#271 – Gamification, Digital Nomading, and Growing Sales to $41k/mo with Stas Kulesh of Karma
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Did do you do you watch youtube at all? Yeah, a little bit. I'm trying to do more learning. I want to a Better information diet.

And a couple years ago, I subtribe to a tonto newsletters, you know, phase when everybody was, like super into a substandard whatever was just like everybody was doing, paid new letters. I subscribed to, like fifty newsletters, and I had this grand plan them. And to read all these news letters, learn this stuff.

But like, what happens is i've just spent the last two years, just like marking every email red and archiving them immediately and now reading any that should. So I think I should go to youtube in the stack news. Other things just like is not working, but i'm not sure what channels to watch, but I got to know what it's good on youtube, but just know there's a lot of good stuff.

You're trying to increase your information diet. Are you as IT like vegal, you just want more information like other specific types of things you want to learn?

I'm not even there yet. I don't know. Like I would like I just want to learn stuff I don't want to watch.

Like you like funny tiktok and like real and ship. Like, I wanted watch. Like stuff where after I watched, I know more.

I'm so difficult with these kind of questions. I'm like, what's your why? Like, I get that you want to learn. Like what what's the problem that you're trying to deal with?

I don't know. Like I will have a downtime and between like I want to work, you know I think I very exercise. I've earn to know my friends and then I play board games online. I'm going to number like twenty three in the world bll ticket to ride. I place so much of my phone and I shouted.

be doing this. I should be letting know what that is.

It's random fucking over again. And you shouldn't even know it's now. I shouldn't know IT row, but there's so much good stuff on youtube every now that I stumbled across like somebody in hacker usia the day was recommending like this video on astronomy. And I just like click IT randomly and it's like this youtube gentle called crash course. And I just do crash courses in topics is almost like kind academy, where you can learn about math or business or life sciences.

Our and I looked like video number twenty five in their astronomy course, and I learned all the stuff about like how we know, how are we? The stars are in the history of how the ancient like figured out that the earth list rounds like did you know the ancient knew the earth was around like two thousand years ago. I don't know that shit the way they figured that was school I I .

did research for um like I was studying innovation and I wanted to write an article on IT and I studied the greeks, figured out that the greeks figured out and learn tons of things like the earth is round. They figured out tons of things that like the random scientific discoveries that later would sort of be found out by people like neon um yeah and essentially all of their culture was just reduced to a rubble through like war.

Tons of these pieces of information just got lost. And then, and like the fourteen hundreds, a lot of the remains were found, a lot of these old manuscripts were found. And that did a huge amount to get the people like europeans out of the dark age.

But setting that aside, do do you know you should you if you're looking to just have like constructive learning time on youtube, you ever heard of extra credits or like extra history, do this thing is awesome. IT does two things to take two boxes off. Number one, it's a history show.

And I love learning about history. But learning about history, learning about most things, is usually like really dense, like IT takes a lot, a lot of time. And this is like the short, sweet cartoons that take pretty much like all of world history. And they like package up and like, you know, little series of like five videos that are like ten minutes each and they're really fun and they're really bite size. Like IT requires so little investment and you just get like the fun crash course.

There's one on youtube like curse kasa, and they also do these animated videos that will explain stuff that are prety cool. But I wants something to like a little bit deeper. I don't want like the you know like infotainment where you know like they give you information, but it's mostly just entertaining and funny and cool.

And then like you know, five minutes later, you forgot everything you watched and you didn't tell anybody. I like a little bit deeper than that. Hey, what's up?

What up?

Yes, thank you so much for .

having welcome on um you are stock culex you're an ndi hacker. You the founder cofounder of the company called calm a bot and I had following your progress on any hackers requite some time on any hackers product page, IT says you're making twenty five brand a month revenue. But then I was talking to you earlier in your lake.

Now that's just a strike revenue. We also like elect direct payments. And so it's closer to like forty thousand dollars a month in revenue for .

what you get you doing. Yeah that's right. Um we we deal with a businesses and sometimes they you know once they sent to an actual the check a paper piece of paper, they sent ted to new zealand.

And we like what ever going to do with that. So it's not just stripe. We need to deal with accounting.

I think one of the call things about your story that I know is essentially when you built karma, IT was kind of an internal tool, right? Like you didn't necessarily build IT for the external world. You had a whole different business going on. You and your cofounder ers decided, like, maybe we can build this cool tool for ourselves. And then you've spd IT out, which is something that chanting and I like like probably should do you for any, we have somebody different tools we built for ourselves.

but we never spend any of them out. Yeah, I truly believe in this. I think it's it's a cheat in a way like with whatever we do, other sub products and site projects, uh, we ve first run them through the team.

The team needs IT. And even if it's not bringing much money as a product for the outsiders, we actually save in tongues on you internally. For example, we do in invoicing and time taking with our own product, which is called time. And it's tiny ah, but IT saves us like six six grants a year. Well.

you had like a hack because I think your company was an agency, right? You guys are doing like web web development work. And you yeah like twenty five people.

Yeah roughly. Ly, and that was a like we tried. I think you can you can have a look at that product hunt.

We launched like fifty something products. Only one or two succeeded in a way like to become sustainable yeah and it's yeah, just keep on building. That was the motto. And then one thing actually worked, that was karma. Yeah.

I think that's the hack is that you essentially built a company where you had a ton of programing resources. And I think most people don't have like the time in the resources to do that like any hackers on the only coder. If we want to build stuff like I have to stop building everything else and build that. But you have an army of people to build the side projects and do what do you say like fifty launches on product time?

Yeah, you can look at that. I think this is just generally including all different versions of garie's. Well, I mean, we also with the team, you have to manage the workload. Sometimes it's quiet. Sometimes it's like not enough work, basically. Then we turn to our internal projects and it's the way of engaging the team and the way of you know keep in the the brains you know alive and just think IT of something new uh, we tried to play the startup game and this is like when you promise someone that you would do one hundred x in a year. So you know this kind of stuff when you need to fund race yeah .

you have to lie a little bit.

maybe you over promise and I deliver. I don't know. I I believe in more like long games generally.

Like I said, we've got a team. They need to feel their families. We need to provide. We need to make sure that they have enough work and it's more important to us to to become a steady kind of sustainable business. Uh, rather than try and get this opportunity this year, but maybe next year where we're onna be laos, we're going to seen in right nowadays why it's bubble.

I love the idea of releasing internal tools, by the way, courland, did you see my the tool that I just released? understand? Yeah, you wouldn't tell .

me about IT for like years, but I don't realize you are going to release IT.

yeah. I mean, so this is, this is a situation where I have my own APP and it's like not a good product. It's like a to do this that basically right.

And I think there's almost nothing worse or more difficult business to get into then creating another to do this that um but the benefit of working with their own internal tools and then releasing those is that in a huge way, it's the risk. So in this case, I just decided to release this thing. And now, you know, whatever, there are fifty to one hundred people who are using this everyday.

I mean, I just literally launched A H A week ago. I have no intensity of making money on IT. I don't think that would make money, but I just generates all this traffic.

And so on the worst side, none was gonna like IT, in which case I just get to keep using my own APP. So there's no, no real loss there. And on the best side, now maybe I will make money, but I will definitely generate traffic. And then I can, like, move those eyeballs to a product or service that does make money. Yeah.

that's cool. Do you never gna charge for IT?

I mean, I don't know. I like the sky is the limit. But I mean, ultimately, this thing was just like stasis product was kind of in stealth mode. I was getting my own benefit out of IT, but I just wasn't doing a bunch of of other work. So it's like literally, if I sit on IT, I don't do anything and the traffic just grow slowly to me, that's Better than simply working on IT in private.

It's fair up. And also I I think it's IT is a huck build in tools for ourselves and then releasing them to to others. You don't expect much is already working. If IT saves time and money, if you're liking the product is yourself, that's already a benefit.

Yeah, so for what you eventually built, stop because you guys built multitool for yourselves. The one that was sort of the break out hit is called a bott carmer bott dot chat. Bott, I was going on your ni hackers product page where for years you've locked about in on ni hackers, you had something like two hundred and forty posts on your product page about you, like you did, like weekly updates, like weekly update number of one hundred and seventy four plus, like blog post post product up, like every book I was calling down minutes.

The way I would described IT now is essentially there's a lot of teams that are doing remote work and their primarily communicating over things like microsoft ams are slack or even like telling the ARM or something like chat tools where you don't really get to see your teammates. In fact, there is like a poston hack news I was reading the other day or someone was saying, like, hey, what do you do when you don't have many friends and you don't go to bars and stuff? And then also like your company goes remote and you suddenly don't even like see your coal workers, like how do you survive this situation? I think was something like karma.

What you're doing is your basically making IT easier for people to come together and reward each other in feel like this personal connection. So you can like basically use your tool to reward your team members to give them like kudos. And you've got animations and you've got like these celebrations when people do good things and people have milestones and they're actually like, you know can log into this interface where they are getting like gift cards or like pizza or coffee here, like know even like company wide bonuses based on like things that you type in to slack. So the whole point is to get your whole remote team like bonded together and be happier and sort of .

stronger together. Yeah I I think I started you know like you said, is changed over time. IT was initially IT was just sending points from one program to and then IT became this kind of reward system with bonuses in all multi level permission stuff.

Because we want like bigger companies to get involved. We want bigger teams to play this game. And over time, we figured that it's about engagement as well as visibility of what's going on in the company.

When you've got one hundred plus people work in remolded and not only not you know becoming mates literally in in in real life, they also get disconnected and they don't pretty know what the company is doing as well. So carma, when you see this animated card is like a greeting card in a way that pops up in a special channel, which is called appreciation or something, or kara, you can call IT whatever. And uh, you instantly know that these people, you've done great job and they've been working on that.

And you like, oh, so this department is actually busy with this kind of stuff. interesting. And there is no limit. No one never left the company because they're been thinking to many times, people like being thanked, and there is no way you can do appreciate your people. And over time, this message became, you know, it's our motto, we trying to make the remote environment, which is really difficult, to be honest, because it's not enough to put a smile like a break at the end of the message or smile or an image even IT still reads as you know, well, okay, he's probably happy with have done unless you've done this specifically through karma, it's not really in a major achievement. So it's like tip in culture, anyway, you have to leave a tips so you people know that you happy.

It's so hard to remote work. I forget to, I forget to congratulate chaining .

all the time. So car 的。

i use IT with with, like a team of two. Like does that make any sense? Because you mentioned like I used to just be like on one on one that's really not .

yeah that's there a bit. It's not for everybody and it's not for all teams because IT partially ads a cultural element. There is a cultural element as well as know generally some teams when they uh may be there were serious and they they don't want to play these stupid games with these stupid points.

We've got money for that, right? Tell me more and I will be happier. So this kind of straight like very you know a prot approach in some teams, we IT doesn't survive karma.

That's why I don't think it's a startup in the in the sense of growing fast and being the product for everybody. It's not for everyone in uh, but the world is big. Software is just drawing yeah .

I feel like I want to use this product just between corner between you and me, almost because I would be like a funny way to be passive aggressive.

yeah. Can I give you like a different number of kudos, like I give you like one star for this podcast. But then no, like a sort of Sarah number of custos.

we need to work with, with the button as well because what you've just done, it's not really I don't support that. So in a bigger company, you may become an H R issue and we we sort of have to deal with that and make sure that throw the all. There is no this, you know, under the cover, kind of terrible stuff going on because in big companies, they are less personal rather than small teams like yourself.

We instantly went towards building each other.

Yeah, I mean, like that just the way like that would bring us together. That's kind of the way that like our dynamic works afternoon, we were working together. But funny, we're talking about maybe a size of a team that's too small for this to work.

But I love this because its just sounds to me like game fiction. And I apply game fiction literally to the way that I personally work. It's kind of weird, but I love IT like I say here, my goals for the week and I kind of have a weird a bit of a point system for like what I want to do in the week. And then every day, the end of the day, I kind of know like if i'm on track, I don't know what i'm working with.

So that works well for some teams. Like I said, we've got modules and we can have bonuses. And based on the way we share care, for example, we could have like one point each in in a week that would mean that APP bunch of pots set aside will be divided equally, because we all worked equally and we all go the same amount of karma for this from each other. But this example is not ideal for the team of three would work Better in the team of three plus three hundred even. I think the biggest we've had was sixteen thousand, and that was kind of difficult to manage.

I'm of curious about you personally because I feel like the mind of the founder who comes up with an idea like carma bot um and you think like okay would be good as to reward people with points into like kind of have these these game unification principles in a product. Like how do you personally think about productivity? Is this is this the kind of thing that like you use in your life? Like I said that the way that I run my personal life.

yeah, i'm totally with you on that one actually like I I feel this especially talking about the long game and business in genre. Like it's a gay. It's it's all is built around relationship that you built with your lights.

It's all built around the money that you get from them as a reward for helping them. That's how I explained this to my son. Like I help people so they pay me money and that's really easy to understand over time. That's the game fiction in essence, like you you doing good deeds and then and you get money in reward.

yeah. yeah. So one of the ways that I like to think about IT is as a kind of pain recept with me personally. And like you know, we feel pain, just physical pain, in our bodies. If you have like ants crawling on your leg, you get like A A signal that like out, this thing hurts.

And it's good that you have these little incremental paint recept tors because if you don't have them, for example, there are people who have conditions where they don't feel pain like often, you know, within a couple of years, they have scars all over themselves and they have like they have to get no amputations at sara. But it's in real life with the things that we want to pursue. There are their goals.

We often don't have those built in pain recept tors are like, in the sense, like progress receptors. And so having these inter mining rewards with something that kind of vague like business or with like in a sort of connecting with your team or doing different projects is honestly a huge life hack. I do believe in my product.

obviously. I mean, I cannot say otherwise. And this is something that helped my team. And I think the right teams that that that would benefit a ord from system like karma. If you taking IT say I seriously because it's it's a pulse in a way like the the number of points that you've got today as a whole as a team that actually shows they're mode, actually shows their productivity. And tomorrow, if it's, it's not hard science IT could be due to be race factors.

But as a leader, you would see that your company, your team is not performing is theyve be formed before when they were much happier and shared more and shared more through carmine and genuinely talked more on on this remote thing that was new. Actually like we started five years ago, it's to this day, companies they just know they get in on board with remote, fully remote. They came fine after quit, but now it's still kind of new.

And I think before I thought karma was like stupid, like little moments, of course, when I thought it's stupid point system, no one wants IT. But also at the same time, we had some feedback from really smart people talking about like that is just not time to wait, just wait for IT. And I now realized why because remote was so tiny. Now it's everybody understands off to call IT what IT means.

So you started building this in um in new zealand. I think you in your cofounder David and you had a your agency in new zealand right? And then one of the things like right now .

you're and I think poland, yeah, it's a whole and a whole windy .

path to get from new zealand. Poland IT wasn't in a straightforward just move on from one of the other like you have travelled the world and you like some funny theories based on on travel. How did you end up in poland? Like why are you there?

Well, poland is just this decade, I would say, uh, is for poland. Um I I believe that IT takes like roughly five, ten years to understand the place where you leave. And I ve been always moving.

I've left my home town when I was sixteen or something. I went to another bigger town, and then I went to another town. And now, and then I spent twenty years in new zealand, been an immigrant, trying to understand how they think.

Watch your upshot of how are the key thing in new zealand. I was there for three weeks. I could tell you how I what my impression was after three weeks.

It's a very late back country, if you like. The birds, if you like, the beaches, if you like, you know, walking the trails and all the cool parks and stuff that's that's very well for you. And I love the place, I love the country.

And I I truly love IT. I mean, i've spent on my city is and I i've spent the years there, but I think IT also has the limit of being isolated in various way, physically. And also mentally in a way of you is an island.

Couple of violence far, far away. And when I arrive there, there was a notion that IT may become x silicon valley of the pacific region because you allow smart people to have this great lifestyle and they work remote. But then due to the various thinks, IT didn't work in the end. So I think at the moment, it's sort of getting through this phase of, you know, taking a step back a little bit and also coit was very difficult for the country. So altogether lay back, you know, kac day, work efficiently in the morning that works for many people.

They live a big I .

was there for .

three weeks and twenty sixteen, I think, and my impression was kind of the same. Like super laid back, very outdoorsy, not very ambitious, like very relaxed, not super indulge. Education, like I said to the family for a while in the school year, is about to start.

And they, like, I was going to take our kids on like a two month camping trip, so they just pulled her kids at a school and just like, went camping and I like, what about school? Like ad doesn't matter that much. And I was driving out the girl family yes, yeah, to be found a lot of like like the signs on the side of the road or like no one cared like no one gave a IT everybodys got like .

beautiful whatever you know.

you're going on yeah.

I just didn't. I just didn't matter. There is volume that is just a different thing is about going sideways in terms of going upwards. So in america, for example, I think the country, the opportunity, you would think, I mean, that's my perception.

I never lived there, but is like you want bigger, bigger company, more people hired, you know, you go in upwards, bigger cars, bigger birds and stuff. And and in K, V, land and be something like everything. Why would you? It's just all right.

I'm fine with this burger and this house by the beach. I I don't need the bigger new york skyscrapers and everything all at once. There is no ambition like you said. And it's fine, it's it's completely fine.

You are saying that you IT takes five or ten years for you to learn, like the culture a place. And so you were in new zealand, twenty years, where to go to that?

Well, the plan was to go to go to live in south america, visited to a couple of times, have been to a spain to to compare and we realized that europe is different to, uh, less than amErica specifically. Chilly elected its very, very much and I still think it's a very progressive country that will you know get places and we will see is so resource reach and the call is so you know different.

And in a way it's I wanted to show my son that the rough places on this planet when people don't speak english as a primary language on not just english speaking world, that observes the third world, this kind of from intelligent, don't like IT in general. I think it's not right. And in actually we sort of experienced that we we came in people's king, different language.

They have different issues. They don't think about up like problems in europe. That's problems in old europe, problems in america, also kind of different place.

We have our own region of the globe, and it's dse enough in terms of things happening in step. So that was the first trial. But but, but in call, IT started and that killed the whole vibe. We basically spend five months in ab, the apartment in a love down.

I did a travel thing when a cobi started to you like around like, I think july twenty twenty. I was like, I want to travel around just the united states, and I was just driving around and I think that was so cool a little bit like you was like, you know, I think I should travel and like, you know, to expand my awareness and just be more on the road. And IT was like, surprisingly, I was like, Better than I thought I was going to beat.

In some respects, I think like as human beings, we kind of evolved to be outdoors and to be no matic and out of, like move from place to place. And when I was like traveling, I was changing cities like every day to that kind of unlocked this very fresh, inspiring perspective on life for me that I didn't expect to happen, where I just felt like, wow, ki, just feel much more alive, right? I like talking to people from these tiny towns that I ve never been to, and everyone, like, in their own town, like you said, was like, very unconcerned with, like, the things that I was concerned with.

And they they had their own local issues and that that was really cool. But then something else that had happening where I realized, like, well, like the other thing that, like, we sort of have all to do as humans as like have a tribe and have like a consistence that of people around us who do you love? Like you had your family right? You've got like your spouse and your kids and so you're like, okay, i've got my people even locked down on the house.

So I got my people. But like I was by myself the remember I met this girl, this hotel, who was working at the hotel I stayed at and like we had some cool conversations, was kind of fury. We want to dedit.

I met one of her friends and the next day is like, right? Well, cool. Never going to see you again.

Goodyer, I just left. And like, I think I actually got, like, settled down somewhere. And so I ended up in seattle. Like, i've had, like the opposite mindsets. And then, like, I don't want to travel, I want to stay in one place and invest and me to ton of people and just make my life Better and Better and Better in one place. Well.

I I think you can do IT not once. I think next thing is is great. Next thing is comfortable. Nesting is naturally what many people are looking for. And it's about I think it's about the anxiety levels.

You just getting calmer, you work Better, you feel Better and you yellow is a perfect place for that. You know lower your anxiety to uh to the very low levels. But uh, I don't know, I got born.

So maybe what we try to do now in poland, which is step three, a couple of years forward, I found my polish ancestry ancestral route. So something theyve got the program governmental programme that allows people up to come and maybe save, they feel like IT. So I went through the official process and I expected to become romanian resident any week.

Now, um it's a long thing. You have to learn the freaking difficult language, which is also beautiful. And you know, so rich, and that's what I mean when you actually have a chance to fully emerging and new culture and IT will take years.

I know, like I said, it's a long game. But back to your point, I will try to build here and ask as well like I done in there. And I will try to do IT here.

IT will take maybe ten years to build a new nest. And realistically, you know that I will be three, four times from now. I win my theorists.

So how much time do I have? Maybe three different places. Maybe japan is japan is good, right? But do you really dig japan? Do you really understand how works?

I think I will take a long time to to understand that. Truly like I A decade so japan I vikings, i'm fluctuated by this nordic culture. So that's too uh then already so i'm sixty all that right now. So then my health maybe we allow me to try one more place and that's IT that's IT. It's like life is short .

and then you're dead yeah all .

of this hits really close to home for me personally because so i've got a girlfriend. And we both kind of mutual decided that we don't necessarily want to have kids and that we would substitute the purpose and like the business ness of kids with a doing a lot of travel and completely throwing ourselves into our projects. And so SHE is shy swiss SHE is um she's not material ed american citizen.

And so we travel back and forth between these two places and a kind of checks that box of nesting, right? We have our new ork city friends is where I live. SHE has her swiss friends. We're literally about to book a flight to switzerland whenever he gets home tonight for the summer.

And now he started to kind of lobby me towards, like this, you know, like, you know, how open are you to actually to sort of moving to switzerland? And eventually, and I feel like that almost entirely comes down to the network thing, right? Like how many people do you know um in that place? Like how much you sort of diversity does IT have? And he has a really strong case where europe, you have this, a really amazing efficient transportation system.

Trains are actually things that you want to, you want to like board where as like court and I had to deal with the bar. And 3Francesco， like, not good. Even the train system in york city, not that could. You can travel around to different countries fairly easily. I could come visit you stain in poland to devising .

that um that instagram account for the new york subway called subway creatures is my favorite instagram count.

Like you see me where you the one that sent me that video of like there was like a guy who had who fell sly, is maybe home as much, sure, but he had like a dog and the dog was sitting in his lap on on the new york city's base and the guy passed out and the dog was just licking the guys in mouth while like everyone around him just held their smartphones up like, record with that.

did you send me that one like a daily the next subway. Use a new day. I folly support IT.

Well, yes, I have seen last time have been to london. I've seen the actual night. Like you note the person wearing armor on the two.

They just he was there and I I am mature. He's coming from some made evil gathering as something. But he was there and I like, yeah that that's interesting.

You know, big cities and would be cultural places. They always like that. But I I, I totally hear what is saying.

And europe specifically original. I think it's super all it's all about nesting. There are villages which can track in their genome.

They could track the same people been living there for five thousand years. Like that's like the reality of how country and you know, nesting, how good that sport is for nesting. So beware.

Do you find that, uh, being an andy hacker, your ability to work on your business is like different in different places? Like what's the different way between running a company in new zealand verses and like south amErica versus and poland?

Well, parts of the businesses is just general agency stuff. So with that being in europe, you cover like wider client base, right? You you can speak just because it's convenient to a billion and half people when you're in europe and when in new zealand is roughly three hundred million because it's a the west coast of uh, amErica is very sensible three hours difference with some Frances go in the rest of australia.

On the other side, they just like twenty six people, million people. And up now, if you've got asia on edis like they, they solve in their problems themselves. Well, so in terms of client work and with karma, we want to sell to businesses I had much, much, much why their opportunities while working from chili, that's roughly new york time and from europe as well as it's just as perfect. I think you just covering more people and that's about connections, of course, like being that I connect IT. And that's why, again, new zalm, I think it's kind of facilitated coroni.

He's on the west coast, he's in seattle and i'm in new york city. So we have like this three hours spread and we have a very international community in the hackers. So like if we have you know some responsibility to I kind of manage the forum, um I wake up away before him and I can kind like cover a little bit of like the european time.

And then when I go to bed, he can still make sure that you know if we have a fire, he's is a way to put IT out. So maybe we like expand our reach just a little bit. If I then just move to to switzerland and then we have like, you know, we completely spread.

for sure, one hundred percent. David is my business partner. He's in australia, so he's got still covering for that part of the globe.

And the time difference between new zealand, for examples, pain is twelve hours, thirteen hours sometimes. So it's fast. It's so unmanageable. But at the same time, if you spread your resources, IT works well.

One of the things that I like about your company about carma bot is that it's it's software as a service, right? You guys charge a subscription fee at the low and it's like thirty bucks a month depending on your team size and go all the way up like two hundred bucks a month. And then you've got like an enterprise pricing thing where you got five hundred and more people, you're doing ten thousand plus deals sometimes.

I like this most of the people who have in the podcast recently, like there's been this trend in recent years towards like kind of like info products, right? Like content based businesses. People selling news letters are people doing like, you know, like maybe like on the high end, like job board and the low end, like people monitise ing their podcast and what not.

And I is a software engineering, like I much more attracted to the sad stuff that you're doing. I wanted like code something and just have to work automatically in the background. All people are like paying me money and I just coming in like that just sounds like a much more exciting type business.

The downside is that it's really, really slow. I give chaining and I wanted some sort of sass product of for any hackers. Part of means I will shit like everybody I talked to who works on a sash product. It's like years before you start seeing meaningful revenue.

yeah. I mean, that could be dead by the time because technologically eat advances in the you know you late for the train, it's a treaty thing. And because I think technically, yes, it's working on IT by self.

There are requests from clients and you sort of improving product, listening to them. So everybody is is happy. But at the same time, uh, it's difficult to sell like we found maybe eight hundred hours selling garment.

David and I doing demos selling, talking about numbers, talking about pricing, I think is the most difficult part to be on us just because it's itself and you selling IT to a business, business is really trying to, you know, get the best out of the deal. They don't care as much as customers. When when you selling something to a specific person, not a company, companies is faceless.

So let's say you can go back in time, right? Like I took you guys a while. I think you started to come about twenty sixteen. By the end of twenty nineteen, you would hit one hundred thousand dollars a year.

Revenue that's like two and a half years roughly between getting started and getting to the point where you can pay like you know a six figure salary to like one person, which is quite a lot of time we get to be patient to do that. How did you get there? And then like what you what do you think you could have done like with the benefit of hindi to get there faster? Like how py you start a sah company fast?

They speaking to customers is the most difficult part. And I think what unlocked carmine, in a way IT. So IT became more than just internal product that we joined. Uh, why cabin at or school? The earliest y come in atter school was actually IT was a real person with Y C experience.

Giving your feedback on on on the products, on the way you sell, on the problems that you've called and that and the hacker is actually as well taking the progress, showing more numbers, trying to understand the lingo, trying to stand the number of being involved in the community that helps to grow from, I don't know, to a hundred box in months to two thousand. And after that, you already started thinking about IT is okay. So this actually can pay for our romance. And then like.

what's next? This was kind of a gamble, right? Already had an agency. This was an internal tool. But sas is a really large leap to make, like what they were ever period. You know, when you are only making two hundred box a months and you were trying to climb some more than that, were you like, thought about giving up? Like, was this a discussion that you in your profounder.

of course? Yes, everyday, like I said, I was really difficult for him, especially to believe that we wear two hundred boxing months like how can we talk about twenty thousand IT will never happen. And i'm so one of these exponential girls and is like all of that, it's like it's it's fake yet these charts, they always be good for the presentations like the should be uh, let's let's be realistic about IT.

So it's still an expansion, al draws just because of the words of the IT brings you one percent growth because people talking about IT, we talking about IT, some people will come tomorrow and that will be the same kind of nona year growth that you get with, uh, digital products like that. And IT just took longer a time. And for me, I think IT was held the ability to convince my partner to just keep on that and find something that he liked.

He likes selling. He likes this moment when money hit your bank in account. You know, I like inspiring people. I like their talking about big stuff and big things.

And your company culture is super important, these values and all, and up to the moon, and they get inspired. But then to actually close the deal, i'm not that interested into that. It's like it's happen automatically.

If they needed, they will buy. That's my water. But my partner, he likes the actual moments of you know, teaching moments I call IT.

And that helped a lot. So he he picked up sales. He started talking about the product. He started talking about IT and understanding listening as well of officer and understanding what they need. And that was a huge leap uh forward. And I like I said, I would be um not fair not to mention why combinator school h and india ckd is well for the as a community that you know with all those two hundred posts of regular dates, that is actually discipline, that is actually showing that it's going fine.

I think one of the things that um I like about what I read in your pot timeline on andy hackers is you can kind of see this upper creep of you doing more enterprise sales. So the very beginning I was like, I would just sell with the tiny teams. And then I think there is one month that was like march twenty thousand nine or twenty eight or something you like.

We've got three enterprise sales deals in the works. One of them is almost gonna. I think we make ten thousand dollars a year from this is going to be so cool. And now I seem you have like many more larger companies that you sell to even the way that you like describe everything in your home page is kind of like, ah I can see why a bigger company would buy this.

And like, that's cool because when you make these bigger deals, like you don't need as many customers and you can grow your revenue a lot faster if you just know we know do five ten thousand dollars a year deals and if you have to do like five hundred ten dollar year deals, like to like individual people just doesn't work that fast. Do you think you could have started that way? Like do you think you could go back in time and be like, you know.

let's just do enterprise sales from the way I know now, I wouldn't be able to speak to them. I don't understand. I wouldn't be able to understand their problems like the way they buy, the way they choose the product, the things that they concerned about.

They are not actually concerned about the Price that much. They concerned about many other things, like how do we actually experimented? How do we actually make sure that people using IT? How do we measure the use? How do we measure the outcome of that? And also having attempted on super important.

We didn't really understand that that the picking a champion e is a founder in the small team I would be selling to you turning and that I will inspire you. You will be, oh yes, that's cool. And then the next day, like IT would be easy for me to convince ce you.

But at the same time, I would be easy for youtube just, you know, drop IT a couple of months later. And I don't won that. I want bigger company.

IT may be difficult to convince, but I want them to stay for me. With the year two, three, the longest is five years plus. We've got lines. They super happy. So to answer a question now, unfortunately, I think it's you have to grow into this.

How do you think a founder kine grow into that?

I don't know if I knew a camera would be much, much, much bigger and that would be a primary thing that I do in life. But it's still like it's in this product and I don't know how to sell to everybody. I don't know how to sell IT.

Well, I mean, we sell IT, okay, because probably Better than some other people would have sold IT. But it's a difficult question because actually it's less quickly, it's less hacky, uh, is less fulfilling in a way you work with corporations, they don't care much about the generation of your code base or generally your product. They solve in their problems and the problems they could be vague, the solution could be fake, the outcome could be difficult to measure. And you are there you either promising too much or your product maybe smaller than they need.

Yeah obviously, IT seems like how you go after big companies has to be kind of tailor to everyone's industry at center of courtland. You remember when I was a copy? Your cells been right when I was like the course.

So I I had this job because I lived in san Francisco and I had to pay the bills. So I was like kind of got this job selling like, you know multi function bag industrial size copy machines. And IT was the worst. IT was like you pretty much have to like go door to door downtown and from cisco. Um you know what of knocking doors, giving people like your business card.

The first day that was on this job, uh literally I went into someone's office and they threw a stapler IT was like the the person in on the front front test through IT like because she's like so sick of people going in um so I decided immediately when I had this job, like I don't want to try get commissions on a bunch of small companies, right like going to sort of have this constant red modern amon. I immediately was like I just want to go for like the big of, you know who what are the eight hundred pound gorillas? And yeah, you have to work your way up.

So I had to, like, meet my commission every single month. But I immediately was like to note school districts. So my sales territory was like north of seven hundred. Cisco and IT took me, like six months of dragging my heels, what smaller deals or whatever. And then as soon as I got that first school district, like I landed this deal, then I had this like network that I was like, that business manager new the business manager at that at another one. And so I was like, once I got in, I like, didn't have to go for the smaller deals anymore.

And I guess if if I were to ask, you know, what's the secret? How did you close this deal? Tell me I want to do the same.

IT would be difficult because it's very business specific. You have to know people. Maybe that guy specifically was really know happy with the way you, the sales, and then his trusted friend trusted him. So it's a pyramid of trust now. So this stuff, when IT becomes bigger, I think it's difficult to repeat consistently. But at the same time with saw and be in the founder and selling your own stuff, it's kind of fulfilling in another way when it's just not for every and if it's not for you, you just, you know move on.

The other thing I think is cool about what you're doing is you're in this industry. I don't know very much about it's called you know you're about page. You kind of describe IT as like you a people culture tool and there's all these other people culture tools.

There is kudos. There's bone's sly. There's bravos one called matter.

What do you think U. S know? What do U S. Do that these other people don't, right? If if i'm trying to make a company in the people cultural tool space, like what's important to know to build a .

good product ah please don't because you smart and you will be difficult competitor.

We're taking notes.

Yeah I think it's partially entertainment, unfortunately. So we have it's like networks. There will be people who would like to watch this weird show.

So if karma is not I mean, similar in summer regards to this program that the companies been using for years, let's say. But I honestly, at some point, people get tired, the attraction goes down. They not engaged this as well as before, so they just need change.

And I think it's how we lose customers is how we get in customers as well. Usually, there is a notion of having people future boosted somehow and then they find solution and over time, they may be get tired of IT. So they look into something else or and this is you know, this is what I always happy.

I'm happy to help and talk about, you know, remote work and people culture, a build in the team revolving. This is kind of new. They trying to become really a progressive in away, that's with the older companies。 They not always understand that.

I I think we understand IT Better because we Younger and we fully remote ourselves and we know we rebuilt for ourselves. So that actually helps to sell. I think that's partially how we different.

But I wouldn't you know argue at all. There are tons of companies. We are not unique, but like I said, there is a different network show for everybody.

And I I feel like ten years ago hearing about a people culture tool for a company, I would have like kind of rolled my eyes, maybe partially because I worked for this terrible sales company and I felt like it's all I L shed. But then the job that I worked right before in the hackers was this company called out dorsey. It's kind of like the airbnb for rv.

Right there is you have an rv sitting in your law. You just get to rent that out. And there was like a seven person team to start about dorsey.

And the culture was amazing. I was sick and I was like, I get IT and like, they would do tonsile things. We were in rv company.

And so it's like, look, every month, someone has to take a month off of work to like getting one of our R V S, and like just go on vacation. And like that was for everybody. Then you like kind of write your little report. Basically, the company had so much focus, these things that I used to be like that just superficial, like you're just kind like trying to pull my strings and but after that I was like, no, that's really, really a massive superpower and .

that's that's what I amount when I was talking about stuff like at the early days when someone would be saying, long man, this is stupid. This is just poins on top of points, whatever. This is superficial and this is not real, it's fake.

And on the other hand, I I had people believe in in the people cultured friend, and that, you know, you just wait in the future, I will pick up and I I think remote a remote stuff when you don't get to see people, when don't get to beat them in person. This really needs this like, uh, what is IT like taste hands or like extra spices is IT needs something to enhance this experience because it's it's scary. Its land is just piece of checks basically on the screen.

You cannot go to bar and have a conversation when we work together on slack. And then once a year to say we meet in person. I was so surprised that you actually know these people.

You communicate with them through zoom, you communicate with them that was like, you know, IT could be a different size. You don't become pretty the size of a person. But you can totally, I mean, I know this dude, I know how to speak to him.

I know how what he means when he responds, when he's smiling. I know that that was he didn't understand me. And this is activable through remote.

And also I I think that's also a discovery from any teams. So calm IT connect to glue for h such an environment. I should .

just one question to sort of wrap up BBC. You've had this journey. He went like over ten years booting this agency. You then you spend you know the last like six, seven years working on karma rowing to forty thousand thousand among the revenue. What do you think a brand new founder can take away from your story?

Um try different things and playing long game. I think IT works. I believe in consistency and persistency like these two hundred stupid updates with numbers that no one excEllent fans apart from myself. I think that that what to and no one cares to be onest. That's what I took to build the product in the end.

I love consistency, play the long game and don't give up after class. Thanks a ton for coming on the india forecast. Can you let listeners know where they can go to find out more about carma and anything else that you're that are working on.

right? So carma is a people culture tool for your company, for your team. If you working on slack with microsoft teams, you can find IT at cara bot dot chat on the interview. Just google us.

We will be there at the top things.