Hey-oh! 🤠 I'm Josh Founder CEO of Referral Rock AMA

So, for the incumbents, I’ve tried to keep things understandable from a “bottoms up” mentality vs “top down”. So a company of 9 people with 3 teams are really ICs (6), and managers (3).

I try to make sure all incumbents have the opportunity to BE that person, but they may not want it.

For recruiting, you have to know what you’re offering and finding the right people to join you at the right part of this journey. Every day, I feel like I have a better understanding of what the needs are for the business. I can articulate it better in conversation, so I know what I’m looking for. The right people will feel right.

I try to look for that right person who has hit a ceiling somewhere else. (i.e. a team leader who hasn’t gotten their shot at management or the manager who aspires to be a director) Those people can take you far and hopefully onto the next stage (if needed).

Here’s a twitter thread I wrote about how we approach recruiting:

2 Likes

Have not considered a reboot and wouldn’t want to get into that market today. So many great players Notion + Asana + Others that are serving that market well.

If I was looking for something else, I’d still look for B2B niche.

2 Likes

When you have a money machine where you know inserting $1 can get you $3 out the back + you’re not worried the machine breaking down.

Know the answer to the question “what would I do with $X so I can get to Y faster”

So, if you know $ is the resource you definitively need to grow then get $. Also keep an eye out for non-dilutive capital like revenue-based financing or some of the micro funds that aren’t betting on you being a 100M company.

3 Likes

Lots of podcast listening and a few communities! I listen and consume the bootstrap/indie side of the tech startup world as well as the SaaStr VC side. I also have been watching D2C, influencers, and other B2C style things as well.

Then I try to break it down in my own lens.

By nature I try to always see all sides and am open to all roads to build better product, distribution, and an overall business that is authentic to me.

I think my diversified learning approach has helped me find the right things for us to focus on and also recognize when something isn’t in our wheelhouse. Def more to come on this front, but the learnings help me strategize where we should dig next.

I try to make friends in these areas and talk business lessons with lots of people as well.

2 Likes

Hey Josh, have a question from @alejandroribo, founder of Discoverfy (from the wider Relay community) who couldn’t attend the AMA:

“Which is going to be the best pricing plan for mid-market clients: flat subscription fee vs % revenue share?”

Please take a stab if you have some time! :))

2 Likes

Can I say “it depends”? LOL

Overall I think you have to know your buyer. What is “normal” for them and how they buy? The buying process should be as frictionless as possible which usually aligns well with how they are used to buying. What’s normal for that industry, how are competitors priced and packaged, payments by ACH/check/CC? What are expected terms? Who has to approve it? Sometimes pricing can be an advantage if you’re making it even easier for an older industry.

I do believe if you have market pull… best in class… clear winner, you can start to have a change the game on pricing for your industry.

In my experience “rev share” is harder to pull off and also harder to track. Seems good in theory, but how do you keep it honest and keep incentives aligned for either party not to think they are being tricked by the other party. Also the economics start to get wonky as things scale. But if your in “payments” that’s the norm, so works fine.

Flat is normal and an easy bet in most markets, but I believe “usage-based” pricing is more of the future in SaaS. I feel like that aligns best with value delivered in many cases.

2 Likes

Thanks @astha for dropping my question.
Thanks @jlogic for your response. Super valueable!!!
The debate starts because we first launched our product on Shopify, and when talking to their team suggested to go “rev share” as this begins to be a trend in this ecosystem.
After a couple of months and more then 70 downloads, we did outbound sales to mid market accounts (eComm +25M annual GMV) and what we see is that “rev share” is easy to sell, but we are more confortable with your recomendation “usage-based”.
THANKS!!!

3 Likes

Hey Josh, good to see you here!

Very curious how you decided that sales-led is the way to go, and how you built your sales team from scratch.

2 Likes

Hey Jane! Thanks for the question.

Basically I found what worked for us by hopping on calls with people who signed up for a trial. I found the audience we were attracting, wanted to talk to us. That’s what led to higher sales conversions.

It was effective and still had good unit economics paired with SEO - inbound leads, so we just kept doing it and scaling out “what worked” in the early days.

It wasn’t so much of a decision, but more of just following what the customer needed.

Building the team modeled after how I did it in the early days. It has since matured to a team of 3 sales consultants and a manager. I can’t say I built that part out myself but had great people to help build and scale a team off of the initial model.

2 Likes

@jlogic, thanks for taking the time! :raised_hands:t4: Whether it’s your note on “following what the customer needs,” or knowing and working with one’s own strengths and limitations, or intentionally diversifying peer circles, what animates these responses is an admirably frank admission of the consistently complex work of learning and growing as a founder. :sunflower:

2 Likes

And, thanks, as always, to Relay founders (@saps, @aditi1002, @Deepika, @navydish, @raviramani, @alejandroribo, and @uibreakfast) for their open, searching, and thoughtful questions. :raised_hands:t4:

2 Likes

Thanks @jlogic!

This is such a powerful, not often acknowledged side of the bootstrap-vs-fundraise decision:

A lot more was learned about our customers, market, and behaviors because of the slower pace we moved that had less pressure.

Wish more founders examined what a heightened/slower pace can do for their particular product and market, instead of going by whatever the prevailing assumption is.

And I’m definitely borrowing those all-hands questions. Especially the one on visualizing (doing exactly that as I write this) seasons. A beautiful conversation starter! :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Totally relate to the pain of not being able to do enough pricing iterations. In the early days, with all that goes on as you begin to scale teams, it does get hard to prioritize pricing.

And, I think, we can all take a page from your “see all sides and open to all roads” approach to building a business. Thanks, again, for doing this, @jlogic!

4 Likes

Awesome, thank you for elaborating, Josh. Great to hear it happened so organically.

3 Likes