Mike Preuss - Visible.vc

Mike:
00:00

One of my strength is being resilient, but there was always self doubt or lack of confidence in what we were building. Once you start to figure things out and they get more repeatable, that's funny. There's there's a different kind of thong that comes with that as well. Just your gut, don't be afraid to burn cash, and charge more. Who does your editing?

Mike:
00:23

Am I talking to the editor? Or do you, do you have someone?

Kyle:
00:27

Hi, Ves. I am a I heard this phrase once called multi potentialite, which is basically probably just a nice way of for for generalists that that do and try way too many hobbies. And so, like, between photography and video and editing and audio, and I've, done a little of all of it. So, yeah, I like I like doing the editing and stuff.

Mike:
00:49

We were just talking about that end scene call. We we did this, like, when new hires start, we did this, like, about me presentation and people cycle through. We have, like, different questions and inspiration you can use and someone was sharing, like, oh, I only do these 3 homies and that's it. And I was like, man, I wish that could be me. I'm like, they did try it in a model d.

Mike:
01:10

So I was like, that's awesome. I know.

Kyle:
01:12

Same same thing. I've like when people are like, what are you into? I'm like, well, I don't know. It depends on, like, what what what month is it? What week is it?

Kyle:
01:18

Like, I you know, I've I've done rock climbing and I mean, just all different things, but I love trying. Sure. I think as a kid, I always wanted to have many different lives is what I you know? Yeah. Different.

Kyle:
01:30

Well, thanks for for joining. You know, it's interesting. I look back, and I'll I'll read you something to kick us off here.

Mike:
01:41

Okay.

Kyle:
01:42

Hey, Kyle. Our team let me know that you recently canceled your account, and I wanted to reach out to you personally. Did we miss the mark somewhere? We're always looking to improve and would love any feedback. Thanks, Mike.

Kyle:
01:53

And from that, that leads us here Yes. To this to this conversation. And what is really interesting, and I love that I love that personal that personal reach out is what's what's funny is it was a little spark for me. I went back and I went, let me let me go back and push on some of the areas that I probably didn't push on. And now I can confidently say that in a given day, Figma, and Visible are my, like, my 2 daily go tos, you know, just in terms of especially when we're in the fundraising round and sort of contacts and and and the deck and where it's at and updating it and seeing who's looking at it and those visible and and Figma.

Kyle:
02:35

Those are my two two givens. So I'm I'm glad you wrote that email not not only to get us to this conversation, but also to to sort of have me have me go back in, dive deeper, and now it's become my my go to. So

Mike:
02:48

and that's so cool to hear. I appreciate that that story. That email doesn't know it doesn't work all the time. Right? I'd say it's, depends on what you get, but, appreciate you being a customer and get it back in there.

Mike:
03:00

As I say, you must be, building product and raising money if those are the top two tools you're using right now.

Kyle:
03:06

That's it. That's what that's that's why I only live in those 2. And, so well, cool. Well, you know, I think just to sort of set the stage, I the idea and this is you are, by the way, this is the inaugural. I did a little 3 minute intro, but you are the inaugural episode.

Kyle:
03:23

So this is Wow. Very cool. One that everyone will look back on, so no no pressure. But, but I, you know, I think the idea for me, especially, I've I've been an entrepreneur entrepreneur at heart, and I've started agencies of my own and and sort of done my own thing. But what I've never what I had never done was started my own product company, you know, in in earnest to then raise money and sort of try and build something out into the world that that the world uses.

Kyle:
03:54

And so, obviously, reading all of the business books and and and and trying to sort of get a leg up on what I had never done before, 0 to 1 is always one of those sort of, you know, key books that people point to. But I started thinking about it is is what is what is 1? What is what is made it? You know, what is yes. I had this I had this concept.

Kyle:
04:18

I started to try and poke and prod at it, and then I got to what point. And so, you know, one of the things I'd love to do is go back early, to to visible and and a little bit pre visible and sort of what led you on this on this journey.

Mike:
04:36

Yeah. Absolutely. It's funny. I'm giving a presentation next week to a group of students at Notre Dame, and then this opportunity came up. And the one thing I I wish I would have done better is, like, journal or, share more or capture more of the early stages of Visible in in building it?

Mike:
04:56

Because it's, like, only in my memory. I I have photos and some old screenshots.

Kyle:
05:00

It's tough.

Mike:
05:00

I was like, man, I wish I would've have captured more. But to to answer your question more specifically, Kyle, I kind of fell into to Visible a little bit. So I was living out in the Bay Area. Must have been 2010 to to 14, and the first company I worked at there was a company called Formstack. And, at the end of that, I was I was looking to start a business, and I didn't know what I wanted to do.

Mike:
05:25

And so I was kinda just see what kind of opportunities were out there, either doing another startup or or starting something on my own. And through Formstack, I met a a group of, investors by the name of High Alpha, in Indianapolis. And at the time, they were starting a venture studio. And they're like, hey. We have this idea.

Mike:
05:44

We we had, like, a couple front end prototypes. So it's just like a HTML kind of interactive app, but, like, no actual back end, and and it was it was visible. And so so what do you think of this? You wanna come come help start this with us? And so, kind of fell into to visible.

Mike:
06:02

I've had a huge passion for, the intersection of, call it, finance and entrepreneurship for for a long, long time, probably my my whole life. And Visible kind of list both of those every day. We serve venture venture funds as investors and and founders as customers as well. And so, that was kind of the the earliest stages. And, I guess, I'll I'll hit pause there so you have any questions before I give you the

Kyle:
06:26

Yeah.

Mike:
06:26

The the larger story.

Kyle:
06:28

I love that. You know, that moment I I had a similar moment. I'd love to hear about that moment too is that that that rough prototype that you you see and you imagine that many people may see one thing, but, you know, was that a moment where you sort of all of a sudden saw into the future and and saw what it could be and it sort of hit in a certain way? Or, like, what was your like, right around that point when you decided to get into it, what made you what made you start that process?

Mike:
06:53

Yeah. It was like a very beautiful, Chris Hsieh, one of my cofounders is a is a designer. And, it was like this very beautiful interactive kinda animated process. So as you scroll, charts are being built and dashboards are getting lit up. And I was like, woah.

Mike:
07:10

This is cool. And you're starting to see, like, capital deployed and, capital return. And, for me, it's like, oh, I could see what this what this could become. This is, like, 10 years ago. And, that that I was I think I was actually sitting on a plane right before I was taking off looking at it on my phone as, yeah, I gotta be I gotta be part of this, and I wanna help start this start this thing.

Mike:
07:32

And and for me, we we try to live that, and still to this day, one of our our values is make better tacos, which is kind of just like build a great product. Totally. That's great. We we, and so we still try to live that to to this day.

Kyle:
07:47

I love that. I love build make better tacos. Yeah. What was okay. So you're on the plane.

Kyle:
07:54

You see you see the POC. You're like, I gotta I gotta go bring this thing into the world. Give me a sense of the next, let's say month or 2 months, like the early stages when things are it's the unformed idea and starting to rally and starting to to kind of formulate what your hypothesis is and go to market and just all those sort of pieces. What what did that what did that period look like?

Mike:
08:19

Yeah. Oh, man. I'd say for like the the 1st year, it was really just building products. Like, we have this idea of a front end. We had a thesis.

Mike:
08:27

Our thesis at the at the time when we started Visible was, there's a lot of angel investors in the world. There's a lot of early stage venture investors in the world. They don't really know what's going on with their portfolio or underlying portfolio companies. That's still true to this day. And but the the original idea was, alright.

Mike:
08:47

We're gonna go sell this thing, to venture funds and to mutual investors, and then they're gonna get their companies to provide data back to them. And they'll have this beautiful structured dashboard with all these amazing insights. They'll know what's going on with my, all of my, call it, private market assets. And that's what we built. What we, I think, failed early on was just kind of understanding the the market dynamics.

Mike:
09:19

I think the founder and investor relationship is one of the more complicated relationships Right. In all business. It's it's a very weird one. It is not an employer to employee relationship. It is not a, I own your business.

Mike:
09:35

It is I own anywhere from 5 to 15% of your company.

Kyle:
09:41

Right.

Mike:
09:42

I probably can't tell you what to do. I wanna be seen as a value add person. I don't wanna be seen as a value detractor. I don't wanna burden you, but you also want to please me because you need me to invest in your future rounds. And so it's a very weird dynamic.

Kyle:
09:59

Communication, transparency, but strategically

Mike:
10:03

Yes. Yeah. It's it's it's it's it's very weird. So the initial, visible initially is like, alright. We're gonna sell this.

Mike:
10:10

We did that to some degree successfully, selling it to small venture phones, accelerators. But we kind of saw it's like they couldn't command the founders to use the product. They didn't wanna burden their companies. It's a really hard customer type to sell into. By nature of what they do, they're getting pitched all of the time.

Mike:
10:29

They're very busy. They're probably not great operators of the business, by the way, and they're gonna get a a few things. And so this would have been probably 2017 or so, we decided to pivot. And we we really pivoted more of the product than anything. We changed from, selling to investors to selling to founders, and changing the go to market a little bit as well where, we want people coming in, trying Visible, deciding if they're gonna use it or not, and then becoming a customer.

Kyle:
11:00

Right.

Mike:
11:00

And so, we did change our product a little bit, you know, to to meet some of those requirements and we would say, hey, we're not gonna sell to investors anymore. And so that's where we were I think we really took off was probably had the right product early on, but we were marketing it incorrectly, selling it incorrectly, to the right growing type of customer. And so that's when visible tech ops is is probably, like, 3 years into the journey of of just, like, figuring out who to sell into. Now it's funny because, like, what's old is new is we we have our investor product again. It is now half of our business and is growing the fastest, but it's very different than what it was before.

Mike:
11:39

Right. Skim everything everything we've learned.

Kyle:
11:42

I love I love that. And I do love that's, you know, one of the elegant things that I think that you found especially, you know, for me is is, like, just being able to take your deck and drop it in there and have a link. And then and then all of the the the communication, the follow-up, the contacts go in there and is that that sort of elegant simplicity of take your deck, drop it in. I've got you a link. Like, we'll do we'll do everything else.

Kyle:
12:06

And so interesting to to hear sort of pushing in one direction and then having that and then doing the pivot, which led you back to getting to where you wanted to be, but doing it through a wider audience first, which is so interesting.

Mike:
12:18

Yeah.

Kyle:
12:20

That's so great. What about, like, during that period, are there any other are there any other sort of, like, the the more sort of difficult or or gray hard periods in there that, you know, that you had as you so hard. No. Totally. I just think about, like, the, you know, the early on periods where you've before you really have have found your, like, okay.

Kyle:
12:42

We've got good footing. We we can see what it looks like if we just keep pushing on this, like, in in those early periods. Like, were there any any things that you, you know obviously, you sort of yin and yang between

Mike:
12:56

Mhmm.

Kyle:
12:57

Feeling like it's great and doubting whether it's gonna work. But are there were there many periods in the early on where it felt like it it felt more like I'm not sure if this is gonna work than than I think it's gonna happen?

Mike:
13:09

I feel, yes. I'd say I've I've always felt confident that I was gonna find, make something work. I think that's one of my strength is being resilient. But no doubt there was always self doubt or lack of confidence in what we were building. And I share this a lot with other founders getting started.

Mike:
13:35

It's like trusting your gut, which is hard. Right? Like, a lot of times, startups are going to be very quantitative driven, looking at the data and all kind of and listening to other people have done this before. But, like, by nature, something something like people probably haven't done, right, they haven't started Stackworks before, maybe a variation of it, but certainly not at this time, this date, in this market. Right?

Mike:
13:57

So I would say, like, I I just trusting your gut more quickly is is one thing I'm certainly leaning into because, like, early on, I was, oh, man. I don't know if we should be selling to investors or not. This seems a little wrong. And Right. You know, you're getting guidance.

Mike:
14:11

Well, bigger ACDs and, you know, it's it's what we you know? And, so I think early on, it's just, like, trusting my gut is something, that I picked up on and then just, like, you know, the the doubt. I think one of the things that I really struggled with early on was market sizing. Mhmm. We, were get we're getting told all of the time, hey.

Mike:
14:34

You're the the market's not big enough. Right? Right. The the market is 1000000, which is true. That is true.

Mike:
14:41

And so there's kinda, like, 2 options you could do with that that feedback, which is, like, accept it or, like, should we pivot and and and try to do something else in a bigger market? So I'd say for a year or 2, we were kinda lost in this, like, nebulous, visible was for everybody messaging period from, like, probably 2017 to 19 ish, where it was, like, caught like, we were kind of, like, competitive with or your messaging to be competitive with, like, BI tools that you'd use, like, in an accounting or finance function or, like, KPI tracking. And so, we were, like, hey, we need to go raise money. We need to tell a bigger TAM story, and so let's go tell this, like, BI let's go see if we can make this BI thing work. And I think through that, it was just like Visible was for everybody and it was really for nobody, for for probably a year.

Mike:
15:38

But what we did see work was just like, yeah, founders need to update investors. And so we made the decision, like, let's just go all in on that and let's not raise any more money. Like, why why like, let's just turn Visible into a profitable SaaS company that grows 35 to 50% a year, and, that turned out to be a great decision in in one but you could feel like an imposter sometimes because, like, we serve a lot of founder customers that raise tens, 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars and it's just like not the, the path that we decided to take for for ourselves, but it was the right one. So, that that was like a a challenging time, no doubt, as well.

Kyle:
16:21

Well, it it sounds like a good pivot. If if I if I have numbers correctly, 2021 was a good year. Right? Yes. It looks like you you grew 80% somewhere around there?

Mike:
16:32

That sounds right. Where did you find that?

Kyle:
16:35

I don't The the Internets. Yeah. Yeah. But that's that's amazing. And I think I think it's so great to, you know, going back to trust your gut, I I definitely I've had that.

Kyle:
16:46

There's actually if you look at my Instagram, I have a video of a moment about 3 weeks ago, and I had just gotten off of a call. And, my my hands were shaking a bit, and it wasn't like it was because I I had this moment where I just knew in my bones. Like, I could see I can't see the future, but I just know, like, this is the river to be riding down. And it felt so good to sort of to do that. And I think it's it's so good to, I think to your point about, like, getting better and better at sort of understanding and and listening to your gut.

Kyle:
17:21

But then in those moments when you need to pivot, alright, this is the way we're going. And then all of a sudden you went, we're gonna go a totally different direction. Is that moment to, like, be in tune with your gut to be like, okay. I I think this is it, and to obviously see, you know, the the fruits of that, you know, a number of years later with with 80% growth is amazing.

Mike:
17:41

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. It It it's it's been it's been, I'd say the last four and a half, 5 years have been incredibly rewarding with where, you know, I think early on it was kind of just like a grind and a struggle figuring out packaging, pricing, product market fit, you know, we didn't even talk team.

Mike:
18:03

There's so many Mhmm. Variables and, those are fun in in a different way, but once you start to figure things out and they get more repeatable, that's when there's there's a different kind of fun that comes with that as well, which has been the last 4 plus years and and that's been, very rewarding.

Kyle:
18:22

Do you feel like you've found a would you say just personally when you think about time and and time spent on the company and away from the company and personal like, do you feel like you found a good balance in the past 4 years? Is that did that come with it too in finding that footing?

Mike:
18:39

Great question. That's a yes, overall. I I personally probably like, I I'm still always thinking about Visible. I just can't turn it off. Right.

Mike:
18:55

And I think that's that's probably most most founders, and, I look forward to a day when I when I can turn it off and and, not check email. But even if I'm on vacation and the auto responder is on, it's it's certainly off. Right? Like, I am still checking email and responding to email when I need to. Totally.

Mike:
19:14

I I've certainly gotten better at being more intentional about time and how I think about time, especially now that I have a family. You know, when I started Visible, I wasn't married and and I didn't have a child, and now, I have a beautiful 3 year old girl and and my wife. And so I think that adds another, component into it as well. And and so, yeah, certainly more more balance, but that's also been kind of balance has also been woven into to the Visible since we got started as well. Like, we've been a a fully distributed company, since 2014, well before COVID and the pandemic and remote work was a thing.

Mike:
19:49

And so, I think that balance has has been something that we've been intentional about as well with with our product with our with our culture.

Kyle:
19:57

I love that. How what's your if you if you had to get you know, it's interesting to me. I've I've always been fascinated with with this, like, expanding and contracting of of remote teams. You know, the pandemic taught us all that we can things still move. Things still grow.

Mike:
20:12

Yeah.

Kyle:
20:12

You don't have to be in an office, but then I feel like over the past year or 2, you have this contraction back to, like, everybody needs to come back. What are like, if for remote global distributed teams, what's your, like, 2 things that helps you just feel like keeping keeping people close in culture and and still pushing things forward? Like, what's your what's your two things that you lean on?

Mike:
20:37

Yeah. I think off sites and getting together are very key.

Kyle:
20:42

Right.

Mike:
20:43

And being very intentional day to day about communication and culture are are another. I don't think remote is not a culture. It is just a way we happen to work. So I think it'd be very intentional about how you build a remote only business and and I also think you need that interpersonal in person trust that you can only build by by seeing someone face to face.

Kyle:
21:15

Right. That's great.

Mike:
21:17

Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle:
21:19

If you had to go back, so go back to the early, you know, when you saw that prototype and on the on the airplane and and you have that moment. Is there anything that you would go back and do differently or that, or that you, would tell a founder in that moment, you know, hey. Here's here's 2 things for you that I would I would pivot based on what I've learned.

Mike:
21:43

I'd say, trust your gut, move faster sorry. Trust your gut, don't be don't be afraid to burn cash Yeah. And charge more. I think that looks like, 3 3 things I've taken away, at least for me personally.

Kyle:
22:05

Yeah.

Mike:
22:06

Trust my gut faster. No one knows your business better than you do. Right? Kyle is not gonna know more about Visible than I do as the founder and the person that started the company, a board member, an investor, a potential investor. Right?

Mike:
22:17

No one knows more about your business than you do, and so I think that's why ultimately you have to trust your gut trust your gut and be confident. I think early on, I was young. I was 26 when I started Visible, and so I think you can easily be influenced by other founders, investors, Twitter, TechCrunch, and Trevor. I think you'd be influenced by outside factors. 2nd, Rob, like, I was scared to, like, burn cash.

Mike:
22:42

It's funny. No. No. I'm still scared to burn cash Yeah. In a different way, though.

Mike:
22:47

But just like spending it's okay to spend money in in especially on people. And I think we we could have moved faster if I was more comfortable hiring quicker than than we did. And then, pricing and packaging, I think you can always charge more. And I still think that's true. Like, I could probably go raise prices again and charge more, but I was I was putting something together for something else next week, and it's like, you know, we still, like, our first packaging price is, like, $19 a month or or something like and now it starts, you know, closer to a $130 a month.

Mike:
23:21

And so Yeah. I think it's, like, charging more, and being being okay with with testing pricing and continue to raise, pricing, at least for, you know, a b to b SaaS company.

Kyle:
23:32

So and I I, you know, I I know that even from my days, you know, building agencies is the the when you first start out, you wanna be like, look. I will make something for you, $100. Throw $200 my way. Like, whatever you wanna do. But that obviously ends up turning out to be the the customer that you end up spending the most time with, and then you end up making $200 for the 2 weeks or whatever it was versus, you know, it it takes longer, and it's it's it's there's there's more courage in turning on the higher dollar ticket and then sort of listening and waiting and see how that's gonna how that's gonna resonate, but then you appreciate it so much more when you're like, okay.

Kyle:
24:10

Well, I have I have fewer clients, but the ones that I do, you know, are are more sort of fanatical about the product and they're they're less headaches and there's less, you know, there's less overhead. So, I know that's a hard that's always a hard decision, especially, I would imagine when you're trying to find product market fit and you're trying to find your first few customers. You know? And, you know, for b to c for our side, we're more in that sort of freemium notion range where you're 0515. You know?

Kyle:
24:40

And and in the early MVP days, obviously, we're just getting friends and family on, and we're sort of learning, and we're iterating. But there's that there's that gut to wanna be like, you know, I was let me just give it away free to everybody, see what they think. But then the other side of the the coin being like, no. No. No.

Kyle:
24:56

No. Let's also let's test pricing. Let's see how it is. And and, so, yeah, it's always a challenge, to find that right

Mike:
25:04

So that's part of thing. Right? Like, yeah. And and at least what we've we've learned is people that hem and haw negotiate price are always gonna be the the the customers that are gonna be the most challenging as well or not a great fit. And, yeah.

Mike:
25:20

There there could be a whole pricing and packaging, episode, I'm sure, or or podcasting because it's it's fascinating. Like and people perceive prices is not I mean, it's totally true. But, yeah, if you're like, oh, you know, give give it away, you're to be perceived differently. We we did this one interesting, pricing test. This would have been 2 years ago.

Mike:
25:46

We raised prices, and our conversion went up on our marketing site. So from trial to customer.

Kyle:
25:53

Oh, wow.

Mike:
25:53

And I was like, that doesn't make any sense to me, when I was looking at that. And then I was like, this makes no sense of how why this is happening. And I I talked to to some folks and, there's I mean, we'll never know exactly why, but one hypothesis was like, well, you're being perceived differently and maybe even, like, not even, when people are looking at Visible, they're putting you a completely different competitor set than, like, who your actual competitors are.

Kyle:
26:17

Oh, yeah.

Mike:
26:19

So, like, you're just being perceived completely differently, than maybe maybe you once were. And so, yeah, pricing is is an interesting one.

Kyle:
26:28

You know, when I think about pricing and that pivot that you made going after founders specifically, what was what was what were your early sort of growth marketing strategies when when trying to to pivot and and less of the let me go into your business and try and sell you b to b and more of the, like, hey. I've got a thing. Wanna try it? Like, what was what were what was the pivot also on the growth marketing side there for

Mike:
26:49

Adi's session? It was early on. It was cold email, which which was still like, it was, we sent out I I created this fake investor update. And then I would send that to founders who recently raised capital. But it was it so you you feel like you're reading this, like, investor update that you accidentally got.

Mike:
27:13

Right. And and kind of the takeaway is, like, you should be doing this a different way. You should be using Visible for this. And so that was kind of, like, our our first like, hey. We need customers first and foremost because we gotta put those logos under our website so then other people when they come to sign up for a free trial will say, like, oh, cool.

Mike:
27:30

All their founders use this. And so, to start, it was straight up cold outbound, and it was looked very similar to, like, b to b sales because that's what we had to do. And then from there, once we got those types of customers on board and people using Visible and got their, you know, logos, we went very heavy into organic search, which is still a core channel for ours. And when those people started coming in, we kind of refined the trial process to today. You know, we're having thousands of trials start every month on visible on the founder products, and people are, you know, converting multiple times per day now, like, completely touchless.

Mike:
28:07

So it's it's certainly evolved over the years, but, like, dude, there's there's certain steps and milestones you have to take to get where we are today. You know? It's it's, you kinda have to fight tooth and nail, early on and then refine and and but knowing, like, hey. This is not sustainable. Right?

Mike:
28:23

Like, send a cold email for a $130 a month accounts is not gonna be a sustainable strategy.

Kyle:
28:28

Right.

Mike:
28:29

But it's what was needed at the time to get us to the next milestone, to the next milestone, to the next milestone.

Kyle:
28:33

Right. So so in that period though, when you were sort of priming the pump during the cold emails, like, how how how would you how long would you say that period was when you started to find enough traction that you went like, oh, there's something here. I'm gonna put more I'm a put more gas on the fire, and we're gonna see how this is gonna go. Like, was there a was there a period where you did it and it and it was sort of, like, cold and then all of a sudden you kinda hit a spark and went, like, we found the right email and the right target that that caught?

Mike:
29:01

It's it's hard to say exactly. I wanna say it's probably, like, 6 to 12 months we were running running that playbook of, you know, just cold and and reaching out to founders and, using that to one lane, customers get feedback and and iterate. And then from there, wanted to go all in on quote unquote, you know, product led growth. And that's when we hired a kind of outside, consultant to come in and help create our our SEO strategy for for Visible.

Kyle:
29:32

Nice. Oh, that's great. Well, and interesting that you did 6 to 12 months on on that on that email playbook because, you know, I think about, you know, for myself, we're we're bootstrapped and we're sort of we're, we're right on that line also of sort of debating, you know, angel versus, now now we've got something that's so rich and robust, and and you could just you could see how how big it it will get. And so now it's sort of like, okay, how how long do you stick on a on a specific plate? Is it, you push on something for a month?

Kyle:
30:06

Do you push on something for 4 months or 6 months? Or, you know, especially from a bootstrap perspective, it's kinda like how long do you push on a single playbook, you know, to to do it before you before you start either widening or or or trying 90 different things at once.

Mike:
30:20

Yeah. So Channel's hard. I have a whole, yeah. Channel channel is really interesting, but I think it's like 70% of your business comes from 1 channel. Yep.

Mike:
30:30

It is it's got I think I can't I think it's Reforged, the growth site, but I we look at we'll look at channel all the time because I think a lot of founders really, I don't think they have to be, like, in every channel and and Right. The only way it could be, like, 1 or 2 channels. You have to, you know, test and find out which ones of those are for you. But you don't have to be in every channel. But for the longest time, I thought, like, this is what we have to be on on Twitter now, x.

Mike:
30:56

Like, we have to be on x. Like, so many founders and investors are spending their time on x. Like, we need to have this, like, community strategy and where you have all these customers from x. And we were never great at it, and it was a core to us. And and so we never were successful there, but I felt like we had to be there.

Mike:
31:14

And now it's like, did you go on our x account, like, we're I'm not even at like, it's just, like, not even a thing to us, and we're totally okay with that.

Kyle:
31:23

That's such a it's such a challenge for any small business owner, I think. Not not even in in sort of the space we're playing in, but that idea of, like, I gotta be on TikTok dancing or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, I gotta be doing everything. And I think it's it it that that races through your mind when you're first starting, but it's also one of those that there is a testing the fence period and sort of seeing what works a little bit.

Kyle:
31:44

But but you're right. It really dilutes your time to try and, like, be every everywhere to to everybody. So finding finding that 1 or 2 channel that really, like, that you can you can hone your your skills at and and make good. What's, oh, so what's next for Visible? So we we we catch us up to this point.

Kyle:
32:03

You know, things are humming. What's what's the next, like, you know, 12 to 18 months look like for for Visible?

Mike:
32:08

In terms of product team Yeah.

Kyle:
32:10

Like Yeah. Like, where where your time and and energy is focused, right now?

Mike:
32:16

Yeah. Great great question. I think on the, so we we serve 2 core you know, fast forward, half of our revenue more or less is coming from the founder platform and half is now coming from from the investor. On the founder side, for us, it's actually kind of resyncing channel a little bit or just what channel and growth looks like for the next 12 to 18 months, for for kind of two reasons. One is unclear what a certain the the future of organic search looks like, especially as all of the major search engines start to prioritize AI driven results over Mhmm.

Mike:
32:53

Content. Right. And, like, paid search could be a Band Aid. But so just thinking through, what our top of funnel looks like for the founder platform and and just all of the conversion and and things that come along with that. And then the investor side, it's it's creating just a repeatable sales process and and playbook.

Mike:
33:14

It's grown incredibly rapidly. It is a we're spending almost all of our time and a lot of our time and energy, and just having better repeatability there. Like, some months, we're like, yep. We're gonna hit the number or quarter. We know we're gonna hit the number.

Mike:
33:32

In some months, it's, this one deal that, you know, takes an extra week. We're not gonna hit our our our our goal. And so we just wanna get ourselves a better predictability, on the investor side. Like, on the founder side, I could tell you to a pretty good degree of, like, where we're gonna end up traffic wise by the end you know, for the next 90 days. The investor side, it's a little bit harder.

Mike:
33:53

So I think it's just creating repeatability on the on the investor platform. It's newer. It's, you know, 3 ish, three and a half years old now. So it's still newer and and at least in my world and and how I think, and so creating repeatability there.

Kyle:
34:08

Nice. Amazing. Yeah. Well, I've got I got one more question. And then this is we're gonna look for now.

Kyle:
34:13

So we've we've done short term now. Let's let's do long term. So it's a 2 part question.

Mike:
34:18

Okay.

Kyle:
34:18

Can you ever see yourself retiring from from either your current or or or creating businesses? And if you did, what would that look like, and what would you be doing?

Mike:
34:34

If I could retire?

Kyle:
34:35

Well, I mean, if you if you decided, like, okay. I'm I'm not gonna, you know, either either build, grow businesses or I'm gonna go do something else or, like, what would your, what would that look like?

Mike:
34:46

I that that's a great question. It's right. I've been doing Invisible for 10 years come come October, which is a very long time in the startup world, and I don't see myself quitting, or wanting to sell the business at all anytime soon. I've met another 5 years, I think. There's just so much, quote, unquote unfinished business.

Mike:
35:09

It is fun. It's like fun building and building the company and the team and, I have a whole other we were talking about remote work. I got this whole other thing about remote work that I still wanna share someday. But, so, yeah, I I I don't see myself, being done with Visible anytime soon. And then when I am done with Visible, I think I'm always gonna be in the the builder in some sort of way.

Mike:
35:38

Right. I'm not sure what that looks like yet. I mean, it it rages every day. Like, today on a team call, I was talking about, creating a Airstream campground with a beer garden, for example. So it's, like, completely not somewhere.

Kyle:
35:51

I love it.

Mike:
35:52

Yeah. That's great. Yeah. It's but I I definitely like building or or helping people build. I, you know, you talk about 0 to 1.

Mike:
36:01

My my favorite part is, like, 0 to 1. It's like taking something from an idea to, you know, inception to to, like, putting a vibe in production or or live. Right? And, like, having someone use it. That's a super rewarding feeling to me.

Mike:
36:17

Yeah. This is really hard, actually.

Kyle:
36:18

Yeah.

Mike:
36:19

Like, we we we built this this new AI inbox tool that pulls in, you know, financials and documents and data for investors and kind of strict creates structured data you can use. And, you know, that project, was was super rewarding because we didn't have it before. We had to build it, launch it, get people to use it, get feedback, put that feedback into the product, you know, and and rinse and repeat. And that that 0 to 1 is just, like, so much fun because I think a lot of people get hung up after the idea phase. It's like, yeah.

Mike:
36:50

I got this awesome idea. It's

Kyle:
36:51

like Right.

Mike:
36:52

Yep. Go do

Kyle:
36:53

it. Yeah. Get that get that dirty rough prototype where you can you just see a little sparkle of something, and you're like, oh, I just wanna keep it in that flame. Like, I wanna see where it goes, which is yeah.

Mike:
37:04

Yeah. So I think I'll always be involved in in some capacity. I would you know, like I mentioned earlier, at some point, it'd be great to, maybe not be, like, the captain for a while and and take some time off and and help other founders or just, you know, be involved in not a full time capacity.

Kyle:
37:25

Right.

Mike:
37:26

But, like, yeah, I I think all of us have to be building or or tinkering in in some way.

Kyle:
37:32

Insane. I can't I can't imagine that that for me, I can't imagine that, like, I don't know, 65 hanging out. Whatever. It doesn't it doesn't take me more than about 1 or 2 days, and and and my wife actually think thinks the same. And so I'm I'm I'm grateful that she and I have a very similar brain in this way, but we will take, like, a a small period of time during a vacation, but it doesn't take about more than a day or day and a half.

Kyle:
37:59

And then one of us is like, you know what would be great? What if you take this thing and you do it this other and all of a sudden, it's like, you know, like, you're you're dreaming up all these you're back to the 0, and you're like, okay. I got I got something else. I got another idea. So, yeah, I love that that energy and that that mindset of of of taking something from nothing and and

Mike:
38:20

building it.

Kyle:
38:21

And, obviously, you build something amazing from 0. So, I totally appreciate you taking time and and sharing that story. And

Mike:
38:28

we'll have

Kyle:
38:29

to we'll do a once I once I get to, you know, more than 10 episodes or something, we we should come back and we should do, what is it, remote work and then, product like growth? Yeah. Or the oh, packaging and pricing. Those are those

Mike:
38:44

are the pricing. Yeah. We should do

Kyle:
38:47

an episode 2, yeah, a a follow-up, which is like, alright. Well, now we're diving right into the guts of of, of these things. That would be

Mike:
38:54

Yeah. Remote work, I could talk about that for a long time. We got a lot of takes on it. So you you have me back. I'm happy to share them.

Kyle:
39:00

Amazing. Cool. Well, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate

Mike:
39:03

it. Kyle, thank you so much. Appreciate you being part of our our world and our community, and, love what you guys are building. And, I'm excited to to to stay in touch.

Kyle:
39:14

Yeah. Absolutely. Talk soon.