Rob: Hi Jerad. Welcome to the Trial to Pay podcast, third episode. Um, hope you're doing well.
Jerad: I'm doing great. How you doing?
Rob: Yep. Yep. Pretty good today. Uh, great. So just to get us, uh, get us rolling, I just wondered, um, do you have a guiding principle, so like a philosophy that just, just kind of like influences how you build products, businesses, and just keeps you motivated, moving in the right direction?
Jerad: Yeah. Um, so this has changed a lot recently. I'd say, uh, last year I actually got serious about building businesses. Uh, prior to that I was really building projects, uh, but I wasn't thinking of them as businesses. And so, um, you know, I've kind of focused on building products for businesses as opposed to consumers.
Um, I've had a lot of projects that were meant to be fun or interesting, but not really make money. Right. I thought I would figure out that piece later on. Um, but uh, yeah, that's kind of how I've been thinking about it recently.
Rob: Yeah, that makes, makes a lot of sense. It's finding that kind of like balance between the two, isn't it?
Jerad: Yeah, exactly.
Rob: Something that's fun that's also got a market.
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: Yeah. Cool. Um, so we're gonna be talking about your, your product, um, uh, SaaS product hypertext today. Um, so I'll just, just to kinda give a very brief sort of intro into that, but we'll talk about it more in a little bit.
But it's, it's an ai ai writing tool, I'd say with a difference as far as I can understand it. So you got a little deeper on the kind of like research side of things to come up with, sort of quality writing is how I understand it. But we'll get into it a little bit more in a bit. Um, so yeah, I guess just initially just be cool to get into your kind of background, roll back the years a little bit. Um, and um, 'cause I was look looking through your, uh, LinkedIn, just trying to get a sense for your, for your background. 'cause you've been, uh, building things for quite a while, uh, web development and so on. So going back to kind of your, your college days. So because you didn't do computer science at college, did you?
It was technical communication, I think.
Jerad: Yeah, that's what I ended up with, although I jumped around, uh, between like five different, uh, majors. So, uh, yeah.
Rob: Cool. So, and then I saw sort of following on from that, you had quite a kind of, there was sort of like a, a writing and sort of editorial kind of interest that you developed for you there. Is that right?
Jerad: Yeah. Yeah, I was really interested in writing in college in particular. Um, and, uh, I ended up working at the newspaper there became, um, the, uh, God, what's it called? The, the chief of the organization there. Um, and yeah, it's, it was something that really drew me in, but it wasn't something I looked at as a career necessarily.
My degree in technical communications was kind of like the bridge between, uh, writing and also being, uh, more of the technical side of things. Um, it was also an easy way for me to get outta college 'cause I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do at that time. So I was like, all right, we're gonna just get done with this and move on.
I'll figure it out later.
Rob: Yep. But I can get a sense of maybe how that led to, we can talk about it a little bit later, how it did lead to sort of hypertext,
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: I imagine
Jerad: Mm-hmm.
Rob: Um, but in terms of, um, sort of how you got into sort of building stuff, web apps and, and websites, that sort of thing.
Was that, um, did that come before, uh, college or did it
Jerad: It did. Yeah.
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: Yep. So when I was in high school, um, I was just interested in building things. I build simple websites, um, play around with macro media flashback. Then,
Rob: Yep.
Jerad: you know, the, the main goal was to learn c plus plus and build video games at some point. Uh, I, I bought a book on c plus plus and was like, all right, this is, might be biting off too much right now.
Rob: yeah.
Jerad: go back to the basics. Learn that.
Rob: yeah, I was there as well.
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: Um, cool. Yeah. So, okay, so you're into a little bit early on and then, and then, uh. so I guess going to college, doing it, you, but you did, you didn't decide to kind of focus on computer science in college. You weren't sort of that far into it at that point.
It was something
Jerad: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So. College for me was more of a social endeavor. Um, it was like, it was a fun thing, but I knew what I really wanted to do was own my own business
Rob: Yes.
Jerad: build something myself, right? So like this whole time I was learning skills to go towards that direction,
Rob: Yep,
Jerad: necessarily have a, a career because I wasn't sure what I wanted to apply myself to yet.
Um, so really my career started, uh, as a software developer. After I left college, that's when I really started to learn those skills. Um, I had an internship in Costa Rica, uh, with a, a small nonprofit organization. And while I was there, I bought a jQuery book, started learning jQuery, and really learned how to do some of this interactive web stuff.
Um, you know, this was like 13 years ago, so it's, it's been a while now. So that, obviously that seems like very old technology, but, uh, that was the beginnings. Um, and then I was like, wow, so now I know this, I can actually apply that. Start building things. They just need to figure out what to build at that point.
Rob: yeah,
Jerad: yeah, I went through, uh, a number of products. Um, you know, the first one I, I think you wanna talk about was narrow. Um,
Rob: got that one. Yeah.
Jerad: yeah, so narrow, uh, you know, it's crazy to think now that that was actually so far has been my most successful product in terms of MRR.
Rob: Mm-hmm.
Jerad: got up to 13 KMRR. Um, I had two founders.
One was a content marketer that helped a lot, right? 'cause then I could focus on building, he could focus on,
Rob: I.
Jerad: uh, getting it out there. And narrow was essentially one of these simple, uh, Twitter automation platforms. Back when Twitter had an open API, you could do anything you wanted, right?
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: would, it would follow users that were, uh, on the platform that would like their content.
And then that would help get your account exposure. And, um, man, yeah, a lot of people were interested in that. Back, at, back then.
Rob: Great. Okay. So, um, okay. And so kind of wanting to kind of do something entrepreneurial build things that started like really early on, even like when you were, when you were young before
Jerad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I,
Rob: wanted to build your own business and Yeah.
Jerad: exactly, yeah. So this was something that was kind of seated in me, uh, long before I actually took action on it. Right? Uh, 'cause I didn't know what the first steps were, but I knew it was directionally where I wanted to head.
Rob: So how did you get to a place where you felt like you could make a leap on that first product?
Jerad: Um, so actually in college, uh, a couple friends and I were building, um, something that was, it was like a local directory. Um, so I went to college at UW Stout in Menominee, Wisconsin. And, um, back then I was really good at social media, uh, in particular Facebook, right? So I could build a Facebook page, get a lot of attention there.
We actually created this, um, this small local directory for like things went on in town, right? Um, and companies could go in and post, uh, events that were happening in the area. And we actually ended up selling an ad for like $500 to some local realtor who was on there, which was kind of nuts given like the exposure that we had.
It, it wasn't that good. Um, but yeah, that was kind of the first taste of like, okay, like I, I could do this internet thing. Like there is actually money here. People are willing to pay for it. Um, you just gotta figure out how to get attention. And, uh, that was difficult 'cause that was like a two-sided marketplace.
Rob: Right.
Jerad: realize that that's actually one of the more complicated businesses to create. Um, but it was a lot of fun to do. And so I was like, all right, this is something I should really think about post-college.
Rob: Yep. Okay. and then did you just sort of have a kind of series of kind of little products you were doing kinda on the side over the years and it was narrow? Um, did that end up being a full-time thing? I guess so. With the MRR?
Jerad: You know, it, um, it's interesting because I, I'd always had a, a job, right? A full-time job, and I did work on narrow for three months. Uh, and then everything exploded because that was the point when Twitter was like, all right, we're gonna start blocking, uh, API access to these things. And that was a really valuable lesson to learn, like, okay, this is platform risk.
Like if you create something like this, you can get shut down. You really don't own your business, uh, when you're dependent on another business for that. Um, so that, uh, yeah, it was, it was a tough thing to learn. I actually tried reviving it over and over and, and, uh, that was kind of a mistake because I should have just been like, all right, this is.
This is what it was. Time to move on, figure out something else to do. But yeah, it's, it's a tough lesson to learn. Mm-hmm.
Rob: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay, great though, but that's, that's, that's a significant success, so you must have taken something from that regardless.
Jerad: Yeah, for sure. That was like the motivation I needed to, to continue doing this. And, um, my, one of my co-founders had a pretty significant share, so it wasn't like all that money was going to me,
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: there weren't AI cost back then either, like there are now. So, you know, these days you build apps with ai, it's pretty expensive to run.
Back then it was just like a pure profit almost, right?
Rob: . So let's, let's move into talking a little bit about, about hypertext then. So, um, I guess the first thing is just sort of thinking about how, um, well, actually the first thing is perhaps you could just sort of just give a quick intro in terms of kind of what it, what actually is the product
Jerad: Mm-hmm.
Rob: who's it for? Um, and, and, and why do they need it.
Jerad: Yeah. Um, so that has evolved quite a bit. But basically right now, the, uh, what, what hypertext is, is it's an advanced AI article writing tool. Um, and so it really focuses on writing in-depth articles. Uh, you know, you could go to chat GPT, have it create like pretty good article these days of, um, whatever you want.
But, uh, what differentiates hypertext is you can actually select which research you wanna pull from, um, and you can, uh, create these really long format posts as well. So up to 5,000 words long if you want to. Um, the focus is really SEO content, but the writing styles are also, uh, you can customize them to match your writing style.
So it doesn't need to be like this, uh, programmatic kind of dry writing. You can make it more interesting that way. And then it has all the standard sort of layers of SEO optimization on top of it. Um, and uh, yeah, that was, that was sort of the main idea. That's where it's ended up at this point. And it's taken a while to get there.
Rob: Yeah. Cool. So, so who, who are your users or you, so your ICP,
Jerad: Mm-hmm.
Rob: if you like.
Jerad: Yeah. So initially I wasn't sure, um, initially this was like, I'm trying to solve my own problem. I built this and started experimenting with this. 'cause I didn't wanna write blog posts. I was like, all right there, you know, actual developer things like how can I build something to solve this problem?
Um, there were solutions out there. I didn't necessarily wanna look at the competition because I didn't want to just get into copycat mode where I'm taking their features and just building off that. So I was like, all right, how do I think of this from first principles and build the product that I would want to use in the way that I want to use it?
So I built it for myself initially. Um, the problem is I never actually went and used it, uh, for the project that I was building it for, right? Um, so I, I created it, I got interested in it, and then I launched it. Um, but I wasn't sure who, I wasn't sure how to get that initial traction of like, all right, now I woke, I've gotta go and find somebody to sell this to.
Um, so I didn't have that in mind 'cause I was, I'm not an SEO, right? Like, I don't, I knew I could build something that did what I wanted it to, but I didn't know how to go and find those customers for it. Um, and that took, uh, you know, almost nine months to figure that part of it out. Uh, it was a long journey.
Rob: Great. Yeah, we can get into that, um, in a minute. So, so would you, 'cause had you been doing in between, so when you're doing that kind of writing and editorial stuff at, at college, had you been doing much writing the type of which this problem would solve? Did you do, did you need to do like some blog posts or something in some of your previous businesses?
Jerad: Not really. No, I honestly, I, I kind of stopped writing after college. Um, you know, switch full-time to, uh, uh, being a software engineer, focus on focusing on that career also, I didn't mention, but, uh, I'm married. I've got three kids under five, so I'm very busy with that as well. Um, so I'm, you know, trying to squeeze as much as I can into the limited time I have.
Rob: Yeah. So, so would you say though that the kind of writing editorial stuff that you did back in college was what kind of in informed it was that the sort of the itch that you were trying Toca scratch sort of in hindsight.
Jerad: Um, I, I think in a way it was because I wanted to write good quality. Uh, articles, not things that were just cloth pieces that, um, a computer could generate, or sorry, AI could create, but were dry, right? So, um, in a way it was about keeping the, the standard very high for what the system created rather than just getting the job done.
And, and that being that,
Rob: Yeah, I think, um, it is interesting actually. I think there are other tools out there that, you know, there's a lot to talk about. Okay, it writes in your voice, but not so much about kind of like ensuring that kind of high quality, well researched,
Jerad: yeah.
Rob: um, output so think that's, um, it
Jerad: That, that was, yeah, that was very much the feedback that I'd gotten from, um, many of the customers once I figured out who I was targeting was this is the best writing tool available in, in terms of the writing quality itself. Um, and that was kind of the missing piece. And it's so hard to understand, like when you have a bunch of competitors, what each of them specializes in, you look at their landing page and you think, wow, these guys haven't figured out, right?
They've got like hundreds of, uh, testimonials and you're like, man, why even compete at this point?
Rob: well forget it. Yeah. It always
Jerad: Yeah,
Rob: doesn't it?
Jerad: yeah, it does.
Rob: not the truth.
Jerad: It's not, yeah, not always true. Um, because although those are often cherry picked and, you know, they can make them, the testimonials look really good, the landing page might look great, but that design does not necessarily indicate that the product itself is doing exactly, uh, what it promises to do.
Um,
Rob: Yep,
Jerad: and so that's, yeah. That, that is a daunting experience to go through. You think like you're way behind the curve and then you hear from your customers that, oh yeah, this is actually the best tool they've used, and they've tried all of 'em, right?
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: yeah.
Rob: you've done something slightly different, which you
Jerad: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Rob: so, um, so, so the users that you, you do have, what's the kind of, I mean maybe it's obvious, but you know, they need to write content. What's the sort of, the actual sort of specific pain that they have that is gonna make, is making you your product over the others?
Jerad: Yeah. So what I, the customer profile that I ended up finding that worked really well with this product in particular was people who had niche content sites. Um, so, you know, bloggers essentially, right? They read on a very specific topic, they write in depth, but they also really care about the writing being their voice.
Um, which is a little different if you have a, uh, SaaS business and you just have some blog posts that can be more generic, right? Uh, it's more information focused. Um, but you know, these bloggers, they want to go and have very minimal editing when they go because everyone should be editing AI content regardless of how good it comes out, right?
Like you do need to go in there and edit it. And this just made it easy because it actually sounded like their writing. Um, so it took them much less time to go in, edit the content, get it published. Um, and I found that that was the audience that really embraced the tool, and so I started building more things for them over time.
Rob: And so, uh, I mean, not having used the tool, but does it sort of, you know, if you, if you are kind of, you wanna write an article, you're not even sure sort of how to approach it, does it sort of give you a kind of framework or sort of like a process and so help guide you, guide you through it in a structured way?
Jerad: Yeah, it, um, there's sort of two modes you can do. One is like the typical, uh, form that you fill out that's pretty generic and has some optional fields. So you give a, a topic, you specify the target audience. Um, you might specify the type of article. So, you know, is this a how to, is this informational? Is this an opinion piece?
Whatever. There's like 20 different types of articles you could choose from. Um, and then there's also an automatic mode. So you can let AI figure that out for you, produce the content, uh, and then there's a few other options in there. So what you can do is either create, uh, an article using that or you can go into an outline mode where then that generates a, a complete outline of topics that would be covered in this piece.
Um, it gives you the outline. You can go and modify points per section. Um, and then when you actually go to generate it, it will research each one of those sections independently and stitch together this article. Uh, 'cause you have to remember back in 2024, it's done not that long ago, but AI tools had shorter context windows.
They could not, um, create articles that were more than like 750 words. Uh, so the workaround was you have to figure out how to create and stitch together these individual sections into long, uh, longer pieces. Um, and that's really where, uh, hypertext excels.
Rob: Yeah, that's a little similar to what they're doing now. Isn't that, I suppose with the kind of reasoning mode, you know, where they break
Jerad: Yeah,
Rob: the prompt up and they, yeah. you were sort of almost ahead of that curve a little bit in your own
Jerad: yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's interesting to see those tools coming online now and be like, well, you know, I thought I was thinking about these principles back in the day, but, um, too bad I didn't implement it the exact same way.
Rob: Yep.
Jerad: Uh, the other, the other thing I like about it though, is like a lot of these thinking tools, they'll do the research automatically for you, but if you really care about the sources that you want to pull from, you can go.
And there's another way to approach the whole article creation process, which is. You select the sources that you care about that you know, um, are accurate and, uh, that you basically want to use as the reference for the article. So you can select those sources. And then we generate what's called a research report.
So it will summarize all of the content for all of the websites that you've selected. And then you use that as the basis for writing whatever piece you're working on. So you might have 10 sources in there. Um, it's, it's summarized down to, you know, a shorter, more condensed form. You use that as reference for the longer article that you want to create.
Um, and I really like that approach 'cause there's no, you, you're not worrying about hallucination. The only thing you're really worrying about is that, uh, the authors of those pieces may have gotten something wrong themselves, but,
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: um, that's why you reference 'em in your content as well. So, uh, yeah, so it's really like a way to fact check content, um, that AI's created.
Rob: Yeah, it's almost just putting the right guardrails around it, I
Jerad: Exactly. Yep.
Rob: So, um, okay, so I was going to, um, I was gonna ask you how you came up with the idea, but I suppose maybe it's just something that just kind of, I mean, you tell me how, how did that come about?
Jerad: Yeah, I don't remember exactly. I think the idea was like, I wanna, I wanna write blog posts for one of my projects to help grow it. And then that became the main idea I was working on after I got into it a while. Um, so yeah, it was, it was scratching my own itch trying to, uh, solve my own problem. And that's really how the idea came about.
Rob: yeah. And while it's, so you can kind of feel, it might be the seed of it somewhere in your, your, your early kind of writing, um, sort of interesting experience. Um, at college. It sounds like more recently, you must have done quite a bit of research into how write good writing is done to kind of come up with this methodology.
I
Jerad: Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. So like, how did I Yeah. Come up with the approach?
Rob: yeah,
Jerad: yeah, it, it must have been just from my editorial background, because it was never an intentional, like, it just seemed like the right way of writing as opposed to, um, as opposed to wanting to create anything, uh, generic.
It was like, all right, this is how you should approach writing, especially if you're, uh, creating something that you're publishing as factual.
Rob: yeah,
Jerad: need to actually do that research, make sure you're citing your sources and you can't just let ai, um, hallucinate. 'cause back then that was a huge problem. It's better at it now.
Um, and we can get into the problems that has on on my company, but yeah. Yeah.
Rob: Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting I guess so far when I've kind of maybe tried to use ChatGPT or something to do a bit of writing, maybe a post or something, I, I, I found it to be f for that particular task, quite over sort of overrated because it's kind of like, it doesn't help you in a way.
'cause you've gotta come up with a really good prompt. You've gotta know how to prompt, you've gotta, and it's even knowing how, how to do that so that you get the good stuff out. The other end is quite, um, that's quite tricky. By the time you've figured that out, you're sort of thinking, well, maybe I could have just written it myself. Um, but, you know, if you have a tool which kind of gives you more of a kind of like, rigorous process where you kind of know it's you, as you said, breaking things up and doing, you know, going the right sources and, and, and, and what have you, I can see how that'd just be a lot more powerful and you get much better quality output.
Jerad: Exactly. Yeah. If you think about with chat, CBT writing with a tool like that is a very linear process. So you have this long thread and you're hoping that over time you're able to refine it into something usable. Um, but if you think about using a tool like hypertext, like that is, uh, basically creating the idea or you're defining the idea of what you wanna write about, and then using AI to help do the research and fill in the gaps and construct it as a cohesive piece.
Um, and it's, it has like your writing style already defined, so you don't need to go and, and prompt like, okay, write like this. Right? It will just reference a piece that you've already written, analyze that, create a writing style. Um, so it does all these things behind the scenes for you so that all you are focused on is what you wanna write about, uh, the topic, the target audience, and, and maybe any secondary keywords you want to have in there.
For SEO purposes, it's, you know, it's, it's clearing up your time to do the actual work as opposed to like trying to walk through and define everything once again, writing with chat GPT,
Rob: Yeah, no, it sounds really good. I mean, I, I feel like I should have, have a proper look at it after the call.
Jerad: yeah.
Rob: so just moving on a little bit then. So we, we've sort of talked about where the idea came from and what it does, but, um, before you started building this, did you do any form of, uh, validation or did you just get stuck in
Jerad: Um, yeah, it was more of like, I knew people wanted to write SEO content.
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: was sort of the validation, right? Um, I think, I wish I would've done more research on who those people are. I didn't realize that it was such a diverse audience. Um, and so yes, I wish I would've done more of that, but I really just, a lot of my projects, I just dive in and figure those things out as I go.
Rob: I suppose the validation on this, because yeah, obviously, you know, anyone who's whatever got a business, so even a business, they wanna do posts or, or, or might need to do blog posts for another, uh, for someone, uh, for a business they work for.
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: it's, it's obvious the problem exists, isn't it? But is it obvious that they would wanna solve it in this particular way that, the way that you had in mind, so I suppose maybe you could have, could have done some validation on that
Jerad: Oh, I absolutely wish I would've done validation. I'm not saying that not having validated was the right thing. I wish that, um, I would've created potentially even variations of a landing page that spoke to very specific audiences and then got enough traffic to them to say, okay, is there interest here?
Is it, is it worth building out this specific tool for this specific audience? That's how I would do it now, as opposed to just, okay, I'm gonna build this entire application, spend, you know, six months doing that. Right. And I know this is a classic indie hacker problem where you don't wanna take the time to validate the product 'cause you're too interested in going in and building, right?
Like that is the fun part in a lot of ways. Um, but if you do that, you're gonna find that you have a huge problem on the other side, which is then trying to match what you built with an audience that is kind of an unknown at that point. Um, much easier to do it the other way around, which is I think exactly what most people will tell you who've done this is like, validate your idea and then, uh, you know, build a product.
But
Rob: I think, I think most people get somewhere end up doing it both ways
Jerad: yeah. Mm-hmm.
Rob: fit, you know, in the end. But, um, and, and, and I certainly did. Um, so, so basically it was a sort of, uh, you, you went the kind of, if if I build it, they will come path. Um, and, um, and we, we'll, we'll, we'll talk in a minute about sort of how that worked out, but so. Talk, talk to us. We've talked a little bit about the kind of what, wait. We've talked around the kind of unique selling point, I guess your kind of this, this process or methodology that sort of backed into your product. Are there any other, um, do you have any other competitors who, who, who were then probably not.
It seems like maybe you were sort of first to do it this way. Uh, I, I guess, but are there some competitors now? Have some others come along and seen what you've done or, or just have others have come up and done a similar thing?
Jerad: Yeah, I think they're probably in general are. Fewer tools like this, I haven't looked at specifically, like who is approaching the problem this way. The way I think about it is any AI writing tool for SEO content or bloggers is a competitor. Um, 'cause a lot of times people aren't, customers aren't looking for this specific, this specific methodology for accomplishing the problem.
They might not even care, right? They're just looking at the quality at the end. Um, and that's tricky because you want to be able to deliver that, that quality quickly. Um, but you also wanna make sure that the proper, uh, formatting of the article, the research is done right. And, um, that takes a little bit of time like setting up an article.
So, um, yeah, there's, I'm sorry, I lost, I lost the initial question on this one.
Rob: no, it was just around around whether there are any competitive. It is, and it is interesting, and this goes back a little bit to the validation thing about how you said, well obviously people need to be able to do blog posts, so it kind of doesn't need to be validated. And the sense now you're saying, well there, I know there are other tools that do AI generated blog posts and maybe it doesn't matter to people that they do them at. Different way to, to me, they're sort of still my competitors. But then on the other hand, it seems to me like you really do have quite a kind of, you know, sort of A-A-U-S-P here with the way that you baked in this, this process. And that's how you, you know, to get the high quality sort of well researched articles out.
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: you know, I would've, I would've thought that's something does really differentiate your product and sort of puts you into a little category of your own for the people who understand it. And then maybe it's just more about how do you communicate that and really get that across so that they, so that it matters to them.
It's something they value. And so they come to you rather than someone else.
Jerad: Yeah. Yeah. And that, that was exactly my initial thinking on this. Um, and maybe it was just a matter of the, uh, the initial customers that was attracting to my website that weren't valuing that.
Rob: Yep. Yep.
Jerad: for a long time I was focused on this. These are like in depth articles, right? Like this isn't just some cursory overview that you're publishing.
Um, but what I found over time is that actually I was just too far ahead of the curve in terms of like what I was trying to promote. People didn't care at that point. Um, you know what, especially when you're on X and you're in a bubble of like everyone creating this amazing technology, uh, most of the public is not there yet.
So they're looking for solutions that have specific problems, but they might not care how you're accomplishing that. Maybe some sub subset of them do. Um, so I had to really simplify my messaging and, uh, even just the UI. To make it much more like my competitors because they were getting customers and I really wasn't.
And there was a reason for that. I think I'd overcomplicated things. And um, so, you know, although that is definitely a selling point, the in depth aspect of this, it was just not the right one at the time.
Rob: At the time, yeah. As you say, maybe a bit, bit, bit ahead of things, but in a good way. I, I feel like maybe this sort of quality, quality control aspect is becoming more. know, more mainstream now because we're starting to look at what, you know, starting to look at the quality of all, all this, you know, written, um, material, but also like code, you know, that's being generated by these tools and kind of looking, okay, it's great.
It actually pumps this code out and it kind of looks good and it sort of works, but then the devil's in the details, isn't it?
Jerad: yeah,
Rob: so I, I feel like we're starting to wake up to that. So in some ways I sort of feel like maybe you're about to have your moment, but, um,
Jerad: yeah. Yeah.
Rob: um,
Jerad: It it's a good point though. Especially like with vibe. Coding coming on using tools like Cursor. Um, you know, you look at the code that's been generated and, uh, for the most part, like you said, it, it does a good job,
Rob: Yep.
Jerad: then it does weird things or it like takes the code in a different direction that you were expecting and it just assumed that you wanted to go that way with it.
Um, AI does the same thing with writing as well. It's like, no, this isn't what I intended. Um, which is one of the reasons I built the outline tool within Hypertext because people wanted more control over, like specific subsections within the articles. Um, they didn't want AI to just come up with the any piece, right?
They were representing themselves when they published this. So they needed a tool that could really control. Um, and my whole thing is like, I love automation. I would love to be able to just say, Hey, here's some inputs I want. Um. An LLM to take it and create this from start to finish. And I don't wanna do anything else about it, but when, when you're creating a tool for somebody else who is publishing it as their own piece, they usually want to have much more of a say in terms of like, uh, what are recovering in this article?
Right? Like, what are the secondary keywords we're hitting? Um, what are the internal and external links? Like, there, there are just so many more considerations than just automate this process. Right. Uh, it took a long time to understand that piece of it as well.
Rob: Yeah. It's, it's, it's not just writing for writing's sake, is
Jerad: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: Um, great. Okay. let's move on then and just talk about sort of the progress, uh, sort of how, how well, how well the business is doing realistically. Um, so when did you, when did you launch the product and start charging, I suppose?
Jerad: Um, yeah, it was launched in, I think March, 2024. And, uh, I used launched in like air quotes because it's been launched and relaunched so many times that, uh, it, it sort of lost its meaning in terms of, uh, what it means to launch it, but it was released at that point. Um, actually it wasn't even called hypertext, it was called the lead, uh, which, uh, you know, if you think about like the saying, don't bury the lead, that's where that came from.
I thought it was clever at the time. Nobody knew what it meant. And so I rebranded to, to hypertext because I just need something cool that that sounds better. Uh, more techy, right?
Rob: And then if you don't mind me asking, and, and I think it's been a little bit of a kind of, uh, it went up quite quickly and then maybe it's tailed off a bit, but the, um, on the MRR side and, uh, and, and customers, you'll give us an idea of where, where you, well, where you, where you got up to where you are now.
Jerad: Yeah, so it got up to just under $3K MRR. Um, and this was in the middle of February of this year. So, uh, my third daughter was born at the end of February. I was hoping that by the time she was born, I would've hit that three KMRR mark. Um, but that actually ended up being the high water mark. And so since then, I'm down to about 2K MRR.
Um, and this has been a real lesson for me in like, what happens to a business if you're not actively. Engaged in it. Like I had to step aside, obviously a new child in the house, like there's other responsibilities. I can't be spending my time consumed on the business at this point. Um, and so yeah, I kind of took my foot on the, off the gas, uh, didn't do as much marketing, running ads, um, even just general communication, uh, newsletter updates to, to my existing audience, uh, and customer base.
Um, so yeah, it's, it's kind of trailed off at that point. I don't think it's just that though. I think that also LLMs are much better at writing these days. And then you also have the fact that people are relying less on Google for traffic. So there's just kind of a confluence of factors that, um, are having to dwindle off.
Rob: Yeah. So is that, is that sort of a, um, I mean for three k, February, so is it, is that a fairly, fairly, is it a sort of steady kind of decline now?
Jerad: It is, yeah. Yeah, yeah, there was no one thing. Um, it's been a steady decline. Um, you know, and prior to that, I was pushing out features weekly, if not daily. Uh, sometimes, you know, bug fixes. Just things that anytime I would have a, a customer write in and be like, oh, hey, could you change this? Like the secondary keywords things, um, very easy to add in something like that, right?
So, uh, it took a day, added it, pushed it up, announced it, and then anytime you send an email, uh, to announce a new feature, you, you potentially attract more people to try it out, right? So there was just this, um, this cycle that I had built up that when I, uh, stopped doing that, I got to see what happens, right?
Like things just sort of fade out. Um, maybe not every business experiences this, but I don't have, um, much of an organic presence in terms of traffic to the website either. Like that's another piece we can talk about, but. Um, I never ended up really doing my own SEOI tried with a blog for hypertext, but, um, since I don't have the technical skills as an SEO, I didn't know how to do keyword, uh, research very well and figure out how to drive that traffic.
Um, so yeah, there's, there's a ton that goes into it, but, uh, yeah, so that's sort, sort of where I'm at, is around 2K MRR.
Rob: Okay, so you took your foot off the gas and, and then the MR MRI sort reflected that after a little while and has continued to do so. So, um, so far have you, have you not decided to pick things back up a gear and get back on the features and try and. Turn that back around.
Jerad: Uh, I don't, I don't know if I want to at this point, so, um, that is the question is like, do is it worth it? Um, I might try something, uh, where I scale the features down or make them more specific to one target audience. I think if I do try to revive it, it will be more targeted towards people who run businesses who want to, uh, gain the, get more organic traffic, um, and then raise prices to the point where, like right now it's basically consumer pro sumer level prices, um, which is good for getting a bunch of people in the door, but churn is higher and they might give up on their, their project more easily.
Right. And then they don't need a tool like this, whereas a business, you know, you're, you're looking at a much longer runway for them. Um, so that would be an approach. But I'm also working on a new tool as well right now aimed for, uh, building newsletters, which is, you know, I'm gonna take a lot of what I learned from Hypertech and apply it to this.
Um, so that's the current plan?
Rob: Yeah. Do, do you have a name for that yet, or is that too early days?
Jerad: Uh, no, it's called newsletter ops. It's, um, I have an MVP out there right now. I do have one paying customer, which has been cool. I've been getting some real feedback from that. It launched last week, uh, early last week. And yeah, I'm excited to see where this one goes because it is a shift in thinking away from organic traffic to really owning your audience in terms of like, okay, yes, you have to use social media to build up an audience, but then if you can get them on your newsletter, you have their email, you can continuously retarget them, send them interesting information, and sort of start from the ground up rather than trying to rely on something like Google, which again is another platform risk.
Nobody knew that it would be a platform risk, but if SEO was your main driver of traffic, like that gets tough, right? Um, so it's taken another approach at this problem that I'm personally more interested in because you don't have to do the whole like, keyword research thing necessarily, right? Like you're writing for, um.
You're writing on interesting topics in interesting, more novel ways. It feels more like, uh, a natural conversation than something that's more programmatic like, uh, ai, SEO content often is.
Rob: Yep. That's great. Okay, well, uh, there might be a future episode to do there then
Jerad: Yeah,
Rob: to get
Jerad: yeah.
Rob: little
Jerad: Yeah. That'd be a lot of fun.
Rob: It sounds really interesting. Um, but, um, yeah, and for, and, and for now obviously still, still turning over Stone two KI mean, it's still helpful, isn't it? You know? Might as well just keep the lights on there.
Jerad: Yeah. Yeah. Keeping that on, um, you know, we'll, we'll see how, how long I have with that. Um, again, like the, the traffic is just pretty minimal. I'm getting maybe one or two trial customers per day.
Rob: Yep.
Jerad: the big, the big mis, not mistake, but one of the problems with hypertext was I was able to attract about 10,000 free users to try the tool.
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: had at most 200 customers out of those 10,000.
Rob: Right.
Jerad: it was this interesting, uh, dilemma where I did a pretty good job marketing the tool, but I did a bad job of converting trial users into paying customers. Now, a lot of that may have been just targeting the wrong audience. I mean, I remember putting up, uh, and sponsoring, um, there's an AI for that.
I did this like multiple times early in, uh, building this tool. 'cause I was like, oh yeah, these people are obviously interested in AI tools. Uh, maybe they wanna check this out. But that was just not like that. It was driving signups, but that was not the kind of, uh, person who would buy a tool like this. Um,
Rob: about kinda new tools, but not necessarily have the real pain that you're trying to solve.
Jerad: exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So they're like AI enthusiasts, like, what's out there, what's cool? You know, I'm interested in checking this out. Easy to get them to sign up. But then I'm like confused, like, okay, I. Is a signup the same as like interest? Not really. Like, you really need to, to, to dig in and figure out who your, your customer profile is that actually wants a tool like this.
Rob: Yeah. I mean, my, my, my gut feel, for what it's worth, I, I think there has to be a market for what you've, you've built, you know, I just feel like it's just in my mind, you're, you're approaching it the right way. And, and actually for me, I can imagine if I was to do some blog posts, I, the idea of doing the chat GPT, it just doesn't really, I. Like I said, for what I said earlier, I'm kind of my own. I've gotta come up with this prompt. There's no structure, there's nothing there to really guide, there's no guide, um, guard rails, as I said.
Jerad: Mm-hmm.
Rob: Um, so the idea of having something more, more, more structured and then, and also just the consistency of your posts as well. And I was thinking about that because, you know, you go to chat GPT and it's kind of cool in a way. It's got this memory, you know, now, and it's just, you feel like any, anytime you go on there, it kind of remembers. I know there's context winners and things like that, but it seems like whenever I ask you a question, it kind of selectively pulls in random stuff I've said before.
And sometimes that's great. But if you're just trying to write a, a, a blog post, a very specific thing, and you want it to just not muck around, not start pulling all this random stuff I've asked, you know,
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: doesn't work too well for that. Whereas I can imagine your tool, um, I guess scopes things better and keeps things, you know, sort
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: on topic.
Jerad: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Which is the real advantage of, uh, the, the research reports. 'cause then you can not only, the other thing is like, uh, these research reports are very comprehensive. So if you wanted to reference them for your own writing, uh, without even having ai, right? You have a, a comprehensive list of notes right there available to you.
You don't even need to use AI for the writing. You can just look at them, um, just like you would do if you're doing journalism, right? You have your notes, you have your references. Uh, and then really the way I think about it these days is, um, I am creating that first rough draft, uh, with ai, but it should not be thought of as like the final piece.
I think a lot of people think of it like, oh, I don't need to do any editing. Like, why is the introduction sound the same every time? Well, it's like, yeah, you're, you're using AI tools. Um, but I think you're right. Like there is still a need for this. It's just figuring out where do I fit, uh, in terms of.
Like what kind of, what kind of people need to use this, right?
Rob: Yep.
Jerad: yeah.
Rob: But you know, you, you keep it alive and I guess there's, there's, there's no rush and you've got another product on the go as well.
Jerad: Mm-hmm.
Rob: a kind of a, a, a sort of multi-product set up kind
Jerad: Yeah. And I might, yeah, I might try to get them to work, uh, well together, right? Because then you have your new newsletter campaign. You also have your SEO campaign. They can send traffic to each other. Um, and in a lot of ways that's like, uh, a great way to do marketing is to have a newsletter, um, to, to be able to build that list up.
Then you have your SEO that takes much longer to get that organic traffic built up. Um, so yeah, they could have some synergy.
Rob: absolutely. Great. So they mentioned you, um, the initial, uh, well the initial trials you got like 10 K initial trials. Was that over a short period of time or, uh
Jerad: No. So this, this is like, maybe at this point I have
Rob: oh, okay.
Jerad: Yeah. Yeah. So this is still like a year and a half into it. Mm-hmm.
Rob: so 10 Ks
Jerad: Yep.
Rob: total over that. Yeah. Um, and so how did you get the word out initially? You mentioned, oh, you mentioned the AI for, uh, there's an AI for that. Was that basically it?
Jerad: It was that, um, it was trying to run Google ads.
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: it was trying desperately to like use, um, I forget what the company's called, but there's a company that allows you to place ads on newsletters, uh, just sort of generic ads that, uh, like get sent out. You don't get to control necessarily what the content is on those.
It's not like sponsoring a specific newsletter. So I tried that approach. Uh, it drove traffic, but no conversions. Um, barely even any trials from those. And it was very expensive. I mean, a lot. The thing is, a lot of these approaches are like, you, you can do that once you've figured out who you're targeting, but it's not a great way to figure that out 'cause it'll cost you a lot of money.
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: so I don't even remember. It was just trying everything. Uh, a lot of it, I mean, product tons, a lot of directories. I used, uh, John Rush's listing bot, which was pretty good. Uh, there was like automated listings. Um, and yeah, I mean there was so many things, so many approaches back then.
Rob: yeah.
Jerad: talk about what, what ultimately like kicked it off, but I don't know if you have any other questions prior to that.
Rob: Well I was just, um, just, one little, uh, idea that popped in into my head was, did you try, um, approaching like marketing agencies, 'cause they, you know, have to produce these blog posts for all their clients, don't they? And they often don't even know about the topic they're
Jerad: Mm-hmm.
Rob: write about.
Jerad: Yeah,
Rob: that, did you consider that as a channel?
Jerad: I did, uh, sponsor a newsletter that was for freelancers. Um, many of them are writers, right? Um, and so I was expecting like, oh yeah, this will be great for them because then they will use a tool like this and write on behalf of their clients.
Rob: yep.
Jerad: but I got crickets and I was like, I felt kind of burned from that.
And I was like, man, okay, well maybe that is, you know, maybe they have some pride in their work that they don't want to use AI tools, you know?
Rob: So, um, obviously Churn a bit of a problem at this point. Realistically, you are kind of losing more customers than you bring in, I guess in a given month,
Jerad: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Rob: but that could be turned around. It's not like, you know, it's uh, it, you know, so roughly how much are you losing a month of, in terms of MRR? Yeah.
Jerad: I haven't looked recently. It is maybe 250,
Rob: Yeah. Yeah. And you
Jerad: I,
Rob: bottoms out, a kind of hardcore of customers who will never leave.
Jerad: exactly, yeah. I'm hoping there's a core there that are like, you know, really using this, uh, quite frequently. And there is, I mean, I can look at the analytics and see that a lot of people do use this often.
Rob: some of the, like the reviews I was reading before I came onto the call and the people, you know, those people, they seem to feel like they've really found the product,
Jerad: Mm-hmm.
Rob: perfect for them.
Jerad: Yep.
Rob: Um, so.
Jerad: Like I mentioned earlier, I think what what happens is you have a lot of people who are, who wanna start a blog, right? They get into it and a few months later they're like, this is a lot of work. I don't wanna do this anymore. They cancel all the tools that they're using to do this kind of work.
And, um, I think that's, especially with the, the newsletter that ended up working, that drove a ton of traffic to my website and customers, that was kind of their niche. Um, yeah. So that is my assumptions of what's happening here.
Rob: Great. Okay. Um, let's talk a little bit about, uh, just the, the, the, the product itself. Um, so, um, I mean obviously presuming you built the MVP
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: product, was it, um, and, and did you sort of, did you prototype it in any way? Did you build something you threw away or did you just start with building the building an MVP and then kind of layer it up into kind of a full product?
Jerad: Uh, yeah. I mean, the way I typically build is I'll just build version one, right? However, it's in my head. I don't even go into Figma Creative Design. It's just like, all right, throw it up there. This is kind of how I think it should work. Get a few people to use it. Uh, somebody says, oh yeah, this is, I, I remember this very specifically.
Someone was like, this UI is way too basic. And I was like, all right, time for version two. Let's scrap everything. Time to make this more,
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: complex. Like more options in here. 'cause again, like my idea was I wanna automate everything so the user doesn't really have to see much.
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: not what most people want.
They want more step by step. Um, so yeah, I built the MVP did not, honestly, looking back, I'm not even sure why I kept going month to month to month to get to the point where I ended up hitting that inflection point because there was so little feedback that I was working with. Uh, so few custom customers were actually paying at that point.
You know, I had maybe a couple hundred MRR, but um, yeah, and, and so I just kept building layer on layer version after version, making it better over time. And then it, it did hit the point where it was like, okay, this is a good viable product that people pay for. But man, it took many months to get to that.
Rob: Yeah. Roughly how long did it, I mean, you, you're talking about getting to a point where you had a product where you felt, okay, this is something I can kind of launch more publicly, try and promote a bit.
Jerad: Yeah, exactly. This was like, okay, I feel good showing this to people now, now like embarrassed, like, okay, this is a solid tool that. I'm, I feel comfortable asking for money because like it does what I say it's gonna do and I kind of understand what it should do. Um, it took, I started prototyping in January, 2024.
I would say it took a good seven months to really feel good about it.
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: so it took a long time. And, you know, even if you're getting little scraps of user feedback here and there, those are really good guiding posts because they're like, it is hard to get feedback from, from users in general, especially for free products.
So when somebody says something like, it should be like, okay, I should really focus on this 'cause this is clearly missing. I'm sure 10 other people, a hundred other people thought the same thing, just didn't say anything about it. So in those early days, you really need to take those cues.
Rob: definitely. I mean, and, and you can, you, I think you can get, um, in my experience as well, you can get a long way if you just manage to get, get two or three say, who are really kind of really engaged. They just want to kind of test everything you do and they
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: feedback and you can get so much out out of them. And then great if you've got, you know, another 10 to 20 who at least give you something, but. You know, it's, it's, it's great if you can get at least, yeah, at least a couple of people who are really, you know, really good on the feedback and really just sort of proactive with trying it out as well. And you send 'em a link rather than just sitting on it and, um, 'cause you
Jerad: I wish I would've developed more of those relationships early on building the product. Like, okay, here's five people I know they have this problem. Like I would just give them free access. I don't care how many tokens they use, right? Like, just give me valuable feedback and, uh, I'll build towards that spec, um, incentive with the approach I took was like, all right, let's blast this out everywhere and just wait to see kind of what catches and what I hear.
Um, so yeah, I would absolutely recommend if you can find the people who you want to use it, get feedback from them, you know, offer them whatever, just to use it for free. Like their, their feedback's gonna be way more valuable than the $20 a month you charge 'em. So.
Rob: Absolutely. Well, when we do the follow up episode talking about newsletter ops, we'll find out if you, uh,
Jerad: Yeah,
Rob: way around
Jerad: if I took my advice, yes. Yeah.
Rob: we won't, we, we won't spoil that now.
Jerad: Uhhuh.
Rob: Okay. So, and in terms of kind of the, uh, sort of tech stack and any particular frameworks, tools that you, you use to build that?
Jerad: Yeah. Um, so I use React. Uh, I'm a front end developer.
Rob: Yep,
Jerad: Uh, that's kind of like my, uh, profession, right? Um, that's what I've been doing for 13 years now. Uh, so I use React. I like Tant Stack, everything. Tant, stack Query, Tant, stack Router, um, you know, that kind of ecosystem. And then on the backend I use Fast, API with Python.
Um, and then I got a Postgres database. And that's kind of it. I mean, I've used that same stack for, for as many years as I can now because I don't have to learn anything new. Um, I'm lucky these days that I chose those because they're very popular. AI knows how to write really solid code for those. So I, you know, and I can review it quickly,
Rob: yeah,
Jerad: life easy rather than choosing some esoteric language that I'm like, oh man.
Okay. This is completely hallucinated with ai.
Rob: Although, um, yeah, so Python on the back end, you've got a little bit of kind of context switching there to, to do, I suppose, you know, it's not really a problem is it?
Jerad: No, it's not too bad. No. And uh, yeah, and especially with like the backend services that I'm creating, they're so simple. There's really not a lot of complexity there. Um, it's just through endpoint and then, you know, you have your AI requests, but,
Rob: Yep.
Jerad: uh, actually this new one I'm building is a little bit more complex 'cause it uses celery and celery, beat celery workers to do some of that, um, scheduling tasks.
Rob: Yep.
Jerad: I haven't played around with that too much yet. Um, I'm excited though 'cause this is like new technology I wish I would've known years ago when I was building. Uh, so yeah, it's, it's pretty cool though.
Rob: Excellent. Okay. Um, how about we move on to, I mean, I think we've sort of touched on this a little bit already, but I've just wanted to make a little bit of time to talk about, um, some of the kind of key, uh, sort of wins and kind of learning successes slash failures. Um, so you have in mind, um, even if it's repeating myself a little bit, but one thing that you feel in your kind of hypertext journey, one thing you, you think worked really well, that was kind of a big, big sort of win.
Jerad: Mm-hmm. So the big win was when I actually found the audience that really could use this tool. Um, it's funny 'cause there's this, uh, account called niche, niche site Lady. Uh, she talks about building niche site contents,
Rob: Okay.
Jerad: sorry, niche content sites. And like forever I was thinking, this is the kind of audience that I want to be using my tool.
Um, I tried contacting her several times, just DM on X and didn't hear anything. Uh, finally I was like, all right, I'm just gonna pay, uh, to buy an ad spot on her newsletter. And that, that's kind of what opened the door to make this a viable business. Um, because not only was paying for an ad good for exposure to the product, obviously, but then I was able to work with her to become an affiliate, which eventually led to, um, her promoting hypertext on my behalf.
Um, now an affiliate program, generally speaking didn't work for me, but for her particular case, because she had such a big audience, uh, and she was willing to write recommendations to use the tool, it worked really well. Um, that was like the big breakthrough in September, 2024. That was, uh, that added a lot of MRR on top of the product, so, um,
Rob: That's great.
Jerad: yeah,
Rob: um, was it quite a sort of short-lived thing though? Did you get initial influx and then it tailed off once, once it sort of got through to the her audience and those who kind of thought, that looks great. I'll go for it.
Jerad: yeah, yeah, it was, it, um, it had, I'd say about a month where it really did, uh, lift up the product and, um, it was a lot of people who were interested in these kind of tools because they'd used many of them before they'd used Koala. Um, they'd used, you know, write bloggers, another one. Uh, so they'd experimented with these in order to do the same thing that I was trying to do with, with hypertext and, uh, resonated with him again.
The problem with his audience is a lot of them were. Looking for that passive income source, right? They're writing niche content sites, and, uh, especially with all of the updates with the Google, it's just not that dependable. Um, you know, user behavior is changing where if you're curious about something, you're probably going to AI first rather than Google to search it.
Uh, so, but in terms of like what worked it was, it was absolutely finding the right target audience that, that could use this. So now I could replicate that and go, I mean, there's many of these accounts, right, that have similar things. I could go and, and try experimenting with that more.
Rob: Yeah. Yep. Okay. And, uh, one thing, so I guess one sort of significant failure, but hopefully something that you learned from.
Jerad: Yeah. Um, so I mean, there, there were a bunch of failure failures. Honestly, o one of the things I did, I, I thought, I, I was like, why aren't people paying for this? It must be because people don't like subscription pricing anymore. So I took like, uh, two weeks and built out usage-based pricing, and I was like, all right, this is gonna be great.
Now people are only gonna pay for what they create. People are gonna love it. And it was like an incredibly complex system to create, first of all tracking tokens and then like figuring out how much you charge on top of that to use your product. Uh, and then I, I think maybe like two or three people ended up using it and I got like $2 at the end of the month and I was like, like, this is not worth it.
This is miserable. I'm not doing this again.
Rob: usage, pricing, it can work, but it is sort of sold, sold as a bit of a silver bullet these days. And often, you know, customers use, they're not, they're not so keen on it,
Jerad: Yeah. Yeah. It's confusing.
Rob: be,
Jerad: Yeah. It's a mystery to them. They're like, all right, I don't know how much this is gonna cost as an action. As opposed to having like a specific number of, um, articles or credits or whatever. It's like that's very concrete. That's what they care about. Like, um, yeah. So that was a, that was awful, but I quickly realized that I do not need to innovate on pricing.
Like that is not the problem. The problems, the product. I have other things to worry about here.
Rob: yeah, yeah,
Jerad: what else? Like Google ads. I spent thousands on that experimenting.
Rob: yeah.
Jerad: you know, it's something that maybe could work, but I didn't, again, I'm not a keyword researcher. I didn't really know like, how to figure out search intent for a product like this.
Rob: Mm.
Jerad: I probably would hire somebody else to help me with that, like that very specific thing. 'cause if I could run Google Ads, I feel like that'd be an awesome channel. I just don't know how to do it. Right. That's another, another skill set that, uh, I don't want to figure out at this point. I.
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: Um, a few other things just just to mention 'em quick.
Like, I tried the influencer marketing, like you'll get these people who write to you and they're like, oh yeah, yeah, a hundred thousand people on LinkedIn. Like, you know, gimme 500 bucks. So I tried that once and you know, again, this is like, I don't know if these are fake, uh, followers or how they do this, but they like boost these accounts to make 'em look really big and they have practically no influence, right?
Um, so that would not be the right way to approach influencer following. If you're gonna do it, like find the person you want to be promoting on your behalf, don't let them come to you.
Rob: Yeah.
Jerad: a mistake. Again, this is like, uh, it was exciting to do it. It's like, oh yeah, I'm gonna have exposure to a hundred thousand people, but it just doesn't work that way, you know?
Uh, yeah. And a bunch of other things like directory listings, they did get traffic to my site, but again, these aren't really the people who would necessarily use a product like this. So, um, yeah, those are kind of the top things.
Rob: Yep. Yes. Still feels to me that, you know, this, product could still, it could still come back and it's just about finding that right sort of channel where you're just gonna get a steady, sustainable, you know, flow of the right kind of people. 'cause I, I feel like, I feel like they're out there.
Jerad: Yeah, I agree. I, yeah, I, I think if I really simplify my message to one specific user profile, that's the way to go. 'cause I think my H one right now is like your favorite, uh, article writing tool or AI write article writing tool. And that's just too general because like lots of people need to write articles.
Who is this built for? If it's built for everyone, it's basically not usable for anyone. Right. So, yeah.
Rob: Yeah. 'cause uh, sorry, just 'cause remind me, so how of rough number of customers at the moment?
Jerad: Uh, I haven't looked recently, it's probably around 120, I think. Mm-hmm.
Rob: But this is the thing, you know, for this to kind of bounce back, it's not like you need 10,000 customers. You know, you, if you have 500 customers, it becomes a lot, you know, a lot. It's moving in the right direction, isn't it? And
Jerad: Yeah, exactly.
Rob: You know,
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: people out. 'cause I think yeah, you built great product and it's got a clear kind of, uh, kind of USP to it. So,
Jerad: Yeah,
Rob: um, so, um, yeah, it's, I guess, you know, maybe you're sort of for the moment kind of winding down a little bit in high text, but maybe you kind of pick it back up, but, so, 'cause I was gonna ask if there's one thing you're sort of trying to figure out with at the moment, something you're sort of, sort of struggl struggling with, but maybe that's more about whether you carry on with it or not.
Jerad: it is. Yeah. It's like, do I put the time into trying to revive it? Do I just move on? And, uh, you know, it's still making money. It's still nice to have, it's still online, but, um, like I said, my, my time is really limited. I have a full-time job, three kids, like, there's a lot to do. And, um, I can't really focus on two products at once right now.
So right now it's just kind of gonna be in the background and, uh, I'm, I'm comfortable with that. You know, I might revive it and make these products, uh, synergistic at some point. But, um, I've also thought about selling it, but then that process is all already, or it is also a, a pretty big thing to go through.
Um, and I don't think it would necessarily sell for as much as I would want. 'cause I know the value's there and it's, it's, but it's a hassle, right? So,
Rob: yeah, yeah. From what I'm from, I'm saying you'd have to really need the money and it wouldn't be a ton of money, but, you
Jerad: yeah.
Rob: better holding onto it, I think.
Jerad: Yeah. Agreed. I.
Rob: Yeah. Um, great. Okay. Um. let's just move on then sort of getting towards wrapping up. But I mean, just thinking about sort of, kind of future, but for, Hypertxt somewhat, but we've already talked around that.
Maybe just more future, future in, in general. Just do you have any sort of, um, in mind? Short, long term? I guess it might be more around this idea of, you know, you've got, you've got a kind of multi-product kind of business developing here, uh, with a kind of a, a kind of a, a theme that unites those two products and there's some sort of goals or vision around that.
Jerad: Yeah. Um, you know, the one thing is like, I, I don't know if, uh, my, any of my products will become my full-time job ever. Like that is kind of how I saw things going in my twenties. Like, okay, I'm gonna build out a business that will be my full-time thing. Now I look at this as like side income, um, alongside my full-time job and I kind of have to having a family and, uh, you know, health insurance and everything that goes along with that.
Just life, it gets very expensive at this point. So, you know, I would really love to have these products become profitable and, uh, really support the lifestyle that we wanna live. But I, I don't think at this point, unless it becomes either of them become hugely successful, that they will be like the main thing I do.
Um, so I, I wanna use them to learn. Uh, I wanna learn how to do marketing more effectively. Right? Um, I, I'm happy growing them more slowly over time. I mean, newsletter ops is gonna be my main focus. I'm hoping I can get this up to like a million a a RR by the time I'm 40, which is about three years now, which will be awesome.
I don't know if it's realistic. At that point, I would be comfortable going full-time and doing that right and taking that risk on. Um, this one feels like it has the most chance of success, uh, of all the products I've worked on in the last 10 years, like, I know who needs to use this. Um, there's not many competitors right now, so hopefully your audience isn't like, all right, this is a great opportunity to time to start building.
But I think I have some ideas that, uh, will solidify a moat here as well. So, um, yeah, I'm, I'm excited about this one. That is the goal is like, just see, even before, um, I start doing a lot of marketing for this, make a really solid product that I can use that I like using, and then get a few additional users on there who are, uh, like you said earlier, like really understand what they need to do, get their advice before going and, um, trying to spray this everywhere.
Rob: Sounds, sounds great. And I know, I think that's a really kind of cool sort of approach. Just, uh, there's no, there's no big rush. You know, you've
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: that you, job that you like and you enjoy that. Um, and you know, you've got some nice side income here, but it could develop into more, um, you know, you don't want to kind of, you know, be working every evening and weekend.
Do you, you know, you've got other things going on. Um, but, but who knows? It could develop into something. Maybe that becomes a full-time thing later on, maybe
Jerad: it,
Rob: looking after you a little later on, you know, and retired a little early with a bit of luck.
Jerad: exactly, yeah. That is the hope, right? Like I would love to just focus on one product, uh, my own thing, right? And let it, um, fund, fund my lifestyle. Um, but it's also very stressful to make that the goal right now, knowing that it'll take a long time to get there. I have other things to do. I've got a family to, to raise, and so.
Um, making that the objective now, uh, is tough. 'cause if I was in my twenties and I did the indie, or I did the, uh, digital nomad thing for a while where I traveled and had fun doing that, you can live off of very little doing that. But now it's like, yeah, I, I gotta be more serious about it. So, and it's not to say I'm not gonna create a serious product that, and that I really do wanna grow, but, um, yeah.
Just from a philosophical standpoint, this is hopefully gonna be a nice, uh, side income.
Rob: yeah. Just gotta be realistic and
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: that balance, haven't you?
Jerad: Yep.
Rob: Um, great. So, and kind of generally, I'm guessing, you know, you are, you're, you know, you're a boot, you're a bootstrapper, um, at heart. I, I, I would guess so. Do you
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: of, any thoughts around you? You might raise some money at some point, or is that just kind of not how you want to do it?
Jerad: No, for something like this, I definitely would not raise money. Um, you know, this something in my twenties, I that was kind of like, oh yeah, you gotta raise money. That's the way to do it, right? Um, 15 years ago, that was kind of the ethos, but these days I don't think there's any reason to raise money unless you're building something so technically sophisticated like hardware where it obviously is the case that you should be raising money to, to grow a team.
But if you're a developer or even a marketer, you know, you have some money you can of your own to put into it. That's the way to go. Uh, I can't even imagine, um, trying to seek money otherwise. So.
Rob: Yep. Great. And, um, and then just, uh, longer term, say it all, uh, comes off and, you know, maybe, maybe, uh, you know, hop text comes up, newsletter drops, gets you up to your 1 million and you've got something there with, with kind of. Uh, you know, sort of value, would you kind of lean towards holding, holding onto it potentially sort of forever, uh, potentially sort of passing it on?
Or would you, would you look to get to an exit if you could?
Jerad: Um, I like the idea of just holding onto a company forever. Um, you know, selling, like if it was so much money where I'm like, okay, this, this is the obvious thing, like I'm set for life maybe at that point, right? But I like building so much that it would be hard to let go of it. Um, if I felt like I couldn't move the, the company forward anymore and I was the bottleneck and it did have life after me, then I would consider selling it.
Um, you know, especially as you scale a team up. Uh, you can, you can run into a bottleneck where, you know, there are skills that I would not have to grow from some certain amount to some other higher amount that somebody else could do. Then I would sell it. But yeah, I, I like the idea of thinking of it as a lifelong business as well.
Rob: I like that. Great. Okay. Um, right, let's, let's sort of wrap things up here. So, um, one thing would just nice if you, if you, if you, if you have it, um, a, um, a tip or kind of message for a kind of, would be sort of aspiring founder. Maybe sitting on the sidelines and thinking, thinking maybe taking the leap
Jerad: hmm. Um, yeah. I have, I wrote down a bunch of tips that, uh, 'cause I was thinking about this last night, so I, I couldn't come up with one man. I came up with like eight of 'em. So if you're okay with me just going through 'em,
Rob: Shoot. Yeah,
Jerad: cool. Um, yeah, so first thing is keep your marketing message simple, not clever. You know, the simpler it is, the easier is gonna be to resonate with people who visit your website.
Um, be as specific as possible about who your product is for. You should really make sure that they know that this is for them and it's not some abstract concept. Um, one thing I would do is I would start pricing the lower the, sorry. I would start pricing the product lower than what you're comfortable with initially.
And then once you find product market fit, then increase your pricing. Right. Um, I don't know if that's actually good advice and generally speaking, but I.
Rob: like it. It's a little bit contrarian, but I
Jerad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think then you get, uh, a wider net of users and then, um, once you know what you're building and who you're building for, bump up the pricing.
They won't be as sensitive about it at that point.
Rob: Hmm.
Jerad: Um, think of your trial conversion flow as a product itself. So it's easy to, to just add on all of the, the things to get your users to upgrade after the fact, after you've built the product. That's usually what I do, is I build out this nice product and then I'm like, oh, yeah, I forgot that I gotta prompt 'em to upgrade at some point.
But really that whole thing is like, uh, a product itself, right? So you gotta think of the, the email sequencing for onboarding. You gotta think about, um, when do you prompt them to upgrade? How does your pricing page look? There's so much there that a lot of developers sort of skim over, but it's almost the most important piece of it.
Um, so think about those things. Uh, and then I'll, I'll just go with one more here 'cause I, I'll send you the rest if you wanna post 'em sometime. But,
Rob: Please do.
Jerad: um, I think starting with Gorilla Style Marketing, where you have these one-on-one conversations, uh, especially on Reddit. Reddit is a, a great place to go and look and find people talking about these subjects.
Just send 'em, uh, a dm, uh, ask 'em if they're interested in talking about it. Don't send your link, like just have a conversation initially and then, um, build that relationship. Get them to try it out. You know, get a few of those users really trying your product, get their feedback. Um, once you've done that a few times, you know what you need to fix, and then you also know if that resonates with, uh, those types of users as well.
Uh, Reddit users tend to be more outside the tech bubble, um, so you get better feedback I think depending on what you're building. I mean, you know, there's cases where that's not,
Rob: Yeah, red,
Jerad: good advice.
Rob: Reddit is just coming up more and more as a great place to go when you're trying to get something going.
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: up in all three episodes now. Um, but um, also just a really, a really good message to end there. I think in terms of a starting point for a kind of would be, would be founder before you start thinking, oh, could I, could I do this?
And trying to get that confidence up is just kind of talking to people, isn't it? You've got an
Jerad: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Rob: people to talk to about it and you might find that, that the sort of, the confidence develops from there. They may encourage you to, to go forward with it.
Jerad: Yes, exactly. Yeah. And you might be overly confident about what you're building too. I mean, that's easy to do is like, oh, I, you know, I've got this plan, I'm gonna execute it perfectly.
Rob: side. Yeah.
Jerad: Don't do that. Talk to some people 'cause they will poke holes in it and you'll be able to fix your plan and then move forward.
So,
Rob: percent. Yeah. Great. Okay. Well has been, um, just a really insightful chat. I think there's ton, tons in here for people to, uh, to unpack and it's been absolute pleasure talking to you as
Jerad: Yeah. Thank you. This has been.
Rob: and, uh, and, um, yeah, genuinely look forward to doing another episode at some point once you've a little further along with, uh, newsletter ops.
I think that'd
Jerad: Let's do it. Yeah. I'll keep you updated. We'll schedule something.
Rob: Cool. Cool. Alright. Um, so what we'll do, um, I'll pop some links in to the show notes, people've got them to, to, to hypertext. Um, also we can drop a link in there for newsletter ops
Jerad: Let's do it.
Rob: there. So if
Jerad: Yeah.
Rob: look that up. Um, and in terms of kind of if anyone wanted to kinda reach out for, uh, out to you, um, to chat about one of your products or just ask a question, uh, what's the best place to, to reach you?
Jerad: Yeah. X is the best place. Uh, it's Mapplethorpe J um, I'm also on Blue Sky and, uh, Instagram, but I, I would just say X, just go there. It's easiest.
Rob: Great. Great. Maplethorpe J, but I'll, I'll, I'll grab that off you in a minute and get that in the notes as well. Um, brilliant. Yep. Well, once again, absolute pleasure Jerad, and , . Thanks for your time and, speak to you soon.
Jerad: Awesome. Thanks Rob. It's been a lot of fun.
Rob: Cheers.
Jerad: See ya.
