Snappa founder on staying optimistic through a rut (and how he’s keeping perspective)

Andrew Warner: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m a, I’m coming to you with a Mixergy listener who I’ve gotten to know over the years, whose story I think is the type of story I want to encourage more of in my audience. He’s an entrepreneur who bootstrapped a company that enables non-designers to create designs in a snap and.
Bootstrapped lives outside of the San Francisco Bay area. Built this thing up. A software just works beautifully. It stands up on its own has done well since the beginning. Um, and then a few months ago, when I said I’m kind of, I’m pressed to find stories of people who are doing well after, after COVID lockdown, he said, Andrew, We’re doing well and we’re doing better in fact, than we did before.
And so I talked to him about doing the interview and then. Did I flake out on you? I don’t know that I would use the word flake. I communicated heavily, but I backed [00:01:00] away at the end, right?
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. I think, uh, someone backed out of an interview and then you were like, Oh, well, we’ll do it. I don’t know a day or two from now, but then that person ended up.
Uh, wanting to do the interview. So then you’re like, Oh, well we’ll just have to reschedule or something.
Andrew Warner: It was really tough those days. I should introduce the person whose voice you heard. That’s Christopher Gimmer. He is the founder of snapper. It’s now snappa.com. I think when we first met it, wasn’t right.
What was the domain?
Christopher Gimmer: It was snap a.io.
Andrew Warner: My browser automatically just types in snap, a.io right now, but it reconnects it re. Direct system.com and what they do is help non-designers create online graphics and a snap. We’re going to find out how we built this company. Thanks to two phenomenal sponsors. The first, if you’re hiring developers, go check out top towel.
And the second after this interview, I’m gonna recommend that you subscribe to a podcast called traffic secrets. Um, Chris, I, I was balancing so many things in those days, wondering when the world was going to collapse completely [00:02:00] and then found that there were some stories that were just. Optimistic enough to keep me going.
And it was really tough doing all that while also having my kids at home and homeschooling them and feeling like this is my moment to finally teach my kids the way I would have wanted to be taught. What are you going through in the early days of COVID before we get into how your business is doing and why it’s doing well?
What was it like for you?
Christopher Gimmer: Um, it was really interesting actually, because we’ve always been, um, you know, fully remote, like, so my co cofounder, Mark, and I, when we started the company, um, you know, we were still working day jobs. So, uh, and then even our first couple employees were all just kind of working from home and stuff.
Um, so COVID was, was kind of interesting because. When you turn on the news, it would seem like the world was coming to an end, but at least, um, work-wise, it was kind of the same for us. Like, it didn’t seem like that much had [00:03:00] changed. And, you know, we were super fortunate in that our business actually grew during COVID.
Um, so it wasn’t nearly as stressful as, uh, you know, some of the people that had businesses that were we’re deeply affected. Um, so. You know, for me, um, it was just a matter of, you know, trying to, you know, keep up with exercise and, you know, spending time with my fiance going for walks, we ended up getting a dog that we had planned on getting for a while.
So that, that seemed like a good opportunity. Um, so yeah, it wasn’t too too bad. Uh, I have to say,
Andrew Warner: well, we like this because I think the first time that I did the interview with you, one of the things that I told you, I was. Just amazed by was that you came here to my office with nothing more than a Kindle.
You’re just so chill that you enjoy the morning in a world where, I mean, in San Francisco where people, they pretend that they’re relaxed, but in [00:04:00] reality, they’re just eager to do something and constantly under pressure. You don’t seem to ever have any pressure.
Christopher Gimmer: Um, I mean, I I’ve, you know, I I’ve had highs and lows obviously, but you know, one thing that I’ve always tried to get better at is maintaining more of like a healthy equilibrium.
Um,
Andrew Warner: what’s the thing that would have set you into a low, and then you were able to bring back because you cared enough to get back to equilibrium.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. Um, I mean, a couple of things like in the early days, um, when we’d have setbacks with like, you know, the technology or, um, you know, the site going down and stuff, like I remember the first time that the site went down.
I was like super stressed out and freaking out or whatever. Um, and then every time one of these, what seemed like a catastrophic moment at the time, um, in, in hindsight, it always ended up being like kind of minor. And we always ended up coming out [00:05:00] stronger than before. And so I’ve, I’ve almost like trained myself nowadays where, when a.
Problem comes up. I’m like, Oh yeah, I’ve seen this before. You know, we’ll get through it. This is an opportunity to, uh, improve whatever is messed up right now. And so I tried to approach it that way. Um, but you know, in, in, in my personal life it’s, um, I dunno, I just. Read a lot and just try to try to try to be mellow.
I, I just try to approach life that way. I guess
Andrew Warner: I have two moments that I always think about the one moment, whenever things are going bad, I have two moments. The one moment was. I had worked really hard and I found myself $5 million in debt because we had easy leases. We had easy, you know, instead of paying for computers, which we could have out of our bank account, Dell offered us to take a loan and the loan was zero interest or something like that.
And so we took it and I end up with $5 million and I remember journaling, I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I’m stuck. I don’t know how I’m gonna get through this. I wonder what’s going [00:06:00] to happen. And I could be bankrupt after all this hard work and feel exhausted and then have to start from scratch when you’re exhausted with no recuperation.
Cause you can’t, you know, so I came through that and things weren’t so bad. So I think about that. And then the other thing I think about was I used to go running in Manhattan and yeah. Running down first street at night was super easy, no little cross traffic, no problems. And then one day there was construction right on 57th street or so, and I couldn’t go down my path and I was so upset.
But I, I yelled at the, at the construction worker, which is what you do in New York. Like, what are you guys doing? Well, you’re keeping us from running. You’re blocking, not just cars, but people too. And he said, why don’t you just run over there? And so I looked over and sure enough, I lived in New York for my whole life before realizing that you can run along the East river.
And there’s this path that if you don’t mind having some of the highway, uh, the FDR drive. Next [00:07:00] to you. You’re fine. You get to, you get to go straight up. Look at the beautiful river. Look at Queens, look at Staten Island. And what I think about a lot is when things are kind of so frustrating that I want to shout.
Maybe there’s an opportunity. That’s going to get me out of my rut. That’s even better than my ride. What is it for you? When things are tough? When the cycles down on the business feels like it’s not going to recover flashed Hill. Yeah.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. I, I, you know, well, one thing that helps is I, I do, um, my, my co founder, Mark, he’s like super awesome, optimistic about that stuff.
And he just, I mean, You wanted me to chill a guy he’s like even way more chill than I am. So, um, usually when that stuff happens, it’s like, ah, don’t worry about it. But, um, I have a very longterm view and, and in my life in general is like, I always, um, you know, I like to say I play the long game and so. You know, I always view thing as, [00:08:00] as kind of, um, you know, stuff like that.
It’s I always recognize it’s like a short term thing, right? Like this isn’t, you know, the site going down, that’s not going to cripple us over the line.
Andrew Warner: You zoom out of this moment and have a longterm perspective. Here’s where I’m going. Here’s what I’m going to do. And in that vision, yeah, an outage a few years ago, even if it’s for multiple days is an interesting story and a bump, but not significant.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah, for sure. And one thing too, that I’ve I’ve, um, that has helped is, um, you know, take the example of like the site going down as, as, as like one of the co founders, you think that like every single person is on the site when it’s down, when in reality, it’s only usually a handful of people. And, um, I think too, we, you know, as, as founders we have this, um, This kind of a distorted version of reality where like everyone’s watching you and every move is being watched by so many people.
[00:09:00] Uh, but the reality is like, that’s really not the case and most people don’t really care. Um, so that’s one of those things too, is like, when you realize that you’re not under, you’re actually not under a microscope and, um, You know, there, there’s actually not that many people watching you. Um, it kind of helps in, in those situations where, you know, things aren’t going well.
Um, you can kind of see past it.
Andrew Warner: So when the site did go down, how many complaints did you get?
Christopher Gimmer: Well, that’s the thing I don’t remember exactly, but it’s, it’s always so much lower than I then than we would have anticipated. Anticipate
Andrew Warner: everybody was angry. Everyone needed to use you right now. And in reality it was maybe a dozen or two.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. And like, everyone’s going to cancel the account and let like, you know, screw this. Um, you know, another, another example was, um, this was kind of actually right after we had launched, um, And then shortly after we had realized that there was a couple of key features, one of them being like image resize.
So someone created like a [00:10:00] Facebook graphic to be able to click a button and convert it to like the Twitter size. Um, we’d realized like the initial way that, uh, that Mark had built the app, it would have been, it’s kind of impossible to do that with, with the way that it was originally written. So we spent, um, Mark spent like two, three months to kind of rebuild it.
And this is right after we launched where we had all these like a feature backlog. And then right before, like, I think it was the night before we’re going to launch. We realized like shit, the system work was Safari. And, uh, so we, we kind of looked at the analytics and it was like, well, there’s only 10% of, of the.
Of the user base that’s on Safari. So we, we went ahead and launched it anyways. And again, we’re like, okay, everyone’s going to freak out and get pissed off. And I think we had like one or two people cancel and the rest just use Chrome. Right. And so that, that was another good example of something that, you know, you, you think is going to be such a huge problem, but.
[00:11:00] It’s really not that big of a deal. I guess
Andrew Warner: you just changed something in your mic. It sounds a little different.
Christopher Gimmer: Uh don’t think so.
Andrew Warner: I see now this stuff makes me like, so frustrated, like something just changed it now everyone is listening thinks that I can’t even get it together.
Christopher Gimmer: No, it wasn’t Andrew’s fault.
Is it, is it sounding okay? It definitely
Andrew Warner: sounds different. I don’t know what the difference is. Why don’t we go into. Revenue. Do you feel comfortable saying what your revenue is now?
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. So as of now we’re doing 117 K and MRR,
Andrew Warner: 117. Monthly recurring revenue just a few months ago, you sent me an email saying Andrew, we’ve just hit a million dollars in, in annual run rate.
Meaning what is $3,333 and 33 cents. Right? That’s the magic number to get in monthly revenue?
Christopher Gimmer: That’s 1.1 0.4 and a, an annual recurring revenue.
Andrew Warner: You guys are taking profits. What do you do with the money? Is that too [00:12:00] personal?
Christopher Gimmer: Um, well, we obviously, uh, you know, reinvest some of that in the business and then some of it, we just, um, you can keep a war chest in the business for either a rainy day or for kind of future future endeavors,
Andrew Warner: but you’re not taking it out and putting it in your own personal account.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. I mean, so typically what we’re doing now is we’ll, we’ll pay, we’ll pay ourselves like a base salary and then typically. Um, we’ll pick, we’ll pay out like a percentage of the profits and dividends. Um, so that way a percentage of the profits are kind of kept in the business and then a percentage, um, we, we kind of get to enjoy on, on the personal side.
Andrew Warner: Does it bother you that now you’re paying taxes?
I know that everyone says it’s nice. I love to pay even more taxes because it means I’m making more money. One of the frustrations about hitting a million in revenue is. You make a really big leap forward, but a big part of that gets taken [00:13:00] away from you, right? Yeah. They’re not talking about, cause I want to take it and go out and spend money in Vegas.
It means that you can’t get it to reinvest it in the future that you’re always taking. You always go back halfway, you know, and that’s very frustrating.
Christopher Gimmer: It’s it’s funny. You mentioned that because, um, I have these conversations all the time and it’s like, so I live in Canada. So the, the top end of the tax bracket is almost like 50%.
Right. So every incremental dollar you’re paying out 50% taxes. And if the tax rate was a lot lower, we would probably hire more people. Right. Um, and so, yeah, I think with me in taxes is like, obviously. I have no problem paying taxes. Like I get the, the, the idea of having to pay taxes. But I do think that we, um, probably don’t get the value that we should be getting for the taxes.
Um, but, uh, that’s probably a whole other [00:14:00] conversation.
Andrew Warner: Here’s the way to just remind people that we’re not evil for thinking it though. I don’t mind if they do. I didn’t look at people who. Who are friends of mine whose money doesn’t come from taking a salary becomes from selling their companies, right?
Then their cost is much lower. I mean, their taxes are much lower and that type of thing is frustrating. Now used to have these types of conversations at dinner and the person who stands out for me as being the most anti this point of view was no Kagan came over my house. I bring this up. People always have interesting answers to it.
Know who goes, I’m just happy to pay money. And like he said, it in such a way that he was like shutting it down completely. And then a few years later, he comes out with his book with what his rich friends are doing to save money on taxes. You know what I mean?
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah.
Andrew Warner: Um, so I’m not put off by people feeling like this is an evil decision.
I think that we’ve got a situation
Christopher Gimmer: where an entrepreneur was
Andrew Warner: working really hard and decides, you know, I’m not going to sell the company. I’m going to make a profit [00:15:00] and I’m going to take some of it for myself because it’s expensive to live in these big cities. And I’m going to keep some of it in the business to reinvest that entrepreneur is actually, I think tax wise, Is in a really tough spot is getting the short end of the stick because they’re being forced to give up half of their money, which for them means half money that they could reinvest in the business.
This is me actually getting too political. I shouldn’t. Um, why do you think you did better because of Corona? Why do you think you did better after Corona?
Christopher Gimmer: So I think there’s two things. Um, one is you’ve got, um, you know, quite a few people that are unemployed. Um, but they’re collecting, you know, some form of stimulus, um right, right.
Depending on where, on, where they live. And so I think, you know, um, smartly, a, a percentage of those people are like, well, I’m at home, I’m not working. And I now have $1,200 or whatever the symbolist packages. Maybe I’ll try this, you know, online business thing, or maybe I’ll [00:16:00] throw up a Shopify store or maybe I’ll, you know, start selling some course.
And obviously those people are going to need graphics to promote their stuff. And so. I think, uh, you know, uh, a portion of that, uh, increase in demand was kind of from these people that were starting these side hustles, as it was like a really good opportunity to do so, um, being at home and not having to work.
And then I would say the other thing is, um, just this huge rush to, um, you know, work remotely and digitally. A lot of, uh, brick and mortar stores were kind of forced to, um, start selling stuff online. And again, all of that requires, uh, you know, graphics. And so I think it was kind of those two use cases where we just saw, uh, quite a big surge and uh, in signups and usage.
Andrew Warner: No, that makes a lot of sense. There’s a local bookstore that I started following on Instagram because I was supposed to speak there. I noticed that they’re [00:17:00] posting a lot more after COVID closed down their store. And I noticed that other local bookstores are doing similar things too. And I realized. Hey, they’re getting good at this because they’re at home.
They have to let us know they’re still around. I do feel more connected to these bookstores because they’re posting, but they’re not artists. So they go to Snappa, they get a photo of their store and then they add some text to it to let us know here’s what’s going on to tell us that they care about whatever issue they care about.
Right. That’s what we’re told. Say they miss us. That’s a big one too. Right? And that’s why people go to snap, but it create these, especially,
Christopher Gimmer: I know you
Andrew Warner: work with lots of different designs, but it’s these social posts that seem like the heart and soul of the business.
Christopher Gimmer: Am I right? Yeah, the social is definitely the big one.
Um, I mean, restaurants is another really good example. Um, a lot of restaurants, you know, don’t do that much promoting. They just kind of rely on people walking in the door. And so when all of a sudden you have to do delivery, um, you know, [00:18:00] and you can’t rely on people just walking past your restaurant and coming in, uh, again, you kind of have to take more of a proactive approach and, and start, uh, No posting more on social media and, and, um, showing people that, you know, we’re open for delivery.
We have delivery kits, uh, all the, all that kind of
Andrew Warner: site. Right. And now they’re learning to do it. And the beauty of Snappa is it’s just easy, quick drag and drop.
Christopher Gimmer: Exactly. Right.
Andrew Warner: Alright. I want to take a moment to talk about my first sponsor, and then I’m going to come back and ask you the question that I was too hesitant to ask you in the past and too hesitant to follow up on, but it’s one that you told me you were finished.
You told me you were really nervous about when we first talked. Fair to say that. Is that revealing too much? No, no, no. I don’t think so. I, maybe it is. Well, I’m trying to read your face. I can’t tell. I feel like sometimes it is a little bit pushy for you because you’re not as gregarious as I am, but you don’t care.
You’re willing to go there. Am I right?
Christopher Gimmer: And necessity kind of accurate. [00:19:00] Yeah.
Andrew Warner: I, my first sponsor is top tile. You probably heard me as a listener. Chris, talk about top tile a lot. I’m going to tell you about a company kind of similar to yours that you, that uses top Taltz company called picker. I interviewed the founder and he said, we use top tile.
I said, how small look, we’re a small organization. Sometimes we need to move fast and we don’t have people on staff to do it. So he says what he does is he just goes to top Cal. He gets to hire an expert. Who’s phenomenal at what they do. But he doesn’t have to have a year long five-year long commitment as Noah Kagan said, you don’t have to go through.
I forget what he called it. He’s like I basically said, hiring employees is a pain in the butt because, and then he listed all the expenses that go along with it and all the difficulties of ramping up and the difficulties of ramping down. Anyway, the founder of snapper to the founder of picker, didn’t get that negative about hiring people.
But he did say it’s nice that I’ve got this person at top down. I just hire them when I need them. When I don’t, we don’t do anything. So that’s the beauty of top town.
Christopher Gimmer: Anyone out there looking for developers
Andrew Warner: should do it. And I’ll tell you, Chris. I also have [00:20:00] said that I hired a finance person through top Cal just the other day.
My brother calls me up and says, Hey, you got the PPP loan. I said, yeah. He goes, you know, you’re supposed to give them paperwork and close it out within eight weeks. I said, yeah. Okay, fine. I guess he says, well, you know, it’s coming up in literally two days. He did the math and no, I didn’t know it. He says, well, do you know what you can do?
I said, I don’t. So I thought Michael starts Googling and researching. I’m not Googling the way you are. That’s not going to be a second job to do whatever the government needs for my PPP loan. So I sent a message to Jack. I said, Jack, can I do this? Can I do that? And can we get on a call? He says here detailed responses to what?
To your questions. And I’m not available today. How about tomorrow? Oh, you know, Jack, you just gave me thorough response. I don’t even need to talk to you. This is great. You know, I had an expert who’s way more qualified than, than I need to, to give me the answer. Jack helped, uh, um, help the legislators. I don’t know how much I can say, but he let up the senators who were putting this plan together.
He helped them do it. He was on calls with them. [00:21:00] And so I get access to him because that’s the type of person who who’s on top towels in top sales network. I’ve talked a lot about how that’s the best place to go to get developers. It’s also great to get finance people. I’ve done both of those. I’ve also gotten designers from them.
If you’re out there and you need to hire top talent.com/mixergy will not only be your entry into a conversation with someone to top, top to see if it’s a good fit for you. But it’s also going to get you 80 hours of developer credit when you pay for your first 80 hours. In addition to a no risk trial period of up to two weeks I have to do is go to the URL top.
dot com slash Mixergy top isn’t top of your head towels and talent. Top J l.com/m I N E R G Y. Canva. I keep watching CAMBA get bigger and bigger. They just raised a ton of money. And the only reason I know it is because guy Kawasaki, the guy who used to be the evangelist for Apple is now the evangelist for fricking Canva, your competitor.
What do you think about that?
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. So, um, so with Canva, obviously they’re, you know, have boatloads of funding and, [00:22:00] um, they’re kind of on, on the IPO track. Um, so. You know, we have to be realistic in terms of like, as a bootstrap company, we can’t just, um, compete, head on and, and try to do exactly what they’re doing.
So essentially what we’ve done is we’ve tried to. Focus on kind of a niche and verticals. So, um, we focus purely on online graphics. Um, so that, that allows us to keep, um, the platform really quick and easy to use. And then we also focus primarily on kind of the small business, uh, B2B use case. So we don’t offer, you know, wedding invitations and, um, you know, birthday cards and that kind of stuff.
So. At the end of the day, um, as a bootstrap company, w we have to be realistic in terms of, you know, what our valuation would be, or how much revenue we can generate [00:23:00] versus a competitor of that size. Right? Oh, you’re
Andrew Warner: hit mute so that I don’t keep breathing into the mic. You’re saying, Andrew, we’re not going to be as big as Canva.
I get it.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. I get that. Raising more money, IPO
Andrew Warner: track going to be bigger because they’re taking on more than you are. The thing I wonder is. Why are people still using snap out when Ken, but lets them also create graphics? Yeah. So actually let’s let’s understand that.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. So like I said, um, we, we’ve just kind of.
Try to make ours like as super easy to use as possible. And then we’ve focused primarily on specific use cases rather than offering the whole kit and caboodle. Um, and so the people that use us over Canva, um, based on like customer interviews and whatnot, they found that it’s just easier to use. It’s faster.
Um, it’s less cluttered and, and bloated. Um, and so. That’s kind of what, we’re, what we’re optimizing for, rather [00:24:00] than let’s, let’s do every template or every size under the sun, because we know that we don’t have the team and the resources to kind of compete with them. Head-on um, and then the other thing too, is like, especially when it comes to software, there’s always going to be.
A number one or market leader. And then there’s always going to be two, three, four, five. Um, and at the end of the day, it comes, comes down to preference. Right. Um, and so. I think there’s, there’s always going to be room for a second, third, and maybe a fourth company, a competitor, and any sort of a space.
Andrew Warner: So then what’s the thing that gets you guys to be the, the second one.
It’s the simplicity you’re saying, you’re saying that when people go to Canva, there’s so many different options that it slows them down. When all they want to do is create a quick image to post on Facebook, another image to post on Instagram, right?
Christopher Gimmer: That’s it. Yeah. And that’s, that’s what we optimize for,
Andrew Warner: you know, what I’ve noticed that too with them that [00:25:00] sometimes I just need to create a quick post for Twitter and I’ve got to go and figure out where it is in the menu.
And I know I could search, but then once I do, I feel like I, I don’t have enough tools, but at the same time, too many tools, that kind of a weird thing to say, cause I know they could do everything, but they eliminate a lot of the tools, so I can’t see them. Right.
Christopher Gimmer: Yup. Yup.
Andrew Warner: So I end up with. I ended up with this feeling of overwhelm and being stupid for not being able to use canvas for a quick tweaked.
Does that make sense? Is that what you’re talking
Christopher Gimmer: about? I a hundred percent. All right. So you’re, you’re going to have the people that want. Like every size and they want all the features and then you, you know, there’s, there’s always going to be that subset, which is like, I’m only on Instagram. I only want to crank out or not necessarily a crank out, but I just want to do these types of, of graphics.
And I want the tool that’s the easiest to use and the fastest. Right. And so [00:26:00] that’s what we’re optimizing for. And as a bootstrap company, um, you know, we don’t, we don’t have to. Grow to their level or, or cater our product to everyone under the sun. Um, and so that’s just kind of the, the choice and the path that we’ve taken,
Andrew Warner: or, you know, one thing that I can’t do with Canva is sometimes I like to have this, like, to have a picture of someone on, uh, background and then have it kind of have a, have a bit of a shadow or something so that it stands out.
With Snapple. What I could do is duplicate the picture and turn the one behind it. That’s a little bit off into a dark picture, right? Yep. Is that the way to do that?
Christopher Gimmer: Uh, if I’m thinking of, of what you’re talking about. Yeah. You can do that.
Andrew Warner: We’re getting into like real tech support for me, but the products are just super, super simple and super elegant.
And you know what else I’ve discovered that I didn’t know until [00:27:00] now he works on an iPad, like, like on a desktop.
Christopher Gimmer: It’s a browser, right? Uh, it’s a fish like officially, I don’t know if it works. Um, there might be a few kinds of things that, that, uh, might not work. Properly on the iPad. Uh, cause it is, uh, like we, we tested for Safari Chrome and Firefox.
Um, what are you using right now? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Warner: Um, I’m looking for, I’m looking for issues. I’m sure that there’s something in there. Let me see what happens if I had saved, saved. If I hit download.
Christopher Gimmer: Is it, are you using like a mouse and keyboard or something with the iPad? Yeah, I guess, yeah. I think if you use the mouse and keyboard, then you should be good to go.
Andrew Warner: Yeah, that’s it. It’s working right there. I wonder how much of this would not work if I was just doing it with my hands, but I feel like I’m more and more. You’re not going to need to have an app [00:28:00] for iPads because it’s just going to become like a desktop. You know, um, I noticed the teams is prominently displayed more prominently than I noticed before.
That seems like a really big feature, right. That for getting new customers.
Christopher Gimmer: Um, the, the team plan, you mean
Andrew Warner: the team plan?
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. Um, so that’s actually something that we, so right now, um, we’re actually undergoing two major things. So one is a, is a site redesign and a big brand refresh. So I don’t know when this interview will be posted, but it may or may not be live by then.
Um, we’ve kind of been using the same kind of branding and colors and it’s, it’s definitely, uh, outdated. So. Um, one of the graphic designers we hired recently is she’s just like crushing, uh, the new site redesign. So we’re pretty pumped to get that out. Um, and then we’re also doing a big refactor on the backend.
So, um, the app is going to actually be even. [00:29:00] Way quicker. And I would say even more easier to use once we roll that out, but that’s several months down the line. Um,
Andrew Warner: who’s developing this.
Christopher Gimmer: Um, so basically it’s my, my cofounder. And then we have, uh, two developers on the team. So
Andrew Warner: that’s it. It’s the four of you in the business, plus I’m someone who does customer support.
Christopher Gimmer: So it’s a, there’s seven of us full time. So there’s myself and my co founder, two developers, a graphic designer, uh, a marketer. And then, um, like customer support slash social media guy.
Andrew Warner: I’ve got to stop playing with the app. It’s just so compellingly simple that I keep tapping and tapping and tapping and tapping.
Um, How do you, how do you talk to customers? Do you still do it yourself?
Christopher Gimmer: Um, I did a lot in the early days. Um, I haven’t, we haven’t done it that much recently just because you kind of start to hear the same things over and over again. So I find that I don’t get [00:30:00] as much out of them as it used to. Um, that being said.
Probably overdue, uh, to, to maybe do some calls. Um, we do do some surveys though. Um, and those are, those can be pretty helpful.
Andrew Warner: They are not, I’m not doing enough calls myself. I was backing away for a little bit. And then occasionally I’ll get on calls with people randomly. And number one, they’re really appreciative because they hear my voice in the mic.
And so it feels like it’s a connection to the person that they’ve heard for a long time. Number two, I just get the sense of amazement and how. Impressive my audiences. The other day, I was talking to a guy who was a Google engineer who quit working Google. Who’s creating an app for, um, uh, online, um, online courses and other online training.
He’s got Google as a customer. And so they’re using his software. He’s got a few others and I’ve taught this isn’t really well done. Start for someone who’s listening. And it feels like that’s a typical listener and it [00:31:00] always fires me up. I just don’t get to do enough of it. I know for me, the issue is it’s, it starts to spread out beyond the number of days that I can give it, you know, it becomes Andrew, ya’ll get on a call with you, but, you know, I know I was supposed to do it this week.
Can we do it in a month? And I say, sure, can we do it three months later? Cause I’m not ready. I say sure. And then it starts to become this thing that creeps into the rest of my schedule. How do you handle
it?
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. Well that’s yeah. You talking about calls with customers specifically. Yeah. And that’s the thing is I think, um, like I said, I, I learned a lot more from the customer calls in, in the earlier days.
Um, whereas now the product has, has matured quite a bit. Um, and we’re at, you know, somewhat of a scale where. We kind of know what needs to be improved upon or what features need to be added just based on like, you know, support tickets and that kind of stuff. And so I find myself like trying to focus on more higher, [00:32:00] uh, leverage stuff, as opposed to, you know, scheduling, uh, calls every day.
And it, it, it does get, um, it does get tiring for sure.
Andrew Warner: You do surveys also. I found the surveys just don’t work for me.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah, we do. Um, like I think the last survey we probably did was, was last year. Um, yeah, we, we definitely did a lot more of that stuff, uh, in, in the earlier days for sure.
Andrew Warner: One of the little features that I can’t stop tapping on is removing the background from an image.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. We just, um, launched that, uh, about a month ago and that, that, I think that’s one of the game changing feature that in imagery size, um, people get pretty stoked about that.
Andrew Warner: Yeah. I wonder why that it just feels magical. You know, there’s an image there. It’s got a clear background. You tap the remove image background, and suddenly you just get that.
If I would upload my photo, would I be able to get rid of the background
Christopher Gimmer: from here? Yep. Yep.
Andrew Warner: I should do that. I [00:33:00] see. This is why I get sucked into your software
Christopher Gimmer: because I mean like, think about, um, how much of a pain it is in Photoshop too. Like just do a simple thing, like remove a background, like you got to trace it.
And
Andrew Warner: I never used Photoshop. I do. One of the things that I liked about the iPad was there’d be standalone apps that would do these one off things.
Christopher Gimmer: Right. So
Andrew Warner: I switched to the iPad so that I can get background removal, for example. But even there, it will get you most of the way there, let’s say 75% of the way there of getting rid of the background, but it still wants you to use that magic wand to trace around the person’s head.
And then by then, I’m just done. It’s not my job to sit and get rid of a background.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. Like the one click, um, yeah, that that’s the magic is you just click the button and boom, it’s gone.
Andrew Warner: And there are tools now that do it. I’ve seen them on product on demand. You integrated one of them into this, right.
Using their API. Which one do you use?
Christopher Gimmer: A removed OD BG.
Andrew Warner: Oh, that’s the first one to hit really big on product hunt. [00:34:00] Right?
Christopher Gimmer: I mean, it’s, it’s it works amazingly. Well, yeah.
Andrew Warner: You just give them a image in the background
Christopher Gimmer: and
Andrew Warner: they charge you per image, I guess, or per
Christopher Gimmer: thousand images. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like a credit system still the base, like the more credits you use, the cheaper it gets essentially on a, on a per image basis.
Andrew Warner: Yeah. That was really good. Marketing. Just create a tool. Let us all try it out for free. No, that we can all experiment with it and then sell it to companies like yours. What else is a, is a big feature like that, that you can essentially outsource to someone else, but get all the benefits of.
Christopher Gimmer: That’s the, actually the only feature that we haven’t built internally, that we’re using an API for, um, Well, I guess the other thing too is, is the, uh, photo and icons library.
So we work with, or we kind of use third party providers. Um, so that’s, uh, that’s pretty big, but it’s not, it’s not like a feature I would
Andrew Warner: say. [00:35:00] Alright. I want to talk about how you get traffic to your site. I’m looking at your numbers according to similar web. Oh, what is this? Is this from? Yeah. May you guys did this seem right?
1.7 9 million visits.
Christopher Gimmer: Uh, we do about a million visits a month.
Andrew Warner: Okay. Wow. They’ve overestimated you, you tweeted out just, I think yesterday, or maybe it was today, you thought that you were going to run out of keywords to target and suddenly you’ve discovered a whole lot. So SEO is a big part of your traffic plan, right?
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. I, um, uh, It was actually, yeah, I think it was like two years ago or something. And I was actually having coffee with Liam Martin. He’s he’s been on Mixergy, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, uh, I remember saying to him, Like, yeah. I feel that at some point we’re going to run out of keywords ideas and he goes, yeah, I thought that five years ago, trust me, like you, you won’t run out.
Um, and sure enough, like our Trello [00:36:00] board of, uh, keyword ideas just gets. Longer and longer by the day,
Andrew Warner: how do you come up with them?
Christopher Gimmer: Um, so we use, um, a tool called atrophie, um, and it’s, it’s, it’s really, really good. So it’s just a combination of, um, looking at either competitor sites or. Um, not even necessarily like actual competitors, but blogs that are kind of serving the same industry and niche.
Um, and then just looking at, um, Uh, and, and even just kind of plugging different keywords into the keyword Explorer to look at, uh, look for like long tail stuff. So for example, we’ll just literally plug YouTube. Um, and then we’ll, you know, click on phrase match or keyword ideas. And then we’ll literally just go through the list and see, you know, what are the YouTube related keywords that people are searching for that we can write articles about?
Andrew Warner: And who [00:37:00] writes the
Christopher Gimmer: articles. So, um, our process is so, um, so Nick is our full time marketer. And so he basically does all the keyword research. Um, and then what we’ll do is we’ll usually, um, assign that to, um, one of, uh, a writer that we’ve been working with for a couple of years. And then she writes the majority of the content.
Um, Nick also will write some of the posts. Um, but, uh, Anna’s is a freelancer that we work with and she writes quite a bit of our content.
Andrew Warner: I’m trying to find it right now, but I guess once you’re logged in the blog disappears from the, from the top menu, right?
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. If you just log out and then click blog, um, you’ll be able to see it.
Andrew Warner: I’m in incognito mode and I see it now. And so you just mentioned YouTube, it looks like the latest post on the site right now is best YouTube channel, name, ideas, and usernames to avoid.
Christopher Gimmer: There you go.
Andrew Warner: And that’s what you’re talking about. Yeah. And then the whole idea is people who then need thumbnails for YouTube would be searching for that, for those that have that set of keywords.
And then [00:38:00] they discovered that they could also create thumbnails on snapper.
Christopher Gimmer: Exactly.
Andrew Warner: And then I look to see where you’re getting the most traffic according to similar web. Oh, you know what, let me take a moment since we’re talking about traffic. I’ll tell you about a new podcast called a well, it’s not that new anymore.
It’s called traffic secrets. It’s by Russell Brunson, the creator of ClickFunnels. You still listening to podcasts.
Christopher Gimmer: Oh yeah,
Andrew Warner: you are. What’s one that you’re listening to.
Christopher Gimmer: Um, I’ve actually been getting into, uh, more into Bitcoin lately, so I’ve actually been listening to a lot of Bitcoin related content.
Andrew Warner: And when you listen to them, what type of people are you looking for?
Christopher Gimmer: Um, podcasts are you’re listening
Andrew Warner: to,
Christopher Gimmer: uh, well, some of them are either like interview podcast or people that are just recapping, you know, news and that kind of stuff. Um, but. Uh, I really like the ones that are looking at it from more of like, uh, economics and kind of, uh, investment side of things. So typically scope out those ones.
[00:39:00] Andrew Warner: I want the doers and I want somebody to vet the doors to make sure that Weber’s talking has actually done some freaking thing there. I’ve got this guy who wanted to do an interview with me. He said he was the, he, the founder of this African company that I happen to know is really well known. It’s a big company.
I said, there’s no way. He’s a founder. I started doing research on them. I start contacting the media person for the company and I was right. He didn’t, he didn’t start that company, but if you do a Google search for him and that company’s name, he comes up on all these different podcasts as the expert, the guy who knows how to start companies, because he started his business and they’re all perpetuating this myth.
Yeah, it just frustrates me back to traffic secrets. The reason I’m bringing this up is Russell. Brunson’s the guy who does traffic all the time for, for ClickFunnels, right? He’s known for creating the software that people use to collect email addresses, to build landing pages that convert to [00:40:00] then upsell people, to get people who are, who are.
Not familiar with the company to go on and not just give an email address, but often to buy. So he he’s gotten traffic for his site. He’s gotten traffic for software. He’s gotten traffic for his landing pages and all of his customers like me have gotten traffic and you just figure it out. What is what’s working for?
All of us, let’s put that in the podcast. So if you’re out there listening to me and you’re looking for a podcast, we’ll will show you how to get traffic. How to get likes Napa. These guys have gotten so freaking good. Go check out traffic secrets, the podcast available in whatever podcast app you’re listening to me right now.
And it’s secrets because Russell discovered that if you say something’s a secret, everyone wants to know it. So traffic secrets, I think all of his books have secrets in the
Christopher Gimmer: word. And know when it comes to, um, like startup or entrepreneur related podcasts. I definitely like to stick to the doers, I guess why like, you know, Rob at startups for the rest of us and, uh, you know, that, that, that the dude
Andrew Warner: is really good too, when I think, um, What I’ve [00:41:00] noticed now, come back to listening to, or reading the transcripts of Rob’s interview, reading the transcript of Jason Fried’s interview, people who have now known for 10 years, there’s this solid consistency things.
That seems so ridiculous. Back when they first talked about them now. Makes sense, but they’ve stuck to their guns. Jason Fried’s transcript. I happened to have interviewed him because he launched, Hey, the email app recently.
Christopher Gimmer: Sorry. Now listen to that one. Good.
Andrew Warner: So freaking consistent with what he said in the past.
And one of the things that stood out for me was that. He used to stand up and say, if you’re creating software charge for it, stop offering it for free. And it’s funny that there was a time when people assume that everything needs to be free. Rob walling, you said tiny is fine. You could start a small company.
Stop trying to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. And he said it for years. Without shame without embarrassment, without feeling small for doing it or smaller than other people and insignificant because of that. [00:42:00] And now the world’s catching up. You seem happy having a company that by Silicon Valley standards would seem small, right?
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. So I think, um,
Andrew Warner: So
Christopher Gimmer: w so going back, like, you know, when I was working a day job, I got to a point where I was just like the socks. Like I want to do something else. And, um, when you’re kind of evaluating, going down the bootstrap path versus, you know, the startup lottery, um, uh, I, I kind of subscribe to the notion that it’s, you, you, you have a higher.
Chance of, of making it as a, as like a bootstrap founder. Um, but your payoff is obviously going to be much smaller, right. Whereas if you, if you do hit the, the IPO lottery, then obviously you’re going to be set for life. Um, I’m typically more of a risk averse person. So the way that I’ve kind of thought about it is.
Let me bootstrap until I get to the point where I theoretically [00:43:00] don’t have to work anymore. And then I’ll start swinging for the fences because even if I fail, it kind of doesn’t really matter at that point. Yeah. So I don’t know if that’s the best strategy or not, but that’s kind of how I’m thinking about things that at this stage
Andrew Warner: of my life, I think that makes sense.
I, I used to believe in the burn, the boats approach, you know, that who was it, Cortez. He landed, he then burned his boats and then he’s, he and his people were forced to fight really hard. Um, but I realized that if there’s so much, if there’s a lot of risk. Your mind focuses on the risk a lot, and people who deal with a lot of risk.
I was just talking to an entrepreneur who dealt with a lot of risks because he believes in taking on risks. He ended up doing a lot of alcohol, lot of drugs to find a way to deal with it and telling himself that he wasn’t really drinking that much. He wasn’t doing a lot of drugs. That way, he, the way he was was everything had to be big, but in reality, he looks back and he says I had to cope with all that risk.
And it is a lot of [00:44:00] distraction.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. I think I’m. Yeah, I think it would be tough. And that’s why I would kind of prefer to go that, you know, swing for the fences wrote with, with a lot more of a safety net,
Andrew Warner: but you’re still feeling like you need to swing for the fences. It’s not enough to just be here. Huh?
Christopher Gimmer: I was not for the money reasons. I’m more for the, um, I have this passion to build this thing that doesn’t exist yet. And, um, In order to do that. Sorry.
Andrew Warner: What is the thing that in order to do that, you have to give up the small and aim for the fences. What’s the thing, that’s the big vision that even when things suck today, you can zoom out and focus on,
Christopher Gimmer: uh, I don’t have it yet.
Andrew Warner: You don’t, you just know it’s going to be something really big.
Christopher Gimmer: It doesn’t even necessarily have to be big. Um, It’s just like, if, so, if snap a, you know, it keeps growing and we get [00:45:00] to, you know, two to 5 million, or we have some big exit one day. I don’t think that I want to start yet just like another B2B SAS app, just for the sake of making more money or launching another app.
Um, At that point, I would, I would just want to do something that I’m more personally passionate about and it doesn’t have to be like a super big idea. It’s just that if the idea fails, it doesn’t matter because I’ve already. Um, made enough money. Um, it’s more along those lines. Does that make sense?
Andrew Warner: It does.
Yeah. I feel like you’ve been consistent about that too. It feels like snap is a good thing for you. A good stepping stone, a solid business, but you want to then create something that feels closer to your soul.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. Yeah. Like I don’t, I don’t see snap as like my life’s work. Um, it, it’s a great business.
We’re super grateful. Mmm. You know, we, we, we have an amazing team. Like we’ve, um, you know, we have a really good work [00:46:00] culture. Um, but I think like, If I’m thinking 10 years out at some point, I know I’m going to want to move on to the next thing for sure.
Andrew Warner: Do you know what that is for you? Like what your personal passion is?
Christopher Gimmer: Mmm. I mean, one thing that I, I, I really care about is, um, investing in personal finance and from the standpoint of people just waste too much money and. People take on way too much debt than they need to. Um, and so I don’t really know what that is yet, but I really like the kind of like the FinTech space.
Um, like I said, um, uh, I’ve been kind of really getting into a Bitcoin and sound money and all that kind of stuff. So. Could be something in that area. But as of today, I don’t really know yet.
Andrew Warner: You mean an advice or creating software to make it easier for people to get into it?
Christopher Gimmer: Oh yeah, it would definitely be more product stuff.
Like, I don’t think I [00:47:00] have the, uh, the, the passion to do like info products or education stuff. Uh, I do really, really like products. Um, so, um, yeah, it would, it would definitely be more on like the product side of things.
Andrew Warner: All right. So back to getting traffic to snap up, why is YouTube sending you so much traffic?
Christopher Gimmer: What are you doing? So we actually just started one of, um, one of our key initiatives for this year was to actually start doing a lot more YouTube videos, um, because we kind of. You know, YouTube really is like the second biggest search engine now. And a lot of our content, um, transfers over really well to YouTube.
Um, so if we write a post, you know, something to do with like a YouTube thumbnail, we’ll actually create a video and kind of embed that into the actual site. Um, and then we also have a, um, And affiliates, um, at primal video. And so he’s created some content around how to create, you know, video content for YouTube, [00:48:00] and then he uses Snappa as one of his tools for creating the thumbnail and, and channel alert.
Okay. Um, and so that sends us, uh, some traffic.
Andrew Warner: And is he the, is affiliate, is the affiliate program a big part of your
Christopher Gimmer: customer?
Andrew Warner: Um,
Christopher Gimmer: is it a big part of how you get customers? Uh, it’s not huge. What we found with affiliates is it’s kind of like the 80 20 rules. So we have a couple affiliates that do the vast majority of the, of the sales.
Um, and he happens to be one of the bigger ones.
Andrew Warner: Yeah, I’m looking at YouTube channel. It’s not huge.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah, we we’ve targeted well. Yeah. Well, like I said, we, we, um, we largely ignored it up until this year. Um, so we’re, we’re starting to put a lot more, um, emphasis on it. Now
Andrew Warner: this is your software. This is snap creating this, this thumbnail, right?
Christopher Gimmer: That’s it? Yeah.
Andrew Warner: Yeah. That’s like an iconic design where you have the, the title ish or this. [00:49:00] Section of the title in the image. Got it. Laid over and then I’m imagining you’re able to get rid of the background of that
Christopher Gimmer: guy. Yep. It’s picture actually, that’s our, uh, our marketing guy. So he’s, he’s doing the YouTube videos.
Andrew Warner: All right. I want to close it out with a personal note. You got engaged. You were supposed to get married, right? Aren’t told me he, he was supposed to have a baby and then COBIT hit and he started to. I think he said he was crying over. What’s going to happen to his kid was going to in his family. I get it.
You had, you’re supposed to get married next month.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah, it was August 29th was supposed to be the date.
Andrew Warner: Okay. And so when it didn’t happen, did you, did your fiance, did you feel like, well, maybe it’s never going to happen now. Did you freak out at all? No. You guys don’t freak out to, you
Christopher Gimmer: know, so, um, I can’t remember exactly.
It would have been a month or two months ago. And, um, so. [00:50:00] So about five months ago, the venue had basically sent out an email and it was like, okay, the policy is going to be, if there’s still, you know, government restrictions, uh, 30 days before the wedding, then you can kind of postpone or reschedule. And at that time, um, Kobe didn’t seem as, uh, you know, like the lockdowns seemed like it was more of like a temporary thing, so we’re like, okay.
Yeah, that makes sense. And then, um, As we kind of got a bit more into it, we got to the point where I was like, Holy shit. It’s like three months before the wedding everything’s closed. I can’t, you know, get a suit we’re supposed to send out invitations. We don’t even know if this is going to happen. And we started to get a bit stressed out about it because we’re like, how the hell are you supposed to plan this wedding?
And if we don’t even know if it’s going to happen, and then the other thing was, we didn’t really want a wedding where people can even like dance or hug and just like, I’m not gonna waste all this money and not have the wedding that we had kind of. [00:51:00] You know, dreamed of. So we basically called the venue and was like, you know, I know there’s a 30 day rescheduling policy, but we really want to reschedule.
Now it’s becoming way too stressful to try to plan this. Um, so they were accommodating and. And let us, um, you know, reschedule to next year. So, uh, yeah, the wedding is going to be next August,
Andrew Warner: anything good? Come out of COVID and beyond the revenue growth. I know for me, it’s, there’s a bunch, I just didn’t. I asked you and I interrupted you, but I gotta tell you I’m loving how our families come together.
We’ve been in the house together a lot more. We’ve been spending time together a lot more. Um, I think Olivia and I are both very independent, very busy. So we’d often just spend a little time. Together as a family, but largely it’s me with the kids or her with the kids. We’ve just been spending so much time together that it’s been really nice.
Um, the other one is I’ve taken up camping and we’re going to go camping in a couple of days. We’ve never been that big in camping, but [00:52:00] it’s nice to be able to go somewhere, not worry about having a hotel room and just go and be on your own and do your own thing. And the final one is all these big expenses that I thought mattered.
Don’t anymore. And big expenses, I guess, are just constant business expenses that I just kept going with because I didn’t want to, I didn’t care to stop and analyze it. I have time to do that, but it’s also like, did I really need to get a pizza every day from era’s Mandy? It’s a great place, right?
Delicious pizza, but who needs it? Did I really need to do all these other things that I really need to have coffee as much? We’re looking at our expenses. Gone down dramatically. And I know that that’s not great for the economy, but I feel like in many ways it’s good for my soul.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. Um, it’s funny. Cause you know, at the, at the, when the lockdowns started, he started seeing all these like memes on social media and stuff about how Erin is going to be getting divorced and stuff like that.
And [00:53:00] so, Mmm. You know, one of the really good things was. Similar, like spending a lot more time with my fiance and stuff, and like really, really enjoying our time together. Um, whereas, you know, some people that I know, uh, in my circle, it’s almost like for them, it was the opposite where it’s like a burden to spend more time with their significant other, um, So that, that was kind of nice where it’s, you know, reassurance that, um, all, all I really need to be happy is just, you know, my family and my health and stuff like that.
And, you know, it just puts, puts things into perspective quite a bit. Um, so w it was nice knowing that. Being locked down and really only being in, in, uh, in your home and, but still being happy. Um, it kind of puts things in perspective and you realize that you don’t need a lot of shit. You know what I mean?
By a lot of stuff, you don’t need to go out [00:54:00] all the time. Um, so yeah, it was, um, it was, it was really interesting
Andrew Warner: to cut back on any expenses like I did.
Christopher Gimmer: Um, Yeah. I mean, I don’t spend that much money to begin with, but you, we would usually go out to eat at least once a week. That’s usually kind of like our weekend date thing.
Um, so yeah, definitely spending less money on restaurants and stuff. Um, but apart from that, it’s been more or less the same, um, also like less money. Like obviously we have no travel plans this year, so we, we for sure would have. Done some sort of traveling in the summer. So, um, uh, to know who would have done a lot there, no money on travel.
Yeah.
Andrew Warner: Yeah. I kinda miss that. Um, I also miss spending time with people. Just getting together, having drinks, feeling like you can be comfortable with each other. I miss the hell out of that, but now that I’ve done this, [00:55:00] I feel like at some point we could, as a family go off and does this TV show on Amazon prime about a family that moved to Corfu this little part of Greece, and they just decided to make a new life for themselves for a little bit, leave England behind and have a brand language brand in life.
And I always wanted to do it and wondered, could I, my answer is yes. As long as there’s internet. Yes. As long as there’s internet high speed internet, it’s the only thing I test for. Yes, we could do it. And that’s a super power on its own. This seat, this feeling like we’re self-contained we can do this.
All right. Congratulations on, uh, Snapple’s growth. Thanks so much for being on here. And I’m looking forward to having you back on here again. What’s the next big milestone. It’s not going to be 2 million, right? That’s not a big enough milestone for you the next big one. Yeah. What do you think is going to be.
Christopher Gimmer: Uh, I honestly don’t know Andrew. Um, yeah, two, 2 million probably won’t seem like the 1 million for us was, uh, that was a huge milestone. I mean, I like when I kind of first started the journey, I couldn’t even imagine building a seven [00:56:00] figure business. So. That was pretty special, but, um, I, I don’t, I, yeah, I don’t know what the next milestone is going to be.
Andrew Warner: What do you, what’s your pricing? You guys are pretty inexpensive too, to be able to get to a million on just a couple of bucks a month. Right? What is it? Nine, 10, 20 bucks.
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah. So if you pay like per month, it’s 15 bucks. If you pay annual, then it’s one 20, so works out to like 10 bucks a month. Um, And then we have a, the team plan.
Oh yeah. I forgot to answer your question about the team plan, but, um,
Andrew Warner: what was that?
Christopher Gimmer: Well, I think you’re asking if the team plan was like a big feature or a big thing for us. Um, it’s something that we definitely need to work on to improve, uh, the, that feature and that functionality. So that’s definitely something.
That’s kind of in the works. Um, but anyways, yeah, so it, it’s a, it’s a cheap product for sure. Or inexpensive product. I should say
Andrew Warner: it is dead to get to a million dollars. I feel like you guys could probably double your prices and nobody would care. Nobody would leave you. [00:57:00] But, um, but w what do you think of that?
I just noticed you smile. As I said it, I
Christopher Gimmer: feel like there’s something there. I think. At the lower end of the market, people do become price sensitive. And I feel like almost all of our competitors are in a similar price range, soy. It would, it would be an interesting experiment, but, um, uh,
Andrew Warner: fricking elegantly simple.
And I’m imagining somebody who’s in a restaurant who doesn’t care about design, like learning the tools to the design just wants it to work. I don’t know of a different software that does it like this it’s this, this purity of. Features being there, but getting out of the, I don’t know how to describe it.
I don’t have the words to describe it. It’s really well done. I feel like here is the next milestone. I think the next big revenue milestone is probably $5 million. My hunch is that you’re probably going to get an offer. That’s going to lead you to sell the company before you hit $5 million in sales, right.
You’re on track to do it. But then the world is moving towards this. [00:58:00] Right? More people need design. More people go social, more people are
Christopher Gimmer: more businesses are going online.
Andrew Warner: More businesses are recognizing that they need to have nice designs, but they don’t have the patience to do anything about it. Right.
That’s why a Squarespace is taking, uh, customers that would have in the past, gone to WordPress. Same thing is working in your favor. I feel like someone’s going to make you an incredible offer. And my guess is that you’re probably getting offers already to invest, probably getting offers to buy, and you’re going to eventually just succumb and sell and like
Christopher Gimmer: David Heinemeier Hansson down.
Andrew Warner: We’ll see. All right. If everyone else wants to go check it out, I do not have an affiliate link and I do not want one. I just want to tell everyone about my, my guests, um, and have it be pure. The website is snappa.com SNA ppa.com. And I think the two sponsors who made this interview happen the first, if you’re hiring developers, especially if you’re not somebody who’s got this giant budget, not willing to make big commitments right now is a good time for you to get in with top talent.
Get the best of the best [00:59:00] developers, Silicon Valley level developers without. The hassle and you can get started with them quickly. If you go to top talent.com/mixergy. And finally, now that this podcast is over,
Christopher Gimmer: yes, there a bunch of Bitcoin podcasts
Andrew Warner: you can go listen to and feel free to what’s one that you’d recommend that they’d listen to.
Christopher Gimmer: Um, Stefan Lavera is really good.
Andrew Warner: Just a fan Lavera what type of podcast is that?
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah, it’s for a Bitcoin. That’s probably one of the better ones to fund less than Aero host
Andrew Warner: interview or, uh, let me see. Podcast just called the Bitcoin podcast on Stefan lavera.com, right?
Christopher Gimmer: Yeah, I think it’s just called the Stefan Lavera podcast.
Andrew Warner: Yeah, it looks like his latest episode is what is Bitcoin? So we’re talking about basics. Am I right?
Christopher Gimmer: I’m going tax strategies,
Andrew Warner: the next hundred million Bitcoin users. Okay. Nevermind that those into different topics, not
Christopher Gimmer: just basics. All
Andrew Warner: right. I’m going to recommend that they listen to the click funnels podcast.
It is called traffic secrets. If you need traffic to your website, it’s not gonna necessarily make you into a snapper.com. These guys are killing it when it comes to traffic, [01:00:00] but it’s going to help you really grow your traffic. Go check out traffic secrets. Alright, thanks so much for doing this.
Christopher Gimmer: Thanks Andrew.