I make $1M/year selling access to APIs I don't own

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Miki previously built a VC-backed company with hundreds of employees, then quit to start over bootstrapped. He launched Zernio, a social media API that lets SaaS companies plug into Meta, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube without dealing with the bureaucracy themselves.

In 10 months, he scaled it to $1M ARR using Google Ads from day one, even when his acquisition cost was double his lifetime value.

Find Miki on X: https://x.com/paletmiki
Try Zernio: https://zernio.com

👋 Apply to join Profitable Founder Community: https://tally.so/r/dWZ5Jz

Chapters:

0:00 - Intro
0:53 - Zero to $1M ARR in 10 months
1:19 - Running ads from day one
1:46 - From VC-backed to bootstrapped
2:51 - Why he quit the VC path
4:22 - The two projects before Zernio
5:19 - How he finds startup ideas
7:15 - What Zernio actually does
8:22 - Real use case breakdown
9:26 - The full growth timeline
11:14 - Google Ads and SEO strategy
14:03 - Balancing growth and churn
15:36 - Building the team
16:43 - The month MRR doubled
18:28 - Managing ad spend without going broke
20:11 - What VC taught him about bootstrapping
21:16 - The Google Ads funnel explained
22:50 - How he built V1 in a weekend
25:30 - First keywords and first campaigns
25:54 - Why he ignored acquisition cost
28:02 - Combining ads with SEO
29:56 - Other distribution channels
31:26 - Talking to customers daily
32:25 - 150 support tickets a day
34:12 - Why he rebranded
35:41 - The real cost of rebranding
37:02 - Building from Europe
39:20 - Vision and next steps
40:58 - Biggest lessons from 7 years of building
43:38 - How much time he wastes on Twitter
44:26 - The playbook to do it again from zero
46:08 - Advice for founders who are struggling

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The first maybe three months we reached 10kmR. This is Mickey. He went from zero to one million RRR with Zernio, a SaaS that sells access to APIs he doesn't own. Before that, he built a VC back startup with hundreds of employees.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

There was a moment I thought that it wasn't my company anymore. I was feeling more that I had a job than actually was my company.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Then quit everything to start over. But this time 100% bootstrapped. We kind of combine a bit the PC growth mindset, but being bootstraps. Right? Yes. So for you, let's start by that. What do you think is the single thing that helped you to go so fast so far with one tool?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

So I think like the first thing that we did, and which I think is like different from what people usually do, is uh we started running ads since Daisy. So this I think helped us get a lot of um attention since the beginning when you're just starting out and iterate faster. So yeah, I would say like this is the most different thing that we have done compared to two others.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Interesting. And can before talking about Zelnio, can you just uh go back to what you were doing before, actually? Like what is your background?

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Yeah. I have been building companies since I was 18. I previously uh built uh a company here in Spain which is called uh U Academy, um, which uh well we have raised uh uh a huge amount of money and and well it still exists today and it's it's pretty big. We have around 100 employees, and um it's like a net tech company um for uh exam preparation. So um I started doing that. This was kind of my first um big company or or success. And then I I wanted to switch to to SaaS. I wanted to to to software, that's that's my background. I wanted to to do technology, so I kind of um yeah, dropped out of of the company, and then for a year I was just kind of lost, trying to do lots of things, and then uh we started with uh Xernio and it uh well it made sense very fast because we saw that uh there was a lot of traction.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

And what made you actually quit the VC pass to actually go into the bootstrap one? Because you're not the only one. I feel like it's rare that people do the opposite, and I feel like a lot of people want to escape the VC pass. Why is that?

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Well, for me, I think it's it's just uh like a personal um choice. And I there was a moment I I thought that it wasn't my company anymore, right? Um, I had kind of lost control, and and yeah, I I thought or I was feeling more that I had a kind of a job than than actually uh it was my company, right? So so yeah, I just wanted kind of the the freedom also. I think that when you raise money uh from BC, you have like a huge growth target in front of you that's always moving, so you are you're well never satisfied and and it's never enough, and always, well, you're burning kind of a lot of money, so you need to keep raising. So it's just kind of a trap. And and I was feeling that we were not doing good enough, but we were actually doing very good, right? But because of of having these um BC money and and a lot of investors, um, it felt that way. So so yeah, I uh when I quit, I I thought that uh well my my next company would definitely be Bootstrap.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

And did you succeed straight away? Like because I think um this was a side project, but did you do any project in between, or was this this one the first success you had?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

No, I did I did two others, and um, and they were much smaller. Um so so yeah, maybe I reached 5k MRR, and with the other one we reached 7 or 8k mrr. So it was much, much, much smaller than and witherni. And and yeah, it was I was doing that for the first year, so um it was not bad, but I always wanted more, right? I wanted uh bigger uh revenue. So yeah, I was at the beginning when starting with Zernio, I was still doing the other projects, but then as as we thought or as we saw that the project was uh growing, I decided to uh quit the other projects and focus entirely on on Xernea.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

And what is your process to actually find IDs? Because it seems like even if you had only 5k MR, that was still like a project that was making money. So, what is your process to actually find IDs and then build something?

SPEAKER_01 5:33

For me, it was um kind of from pains that that I had in the past, right? Um the tools I needed uh that I didn't have. Um this was one of the like first tools that I built after after quitting my old company was Tailwind, which is kind of a NIMBOIS extractor, and it was a uh a really big problem that we had um on my old company. Um, but it was uh well, it is uh like a difficult um space to build in and and to grow, and there's a lot of compliance or a lot of um yeah, tax-related things. So it was it was still uh like a good revenue in San KMRR, but um it felt like difficult to grow, right? So I I never felt that we had broke market fit. And then um like it's I think for me it's either like pains that I have or uh problems or other startups that I see that uh I think we can do it better. So we just kind of uh copy it and and improve somehow.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

So Zernio was that it was like a product, a problem that you had, something that you wanted to do, and I think you were the perfect ICP for that, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We saw it was a moment where we saw a lot of people was building on social media, social media integrations, but we were not seeing anyone building like an API first tool for that, right? Um it was like a huge if we didn't know if if that if there would be traction for it, but um, but yeah, we thought it would be a school-based space to build in. So that's why we we decided to like to ship it and then see how how it it went.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Can you explain a little bit more what is Xerneo exactly?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Yeah, Xerne is a social media API, um, basically for other SaaS that want to add social media features into their software, but don't want to handle either all the bureaucracy of applying to uh its social media developer um program, etc., which takes weeks and you need to um get like a huge compliance process, blah blah blah. Uh, and also don't want to handle all the infrastructure of scaling like all the uh social media features, right? Um it can be posting, but we also have analytics, comments, uh DMs, or even ads. Um so our ideal ICP is big softwares that want to add social media features into a stack and then want to do like the the heavy lifting.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Okay, and can you explain like can you give me maybe um a use case on like what kind of uh how do you integrate the social media and why would you do that?

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yeah, for example, we have like uh the most common case is uh probably an AI software that does like image uh generation or video generation, something like that. Um and then they won't allow their users to post um this content into social media, right? So um it's not their core offer, like it's not their core product. So they want to focus on on the AI things and on the content generation part, but still they want to offer their users the option to do that, right? But maybe it's a small team, or maybe they just want to um try and externalize it as much as possible. So um they usually start finding or searching for solutions on how to do that. Um they try and and use the meta API directly or any other API, and they see it's a nightmare to uh to handle. So so then they try Xerneo and and usually when when they try it, and they're they're integrating with us uh directly and it feels feels much easier.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

So you grew really fast, zero to one million RR in 10 months. You have a churn, a really low churn, I think under 10%. Yeah, like I need to know everything. Can you give me the timeline from like day zero to where we are now?

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Yeah. Yeah, so it was kind of exponential because uh well at the beginning it was running fast, but not not that fast. Um but yeah, then we like the first maybe three months we reached 10k mrr, something, something like that. Um and then as we kept adding new things, and as we well started to like get bigger clients, like big big um bigger clients pay more to us, right? So it's it was easier to scale when we close like bigger deals with um bigger software companies because they had lots of accounts. So then the MRR uh started to climb faster. And then um the churn is I'd say pretty high uh when when it's um on the lower plans for small developers, uh someone that has maybe eight, ten accounts and it's using it for for himself or his his own project. But then as the uh software, uh as our APIs are integrated into uh like a peak software, uh all the user accounts are connected to uh Xerone, it's it's very difficult for the actual uh user to chart, right? Because um to migrate, they would need to disconnect all the user accounts and not only do like the um uh the integrations themselves or maybe with a competitor, but um but yeah, migrate all the existing users and it might be uh yeah a friction to to their actual users.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

So you used uh first you say paid ads, I think it was mainly Google Ads, right? Yeah, and uh SEO combine. Can you explain me more like how it worked and what you did, what kind of keyword did you target?

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, so since since the beginning we targeted very like intentional searches, both on SEO and Axe. Basically, someone does a searching for meta ads, uh, sorry, meta API or um Google API, YouTube API, um, TikTok API. These are very, very um qualified searches for us because basically we are kind of not a substitutor because we still use the official API, but we are kind of um the ideal alternative for someone that's looking to build with with these APIs, right? So this started working very well since the beginning. Uh ranking organically for these keywords obviously is very difficult because it's it contains like brand searches, meta API. Obviously, it's uh very difficult to outrank meta in in this keyword, but with the uh pay data you can do it uh pretty easily, right? So we found out that um this started working uh well. So we kind of always have kept uh spending and spending more on on Google primarily. Um and yeah, this this has been kind of uh kind of our playbook. And then with SEO, we we have been trying to also target long-term keyword uh long-term keywords, um but uh also branded keywords as as much as we can where where it's possible.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

You know SEO works, you just don't have the time for it. But every day you spend postponing borrowing marketing is another win for your competitor who already ranked number one on Google. Take this example. If you have a social media scheduling tool, then people will look for that on Google. They will search exactly this keyword, and as you can see, there is 3,400 people who are looking for this exact keyword every single month on Google, which means that there is 3,400 chances for you to convert these visitors into customers, and this works for any kind of product. People are searching on Google trying to find the best product in this market. And if you want to convert these people into customers, you have no choice but to show up in this zone. The only thing you have to do is to kick start your SEO now, so it will compound over time. But I understand you're probably way too busy trying to improve your product. That's why we built this trip. You just have to create an account at your website and we take care of everything. We write and publish daily content for you, build backlink from real businesses so your brand shows up on Google and AI search. If you want to give it a try, you can click on the link in the description to get your three-day free trial. Now back to the episode. And um, how did you manage? Because I feel like the growth was pretty fast and the churn is pretty low. You said that it's mainly because enterprise uh customers have low churn, but how did you manage both? Because I know like as a SaaS founder myself, that it's pretty hard to actually like get the feedback, make the product better, and make sure that you know both are in balance. There is growth and the churn is low. How did you manage that?

SPEAKER_01 14:30

I think that for me, like the most important important thing for that was like start to build team, right? Um I had I had in mind that I wanted to like to build a team when the product started to grow. So uh this way we didn't like we have managed to keep the balance right and and not just focus either on growth or or on the product. So when we maybe uh on month three or four or something like that, we already hired like the first person, and then we have uh kept uh hiring people, and now we are uh five people. So I think this has helped us a lot. Um well, keeping the balance while keeping the product good, group picking keeping the support good, and also uh being able to invest in in growth and doing everything at once. I think that well, for me when I was alone, it was uh very difficult to do, so I always had to kind of uh leave something uh on the table. Um, but now we're trying to uh to do as much as possible.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

So your first uh hire was a dev, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

And then after that, what was what were the first person that you hired to actually make sure that your team was good?

SPEAKER_01 15:49

So it was uh a support person, which was also a developer. Um, so yeah, the first person was a developer, and the second one was also a developer, but only focused on on support because we had like lots lots of tickets and we wanted to like be able to handle everything um correctly and and give good support. And also like this person is focused on solving bugs, um, basically being fast with all the uh customer requests. Um then the third hire was also a developer. So we uh like the first four people, we were all developers, and the fifth one was uh growth um a growth person, which is uh well the first growth cow hire that that we have done. And it has been like one month ago, something like that, so very very recent.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

And there is one point during your growth, I think it was around March, that you did um product earned launch, and that's when that that month, I think that's when you reached uh 80k MR. Is there anything else that happened in this month? So like why did you grow so fast? I think it was like 40 to 80k in about two months or something like that. You doubled your MR. What happened at this time?

SPEAKER_01 17:07

I don't I don't think there was like something special, but since the beginning we were kind of doubling um our like our MRR, and then we also kept like doubling our ad spend. So it was kind of very mathematical in the sense that we were always trying to get our funnel like doubled month to month. So the MRR always kept uh also uh doubling, which well right now it has already stopped doubling every month because it's I think it's very difficult to to like to keep the the uh the speed. But um yeah, we tried and and measure like the final since the beginning, so we get like double sign-ups every month, and and we could keep the uh the speed. So yeah, we did some, we tried some things like the product hand launch. Um but I'd say that for us it didn't really work or bring any any revenue, and all the revenue that came basically was from the same channels that were were already working. So so yeah, I wouldn't say nothing, nothing special um for for the actual there was no viral posts or anything like that that that happened to us. So it did have to be very like hard hard earned.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

You say that uh it's mathematical. Uh with ads, there is a risk that you spend too much and you have not enough money to continue paying because there's always this uh period where you do the ads and then the customer pay, maybe 10 days later, 15 days later. Did you take any risk or did you actually calculate everything? Made sure that you would never miss actually capital for that?

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Yeah, I'd say at the beginning it was like more I was more um cautious about not spending too much. Um but then as we grew, uh our costs didn't like didn't grow uh dramatically. So we had kind of a pretty big buffer that we could um rely on. So right now I we have like a bad idea of uh how much we can spend, but we don't actually like calculate it to the cent, right? So but yeah, at the beginning we had to be very careful because we were like we didn't have any any money. Um but then as we uh kept growing, then like we have built some some cash and and we have like a bit of safety, uh, I'd say um that we can maybe in a month spend a bit more or something like that, and and there's no no risk. So um so yeah, and also I think that it helps keeping like the the team small and and not overhiring, which um happens a lot on on VC backed startups, you have the money, so you kind of want to spend it. Um so yeah, we're trying to keep the team as small as possible. So so we don't make like stupid decisions or or silly things.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Do you think that raising money and growing that much with the VC backed company that you had before gave you a lot of experience to actually build these bootstraps?

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yeah, definitely. I think that like for the ad side, um, on my all company, we still rely a lot on ads. So it was easy to me um at the beginning to say, okay, we'll we'll start running ads since since they won, even if we're not profitable, even if um we don't have a lot of money. So yeah, I think that we kind of combine a bit like the BC growth mindset, um, but being bootstrap. So I don't think it's kind of incompatible at at all. Obviously, it depends on how much or how faster you want to grow. I don't think we could uh ever uh grow um as fast as course or data or something like that. So so yeah, but I don't think it's incompatible in the sense that we can still grow fast while not raising money because we we have the money to to do it.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

When you do uh Google Ads, what what kind of funnel um do you do? Is it like straight away to a sales page? Is it uh to a lead magnet? Is it to a comparison page with a competitor? Like what kind of uh funnel do you use?

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Right now, like we have but we have a bigger budget and and we have kind of an agency that's helping us run the ads. We have specific landing pages for the ads and specific rating for the ads, so all these things. Um it's very different from what we had at the beginning, which is everyone was just going straight to the like to the main landing page. There was nothing specific about it, and actually it it still worked um pretty well. So um so yeah at the beginning I I was do I was running the ads myself. So I tried to uh keep it as simple as possible so it was manageable. Um but yeah, as we grew, we started like segmenting better and and doing um better things. But I still think that it's important to start simple and yeah, don't try and overcomplicate it uh because it it then become it becomes unmanageable, right? I just tried setting up the campaigns on Google Ads and just uh left it running there. I didn't have to kind of um work on them every day or didn't want to because I I wanted to focus on other things, but still um obviously the campaigns were not kind of optimized, but uh well at least they were uh bringing in uh people so that was the important thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

You're starting solo, you started solo, um, and I think you built it in one weekend, right? The V1. What is the um step by step that you follow to build uh SaaS really fast, validate really fast, and just make sure that you just work on the good thing and you're not wasting your time?

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Yeah, for me, um, I mean it was it was easy to think like that because we um yeah, and have another choice, right? We didn't have anything to lose. Um, we had another projects that were uh growing but not uh amazingly. So um yeah, when I had the idea or wanted to start building it, um I thought, well, I uh well I didn't really think much about it. I just like felt the like the urge to start building. So I think that's something that happens to a lot of us. So um yeah, I just um decided to to go through the weekend and and to get as as far as possible as I could. Um and then I just decided to like to add stripe into it and and then to um yeah to basically ship it um and see how how it went, right? So it was like on the first weeks, just um from seeing from the traffic that we were getting and like the conversions, I was actually comparing it to my um to the other projects that I was running, and I felt that like the numbers were much better, right? So um just seeing like the first uh conversions, the first subscribers, um I already saw that that it made it was well it felt much easier than uh for the other projects. So um so yeah, I then obviously like the product that we shipped in in that weekend, it's uh nothing compared to what we have now. But uh, but yeah, it was I think pretty pretty good. Um well thanks to all the i itals that we have now, and and it's uh very easy to to ship uh uh the first version.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

So what was it? A beta version, a landing page, and a Stripe account, and then you did ads on Google Ads?

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yeah, Zav.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

And the first uh keyword that you targeted were the keyword that you uh talked about before, uh Meta API or yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

At the beginning we shipped like maybe four or five integrations at most. Um so yeah, it was meta API and then probably TikTok API and Twitter API, something like that. So these were probably like the four or five things, uh thing the first campaigns that we were running.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

And I don't know if you're okay to share that, but you say that the the first number were actually uh green flag for you. What kind of number, like if I never did ad in my life, like what kind of number can I expect when I do ads, like the cost per lead? Uh, what do you look at if it's works if it's working or not?

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Yeah, I I mean I wasn't looking at numbers at the beginning, um, really, because I mean it gives you a lot of numbers, uh, it gives you like the cost per uh acquisition cost, which for us was was huge, and and it wasn't like even I think it was kind of double our uh lifestyle value uh that Stripe told us. But yeah, I wasn't really looking at it at the beginning, at least because um I thought that if we kept importing the product, then well the the numbers would kind of make sense uh on itself, right? So I was not um obsessed about making the numbers work uh the first maybe two or three months because it was still to like a very initial stage. Um like people are just starting to use your product, you don't know what your retention will be, your product still probably shit. So um you have to improve lots of things to to keep the the churn low. Um so yeah, even now, uh at I mean we do track some things, but still we are not kind of obsessed on on the metrics to to work, right? Obviously, like for me, there's like a key metric, which is the MRR or ARR, and then like the money that we have on the bank. So at least um if the money doesn't go to zero, I can't uh I'm I'm chill and I I don't panic. So uh then yeah, some we have started to look at like how the uh acquisition cost compares to lifetime value and and all these things, but uh yeah, it wasn't like an obsession at at the beginning, and and yeah, I I also I'm not uh an expert on on this, so probably my my opinion is not like uh the best one, but uh I'd say just um do it and and then see see if it makes sense or or not.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

You're not an expert in ads, you said? Yeah, I'm definitely not an expert. I'm just I was playing around with uh with them. But you still started yourself, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. And then at one point you also combined with SEO. Um, did you actually target straight away the keyword that were converting in ads? Or did you do a total different strategy?

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Yeah, I mean we tried a lot of things of things on SEO, um, and it has now changed a lot compared to what we were doing. At the beginning, I was trying to shoot at everything, right? I was, I don't know, creating blogs with AI. Um, I was trying to rank for um for these uh keywords that were working for us in in Google Ads. Um because yeah, I just kind of read on uh SEO on Twitter and and that. That's all I knew, right? So so yeah, I and it didn't work for I'd say like the main keywords that were already working on Google Ads because they were very, as I said, competitive or or branded, like Metads or Meta API, it's very difficult to run for that, right? But yeah, we did get some like long take keywords and and also like the kind of the ads that we that we were running were helping us in in gather all this data um too. So so yeah, at first we were shooting at everything with SEO and it something uh at least something was sticking. And and now like uh nowadays we we're trying like to hit the cures exactly that that Google says that um for the ads are working. So um so yeah, it's changing, it's changing fast. And for example, we have stopped trying to generate a lot of content with AI and instead focus on on a small or or or uh much um less uh content. Um so it's more uh qualitative and and maybe Google sees that as a quality signal.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Are you looking at other distribution channel right now, or you just focus on these two and you will push as far as you can?

SPEAKER_01 30:06

I mean that right now we we are working on other uh crucial channels, for example, YouTube, and maybe uh mainly partnering with other uh creators in the like uh DevTool space. Um but I think that these two channels can take us very, very far. So we are mainly focused on on these two channels and at the same time trying to do some other things, so so that we'll see. But yeah, I think that these two can can um get us very, very far. So yeah, and I'd say that I mean, even we could have focused entirely on ads, at least at the beginning, to get faster to one million ARR, maybe. Um, but yeah, we we uh worked on on both. Um but yeah, probably if I started again, I would just focus on one and then improve the the shit out of it so so we would improve uh faster. But yeah, I think that at the beginning you were just um scrolling on Twitter and see everyone doing very cool things, so it's difficult not to try and shoot at at everything that you that you see. So so yeah, it's it's more about doing less things than than doing uh everything.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

Do you spend a lot of time talking to your customer? Or you know, like helping with the support, you hired someone with that, but do you yourself also look at it?

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Yeah, all of us do. I think that for us it's well, it's just not about the support itself, but yeah, like we get an insane amount of of data, um, requests, and that we try and do as as fast as possible. So for us it's very, very important. Um so yeah, all of us, all of us do it still. Um we have grown personal which is dedicated to it, but uh like the rest of days we try and and all of us do it. Um so so yeah, we are also some sometimes not every day, but sometimes we jump on call with with customers and and we speak with them. So I'd say that well, this is very, very important for for us, and it has helped us incredibly like iterate very very fast.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Do you have like a specific workflow? Like uh did you build something to get a lot of feedback for your customer or it's just like organic?

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Yeah, it's very organic. Um we do have like we do have we use feature base for like the feature requests and and all that, but I mean most feature requests just come to the support chat, right? So uh from that we try and uh well we try and ship it immediately. Like if it's something that we can do at the moment, um, which is tell Claude to like to ship it and and we try and do that. Uh if it's obviously something bigger, then it it kind of um uh we we have to get it on the roadmap or or or some of the of the weeks. Um but yeah, it's like you get a lot of requests, and then we have like an idea, all of us, um, of what has been the most requested thing, uh, and then we kind of uh ship it when when the time comes. So so yeah, there's no hitch system, just like lots of tickets. I think that like we use CRISP for our support, and I think that we get like 150 uh conversations every day uh on on the support. So so yeah, it's a lot of it's a lot of work.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

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SPEAKER_01 34:14

Why did you rebrand actually? I mean, uh our brand was called um get late. Uh well, the domain was getlate.deb. Um, so for me it was just like when someone asked me uh what's the what's the domain? It is very, very difficult to spell, right? Also, like being called late, which is very general. Um, it's obviously that if you search late on Google, uh our uh company wouldn't pop up ever, right? So also when we started, we didn't think about the brand itself. Um so we we wanted something recognizable, something different. Um, and that's when, well, after these months of uh already having traction, we thought it was it was better to do it um as as fast as possible. Um and then there was also like there's this social media uh scheduler called later, which is kind of a a competitor uh or well, I wouldn't say uh like a huge competitor to us because it's different space, but um we were we feared that they could come after us someday, right? So um yeah, it was like a bunch of things, um, but yeah, not I I mean not ideal. Obviously, changes are not um are not for everyone, and it was a bit confusing for users at first, but yeah, I think it was a good decision.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Were there like friction? Because for example, with SEO, you have to be sure that everything is redirected. Is there like anything else that were really hard to do? Because I don't know, I I know that a lot of people choose name fast at the beginning just to you know ship, which is good, but then you can regret it. Like, is it a big work to do rebranding?

SPEAKER_01 36:03

I would say not huge. Um I mean, I would probably still like ship something and if it sticks, then rebrand it. Um so yeah, it was maybe like I mean one week work. Uh well, designing the brand and all these things took took more time, but the actual like technical work uh customers, it was uh one or or two weeks at most. Um so I think that that yeah, it's not it's not huge. And with SEO, I mean, uh for us, we had we had some SEO, but it was not incredible, so there was not uh like a huge risk um for that. And yeah, it recovered pretty weak, pretty, pretty quick if we actually do like everything that Google recommends, like the redirection, blah, blah, blah. So um, so yeah, it's it's not that. I mean, I think it's more like a mental barrier than than something uh extremely difficult.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

So you're based in Barcelona, and I want to ask you this question because I don't hear a lot of uh builders in Barcelona, and you know, people talk a lot about Europe. What is your position on that?

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Well, I'm kind of very like I don't spend like a lot of time um meeting people like in the in the space um or even here in in Barcelona. Like sometimes I meet someone that's building and and that's cool. I sometimes I reach out to someone, sometimes I I get reached out. Um so yeah, I don't spend like a huge amount uh on it. I probably spend like more than I'd like to because like Twitter is is very uh very very easy to to like to lose your time on on if uh during the day. So yeah, I mean for me, I don't really have like uh an opinion. I I don't really care about it. I mean we're just measuring from from here, like our all our team is in Spain. We are remote, but uh we're kind of scattered about around uh the country. Um so yeah, I haven't given uh it uh a lot of thoughts. Most of our customers are from the United States. Um that's true, like 50, 60 percent are from the US. Um so yeah, I mean, for us, we obviously hadn't hit like a huge roadblock that pitches to like to build on Europe. Um and yeah, and for me personally, like I I want to uh be close to my family here, so probably like that's the uh the number one thing that that uh keeps me um here. But yeah, I don't know in the future if if this will change. Um but yeah, I mean for us, we have have not really hit like a huge block that prevents us from from doing business from here. Um obviously you see like taxes are are higher, but yeah, I mean I I suppose that we haven't thought a lot about it because it's going well. Probably if if if it was going um not that well, we would give more thought into it.

SPEAKER_00 39:19

What are the next steps for Zernu? Like, how do you plan to scale? We talk about uh the distribution channel that you're targeting, but what is your vision for it for us?

SPEAKER_01 39:32

I think it's just um keep doing what we're doing. Um I think that we found kind of a good good product. Um, I think that we can like do a lot of more things, even on the integrations that we already have. Like we can go a lot a lot deeper. And also like we have to grow our current infrastructure to like to be able to get to bigger users like on and other softwares that maybe have millions of users, which is starting to happen, right? We're starting to like um to get requests of huge um softwares that want to integrate social into their um into their application. And we need to be able to do this correctly, like to serve them and and that there will be no issues. So our idea is to um like get or be the number one social media API in in the space. So probably like staying in in the niche and um and obviously that then there are still lots of integrations that we can add. For example, WhatsApp is one of the like the biggest ones that we have recently added. Um well I think that from what we have seen, it's a space obviously that's growing because more people are creating apps with AI, uh shipping new things. So yeah, we want to like be the uh number one API and in the social needs space.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

You've been building since you're 18 years old. I don't know how old you are now, but what are the 25? Well, that's good. What are the biggest lessons that you got and what is the biggest biggest bullshit about you know building and what people talk about online, but that uh but that are not true at all?

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Well, I think that like there's lots of different, for example, one of the the one that we already mentioned, for me, I mean I feel myself like part in the hacker, but also uh I have been in like in a BC-backed company, right? So I don't think it's like um black uh or white, anything it's either you are bootstrap and you stay small or you are busy and you want to like to grow as fast as possible. I think there's kind of a gray space there that you can like you can still grow fast and be bootstrap, at least. Well, I I I mean I see other companies doing that, right? For example, Chatbase is I think it's doing doing that, and we are trying to do the same thing. So I don't think it's like um one thing uh or the other. Um I'm also very like when someone says um you have to do this like this way and this is the only way possible, I always try and not do that because I think that I mean uh BC, I like I think that BCs have a lot of sense um for some type of company. So I I don't think it's it's also bad uh on itself. Um also, I mean, being an India hacker and not wanting to like to have a team, I think it's also uh valid. So I think it's everything is more about like personal decisions or preferences than than someone that tells you you have to do this uh this way. And another thing that I think is that um I think like if we spend like maybe less time on on the internet on or um yeah, um like on the space with all the noise that there is, and instead we spend more time like with our customers and yeah, trying to like the build a little better product uh scale the acquisition. I think also like the company would uh would go go better. But it's also it's always this formal, right? That you like need to be in the conversations, that you need to be like on social media, all that. And well, for us, I don't think we are um I think we are very small on social media, and it has not been like uh impediment for us to to grow. So um, so yeah, uh I would say that.

SPEAKER_00 43:38

I think it's funny because that's the third time that you talk about that. Two times about Twitter and now again. How long do you spend a day on social media?

SPEAKER_01 43:48

I mean, probably around one to two hours, something like that. Um so but I still think that it's it's too much. I I think that Um, it's good for some things. I mean, we get like a lot of inspiration and see what other people are outbuilding, but you also get like a lot of inputs, right? So I mean you have to be very cold or yeah, have a like a cold mind and and not um and not try and and apply everything to yourself and do everything that that everyone is doing.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

I'll ask you a last big question because you did it really fast. So I would like to know like what will be the playbook that you will use today like to actually do it again and without all the mistakes that you did, even if you probably didn't do a lot of mistakes from like finding an ID, building a prototype, and distribution.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Well, I think there's sub there's something like very important, which is like you have to like you have to hit it with um with an idea that that actually grows, right? Uh and not do like reinvent the wheel or something very difficult. Um so I would probably just pick something that's working um and try and do it better, right? Uh I see someone that's growing a company that's um maybe really big, um that already have uh that I can build an alternative to, right? So I I don't have to build a market for it. Because if I try to build a company from scratch, something very innovative, well, uh I'm sure it's possible, but for me it would be very, very difficult to do, right? So I would just pick something that I know I'm I like um because I I would like to enjoy it, and then something that I could build myself and that it already exists. So um so then well, then I would just do the same, right? Start running at CSA1, build a team as fast as I can, because at least I can start um relying also on other people and and not only on on myself. Um and then I think everything becomes easier uh when you have like a good team and and you don't have to like do everything uh yourself.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

Is there a last thing that you would say to someone who maybe is watching right now and want to start and is hesitating or is struggling? Like you've been at the beginning, you didn't make it straight away. So what will you tell to this person?

SPEAKER_01 46:22

Well, I think it's it's very clear, She's just time for it. Uh I think that uh well we see it all the time, right? Um, people that but while you're building, you're doing things, and and sometimes that they don't stick. Um, but yeah, if you try long enough, I'm sure that um you'll you'll find something that that works. And and another thing, I another thing I would say is um just don't get like don't get um just keep doing like the same thing, but try and iterate very fast, right? It's not a problem to just keep throwing things in the trash, but you have to try as much things uh as possible as possible for for them to to to work, right? Sometimes you are just trying something that just there's no market for it and no one needs it. Or maybe uh everyone needs it, but you can monetize it or something like that. Just try and iterate and do as many things as possible. Something will will stick, and then you then you can focus on it, but not before, right? Like for us, we were doing two, we started third projects, they were not growing uh or or working as much as we would like. So we started trying things and and then we focused on on certain.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Well, Mickey, thank you for your time, and I will get you when you eat 10 million a year. Thanks for having me.