Profitable Founder
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Profitable Founder
How we built a SaaS to $8M a year (at 24yo)
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If you had to start today Nick to build a new startup, how will you find an ID, validate it, build it and distribute it? This is Nick. He grew Sideshift to 8 million a year and just moved to his new office in New York. But his startup wasn't meant to become a UGC platform. It started as a local job marketplace.
SPEAKER_03In the mornings we were breaking into dorms to pass our flyers so we could get users for the marketplace. And then in the day we were knocking on business owners' doors and seeing if they would, you know, be an early adopter of Tech Twitter had a better idea. And what ended up happening is Tech Twitter kind of got a hold of our product. And tech Twitter started, you know, going onto the platform, posing his small businesses, and was hiring college students to do UGC.
SPEAKER_01In this episode, you will discover how Nick and his co-founder built an $8 million a year startup, how to use UGC to get viral with your product, and finally his complete playbook to build a $1 million startup in 2026. So Nick, you built uh Sideshift. You started in 2023 as a local jobs marketplace for Gen Z before pivoting into UGC. You went from zero to 2.4 million ARR in 12 months, which is crazy. Can you just take me back when it started? 100%.
SPEAKER_03So it was my senior year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My co-founders and I had started, you know, playing around with the idea of building a marketplace specifically. And the idea that we landed upon was a labor marketplace. We saw a lot of friction in helping, you know, in the way that students found jobs on campus. We thought that the hiring process was extremely fragmented. Paper applications, people walking into a lot of these brick and mortar stores. And we thought that we could automate this amongst college towns. Um, you know, we were naive, didn't really do much market research, uh, didn't really know about Indeed or any of these huge, massive players that dominate the space. But, you know, I think that was a good thing actually at the start because we just started building. And we spent about six months developing an MVP. And then from there, we launched it. We went door to door, we went into dorms to get our first users, door to door to get our first customers. And, you know, next thing we knew, we had a very poor but functioning marketplace that was, you know, completing its primary function of connecting students with bars and restaurants on campus. And we then graduated in May of 2024, and everyone went full-time on this idea. So we uh we thought it was time to scale. We had Madison that was kind of working, had like 3,000 students on the platform and, you know, 20 businesses or so who were hiring. Keep in mind, you know, these businesses were paying us little to no money, maybe like $10 a month. That was like the top subscription. But, you know, we were young and we were naive and we were like, we're just gonna build this and we're gonna make it work what uh no matter what. So that summer we continued to like refine the product as as much as we could. I mean, the product was terrible throughout the entire life cycle, you know, of this V1 of SideShift. But we went to all of these other college towns, right? So we started in Wisconsin, Madison, which is in the Midwest, and then we went to all these other big 10 schools and SEC schools. So we went to Michigan, Iowa. Um, where else did we go? We went to Georgia, we went to Texas, we went to Ohio State, Indiana, all of these places tried to grow and scale the marketplace. We would essentially go to each campus for 10 days uh at a given time, and then we would try and do as much land and grab expansion as we could. So uh in the mornings we were breaking into dorms, posing as faculty to pass out flyers so we could get users for the marketplace. And then in the day, we would go door to door, you know, knocking on business owners' doors and seeing if they would take a meeting with us and if they would, you know, be an early adopter of Sideshift in their town. Now, we ran this playbook for about six months, and then we, you know, kind of had a pivotal moment where things weren't working as well as we had hoped. Everyone was full-time on this. We had graduated university. We had around 10,000 students on the platform, maybe even less. Um, and our businesses were just not paying us any revenue. I think we did the math. It was going to take us like seven years to get to a million dollars in ARR, right? And we kind of had this epiphany where we realized, you know, we have such a really strong supply side of our marketplace. We have a generation that is hungry and eager to earn cash through, you know, non-traditional means. And what ended up happening is Tech Twitter kind of got a hold of our product. And tech Twitter started, you know, going onto the platform, posing as small businesses, and was hiring college students to do UGC. This was about a year ago. And a lot of these creators were extremely down with it right away. Or I should say students at this point. A lot of these students were down with it because, you know, they were chronically online, they were tech savvy, they know how to pick up their phone and create content. Since the nature of UGC is that anyone can create content. So, you know, we had a lot of, we had a lot of early brands on Sideshift that was kind of shaping the pivot and the v2 of the platform. And it wasn't until we kind of looked at user activity around a year ago where we where we saw that, you know, okay, no local jobs or no local business owners were really using the platform after a month. But for some reason, these indie hackers, this tech Twitter side of people was using the marketplace to hire content creators. And like I said, we really let them shape the future of the product. So we started building out, you know, proper tooling for these brands. You know, we started re-engineering the profiles to be, you know, student job profiles to creator profiles, um, starting to show things like, you know, top videos and experiences and top posts to continue to seamlessly make, you know, these hires happen across the board, right? And I would say it really wasn't until last summer when we went full bore boar on creating the premier UGC marketplace where creators of all shapes and sizes now, not just college students, can come onto Sideshift and start working with, you know, some of the hottest brands, whether that's people like, you know, Brex, a handful of consumer apps like Suno or Pixart, um, you know, movie studios like Paramount Pictures, record labels, and really everything in between. So started off with a really strong foothold in the recruitment market, then pivoted to specifically recruiting for UGC creators and facilitating those connections. And where we are now is we have built out the operating system for these brands to never leave Sideshift and to run their entire creator programs directly within the platform. So we now support not just the recruitment of creators, but we, you know, now support the handling of analytics, the management, the correspondence, the payouts, the legal, the tax, the 1099s. It's really a one-stop shop for a brand to come and, you know, kind of meet or kind of um get all of their UGC needs delivered to them. So whether they're running a small five-person creator program or a hundred-person creator program, they can do that on side shift um at really a at really a a minimal with minimal headaches, if that makes sense. So that was kind of the whole journey of you know how it really started and you know where we've landed. So I would say the the key pivotal moment though was definitely um those early tech Twitter people who started to shape the platform for us. And we just listened to our market and made that pivot.
SPEAKER_01Man, that's crazy. So you literally like let it happen naturally to you. It's people who decided how to use your platform and you thought it was a smart idea, you let them do it, and you pushed in their way, and it happened.
SPEAKER_03We just, yeah, I mean, we just listened to our users at the end of the day. And I think, you know, when I think back at that period, when we didn't have product market fit and we were trying to force this marketplace into existence, you know, we just weren't listening to our customers, right? They would tell us this isn't a need, there's not a pain point here. And we just kept trying to force it and force it and force it. And, you know, luckily the supply side was it was able to work things out, but you know, we we completely had to re-engineer what type of employers we had on Sideshift. And that was the brands and the people looking to run UGC specifically.
SPEAKER_01So listening to your customer was one of the biggest um lessons that you got from it. Is there like anything else that you learn in between 2023 to 2026 building Sideshift?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, uh 100%. I mean, I still think that listening to customers is one of the biggest advantages we have over cus uh over competitors. You know, we chat with customers daily. Everyone has an individualized Slack. We're always making appearance, I mean appearances in there, whether it's, you know, just helping out with simple product requests, bug fixes, or just generally kind of like, you know, shooting the shit with everyone. These customers have really become our friends. And now that we have, you know, almost uh 800 active customers, uh, it's gotten hard to to manage and keep up, but I I still think that's one of our values that really sets us apart is just these personalized relationships that we have with people, right? Like everyone has my number, every single customer has my number. They can text me whenever, hop on a FaceTime. I really don't see my customers as customers, and more so I just see them as friends at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_01Is it odd to manage um a SaaS that has two faces? Like one face is actually uh recruiting uh Gen Z or student to get a job, and the other side is actually recruiting um people who are ready to hire them. How do you divide that? Like, is there two teams? Like, how do you do that?
SPEAKER_03Uh uh a hundred percent. That's always been one of the hardest pieces, right? And I think what you're saying is how do you shape a product for all of the creators? How do you get them to sign up to Sideshift and to, you know, start working with brands? And how do you attract those people? And, you know, luckily we do run really large UGC programs ourselves using our own creators talking about how, you know, if you download Sideshift, you can have an unreal earning opportunity outside, you know, a traditional nine to five. You can pick up your phone and start creating content for brands, and you can now be paid to post, right? So turn profit or turn posting into profit essentially. And it's a little bit of a consumer mindset for all of our creators, right? Because the majority of them use our mobile app. We have a great iOS team. Um, you know, we just shipped an insanely huge uh mobile revamp that has really uh, really, really increased the overall satisfaction level of the mobile experience. Um but to your point, yes, it is ridiculously hard. The messaging is different, you know, all of these things, it's it's almost like building two companies at once, right? And then on the SaaS side, the brand side, luckily, word of mouth referrals really taken over there. We have a really strong inbound funnel. Um, you know, I'd say inbound is about 80% of our sales, 20% is outbound. And yeah, the biggest thing that I've always struggled with is like how do we, you know, have different messaging for each customer, I guess, but still keep it universal for both sides. And, you know, I think the way that we do that is by labeling Sideshift as the distribution hub, you know, really of the future, right? I think creators understand that message that they can come on, they can start earning, uh, they can start posting and you know, get paid for their distribution, and brands can leverage uh distribution at on at an unparalleled uh level they've never seen before.
SPEAKER_01So you basically have a B2C and B2B SAS. Like you like, but the one who pay you are the B2B. Uh, what is the easiest for you? What is the easiest distribution? I think it's probably UGC on the B2C side, but yeah, what is the best way?
SPEAKER_03The the easiest way um on the user side has always been to take our best creators, reward them, and have them create more content for us. Some of the top earners on Sideshift are earning between $20,000 to $35,000 a month, which is an insane amount. We love to work with those people. Um we have really cool close relationships with obviously our top creators. Um, but to answer your question, that is, you know, definitely the easier form of distribution that we have. Right.
SPEAKER_01On the B2B, are you more like into um, you know, you have closers? Like, what is the kind of distribution on the B2B side for you?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so B2B and you know, a lot of that revenue generation, that's where I spend a lot of my time. It's where my co-founder, Canyon, spends a lot of his time. That's where our head of partnership spends a lot of his time. So it's really us three. We're starting to expand the team out a little bit. Um, you know, we're building a sales team right now just because of how many leads we're getting and how how hard it is to, you know, make sure that all these leads that come in end up as a paying customer on Sideshift. And we essentially have an array of different tools that we use. But one of the things, again, that really sets us apart is everyone is having a personalized touch with every single person that onboards onto Sideshift, right? If they end up becoming a paid customer, that's amazing. If not, we made, you know, a new friend and we learned about a new business. And they might not end up using us, but they might tell a friend. I've ran into that multiple, multiple times for people like, hey, you know, this actually isn't a fit, but my friend runs growth at, you know, so-and-so company. Uh, I'm gonna refer them over to you guys. And that's where a lot of our business comes from. It's just really strong brand name recognition.
SPEAKER_01I see. And you're currently at 8 million AR, which is a lot of money. I have a question to ask you because I just renamed this podcast and now it's profitable funder. Are you profitable?
SPEAKER_03I like that. I I actually saw that on Twitter. Looks great. Great rename.
SPEAKER_01And are you profitable?
SPEAKER_03We are, we are profitable. Right. And I think that comes from us just having a lot, a lot of customers. And SaaS does become profitable over time. We're very cautious with the money that we do spend so burn is extremely low. Um, I think that's important to always kind of keep that mantra, especially as you scale, right? Just because you make more money doesn't mean you need to just start spending money on, you know, random, flashy things that don't really serve much purpose. It's better just to continue to keep the same mindset that you had when you were a scrappy, you know, sub 1 million ARR company, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01So a question that I think a lot of people ask themselves like now you have a company making a lot of money every year. Did your life change drastically in between 2023, you going to dorms trying to sell your uh Joe's marketplace to Nick now making 8 million a year?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, my my life has has definitely changed, right? When we started the company, we were in the Midwest, we were in Wisconsin, we were working out of a apartment that we turned into an office. And, you know, slowly over time, as we got more product market fit and onboarded more customers and just, you know, built a better company. Um again, we've, you know, we've been able to keep our burn low, which is nice, right? And I think like the only thing that we've really spent money on is our new office, I would say. Um, but that was something that we really believe in. Everyone's in person on our team. It's a huge value that we have. The feedback loop is a lot tighter that way. And overall, we're just trying to be focused on building a really great culture where everyone is extremely fired up to come into work, you know, especially with where we're at. You know, I think it's it's great traction that we do have, but I think the the war is is far from over. And we are just well positioned to own the entire industry right now, and that's what we are focused on, and that's our mission, and that's why everyone's in the office from you know 9 a.m. to 9 at night.
SPEAKER_01I know that a lot of people, including me, um, are hesitating to raise money or not, you know, like the bootstrapped path is pretty sexy, but raising money to actually build something big like you did with Sideshift is also really sexy in a way. How did it help you to raise money?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I mean, we've never really raised that much capital at the end of the day. I think the proper term for where we're at is seed strapped in the sense where you raise a little bit of capital to kind of just get off the ground, right? And over time try and build an extremely profitable business, right? One that's, you know, very attractive to an array of different people. And I don't think, you know, it's a one size fits all answer. I think if you're deciding whether to raise money or to stay bootstrapped completely, you really need to figure out what type of company you're building, right? There's there's no shame or there's no problem in building an extremely great cash-flowing business that, you know, prints a couple million dollars a year. Now, if you want to build obviously a unicorn, it's gonna take a little bit of capital to get there. Don't get me wrong, there's been outliers. MailChimp was a $20 million company, never raised a dollar of funding. Um, you know, but I I think the reason that you raise capital is for a couple of reasons. One, you know, is competition arising in the market. The second is just speed. And third is obviously to support growth, right? Like if you're actually hiring so many people that you need that you need more capital, it is a it is a good sign at the end of the day. But the biggest thing that I would say to founders debating whether should I, you know, should I raise money or should I not raise money is to really just be honest about the outcome that you want for your business, right? And for us personally, we're trying to build a billion-dollar company. That's what we've always set out to do. That's where our ambitions are. We want to own this entire market of distribution. And, you know, I think that's kind of how our narrative is being written right now.
SPEAKER_01So I got David Park uh a few weeks ago on the podcast, and he talked about the fact that he also did seat strapping. I got Travis in the meantime, and he said that seat strapping is cool, but then the investors are not looking for seat strapping. Usually they're looking for other like um wave of phrasing. Um, how did you do that? Like you had the idea. When did you actually raise money and how did it happen?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so we've, you know, the original funding that we raised was friends and family round. And that was more so just trying to get our story out there and trying to make sure that the people who were investing, even if it was such a little amount, you know, were able to really just believe in us as founders and know that, you know, what we're building right now, and that was the V1, might not be the the end result. But the but hey, I believe in these guys. I think they have what it takes. I'm willing to take a bet on their character. And, you know, that's kind of how that happened. Obviously, later down the line, we ended up raising a little bit more money. Um, but that first round of friends and family is the one that like sticks out. To me, right? Because it's easy to write a check when you have traction, you have all this you know hype and buzz and noise around you, but it's the people who believe in you from day one and are willing to bet on your character and not just you know your PL.
SPEAKER_01I see. Well, congrats for Sideshift. Really big numbers, and I think there is a bright future on the tool. Instead of asking you like what Sideshift does, uh now I would like to understand how do I make millions with UGC? Because that's basically you know what you want for people who use Sideshift. So for who is UGC?
SPEAKER_03So UGC is either for you know, if you are a creator and you want to earn cash from posting, you believe in content, it's something that you aspire to do, you can join Sideshift as a creator that way, start posting for an array of different brands, right? We make it extremely easy. Mobile app is centered around gamification, training, really taking everyday people and turning them into creators. Now, the piece that I'll focus a little bit more on in your question is the latter, right? How do brands, how do consumer apps, how do e-commerce brands, you know, print with UGC? And the reason that UGC works so well is because a lot of these algorithms are unweighted. And what that really means is that you don't need zero or you don't need a hundred thousand followers to go viral anymore. You can go viral with zero followers today. And what that looks like in practice for successful creator campaigns is essentially hiring a cohort of a dozen creators, having them post anywhere from 30 to 60 times on a brand new account that is dedicated to pushing the message of their product, right? The best videos that we see that go viral, that convert for brands, whether it is, you know, a movie, a consumer app, an e-commerce product, whatever it may be, these are all videos that feel extremely personal. They just show up on your for you page, right? Because the best way to influence a set of people is to not make them feel like they're being influenced. It's why paid ads, you know, or not paid ads, but why influencer has gone down so much in recent years, right? It's the consumer sentiment around seeing a video from Kim Kardashian, who people know is is being paid millions of dollars to say an exact script, is not the same as seeing your neighbor talk about this amazing new, you know, calorie counter app that has changed his life and has helped his, you know, physique go from being overweight to in shape and just seeing like the real effects that has on a human and being able to connect with them on a personal level. Right. And that's really what Sideshift allows brands to do. So with our 700,000 zero-based creators is what we like to call them, they can essentially spin up these high volume campaigns where they have their creators posting over 300 videos in a single month and they're looking for those organic winners, right? And the organic winners are the ones that go viral. It's a VC centric approach as well, where, you know, out of 300 videos, only 10 might go viral, but that's okay because it's those 10 that will change the course, you know, of your company, right? And, you know, we're seeing it take off in so many new industries right now, which is so exciting. Um, you know, but we're just really focused on building the operating system to support all of these emerging industries who are starting to leverage, you know, high volume UGC.
SPEAKER_01You said you do not need creators in your niche. That idea is holding your brain back. Next-gen UGC creators aren't experts, they are microactors. They research, adapt, and perform. Like I like this because I see that a lot. I didn't understand it before, and now it's clear for me. But can you explain that? That yeah, it's that basically micro.
SPEAKER_03I would love, would love to explain that because that is one of the largest. That is one of the biggest objections I get when I talk to people. You know, so for example, I'll get someone who, you know, inbounds to the platform and they are building a let's say a mental health app. And they'll think that they need mental health creators, people who have only ever done mental health content. But that's actually not the way to go viral. Because if you think about all you're doing is you're just gaming the algorithm, right? And you're gaming the algorithm with just sheer with a sheer amount of volume. So the creator that you're actually gonna want is someone who understands how to hack this algorithm, someone who is consistently going to post those 60 videos, is gonna have good lighting, is gonna have captions that are clearly readable, you know, or uh on screen, right? When brands start thinking that they need creators in a specific niche, it actually really ends up holding them back because, you know, sometimes they have extremely, extremely small niches that don't have a lot of creators in them. And, you know, we still have a lot, but you know, we don't have like woodworking carpentry creators. I mean, I'm sure we do, but you just need people who understand how to hack the algorithm. And that's really the cohort of creators that we have on Sideshift. They understand everything that I've just talked about. They understand, you know, why brands are doing this and what it means for them and how conversions are happening. Traditional creators, you know, who are still a little bit in that influencer microcreator market, they haven't necessarily kind of adapted to this new wave of distribution. So there's a little bit of a gap in the market there right now. Um, but at the end of the day, the high volume creators that we have, they are micro actors at the end of the day, right? And I think I said in that tweet, like, you know, Brad Pitt wasn't cast in F1 because he was a race car driver. He was cast in F1 because he's a great actor and he understands how to have a screen presence and how to hold frame and you know how to captivate an audience. And that's the same thing that these sideship creators are doing just at a much smaller scale.
SPEAKER_01I really like that because I think it's like a mental shift. In a way, it's like you are hiring your casting. Like, for example, you will try a woman, a man, you will try different types of body. For example, if you um want to sell uh skincare um product or whatever, but you're not looking for someone with an expert in the industry, you're looking for a good actor that would represent your product, right?
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Exactly. That's all you're looking for, you know, at the end of the day. And I wish that that mindset would change for brands because they could start working with so many amazing creators if they, you know, kind of had that paradigm shift.
SPEAKER_01And if I'm watching this video, I don't have the budget yet to work with Sideshift, or I don't need to manage all my um creators because I don't have any. I'm just starting myself. Where where do I where do I start actually?
SPEAKER_03So the first thing that I recommend to people who don't have budget, um, and first of all, they can always reach out to me on Twitter. I'll always field questions and point them in the right direction. But if they if they don't have any budget, I would say they need to create a TikTok account for whatever their new product is and they need to start posting on it. They need to understand what it is like to be a UGC creator before they can start directing other creators. Now, when we first started UGC, right, I was posting four times a day across five accounts. So over 20 posts a day. And I was just doing this so I could get reps in, so I could understand like how this market works, why is it growing? I have zero followers. Will videos really go viral? And sure enough, after, you know, three weeks, I had my first viral video, got like five million views. I was completely ecstatic. And I was like, okay, this is why brands are shifting to this form of distribution. I can see that it's clearly working. I've had a firsthand experience with it. And I always recommend to people who are trying to get into UGC without budget to actually just pick up the phone themselves and start creating. That way they can understand what hooks work. Um, you know, what are all these like metrics that they're looking for, analytics, watch time, engagement, things like that. What does that actually mean? And then they can start, you know, kind of taking their findings and building a repeatable system around it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so only when they figure out what works then can actually start hiring people.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Or the new thing, the new thing right now that people are really looking for is the UGC engineer, right? And I'm sure you you've seen that all over your your feed, but essentially the UGC engineer is done through that in that entire trajectory that I just described. But instead of them, you know, starting a company, they're just a creator working with a brand who really understands the algorithm, who now understands what archetype is being necessarily favored for a specific product. And now they can build a team, they can build those repeatable systems, they can run an entire sideshift account from start to finish and just put this on autopilot for brands. And that's where I think we're going to start to see a lot of scale in 2026.
SPEAKER_01You know what? I never heard about it. So, like basically, I hire a UGC engineer. He figured out with me my brand, the vision, and what kind of UGC campaign can work. Then once we figure out that we hire a team of microactors that will actually reproduce what works. And then after that, I need to manage all these people. And you said it um in one of your posts as well that the bottleneck isn't to hire the good influencers or the good um UDC, is actually to manage. Why is it so hard to manage uh creators and what are the problems that you're facing when you manage?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the so the problem with managing that's always been so tough for people is people just don't have the domain expertise, right? And that's why I said it's pretty imperative for people who are running UGC to do the UGC first themselves so they like properly understand what to look for, you know, how to edit videos, how to do these video reviews, how to like hire and filter the four of the best creators. Um, managing itself is actually not that difficult when you have great creators. And luckily, you know, we try to provide the best creators to our customers that we can. Um, you know, but one of the like kind of the best pro tip I have for people who are managing creators and don't have a UGC engineer is make sure that you build camaraderie and rapport with your creator team, right? And what that really means is talking to these people on Slack or on, you know, Sideships, new messaging system or whatever it may be, um, to really make sure that everyone's bought in, leaderboard, send merch out to people, you know, shout people out for doing a good job. That's where managing starts to become easier because people are so bought in. And you go from kind of being like two steps behind to actually being ahead because people are excited to create content for your brand. They're bringing you fresh ideas, they're helping other creators in your, you know, community or whatever it may be. And um, that's that's also where I think, you know, a good program turns into a great program.
SPEAKER_01Do you have any insane case studies to share, like, you know, crazy numbers of one of your clients who actually like used UZTA went from this to this?
SPEAKER_03Sure. I mean, I think a good example that I can share, you might be familiar, uh, Voodoo, huge game studio out of Paris. They acquired Be Real for $500 million. They're doing $700 million a year in Revenhill. Um, they were on sideshift trying to, you know, promote a new game of theirs, paper.io, right? And they're spending a lot of money on paid ads and all this stuff at the end of the day. And, you know, they were looking for a way to scale organic social. They had worked with influencers, they had CPMs that were extremely high, but they were looking for a way to truly scale organic social and get these astronomically low CPMs that everyone's after at the end of the day. So in the span of a month, you know, they went from zero to 90 million views. And that was an incredible lift for them. Uh, another one that comes to mind is some of our e-commerce brands that, you know, we're starting to see a rise on the platform more. Uh all in Motion, that's a brand from Target specifically, 25 million views in the first month. Um, and then we have Yapper, who uh is run by Emmett Holm. He's uh a great founder, and he's really leveraged Sideshift in an extremely unique way. He has an extremely huge program, uh, doing over 80 million views a month. So we have dozens and dozens of case studies like that. Our own programs generate anywhere from, you know, 50 to 60 million views a month. I would say that's probably the best case study of them all, is that our own product works for our own growth, giving us a really great flywheel.
SPEAKER_01I really love UGC, and I have myself to get into that a little bit more because I see people like Jack Freaks just killing it with uh UGC with their small product, he does it himself with his girlfriend, it works amazingly well. And then you have like company, startup like you just described that have insane amount of money already and already do paid ads and then scale with UGC. What is for you the best like level to actually start uh working with a tool like yours?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So I would say if you so people ask that question all the time.
SPEAKER_03And you know, you can start with Sideshift on a free trial, on a seven-day free trial. The budget that I always have people set aside is around, you know, 1,500 to 2,000 for creator payments. Now that'll get you a lot of videos, uh, you know, just with today's market rates on these creators. So if you let's say you hire four creators to test things out, right? And you do a $500 base, uh, you know, $500, you're gonna get 30 to 60 videos with that. And then you add on, you know, your view bonus incentives on top or a CPM. But that is a good amount of volume to test with to see how UGC performs for you, right? You have four creators, 30 posts each, uh, over 120 pieces of content. If you, you know, are not really able to discern what things look like after 120 pieces of uh of content, then you might have to go back to the drawing board. But it doesn't need to be a viral video in that 120. It can just be the slightest sign that, you know, this was this was resonating with an audience. This hook resonated. It didn't get even 10,000 views, but it got 5,000, got 6,000, you know. So there are legs here at the end of the day. Um, I would say that the the the strongest brands, the way that they're leveraging it now is they're using UGC to go viral on organic social, but they're also using it to test dozens and dozens of ad creatives at the same time. Meaning when they have a video that pops off and goes viral on Sideshift, you know, you can download the video directly. You have all the IP and usage rights behind all these per year contract with creators. Um but they'll take these viral winners where they traditionally had to test um, you know, with a couple hundred dollars for a single asset. Now they're testing for free. They get the benefit when the video goes viral for free. Um and then they can put that into their paid ads machine. And that way they can also scale, you know, with paid ads. So it's not just uh, you know, kind of a one, uh, a one-stop shop, right? The UGC really continues to grow, I guess, is a good way to say it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And I think uh knowing a lot of people spending insane amount of money into paid ads, you need a lot of creatives. Like you need that every single week. So if other people can actually do the work for you, and on top of that, you can go viral organically, I think that's a good wheel win. Um I will pick up your brain for something that I know a lot of people want to know. You built uh successful SaaS, Sideshift, 8 million AR, amazing amount of money. How do I replicate that in 2026? Like if you had to start today, Nick, to build a new startup, how will you find an ID, validate it, build it, and distribute it?
SPEAKER_03So I think one of the best ways to find an idea is one, you can check TikTok comments sections for niches that you're interested in, right? And what that really means is someone who just is in there complaining about, you know, a very small problem that they have, and then it's your job as an entrepreneur to extrapolate from there, right? Another way that I think was great is let's say that you are really interested in building a what's a good example? Building a prediction market. That might be a bad example. Those are hard, those are really hard to build. But let's let's stick with calorie counter, you know, just for simplicity reasons. You can go and search up all of the popular calorie counter apps and then start to read all of the reviews. Now you're gonna filter for all of the poor reviews because that's gonna tell you exactly the gap in that product. Now, you don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel. And I think that innovation comes in a lot of different forms. Sometimes it's just about making something 25% better than a full 100% better. In our case, you know, we're trying to create a new market and make it a thousand percent better. But if I were starting over and I was like, how can I speedrun to 10K MRR? I would see, I would look for products that are already doing extremely well. I would then go and read their app store reviews and see where the fallacies lie. And I would start to hone in on those and you know, start to uncover and see if other people are having that problem within that specific market. And that's what I would start to build for. When I have an idea, I would really, really, really dial in distribution. I think that you actually don't need any money to start UGC. And that was what I was talking about earlier. I would spend, I would find a great technical co-founder, if you're not technical yourself, but I would find someone who is extremely technical. I would then spend my time producing the most amount of UGC healingly possible. Whether that's, you know, 20 posts a day or even 30 posts a day, that is what I would spend all my time perfecting just because I've seen one viral video take a product from like, okay, this is like a little fun side hustle that I'm hacking on to actually being a real company. And I've just seen the power and I've seen the magnitudes of it. So I would just hammer distribution because in the early days, it's all about just validating your product and finding product market fit and getting early customers. Obviously, as you scale, you know, you delegate different responsibilities and you have a whole new set of challenges. But if it was true, true early days and I was trying to get to 10K MRR, I would legitimately spend an odd ungodly amount of time on short form platforms just trying to, you know, manipulate the shit out of them, essentially, trying to get videos to go viral. And I would, I don't care if that takes 30 videos or 40 or 50. I would do as much volume as possible because I know, I know that since the algorithms are unweighted, one will go viral and it will change the course of my life.
SPEAKER_01Would you start on your own account or will you start a brand new account or different brand new account to publish?
SPEAKER_03Brand new, brand new account. I'd start a brand new account specific to that niche. I would warm it up. If I'm building the calorie counter app, I would warm it up in the fitness niche. I'd be searching up, you know, fitness content. I'd be engaging so that way when I do start posting my content, it gets distributed out to that exact demographic that I'm looking to get in front of.
SPEAKER_01Tell me if I'm wrong, but you really have to dissociate personal branding, build in public with UGC. If you are doing uh UGC or like start-up brand new account for your brand is acting compared to your personal brand, sometimes it's acting, but the the thing is more building public, right?
SPEAKER_03100%. You know, I think build in public is great for brand awareness, and it really depends on the market that you're in at the end of the day. But building in public for a sheer consumer. Product, is it necessarily going to drive you conversion at the end of the day? And that's what you're looking for when it's early days, right? Like I think building in public is great and building a following, but if you can't actually turn that audience into anything, then I would just spend most of my time, you know, trying to beef up my UGC accounts. Right. If you're building, but for example, like if you're building exactly what I'm building, you know, it makes sense to try and build up your personal brand a little bit, given that a lot of our B2B inbound comes from word of mouth, referrals, brand presence. So it's important there, but it really depends on the niche that you're in. And once you get to a certain point, yes, personal brand all the way. But true early days, you got to pick and choose your battles. And I think it's best to try and just validate product, get product market fit, and get early customers.
SPEAKER_01What kind of funder are you in? Are you the technical funder, the CEO, the guy who has a lot of ID, the organization guy?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So I am uh not the organization guy and I'm not the technical founder. I've always been one that's, you know, tried to lead the ship and try and discern where we're going with this company, what we're building, what market we're looking to disrupt. That being said, I spent a lot of my time on revenue generation. That's, you know, what brings me a lot of pride and joy is just, you know, all of these different sales motions, whether it's inbound or outbound, trying to bring in as much money to the business as possible. Um, but you know, I have two other co-founders, Drew, he's our CTO, he's technical. I have Canyon, who's not technical, he's our COO. The way that I like to describe it, right, is you know, Drew has has built the engine of the ship, which is the product. And Canyon is the one who is able to keep the engine running, right? And I would say that, you know, I more so I'm at the helm in directing where the company is heading and you know, all of these decisions that we're making surrounding, you know, what does our culture look like? What are we building for? How do I find the best people possible, get them bought into our mission, and you know, really bring us one step closer to building a billion-dollar company?
SPEAKER_01If I have your profile, how do I end up in your position? I asked this question because a person like you, don't do anything without a product. You know, like you have the vision, you have the ID, but you need people who actually build the engine as you sale. So how do you end up in your position right now?
SPEAKER_03So we got really fortunate. Um, when we just when we we first first started, it was just Kenny and I, two non-technical guys, uh, you know, running around the University of Madison, Wisconsin, trying to find someone to build this product. We did like fiver, upwork, handful. This is before vibe coding was the thing. So every product we got back, since we could like clearly extrapolate what what our thinking was, was a mess. Um I I mean, I I don't know if it necessarily counts, but I do product design at the at the end of the day. So I was able to, you know, at least get pretty proficient in Figma and help shape a lot of product design and you know product decisions that way. Um but luckily Drew was, you know, he was canyonized. He's one of our best friends, extremely technical, extremely gifted when it comes to, you know, that side of things. Um, but if I if I if we didn't have Drew, I think what we would have done is we would have tried to leverage more of these, you know, networks to help find technical people. Like, for example, why combinator co-founder matches a great one. Um, I don't think you should ever like outsource completely from the beginning if you're trying to build a true, true company. You should, you know, look for a co-founder who's technical, who's gonna be bought in with you. And, you know, it might take some time, especially if you're not technical, to convince someone to join. Um, but that's where, you know, as a non-technical person, your sales skills need to shine through. You need to talk about, you know, how this company is going to change their life and what you're building for and what you're looking to disrupt. So that would be my advice. Practical advice, you know, use a platform like YC Co-Founder Match, heard some good success stories out of there, um, Reddit, or just have a you know, have a best friend who's an extremely gifted programmer, which might not be the case for everyone.
SPEAKER_01And another personal question, like you know, there is this equigwai stuff, like you should do like what you're good at, like with your skill and everything, and find the center of it. Did you actually like find yourself in a good position? Like, or did you end up understanding exactly what you were made for?
SPEAKER_03That's a really good question. I think I so I kind of have this belief that you should really double down on what you're good at at the end of the day. I don't think that you should necessarily um, you know, I don't think that you should necessarily try and be something you're not. For me, I'm really good at talking to people. I'm really good at getting people bought in. I'm really good at getting people to join our mission, to buy our product. That's like where I spend a lot of my time, and that's what I love to do. Um I I truly like try to double down on that as much as I can, right? I do like product design a lot. Um, you know, I work with other designers as much as I can, but majority of my time and where I've found myself is, you know, how can I talk to as many people and try to, you know, I don't want to say convince, but more so inspire to join our mission as a customer, as a creator, as an employee, whatever it may be.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like that. I think it's pretty important because it's pretty hard to understand that, but I really join you on this. You should also give up on things that you're not good at. For example, for me, I try to learn to code because I want it to understand, but I know that I don't enjoy that. I will never be a good developer, so I have to give up on that and then actually find a co-founder with technical like you did.
SPEAKER_02Yes. 100%. That's that's kind of what it's all about.
SPEAKER_01Is there a last thing you have to say to someone watching this and want to build a million-dollar startup like you did?
SPEAKER_03Last thing I would say, my my closing remark is that you must be persistent in this game. You're gonna face a lot of adversity, a lot of setbacks, a lot of your ideas aren't gonna work, but you have to be prepared to be persistent, to double down when things aren't working. And, you know, it's kind of just go big or go home at the end of the day. But we have a saying, and it's that, you know, nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. That's how we've survived this long and you know, have now flourished. But I truly believe that nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Well, Nick, thanks for your time, and I will see you soon. Thank you very much, brother.