like,
Rob: Yeah,
Bill: environment, like it's completely different from like the, from like the business. So if you have
Rob: yeah,
Bill: skills, like it doesn't really, does not really translate over at all.
Rob: yeah.
Bill: Hmm.
Rob: were there people, like when you, before you decided to go to college and do, uh, do computer science, were there people around you who you knew who could code and you kind of thought you couldn't do what they did?
Bill: Um,
Rob: Or just, or just no one was really kind of,
Bill: there were probably were people in high school that were really good. Uh, I just didn't know who they were. I know there were like AP computer science classes in college, in, in high school.
Rob: yep.
Bill: I didn't take, I, I didn't take them because I, I didn't think back then that I would, that was the path I was going into.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: really know what I was gonna do. I, I, I, my dad is an engineer,
Rob: Yep.
Bill: but, so I just sort of thought, I just became, become like him. Um, I actually was doing, like, trying to do like a dual business computer science degree, uh, in college. So I actually got into the business school, uh, and did computer science at the same time.
But after a year, I realized that like, business, you don't really learn anything in school. So I,
Rob: Yeah. Nice. Do, I mean, do you think there's like, um, it's probably another topic, really, but do you think there's a, something about a kind of bit of a culture of like leaders in these days around software engineering and kind of maybe you just felt like you couldn't be a part of that?
Bill: Uh, well back then, I didn't really know, know anything about it.
Rob: Yeah. Okay.
Bill: yeah. Well, one thing that's interesting is that like, like maybe t 20 years ago, like pe people that went into software engineering, like computer science tech, they were like the weird kids that like generally like that actually enjoy doing it. Um, but nowadays, uh, it's sort of like the same people that do
Rob: Yeah,
Bill: banking
Rob: I get it.
Bill: consulting. Yeah.
Rob: Yeah, no, I totally get it. 'cause I just, I just think back, I mean, I did, I did start, I'm not like some kind of whatever, poly glot or something,
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: I mean, I did start messing around with computers when I was like six, but it was more, 'cause back then it was all, it was all new kind. No one's really doing it.
And you just get a kind of old computer and you just kind of get onto wherever you can type in some kinda basic code and you just have a mess around. I mean, to some extent to even play a game, you have to type it in yourself to be able to play it. So, um, you didn't really have any choice, but, um, yeah, but no, that, that's interesting.
Okay. Um, and. So, yeah, I guess it's funny 'cause in a way in hindsight you might think, oh, I didn't really, would you, would you think you needed college? 'cause in a way it kind of gave you that, um, confidence, didn't it, to kind of think you could do it,
Bill: I mean, there's like, am my, I mean, in the us like if you don't go to college, like I, I, I, I can't imagine how like, it's so rare for someone not to go to college. Like
Rob: right?
Bill: you're, like, even if you're like, uh, bill Gates or Mark,
Rob: Mm-hmm.
Bill: okay, but you, you go to Harvard for a year and you
Rob: Yep.
Bill: you, you have to, you have to signal that you're able to get into a college,
Rob: Yep.
Bill: if you're like tracked and you go to Harvard, oh, sure.
Yeah. Yeah.
Rob: They seem to like to tell us that well tell you guys that you shouldn't be going to college, but they all went,
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: that's the, that's the strange thing about it. Um, okay. And, um, so kind of moving on from that. So, um, so you've had like, like I just had a quick week and you have LinkedIn, so you've had like a couple of roles.
You did like an internship and, um. Was, was that help, was that part of college or was that afterwards?
Bill: Uh, internships in the us like in tech, you, you do them in the summer break,
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: it's not part of college. But I mean, usually, uh, it's really important to find internships if, if you wanna fly, find a full-time job. So I did an internship at, at a FinTech app, uh, a, a FinTech startup called Tribo. And then I also did an internship at, and, or this
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: which I, I've, I've also been working here for the past three years.
Rob: Okay. So that, and that's where you are now, and you are sort of doing that alongside, um, your two businesses. Right. And we'll just touch briefly on the other business. Um, and so, and you, and you work. You work remotely.
Bill: No, I, I, I, I work in person, but most of my team isn't here, so I don't have, have to go in every single day.
Rob: Okay. Nice. Um, so, okay, so. Yeah. So I mean, was there kind of some point sort of along that, that, well I suppose you've always had a kind of an idea that you might like to be involved in kind of business entrepreneurship, I guess. So was there a point where you kind of, the two came together and you thought, um, you know, maybe I could, uh, build a business?
Um, building products, coding.
Bill: Yeah. So it comes from, it's not really a linear path. So how it started was that in high school, and my friend, we did, like SEO we, we, we tried to build a basically Amazon, Amazon affiliate sites.
Rob: Okay. Yeah.
Bill: to rank for like certain keywords. I, I think our, and like write blogs and, and those blogs or like advertise products at Amazon. first site was, I think we were selling above ground pools. I think it was like
Rob: Oh yeah.
Bill: above ground pools.com. And then our second site was called panda
Rob: Yep.
Bill: which sold products. So we built those sites using WordPress. Uh, we didn't use any like PHP code or anything that, just like pure, just pure, like using the WordPress
Rob: Yep.
Bill: Um, ended up making a couple thousand dollars, we were using sort of blackout SEO, so we got our listings, got nuked by Google after a few months, which is kind of sad 'cause like,
Rob: Yep.
Bill: yeah. Mm-hmm.
Rob: Yeah, and I guess that's got harder and harder and harder to kind of do over the years, isn't it?
Bill: nowadays it's all AI slob, so I,
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: it's like it's impossible
Rob: Just forget it.
Bill: like Yeah.
Back then you could at least like write stuff.
Rob: So I guess would you, would you count those as well? They weren't really failures, were they the kind of
Bill: Yeah. Uh, mean, I was in high school, so I, I, I, I had no idea what was going on. So,
Rob: Yeah,
Bill: back then, like a couple da I was in high school, it's, it's insane, right? Uh, but after that, after like, we got shut down by Google, so it just like went back to gonna school, like doing one classes and taking tests and stuff.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: um, for the most part, I didn't really do anything like entrepreneurial just followed like the standard, like high school to college route. I,
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: um, yeah. So in college, the, the reason like, uh, if, if we go to my other project.
Rob: Yep.
Bill: Middle Gigi.
Rob: Yep.
Bill: that started in college, not because I wanted to become like, not because I wanted to build a business, but because I just wanted to get more experience in coding actually.
Rob: Okay.
Bill: uh, so Tomato Gigi is a stat site for World Tanks, which is a multiplayer game. And back then, uh, I was using a different site called Wat Labs, and it was a site that I really liked. So I just basically set out to build a clone of WAT Labs and then just put it on my resume to find internships. So like, the original purpose of TE Gigi was purely to boost
Rob: Yep.
Bill: my resume. Yeah.
Rob: So this was, um, and, and this was a, like a video game that you were really into at the time? Yeah.
Bill: Yeah, I've been playing a video game since, since like high school, so,
Rob: Yeah. So I mean, a little bit on that. I mean, like we said, you know, quite possibly 'cause technology, GG is, uh, and that's, that's good game, isn't it? Right? Is that where that is? It's like gg Good game.
Bill: Yeah. Well, Gigi is like the top of domain you
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: gaming sites use, and tomato is sort of an inside joke, uh, for people inside the game.
Rob: Yeah. You'd have to be there, I guess. Um, cool. And so, so the idea was just to kind of build, build something. I mean, was that sort of quite um, so I mean, what, I mean we sort of said maybe we'll go into this potentially another episode. It's probably quite a bit of depth here. So one thing is that this is actually still a kind of, and this is a business now, right?
You are, you are making some decent kind of revenue from this.
Bill: yes. It, it is a business now. Uh, it's been slowly growing for the past five years. Yeah. So I'm making around, I'm making around seven K per month,
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: 2K from ads and 5K from my Patreon.
Rob: Right, right. Okay. And that's, so that's just like gamers just sort of supporting the site basically. 'cause they like it.
Bill: Yeah, yeah.
Rob: Do they get a little bit of an inside kind of deal or something?
Bill: for Patreon, you get, you get extra features if you, if you, uh, buy, buy it. And for ads, it's just for people that, you know, go on site. Mm-hmm.
Rob: And okay. And I guess, um, worth touching on that, that, so that's, it's a relatively kinda high traffic site, isn't it?
Bill: Yeah, it's pretty high traffic. It gets around 1.5 million sessions a month.
Rob: Yep.
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: Okay. And um, and then in terms of the kind of, uh, what you actually built there, 'cause I mean, was, was that quite like challenging and did that then equip you to kind of move on to your next.
Bill: Yeah. I mean, it was the first real product I made, so I made it during COVID in 2020 when we were at home and had thing else to do.
Rob: Yep.
Bill: So it was also my first project that wasn't like my first like real project that wasn't part of school. So it was really hard 'cause I had no idea how to, school you learn like in my first like intro classes in, in university, we learned how to like write c plus plus
Rob: Yep,
Bill: this was a JavaScript with like with React and no js.
And we also had to learn, I also had to learn SQL, uh, to do this. I mean, the first few months are very hard, but eventually like it got much easier.
Rob: Yeah. And so, I mean, essentially that, that's this, um, its app sits, I mean, it is crunching a lot of data right? From all the games that are being played.
Bill: Yeah, it's a ton of data. Data actually. Like, um, I mean I have, right now I have just a Postgres, um, database that has probably like 1.5 terabytes of
Rob: Well, yeah.
Bill: data. Um, some tables have like. One or 2 billion rows. So it's grown to be quite a beast.
Rob: Yep. And, and it is only gonna get bigger.
Bill: Yeah. I, well, hopefully not because
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: I'm at the point where like I'm just, I'm just deleting stuff.
I, I, when, when it gets too old because I just don't want to spend my time
Rob: Right.
Bill: Yeah. That
Rob: Yeah, that's fair enough. So, um, just curious, so how, if, if that's, obviously you didn't, you didn't create the game, so how are you, how do you kind of get the data from the, from the games? How does that work?
Bill: they have a public API, which you can, which where you can fetch players stats from. So that's what I use.
Rob: Okay. Yeah. Cool. So that's really interesting. And yeah, I get, I can get a feeling for kind of how that kind of set you up nicely for being able to work on, um, to be able to build, um, Rybbit. Um, so we'll move on to that. So, so this product Rybbit, so, I mean obviously I have a rough idea, but if you could tell me kind of what, what is it, who, who's it for and, and why do they need it?
Bill: Yeah, so it's a Google, it's a web analytics, uh, alternative to Google Analytics. Um, it's, it, it, it's open source and I built it for just anyone that was, um, that found Google Analytics or any like similar like platform that was too, too complicated. Uh, I wanted to build simpler platform, and even though like many simpler PLA platforms exist, like plausible or umami or, uh, fathom, I wanted to build something that had actual, like, that had like features that was just beyond like a basic, a basic dashboard. so like in the market, I sort of saw like on one side you had these like enterprise platforms, which are like very complex and expensive. And then on the other side, like you had like very easy to use platforms. But beyond a basic dashboard, there were no further insights. I thought that maybe in the middle there was sort of balance.
I could strike and there was an unfilled, uh, and there was like unfilled demand there, because certainly from my site to demand I Gigi there was at
Rob: Yeah, it makes perfect sense. 'cause you know, I mean, um, and you mentioned plausible. I think there was another one, but I mean, I, I've. I've used Fathom and I've used Google Analytics. I say I've used Google Analytics. I always set it up. 'cause you know, you just kinda kind of have to, particularly if like you working with, like, you might be, you know, if you like working with a marketer or somebody who knows the way around it, you know, then you can, it's useful to have it there.
But for me, if I just want to go on there and just get a sense of kinda how, you know, what kind of traffic the sites getting on what pages and you know, so things like that. It's just, I I, yeah, I came across Fathom a few years ago and I tend to use it on, on sort of new sites, but, and this isn't an area I know a lot about, but I've certainly gone on there a few times and just been like, this is great, but you gotta go to click something and it doesn't click through to anything.
There's just no, there's no extra depth there.
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: So I can definitely see there's, um, sort of a gap there. That's what it looks like to me for something in, in the middle. Um, so that makes sense. And um, so when you, you, you've launched quite recently. That's right.
Bill: I launched around a month ago, around 35 days ago.
Rob: Yep.
Bill: Yeah,
Rob: So, yeah, not long at all and um, it's been quite sort of quick, quick growth initially as far as I can, can tell. I mean, um, I know you've, you've, some of the numbers are, are kind of publicly available anyway, but just for kind of the, the listeners, you know, in terms of kind of, uh, users so far, also paying customers and kind what kind of MRR you, you, you've gone up to so far
Bill: yeah. So I've had around like 900, uh, like either trial or. Or featured signups. And of those I have around like 23 customers that have converted. So current MRR, I'd say is around maybe around $500. But, but so far the revenues is like 1.6 K so far, because like some people have signed up for annual deals.
Rob: For annual? Right. Okay. Okay. Yep. Um. Cool. That makes sense. And, um, so, and yeah, we've already, we as, as we've already discussed, I mean this doesn't, this doesn't sort of change and mean, obviously this kind of adds onto your tomato GG income. So, you know, maybe you are, you know, a little bit higher, but it's still not realistic.
It's enough, not enough for you to be able to sort of go on this full time. Um, but is, is that something that maybe you're thinking about, maybe in, in, I dunno, a few months or if it does continue growing?
Bill: Well, if I don't change anything, I'm sure, I'm sure it will. Continue to grow, but it's not gonna, like, it's not gonna be able to replace my income, um, like my full-time job income in, in a few months.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: But, so it's either like, I just grind this out for a couple years without changing much, or I sort of can into more of a, into more of a enterprisey field.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: yeah.
Rob: Interesting. And so in terms of the kind of positioning of it, obviously you've said that it's kind of, um, yeah, kind of simpler than Google Analytics, but maybe has a bit more going than say a fathom. Um, so I mean, do you have any kind of direct competitors more in that kind of middle? Um,
Bill: um, yeah, I definitely, there's a couple of products that are pretty similar to mine. I think, uh, umami is probably the one that's the most similar. They've actually copied like my, my design in their latest
Rob: yep.
Bill: which is, which is annoying, but it's also. Yeah. Yeah. So, so they, they, they're pretty similarly positioned to me.
Uh, but I, I, I think I'll be able to outpace them in the, in the, in the quality and of features that I ship.
Rob: Yeah. And have you got any sense for kind of, uh, whether they are. Whether they're fund, like funded or bootstrapped, and whether they have a wider, bigger team or,
Bill: they're pretty public about their team. Um, they're, they're open source as well, from what I
Rob: yeah.
Bill: founded by three brothers in the Bay area, and they, they, they, they've been around since I think 2020, and they've raised 1.5 million in, uh, a seed round, I think.
Rob: Okay.
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: Okay. And, um, were, were you sort of looking at them somewhat when you were kind of putting together a plan for, um, for, for Rybbit, for, for launching? Did that feed into why you went open source?
Bill: Yeah. Well, uh, the reason I will open source is just 'cause there's a bunch of alternatives that are already open source. So there's no reason to not be open source. 'cause if someone wanted to co, if, if someone just wanted to copy your code, I mean, there's already a bunch of different open source ones available.
So I feel like if you're in a field where everyone is open source, um, to not be open source is just putting yourself at a huge disadvantage.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: Okay. Um, makes sense. So, yeah, so in, in terms of the, kind of the, the idea, I suppose it wasn't so much that you kind of went and kind of looked for an idea, it was more that your idea came from what you were doing with Tomato. Is that right? To.
Bill: Yeah. Uh, it's, it's a pretty similar stack and sort of product as tomato. So my four or five years experience on tomato definitely helped, helped me build this. If I was just building this from scratch, like it, it would take me a long time and it probably, it would not be that good. So it was, I, I've definitely like it, it definitely helped me a lot that I was building on top of something, well, on top of what I learned from, from tomato. Yeah.
Rob: I guess in a sense you were sort of your own kind of first customer. 'cause I think you were looking for something weren't you to use with tomato, right?
Bill: I was using plausible and goo analytics and I, I wasn't happy with either of 'em.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, just having had like a brief play, uh, play with it. I mean, I, I was sort of seeing some things that looked like some maybe unique features, like some of the visualizations. Is that right?
Bill: Yes. Um, I think the, the, the one I'm talking about is probably the Globe, right?
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: Yeah. That's not,
Rob: pretty cool.
Bill: that's not unique. Unique though. It's not,
Rob: No,
Bill: kind of like caught copy that from someone else as well, but like, it's sort of like the, it's just sort of
Rob: yeah.
Bill: mean, you, there's like truly unique features that it's be hard to find something that, that's truly unique. But, um, I've just, like, I've done a ton of research on what my, on, what my, on, what my competitors are, I sort of just grabbed the best feature from, from every single one and put them my product.
Rob: Yeah, that's a good strategy. Um, cool. And then, um, so in terms of kind of, did you do any kind of validation of the idea before you started building it? Or did you just figure you, you just, you needed it so probably other people would,
Bill: Yeah, I didn't follow the advice to do validation because I mean, it's already a very market and
Rob: yeah,
Bill: already, like I was just building pretty much a clone, at least at first, I was building a clone of something that was already there. Um, so I just went, I went with it.
Rob: yeah. I guess you just, you had an instinct that you were gonna do it slightly differently, right? Because if it was an exact clone, then what would be the point?
Bill: Yeah. There's actually a lot of people that do exact clones. Like if you go on like these, like, uh, if you go on these comparison sites, you'll see a bunch of different platforms that like are just crappier versions of plausible or fathom, and they get into nowhere 'cause they're, they're
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: single way.
So the, yeah. So I knew that I had to like differentiate myself in some way. And the way I would do it is just by creating like just a better overall.
Rob: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I, I, it's like I haven't looked around that much lately for go for web analytics products, but I had a little look at Plausible and
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: or two others before the call. Um, and I think the thing that kind of jumps out at me with your, the way that you've put together your, I guess what you call your marketing site, but you know, it very much reminds me of kind of some of the kind of really kinda slick sort of dev tools out there at the moment.
It's got that kind of familiar sort of dark, dark mode look. Um, and everything is really, I don't know, just looks kind of pixel perfect to me. You can't really fault in the thing on there. And I guess that sort of then gives you that kind of. It gives you that sense that probably the product is just gonna be like really well thought out, work really well.
So did you take quite a lot of time on that, on that design? Did you, did you do that? Design yourself?
Bill: I, I, I, I did that myself. Uh, actual site from, for most of the, of course I've put like more work and after, but most of the, probably 80% of the marketing site was done in a day. So, uh, yeah, it's, I, um, I sort of just kind of coded it in cursor actually. So it, it was
Rob: All right.
Bill: I thought it would be.
And uh, I felt like it turned out pretty good. Uh, but it was after, like, I only made it after like a couple months of just like researching like how other people did it and thinking in my head about like how, like what would make it work well.
Rob: So, um, so when you say like you did, did some vibe coding there, was that just of the, kind of like the marketing site and the UX side, or did you also use some, you know, some AI tools on, on sort of the backend stuff as well?
Bill: I mean, I, I definitely use AI tools a lot, um, on my actual product overall. But all of the core, core features I, I, I, I either like, um, I don't just like ask it to like, do this thing and I, I leave. Uh, but for, for, for, for some features, it's, uh, it's very much like AI coded for some of like the non-essential features, but for all the core features and especially stuff that people see, like, um, have to, like, it has, it has to be a, a ton of manual input on, on it to
Rob: Yeah, for sure.
Bill: look good.
Rob: Yep, yep. Okay. Um, so yeah, so was there, um, I guess was there kind of an MVP or like a prototype that you kind of put in front of people or did you kind of like just build the kind of V one and get it to pretty much how it is now before launching it?
Bill: Well, I started this in January, so
Rob: Yep.
Bill: months ago. And you know, I showed my friends, uh, and p people I knew about it. So I probably showed maybe like six, seven people, but I, there was no, like, there was no like pre-launch, uh, like beta or anything. I just sort of just like when, when it felt right, I it and, and I, I guess one thing I, I did for my launch is that I, it was probably more polished than most
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: Like I had, like, I had my open source repo. I had like docks, I had like a fully built out like platforms you can stripe. I also had like, uh, doc docs for. Stop hosting it.
Rob: Yeah. So, so did you, um, kind of, at what point did the, did you make the repo public?
Bill: Yeah. I, I made it public a couple months before I launched, but because I didn't like say anything, um, uh, I, I, I only, I only sent, sent to my friends, but when, when I launched, uh, when I like officially launched, I just made a few read a and
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: sort of how it, um, became popular.
Rob: Yeah. Okay. Um, so just, um, yeah, stick with the product for a minute then. So, so you started in, in, in January you launched, you said, uh, I can't, when you said, but very recently.
Bill: I launched it, uh, in early May, so it's, it's been
Rob: Yeah. So, okay. So, so it sort of took, took you about four to five months to get it to a point where you were, you were happy. Yeah. Um, and I mean, you mentioned that you used like some AI tools cursor and bit of vibe coding and so on, but, and, and then the actual sort of stacks, it's like a node js and then, is that right?
And then what, what are you using on the front end? Are you using any frameworks? Anything like that?
Bill: I'm, I, I'm using a very, like, pop popular right now. So on the front end, it's next Js, TypeScript, tailwind, CSS.
Rob: Yep.
Bill: And then on the back end I use, uh, node with type, type script Fast five for my server
Rob: Oh yeah.
Bill: my for my databases. I use Postscripts for my data and for my type, for my, uh, time series data, I use Click House.
Rob: Oh, okay. Yeah. Great. Um, and then, so, and with Tailwind, do you use any sort of, any kind of framework, frameworks or sort of templates or anything like that on top of that? Or you just
Bill: use a customized. Uh,
Rob: Yeah. Nice. Yes, I've, I've heard, oh yeah, I've heard good things and now I think about it when I've been looking at chat, I can see,
Bill: Yeah,
Rob: see similarities. Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. Um, and it's interesting as well that you, um, you kind of instinctively went towards, um, SQL for kind of like just the core sort, I guess, the kind of crud side of it.
Yeah, the kind of, uh, rather than a kind of no SQL.
Bill: Yeah. I've always been SQO, um, for tomato, I just decided to use Postgres and that's just what I've been using since
Rob: Yep. No, that's interesting. Seems like, uh, SQL's getting a bit of a comeback these days. 'cause for a while it's just, if you used sql, you were doing it wrong, you know? Um, apparently,
Bill: May, maybe I, that was a, a, I'll, may, may. Maybe That sort of predates me. 'cause when I sort of came into the field in 2019.
Rob: yeah,
Bill: postcodes and SKO
Rob: in
Bill: on the way back.
Rob: Interesting, interesting. Yeah, there was definitely a good while where I just felt like if I said SQL then people would look at me strange from about 10 years. Uh, but I'm glad we're, I'm glad SQL's back. Um, so good. Um, so on the open source, um, side of things, and I mentioned that, um, you kind of did it that way because you felt that if you didn't.
Then whatever, someone just used one that is open source. Yeah.
Bill: Yeah. Mainly it just goes down to I had no idea on how to do distribution if, if, if, if not, if, if it was not open source. Like I, I was completely clueless and I, I also didn't wanna put in an effort to do it. Uh, yeah, because
Rob: did you have some experience like, um, with distribution through open source? Was that something on you did on Tomato Gigi, but then No.
Bill: tomato's not open source. So, uh, I, I had no experience with open source, so it was actually quite scary for me, uh, to do it because like, once you're open source, like people can see your code and if your code sucks, like, I'm afraid all, like, they'll be like, your
Rob: Yeah,
Bill: And I,
Rob: I,
Bill: I, they,
Rob: I still haven't gotten over that one. I, it's the one thing I, I want to do an open source thing, but I'm still not there and I'm, you know, I'm old than you and I still think like, yeah, what are they gonna think of my code? But, um, yeah. So, okay. So was there some kind of, um. Success that you'd seen, you know, with a kind of an open source launch that you looked at and thought, oh, I could use that kind of playbook if you like.
Bill: So it's actually, it's actually something I, I wanted to talk about. So around two years ago, one of my friends created an open source, search platform. And I mean, it, it exploded pretty quick. Like, uh, it, it was enterprise Enterprise search of a, a ai. So
Rob: yeah.
Bill: it exploded pretty quick and he got into YC and he was
Rob: Okay.
Bill: a $10 million C Cron? I think
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: And that was just like in, in course of a year, he went from having nothing to raising 10 million in a year.
So I was like, open source is the way to go. Yeah.
Rob: Yeah,
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: absolutely. Because, yeah, 'cause it's interesting 'cause one thing I'm trying to work out, obviously it's, it, it like, it, it, it has worked on, you know, it's grown quite, quite quickly. Obviously remains be seen that where it goes from here, right? You don't kind of, kind of know yet, but it's, it is, it is growing for the time being.
But then on the one hand though, you're kind of, you wanted to build a product that's sort of simple. Um, but then you've got this kind of, um, kind of self-hosted option with it. You, so you don't have to pay for it. Um, which is nice. But then on the other hand, if someone's in the market with something very simple and like doesn't have the first clue about kind of open source and kind of self-hosting and, and so on, um.
I suppose for them they've got the paid option, right? Is that, that's kind of the idea. I mean, would, would generally someone who's technical self-host it or do you think they would, they would still maybe just pay.
Bill: Uh, well the, there I, I'm probably going to even add more features that are only available in, in the
Rob: Okay.
Bill: currently. Like there's a couple
Rob: I,
Bill: that are for the paid version, but in the future, um, I'll sort of like create more of an incentive to to to pay for it. Yeah. And, and for self posting, like for it, it's like, yeah, it doesn't really align with like having something that's su that's super simple, but you have to self, self-hosted to use it.
'cause hosting something, I've tried to make it as easy as possible, but. You still have to set up
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: and stuff.
Rob: I suppose there's one. Yeah. One because one possibility there. 'cause it, it is not like it used to be that, you know, we had a lot of things like this that were self-hosted and you would've seen if kind of your WordPress days, you know, you go to a host and you can kind of one click install WordPress, one click install this, that, and the other.
So I could, I could definitely see this as being something that you could kinda, would, would turn up on there as a one click install and I'd kind of be nothing, you couldn't stop them from offering that and charging for it themselves. Um, but I suppose you could still kind of hold this kind of, if you want some extra features, then maybe you need a whatever, different license code or something.
Bill: Well, I have A-A-G-P-L-V three, so unless they open source everything,
Rob: Right.
Bill: they open source term modifications, they can't do that.
Rob: Oh, okay. I didn't even know that was possible. So you've got like an open source license that Okay. Means what they They can't charge. They can't charge. So no kind of commercial use or.
Bill: They can charge for commercial use. It just has to be licensed under the same thing. So like if they make, uh, if, if they add stuff to it, like to, to, um, to, to facilitate their use case, they have to open source it under the same license.
Rob: Okay, that's good. Um, right, so, and lemme just think so, and the I, this kind of branding you got there, you got got the kind of ribbon logo. Is that, so did you design it yourself? I, that designed or,
Bill: Yeah. So actually my designed that for me. So, um, pre, previously before launch, it was just a frog emoji. But I, I knew like after lunch, I, I, I had, I had to be an actual, like design.
Rob: just did a nice job.
Bill: Mm-hmm.
Rob: Yeah. That's really good. Um. Cool. So, um, as you said, you made the Rep Republic, um, a little bit before the launch and now you've got, 'cause I had a look and you've got, I think it's like 16 or so contributors.
Bill: Yeah, I have a, a couple around a dozen con con contributors and around, uh, 6.6 K stars
Rob: Yes.
Bill: time I checked. Yeah.
Rob: Yeah. Yeah. So, so at this point, um, you have, I mean, how active are those contributors? Are they, are they kinda helping you quite a lot?
Bill: Uh, there's no, like, I mean, there're, it's mostly just me. Uh, I
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: the contributors they're helping a bit, but, um, 90% of it is still driven by me.
Rob: Yeah. Yeah. And it was, it was a hundred percent you to kind of get the
Bill: Mm-hmm.
Rob: initial product built. Um, yeah. And kind of one thought again, did my final thought on the open source side of things is like, um. Have you kind of had any sort of, kind of push, sort of pushback from the com community that you know, that you are, you're charging for an opensource product?
I know it's not kind of unusual, these, but you're not really charging for opensource products as such. You're kind of charging to host it, I guess, but has there been any pushback on that?
Bill: no, I, it's a pretty common nowadays, so I think people are used to it. I do have, I mean, some people are asking me like why external features are not available on the, some focus version, but it's less so than complaining. More so than, I'm not being like, fully transparent about what's available or not.
I haven't updated my docs or anything, so I, I don't think, uh, don't think PP people have had a problem.
Rob: Yeah, and at the end of the day they can self-host it if they want it for free, I guess. And, um, and is the, the, is the, is the marketing site, is that in the repo?
Bill: Yes, everything is in is in the same
Rob: Yeah. And was that a kind of, kind of. Did you think about not having that side of it in, in like, even like the Stripe integration, everything is all that in the same,
Bill: Yeah, it's on the same, which is kind of scary, but it's, I did it 'cause uh, otherwise it'd be really complicated and I wanted to be
Rob: yeah.
Bill: move fast.
Rob: Makes sense. Great. Okay. Um, so now just kind of, uh, thinking about the sort of launch itself, um, how, so you, you mentioned you, um, you did some initial kind of Reddit posts to kinda get the word out. Is that right?
Bill: So the first post I made was on our slash side project. So that one, like, it got, it got pretty popular. It got like a couple hundred comments, probably like, maybe like a thousand likes. But then my account got banned out there
Rob: Oh.
Bill: so I got banned for self-promotion, which kind of sucks 'cause it kind
Rob: Isn't everyone doing that on there?
Bill: yeah, I, I, I, I, I don't know why it got banned. I, so it sort of killed my momentum for the first day, but then like after that I, I just, I used my alt to post on, um, different subreddits. Um, and then like the post I made on my alt actually blew up more, uh, especially the one on r slash uh, self hosted. Uh, so that's sort of what that, that was the viral push that got me like a viral on x on hack and on Hacker News and a bunch of like Korean, and Japanese, uh, sites.
I'm not sure exactly what they are, but it was pretty popular for around maybe four or five days.
Rob: Yep.
Bill: Mm-hmm.
Rob: Um, and so, and I think you mentioned, I think you mentioned on your in Hackers post that you, uh, did you post on, um, hacking News as well?
Bill: Uh, I, I didn't post on how news, so somebody probably f found, found my project and posted it on there.
Rob: Yeah. Yeah. And, and was this basically all you did to kind of get the word out at that point?
Bill: yeah. Pretty much.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: um, I just made a bunch of posts and, and that's it. Yeah,
Rob: And then you just got like a flood of, I mean, is it, did you get a flood of signups or were you more looking at the kind of, because Okay, see, because you got the, you got the paid product and you've got the self-hosted and then you've got the free
Bill: yeah.
Rob: So was it a lot of signups for free?
Bill: Yeah. Uh, in the first few days I probably got like a couple hundreds of signs for free, and of course, like there, there's gonna be a lot more people that are just on, on repo or trying to self posted just based on like the communities where I posted, like he posted and, and. And Hacker News, like they're going to want to be able to self host it. So I wasn't for like, which, um, audiences were like, were the most likely to convert to my paid plan. I was just trying to get it to,
Rob: Yep.
Bill: as big of an, to like, of a general audience as possible.
Rob: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So have you, have you got some ideas now about sort of trying to get, push a little outside of that kinda self-hosted kind of, sort of techie space to try and get more, kind of more people who would be likely to sign, uh, pay?
Bill: Yeah. It's
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: because, I mean, you can get away with like advertising your product if it's, if it's open source really easily, but if it's just a paid slash product, you'll get banned from anywhere or, or you really get banned
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: peop or people won't care. So I, I, I don't know. I, I honestly don't know what to say to that.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: Um,
Bill: so I, my strategy is to have
Rob: yeah.
Bill: really big funnel, but even if like the
Rob: Yeah,
Bill: is really small, at least like, hopefully the volume at the top is going to
Rob: yeah.
Bill: it.
Rob: I don't know. Have you, have you, have you thought about doing anything on, on LinkedIn
Bill: Um,
Rob: might be quite a good,
Bill: yeah. It,
Rob: there are a lot of technical, technical people and there's a lot of non-technical on people on there. I know we're also interested in seeing what people are building and things, but, and this is such a kind of general, uh, the market for this is so big, isn't it? And anyone who's got a, a website,
Bill: yeah, eventually, I mean, I just, I, I don't want people like finding out, like, I'm doing this at, at work, honestly. the main reason. Yeah.
Rob: well they don't, they don't know.
Bill: Uh,
Rob: Oh, you're doing, you find out you're doing at work.
Bill: yeah, I mean, like, I, I, I, I'm not like. Hiding it. My, my, my GitHub is public. I'm, I'm doing a podcast right now, but I don't want to like, be just posting it on LinkedIn and my manager see that, like I'm just
Rob: Yeah,
Bill: all my time doing, doing this.
Yeah,
Rob: that's the difficult thing about LinkedIn, isn't it sometimes.
Bill: yeah.
Rob: Um, interesting. Okay. So, so you haven't really done, uh, you haven't done any kind of paid, paid ads or anything like that?
Bill: No, I feel like that's, that's not gonna work. That's not gonna
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: work for me.
Rob: Yeah, I can see that. Um, and, and you, you made a conscious decision to go for the go for the freemium rather than like a free trial.
Bill: Yeah. Uh, initially I had a free trial, but, um, but like, after, like almost two weeks since launch, 'cause my trial was, my trial was two weeks and even
Rob: Yep.
Bill: days, like zero people had signed up. So I was like, this is not working. So, and then I, uh, to, to free tier. And after that, like, uh, got a bunch of. Signups in the, in like the, the, the few days a after, so the free trial did not
Rob: Hmm.
Bill: work for me.
Rob: Well that's interesting though that changing it and immediately you did see some paid signups, so.
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: Yep. Um, and I mean, are you talking concerned like with the freemium side, if you get a little free, a lot of people who stay free and is it gonna end up being a bit costly for you to kind of keep all their data?
Bill: No, my free tier is pretty limited. It's only a couple do thousand events a month. So for three years there's, it is basically free. Free for me.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: Mm-hmm.
Rob: Great. And, um, how about on the kind of, um, support side? Are you finding you're having to do much work there yet?
Bill: Yeah, I've had, most of the support has been for, for open source, uh, 'cause. PPPP people run to issues all the time trying to self-host it. Um, but for the paid tier on cloud, you usually, there's not many issues 'cause it's all the same.
Rob: That's kind of ironic then you're not having to support the customers who are paying you, but you are the ones who aren't.
Bill: Mm-hmm.
Rob: Yeah. And how do you, how do you sort of, I guess, how do you hand handle that? Because I guess technically open source and it, you know, it's community thing, isn't it? So you can't say, well, you have to pay.
Bill: put some effort to it. I put some effort into it, but I know that like, it's not, it's not something that's super important. So like, if it's something that see the issue or bug report, it's an actual bug with the product itself, I'll fix it. Of
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: But if it's just because like he deployed it in a weird way and like there's some error that I don't understand, I won't, I won't do anything.
Rob: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Okay. Um, let's, um, yeah, uh, bill, I just realized we're at, we're at an hour. Have you got like another 10 minutes? Yeah. Great. Great. Um, alright. So what we'll do, we'll look at, I think it'd just be interesting to know a little bit more about kind of what you, what you kind of, what you kinda learned, what, what you've learned so far.
So, you know, kinda what, what went well, what didn't go so well, and maybe what, what the kinda hardest thing was to kind of pull off.
Bill: Yeah, so I mean, overall it's grown better than I expected. I, I remember, like when I first started, my goal by the end of the year 2025 was to get one K stars on And I've already pa I passed it pretty much on like the first two days. So I'm happy about that. Uh uh, I mean, I can't really, I mean, most things I've gone well, honestly, so I'm pretty about that. And, uh, for things that haven't gone well, it's mostly on the technical side. On the technical side, there's like a few, like technical, a few like on how I are on how I did the code that
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: but those are, those are mostly fixable, but
Rob: Are those things you figured out? Are they sort of things that maybe like other people see in the code or kind of highlighted.
Bill: Yeah. There were some issues with the how to self hosting success set up was done.
Rob: Yep.
Bill: um, yeah, I mean they, they were annoying to fix, but I've mostly fixed 'em by now. Mm-hmm.
Rob: there, isn't there? Um, and yeah, just, just briefly, you mentioned, um, just to go back to your Indie Hackers post, and you mentioned there, one of the things you did that worked really well was the, uh, the, the embed, the I frame.
Bill: Yeah, so basically on the demo site, on, on, on, on the, on the, on the marketing site, you, you don't have to, like I do have a link to my, the demo site on, on, on, on top, but, um, I do, I actually embed like an actual, uh, preview of my entire, the demo site just right there. So you don't have to, so the user, immediately as they go on my site, they can see a fully working demo of my product.
Rob: Yeah, it's really cool that I had a little, it'll play with it earlier. And um, I think, like you said in the post, it's surprising that, that it's not done more often.
Bill: Yeah, it's, I'm surprised it's not done more often 'cause usually people either, um, have just a bunch of screenshots and a demo link. But when you, when you go on a demo link, I mean, it's there. So like why can't you just put up on your page? Mm-hmm.
Rob: particularly well for this, almost like, well it replaces the need for you to have, to have the big screenshot of the big hero image, doesn't it? It's just the actual, the actual, uh, app, which is great. Um, cool. And um, anything that you would do differently next time, I guess in terms of the bill, but the launch, just kinda everything really?
Bill: You know, I, I, if I had known that, like it would've gone relatively well, I would, I would've like done this maybe a year or two earlier actually.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: 'cause like when I started this, like, it wasn't like I was planning for months on how to do this. I swear it was like one week I was like, I kind of wanna do this, and then the next week I started building it.
So you don't really need to have like some grand plan. You just have to start.
Rob: Absolutely. Yeah. Um, great. Okay. Let's, um, be good to chat like kind of a little bit about the kind of future as you see it for kind of rivet, but also for yourself. Um, I mean, and we've talked around this a little bit already, I suppose, but do you have some kind of, kind of, kind of, sort of goals in your mind?
Uh, short, short and long term for, for.
Bill: Yeah. Uh, so goals are just to like, grow at a sustainable pace. I'm not like VC backed or anything. Uh, like I don't really have anything that's pressuring me to grow at, like, at any speed. Uh, but you know, I, I, I, I, I want to like, keep on improving the product. I want to get better at distribution and marketing. Uh, but definitely, uh, when I first started I was like, if the, if this can make like 10 KMMR be happy, but I feel like my standards have that for, for that have increased a bit.
'cause I know my. My competitors are making a lot more than that.
Rob: Yep.
Bill: Mm-hmm.
Rob: That's the thing, you know, you'll get there and then, you know, you want to get to the next,
Bill: Yeah, yeah,
Rob: the next milestone. Um, and so kind of long term though, you kind of, you tend to kind of hold onto this, bootstrap it. You're not gonna thinking, I'm gonna raise and try and kind of go big and get like an exit. I mean, never say never.
Right. But
Bill: I mean of, of course, like right now, like, I can't imagine me myself not, not working on this and like selling it, but in 10 years then things might change. for like VC funding, I mean, right now I've no plans to do it, but if it makes sense, why, why not? But like, if, if I do take funding, it won't be like, I, I won't be trying to raise like a series A, B, C, like D every single year and trying
Rob: yeah.
Bill: as fast as possible. Uh, what is likely gonna happen if I go this route is. I'll just get some rocket feel from my seed round, maybe around like a million and try to just be one and done.
Rob: Yeah.
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: That's cool. Okay. And in terms of kind of, is there a kind of, uh, in terms of the, I guess more like in terms of the product, is there sort of a bigger vision that you have for, I know you talked about kind of, kind of enterprise, but are there kinda related products you're thinking about here?
Bill: Yeah. Um, so there's a bunch of like different niche, uh, web analytics verticals that not really, uh, well serviced right now. I'm not really, I haven't done too much research, there's definitely a bunch of companies that are making a, a, a ton of money, but like they're, they're not really well, well known out there. So as, I mean when, when you're not like competing directly with Google Analytics, like there's a lot of different ways you can go. So that's sort of a direction I could pivot in.
Rob: Yeah, I think that's the thing. Once you get into kind of a space like this, you start to see all the kind of little niches and kind of, you know, sort of opportunities within it, don't you? Great. Alright, well I think that's, that's, that's pretty much it. I mean, it's been really kind of interesting just learning, learning about all this. It's a really inspiring story and, you know, it just seems like there's a great future ahead for, for Rybbit and for you. Um, so yeah, just to kind of wrap things up, I mean, if, if you got, um, you know, if you got a kind of a, sort of a, a, a tip or kind of like a message from maybe someone who's kind of in your shoes earlier on before they started building something, maybe the kind of earlier when you didn't even think you could, could do it, or if you were the right kind of person to kind of go into this kinda what you might say to them.
Bill: I would just tell 'em to try. Uh, I mean, it's, it's really easy to just, um, wait, are, are, are, are you asking the, the question from, uh, from of a person that's just like doing computer science, doing programming, but not like doing any projects? Yeah. Uh, yeah, so I, I would just say try it. 'cause it is usually people don't build projects 'cause it's sort of scary and it's not following the, the, the structured route of just going to school, taking classes, doing in internships, getting a job. But, um, and, and it's definitely like, it's definitely undefined. You have to like, figure out things for yourself. Uh, but you should do it because, uh, it is definitely like a big resume boost if it works.
Rob: Yeah. Right. Even if you just do it on, on the side and obviously you, you generally recommend
Bill: Yeah.
Rob: starting something on the side then kind of like, um, I don't know, betting, betting the farm on it and you know, sort of quitting your job and kind of, uh, going all in from day one. That'd be a bit crazy. So, uh, yeah, absolutely.
Start something on the side and see where it goes. Um, great. And so rib, it remind me the, the UL
Bill: Rybbit
io.
Rob: Great. So people can.
Bill: do io
Rob: Perfect. 'cause I think anyone listening, we all need web analytics, so, uh, they should, they should have a look and I think they'll be impressed. Um, great. And um, in terms of kind of like, if anyone just kind of wanted to ping you, you know, ask you something after this, I mean, where, where could they find you?
Bill: yeah, they can, uh, you can reach me on x. Uh, it's, I can you yang under dash frog and you can reach me on discord as well, uh, on LinkedIn.
Rob: Great. Well, what we'll do when I've figured out how you can do show notes, I'll, uh,
Bill: Hmm.
Rob: do that and we'll get some links and put them in there. So, so people have got those. Um, so great. Well thank you. Thank you. Uh, bill, it's been absolute pleasure and, and super interesting learning about Rybbit and your, your background as well.
Wish you all the best and, uh, I'll be, I'll be seeing you soon, I'm sure.
Bill: Yeah. to you soon.
Rob: Cheers. Bye-Bye.
