Chrome Ext To 7-figure ARR Bootstrapped SaaS startup | Interview with Zach Murray from Foreplay

all right so back with another episode today I'm joined by Zach Murray who's the the founder of forplay a a SAS product that fits into the the creative process and of course we'll be digging into more detail about that um for those who aren't familiar with with your self Sack or or foreplay um you know what's the the quick background story yeah I mean in terms of like the product you know we started as like a very simple Chrome extension to just save ads um and you know we've evolved into just being like the Place uh that you know performance and creative teams go specifically they're running Facebook ads Tik Tok ads pretty much any digital channel the place they go for you know ad creative inspiration um you know building swipe files mood boards to know inform their upcoming campaigns um and just like centralize like the whole team specifically the performance team and creative team to just ship more winning ads um and yeah it's evolved into like a full product um with like you know inspiration there's like a Community Feed um we have the chroming ition briefs you have a full spider like spy tool now for Facebook ads so um yeah that's pretty much the product um as as it sits right now nice yeah I saw the the spider feature come out um I wouldn't say recently times flying by so it's probably not that recent at all but that's a that's a real interesting one and I'm sure we can get into that what um so let's let's rewind a bit what were you doing before you know forplay the the product yeah before forplay the product uh I so like long story short I like started my career um as like a creative I was like into design I thought I wanted to be like a documentary filmmaker um I had like all these like creative Pursuits that I thought you know as a young person that I wanted but I also really you know love money in business and like documentary filmmaker and like that usually don't mix um and so I went away to University dropped out after two years um and then kind of started off as like a freelancer small agency doing you know creative projects whether it's like it was websites um I did a lot of video production style work uh and then I built a motion design agency that was like my first real business we did a lot of motion design for software companies so like animated videos launch videos things like that and then I met this guy that was doing Drop Shipping uh like in 2019 and I was like wow this is the most amazing thing I was going from like a service business to being like Oh I just you know uh you know find a product sell it online and make endless amounts of money and so we built a brand called nomatic Fabrics me and him um and at the same time we we had built up a performance agency this at the same time called foreplay uh since then you know we sold the brand I bought him out of foreplay before it turned into a software company uh and then in 2021 you know completely pivoted to obsessing about building software in the niche of you know performance advertising and creative I I feel like I had these like two sides of my brains and two sides in my um my past which was like this like creative person doing agency like work and then also you know know running a lot of paid traffic um and there's a lot of disjointed stuff there and so I thought of you know our very simple First Tool which was foreplay and then I had about a year and a half stint while I was starting foreplay I was also the head of product design at triple well um where I learned a lot about you know this like you know this whole Community you know the whole like niche of like SAS in this space their Venture back were bootstrapped it was like this really amazing time in my life where I got like it was very much just like eyes wide open like absorb as much as I can and it it definitely you know yeah it it like planted a ton of seeds in me while I was like building foreplay um you know things to do things to avoid and and that was really great yeah interesting yeah I've that's an interesting story um I I've always because you know we've spoken before I've always seen you as like a very creative person um I remember you talking about you have this ambition to create uh coffee table uh book I can't remember what what it was going to be specifically I think it might have been like vintage ads um and funny enough so the the four play t-shirts the t-shirts you sold I wear I I bought like a couple and I wear I wear them every week um so like even I've had um probably you know a handful of people and bearing in mind I've been just traveling around Europe for the last 12 months I've had random people come up to me and compliment me on the um on the on the t-shirts and one of them I think I told told you about this actually one of the t- t-shirts somebody was like they they um they recognized the logo and we ended up going for for dinner together and he was in like no [ __ ] way dude that's awesome yeah yeah that's so cool dude that's like that makes me like dude that makes me like so happy I mean touching on that I mean like I am like a hyper creative person and like I think my whole life I've had this there like two sides of me that definitely like they like bump heads consistently at the end of the day like I feel the most fulfillment and joy um if like at the beginning of the day something didn't exist and at the end of the day something existed something exist that did not exist at 9:00 a.m. um and so I just like I default to just like making things which I think is good and you know but then there's also you know those days when you need to like dive into like business admin type stuff um which like nobody likes but I would say like for me it like drains me in like a in a special kind of way um because like even if I have like a really really you know productive day doing that stuff I like I lack any sort of feeling of like accomplishment at the end of the day and so yeah it's it's it's like an interesting spot um but I mean it's fun and like I like you know the merch projects we have a bunch of stuff coming out this summer that I think is like fun and cool and funny um that I'm really excited about and yeah it's it's cool when you can have all these like little side quests that still you know like funnel up to like the business you know like I really just want wanted t-shirts with vintage ads on them I [ __ ] love vintage ads and so it's like oh like thank God I have like a ad software and and we can you know make these t-shirts and it was it was a cool project and I wish I had more time for it um but yeah we have some stuff coming up the summer yeah it's good it's something that like if you're building any kind of business you need to be able to you know show up for years maybe decades and stuff like that uh you know keeps the spark alive um as as someone who's like inherently creative then how you know how did you end up building a software product like I I assume you're a non-technical Founder um like how did you build the the product did you did you go down like the contractor route like what did that look like yeah so I mean the I'll just touch on the reason why I build a software product and it was I'm a I'm an avid lover of soft Ware um as like a user and there's like so many softwares in my life that I I I got introduced to them I learned them and they ended up like either putting money in my bank account or allowing me to make something and I had like a and and so I had like a weird emotional connection to like you know like the Adobe Creative Suite and like all these things that was just like there was just these like programs I could download on my computer and like learn skills to make money and like that was like always the magical thing for me and um I I've always always been super interested in just like listening to founder interviews and the ones that you know were always the most exciting to me and always the most interesting with the software founder interviews um and so I always wanted to create a software product like it wasn't like oh this is my next thing or or I think this is a really good opportunity like deep down like those were the founders that I looked up to um and so like I I wanted to kind of like build something in that Arena um in terms of actually going from like the idea into like building the first product they I had I I you know I I'm I've been like incredibly curious my entire life um and so like I had like a stint as UI designer for like a fantasy sports app for like two years and so the first thing I did was just like I designed the first version of the app end to end without building any functionality by myself in figma building prototypes and like work through like five iterations of the first version which was still horrible um and then the first version was built by like a freelancer in Argentina it was like five grand um found him on upwork he disappeared um and then you know then I got introduced to kind of our lead developer now um you know probably like four or five months in um but yeah that's that's kind of how we went from like zero to one in terms of product it was me designing the entire thing end to end and and then using you know Freelancers to build like the first product makes sense yeah I think I think a lot of similar route to that most people go down I mean I think finding like a CTO technical co-founder uh personally I think it's probably the the best route because you know someone can like when you're non-technical um it feels like sometimes Engineers are just speaking a different language to you um and it's hard to verify if what they saying is true or you know the quality of their code and stuff like that and I think if you have a CTO co-founder um they can sort of own that but you know finding a co-founders like you know finding a partner you want to marry right it's it's it's not a small decision and it's not something that we can all just do at the click of fingers so I think going down the the contractor route is you know what what most people do um yeah okay makes sense so when when you let's say you had version one of of for play or you know whenever you went public with it how did you get like the first 10 you know handful sl102 customers how did you get them yeah I mean I still remember like so our first customer was a friend it was someone who uh his name is Alan Porter he kind of like informed some of the product really really early on he's like oh I really need to like hey what do you think about this idea about like saving outs for face out dier again it wasn't really a product it was like a little widget was like a little tool um and so he you know he was like our first like you know paid customer um which was really cool in terms of going from like at 1 until 10 a lot of it was just like dming people on Twitter I pretty much had like I don't have like a big Twitter following even now but like I had zero Twitter following then but just like putting in front of people um and then you know the time when it actually felt like we were requiring customers that wasn't just like straight hand toand combat and bet and begging um was just like I wrote you know a Blog article how to save ads Facebook ad Library it ended up ranking and you know we started getting like one customer a day two customer a day um and then there was like a whole and then and then from there it was just like a bunch of stuff I mean like attribution for like where people come from for your software is like I I mean I have no idea even to this day like I have I have like I have a very like shaky compass on on where those things come from um but you know we were list on the Chrome web store like you know like all these places where people are searching for things you know we rank really highly and so that was kind of like the actual first co-ord of customers where they came from got it yeah I like that uh hand to hand combat I've never heard that one um so how how long would you estimate from like going public to that let's say that change in momentum where it changed from hand toand combat to you know daily customers like how how long would you estimate that timeline to be for you to really start feel months like six or seven months Maybe a little bit more than that actually like probably eight months to where I was like there's a predictable new customer like not free trial coming in once a day um and and then from there it was like 10 20 um and kind of been going up from there but yeah it was it was probably yeah eight or nine months before it felt like okay there's there's a lot of people coming in now that I had I had no idea where they came from or it was coming from a referral from someone who else was a customer and it started start feeling like a flywheel um where it actually felt like it was like turning into a real business was probably about a year I mean that that's relatively quick to be honest like based on what I hear um from from other companies what what would you say with some uh I know you you said you posted this um this blog post but what what else was going on through this period And I guess this is a bit of a loaded question right because um my assumption um tells me that you know you're you're more suited to to companies in like the e-commerce industry at least that's just what I've seen online um and there seems to be this like sort of community in in e-commerce um where you know there's this sort of online community where people are close um and obviously you know you worked at triple well as well was there anything going on there like community-wise or um did you partner with any Brands like you know was there anything going on there we never did any like Partnerships really early on I mean there was like a few people like I'm I'm talking like less than 10 that I know were just like brands that I would really wanted them to like use a tool and give feedback that I would give a free account to I've been always very against giving away a software for free even to influential people for the and it's also why like when I hear some people say it's good to like launch your product first for free and then get traction and then out of pay wall and like I couldn't disagree with that more at least for B2B software because like I've always just been very mindful that like the the feedback that comes from people who pay for your thing is a magnitude more valuable than someone who didn't pay for it asking you to do something um because there's in software there's like when you're building a product there's a million times when there's a bunch of stuff that would be nice to have and nice to build but that doesn't mean you should build it but if you have someone that's already paying for your thing you've already got value from them and they're like hey it would be really great if it did this you're building in in that channel in that column of like people who are willing to like pay for your thing and and and you're prioritizing the right things um and I got a little sidetracked there but so that yeah we did like a few gifted accounts but actually very much against it um and then in terms of other stuff going on yeah like I was working at triple will that got that introduced me to a lot of this e-commerce you know sort of community it's heavy on Twitter um I mean we do have like it's definitely like a large part of our customer base um I I think it's probably still a majority but it's it's getting close to where it's not I mean we still we have like at the end of the day our Tam is anybody running Facebook ads we're in this like transitional shift we're cre is the only thing that matters it's not even a shift anymore we're just [ __ ] living in it it's like creative is all that matter we're at the maturity of the ad platform and so we have like a lot of Leen we have a lot of apps in gaming um agency is large for us um and so we grew out of the e-commerce Niche bubble pretty quickly I still want to grow continue to grow more outside of it I actually think there's a lot more meat on the bone outside of e-commerce than directly inside of e-commerce I think when you look even at the most successful e Commerce specific software companies they all seem to hit a ceiling um I mean you even see this even more with like Shopify apps right like Shopify like only I think it's like 2 million stores in ter and if you're building an Enterprise product there's like I don't know like maybe two to 5,000 like plus customers or something like you know it's like it's in it's incredibly small like pool if you like think about like the entire like market and so um yeah at the time there's there was other stuff going on but I would say and like that was like a nice little like pod to grow in and then need to grow in initially but um again I'm not like throwing it to the curb and like we're not we're still like actively investing and growing in that space But I think it's just opened our eyes in as we just grow organically that like there's a lot more out there outside of this little bubble yeah yeah interesting and it's good I mean it's diversification as well right um like I you know I log into Twitter most days and there there also seems to be this uh at the moment this um sentiment where I don't know maybe I've got it wrong but um some negative sentiment towards like uh SAS Tools in in like the the Shopify SL Ecommerce um ecosystem and I think ultimately it boils down to e-commerce Brands typically have very low margins and so every you know every expense has to be questioned and you know as a vendor that's that's a potentially a risky game to play right because um you know it's going to affect your your user retention so it's not a bad idea to to diversify you know where your customers are coming from um you said something interesting there about you know uh prioritizing paying customers like not giving the products away from free for free um because well you know paying for the product is true validation and that's who you want to build the product for um my I I believe you're bootstrapped is that right yeah what what's the philosophy there you know I'm sure um I'm sure someone like you you seem like well connected um you know probably could have easily raised money um you've had successful past Ventures how come you chose to go down the bootstrap route um rather than uh raising money I think the status quo is you build software and you raise money um it's because we lived through this era um where like money was very very cheap um and like a lot of really great companies got built like that the reason why I didn't was one like at the time that I was starting to build a company I wasn't trying to build a really big company that's changed now right now I'm trying to build a very large business at the beginning I was like I just want something that pays me like 20 grand a month um you know live like a decent life I was off the back of like e-commerce which is like entire grind I was like D like all of her money was going into inventory I was like this is like let's build like I was just like in a spot in my life where I just wanted to build a healthy business um and the best way to do that is boot trap like you you literally can't do that if you raise any sort of capital um and so that was the original plan and so Venture didn't fit into that I also have like a very close friend who we both know Stephen who like has bootstrap a business to like a meaningful size um who like stayed bootstrapped and I think that was honestly like a pretty important piece for me staying bootstrapped because I had this like person like in my like Circle that's like if he did it I can do it um and I'm like super grateful for that um and I guess the answer now to is like why are we staying bootstrapped people people say like oh if you don't have a billion dollar outcome you know you shouldn't raise Venture um I believe that to be true and I believe a lot of people that say that don't they they say it and don't actually believe it I think a lot of Founders get to a point where it's getting very hard they maybe see like some sort of opportunity they need cap and they justify needing Capital to not have to like weather that storm to go and like go down that path um but I think if you like actually hook them up to a lie detector and be like did you actually think there's a billion dollar outcome here I think the lie detector would like call [ __ ] like 100% because if you actually backend and like reverse engineer the mechanics of a billion dollar outcome I don't think you can justify it in like the case with like 99% of situations and I think like my our current situation right now is like in and right now it's like it would be incredibly easy for us to raise money like I I still take the calls with like the Theses that you know reach out because like it's not bad to have the call and like you said like maybe in the future what if I do another thing or if there's a time when I do see a very clear path to a billion dollar outcome you know having these people you know at at a phone call versus like having to do Outreach is like important but yeah we could easily get like a ton of money right now like a very you know you know favorable sort of like rate but again we're like we built a very healthy business that's growing well I talk to venture-backed friends that don't have the growth rate we have and there's spending time writing investor updates they're getting pressure they're not building 100% in alignment with them like the there's there's a price for everything right and like Capital was never free like you B give up your business but there's a lot of other things on that like in the line items of raising money that people don't account for um and I just prefer a life right now where I don't have any of that will that change in the future potentially right like strong opinions loosely held if like the market changes in front of me and I see like an incredible opportunity where like Venture seems to be the most likely scenario for our success then that would be what I would do but otherwise I avoid it like the plague um and yeah it's a it's a lot of fun no I like that I like that mentality I think um yeah I think the way it should be approached is build a company that doesn't require external capital to survive but you know it should always be on the table like if you need to expand the other piece too right like as a business I I like scar I'm like scared to even like say this out loud but like we're figurative like we're indestructible like I don't need to go raise any money it doesn't matter what the market is like we're profitable and we're growing like so at the end of the day it's like it's a self- sustaining thing that now is just like something and it's like a machine that I can now optimize and try to make larger um with the cash flow um and I just think it's like I don't know like when you boot up a company it's so much more important to make good decisions and like I understand the Venture model which is like your funding the ability to make poor ones but I don't know like like again there's times when that makes sense but I do sometimes think it swings the other way where it just like it becomes the norm to make poor decisions because we're testing things or because we're need to deploy Capital um but like I don't know I have a ton of pressure to make really good decisions and I think that because that pressure is there I make more good decisions um and so yeah I don't know it's the way I like to do it um and if we can stay boot shop Forever Until exit then you know it's better for me it's more enjoyable during the process um I do think like if I whatever I do next I might raise money just because I think I'll have like so much stored knowledge about making good decisions that like just like you know um I can like speed that up but um yeah I don't know I'm enjoying it and I and I implore anybody if they're like should I raise money should I not raise money just like see if you can do it without it like try your hardest like but like also like burn the boats like don't keep it on the table like um you know just like give it your all to not raise money it's it's I I think it increases your likelihood of success at Le especially as like a founder and like getting some sort of positive outcome for yourself no I like that good perspective definitely um so something you said there you said uh when I got started you know I just wanted to make like 20K a month um so basically you know bit of a lifestyle business um and then you said something changed uh you want to now build like a really big business what do you mean by that and how how has your mind mindset shifted um with regards to what levers you need to pull to to to get you to that you know new goal that you have now the only thing that changed is I started making $20,000 a month and like wasn't enough you like there wasn't anything that like really Chang I mean I I do think too there's like you you get you can have a lot of conviction with no product and no Revenue but it's not as much conviction as you have with a good product in revenue and so like as my conviction has grown with the business my aspirations for it and my conviction of its outcome have grown kind of linearly with it um I'm also not a person where like the whole idea like oh I just want $20,000 a month like I I think I prefaced that by saying I was at a time in my life that's not like necessarily who I am as a person and that wasn't who I was before and that's not who I am now I was in this like chapter of my life where like it was like also Co like I was like traveling I was very much living like a very Chill Lifestyle um and so yeah it was just a time and then again like yeah it's like strong opinions lcy held and like things changed and like now also it's like a piece where you put all your time you put all of your effort into something and so to not try to make it as big as possible seems like squandering my life and I think there's a lot of people that would disagree with that it's like oh no you can just live your life and like enjoy it and like but I I actually get all of my like I was saying before like all of my fulfillment from going from something not existing to something existing um and it's as you do that over and over again like the thing you create needs to become more impactful than the last thing um at least for me to feel it and so inherently to just like fulfill my desires of fulfillment like I need to create a really big business to just like feel good about like life like um yeah again now at a different chapter of my life where I'm not really like traveling I'm not I'm not living like a really good lifestyle like I could live a much better lifestyle than I do right now but like I'm again at a spot in my life where that's just like not what's bre me joy and what is is like really shooting to build like a big business with a big outcome for everybody involved nice I like it the pursuit of Excellence right if you can get to Milestone one why can't you get to to Milestone two and then three and then four um a blessing and a curse uh so fast forward to today I know you said um there are some let's call it attribution problems attribution is a nightmare right but you know how how is for playay mostly growing like where are most of your your customers coming from the actual answer is a horrible one because anybody that says this I remember when I would listen to it like okay whatever what does that mean and I'll try to clarify it the answer is Word of Mouth um but Word of Mouth actually isn't an acquisition Channel um because word of mouth is a result of product um and so how do right now we're going through really good product that people talk about really organically and share a lot of people think that we like pay a lot of the people to talk about us and we don't um SEO which we're doubling down on we run a little bit of paid but nothing meaningful it's not like a set CAC where we have we know how many customers it's just like honestly a tax I feel like we're paying to Google and Facebook um and then Partnerships have now kind of become a more meaningful part of the business whether that's agency Partnerships publishing Partnerships um and then we we've tried this a few times and failed um I have a lot of conviction in it now because of some of the new product that we're building um and some of the people that we've installed but we're like building a full direct sales motion um and so that's had like a little bit of like an incremental lift but again we're not haven't we we've strapped that onto the business but we haven't strapped it on to the part of the business that I'm most excited about which we're building right now and I think once we have that new product um bolting on sales to that I think will be what takes us from where we are right now um which is single digit Millions into eight like you know eight figures so um yeah that's kind of how we're growing now you know we have a bunch of experiments that we're going to be running this summer a lot of like moonshot marketing ideas that definitely are not in any s SAS growth Playbook but going to give it a shot um and yeah yeah that's pretty much how we're growing right now got it what so you said you're doing um some direct sales uh and there seems like there's a there's a master plan that's about to unfold there um what does your orc structure look like at the moment like what's the team size and does does growth still solely rely on you like you know your inputs on a day-to-day basis or do you have like a team now responsible for that so our our team size is about 11 right now um most of the development team is in-house in Toronto um as well as like operations and stuff like that um customer services overseas as well as some just other roles like design and stuff like that in terms of core go toet Market marketing currently I am doing all of it um pretty much anything you see from foreplay that is public facing I did at least 95% of it um from like our website to any video or anything um that's obviously not sustainable we need new growth channels I think we're at and it's something I'm trying to figure out right now where I found myself being like a very capable Swiss army knife and all of these things are like very small drops in the bucket um to to install it a whole person on any of these we're like not really ready for it right um and so like I'm and we're actually in this like weird flux where it's like if I if I knew that like you know um I don't know [ __ ] YouTube videos were like our number one like organic growth Channel I would like install like a full-time you know kind of like content like you know kind of content but it's like that's like it like it's meaningful but whatever so I'm currently trying to identify the area of growth that has the most opportunity to like one take off my plate where I think someone else could excel at it um I mean SEO was one of those things we just like we ended up Outsourcing it but yeah trying to do that more and more um because I still also like spend a lot of time on product I spend probably 50% time on product 50% time on marketing um and so yeah I mean that I would say that's our biggest problem right now is we need to start building a go to market team um around around myself got it got it um Mak sense you you you jogged my memory there are you um so you have an office in Toronto right like is so you've got 11 person team is is everyone in office do you have like remote s so seven people are in Toronto in six or seven are in Toronto in office um anybody that's associated with the core product is in office and that's kind of like my ethos um around it and the people that are not in office it's either for the reason that I think it's distracting to have them in office um for example like customer service it's like it's kind of a distracting thing for like customer service be around with like developers like maybe there' be like if we had a massive office where like customer service like on a different floor and they can come up and like talk to developers like maybe that'd be valuable but like realist and like same with like sales like our salesperson is it is like close to Toronto but not in office every day he comes in once a week um yeah like having someone just like run demos all day like in the background like kind of distracting to build good product and so the whole idea is the office in Toronto is focused on product and like go to market and marketing and like things like customer service sales and like these other things you strap on to the thing that matters most to us which is a plg company is product is inh house face to face that's interesting because I think one thing is having an office that's that's one thing which is sort of become uncommon I would say just for like the space we're in um but the the second thing is having your product team in office because there's that there's this kind of meme right where you know Engineers are just locked away in a Cupboard um you know coding for for 12 hours a day I actually remember seeing you upload an image on Twitter like where he was charging the engineers with red like that was hilarious um how how I mean how has that been because I imagine like productivity has just skyrocketed but how has that been in terms of the type of talent you can attract um like you know company culture all that stuff really interested to hear that there's problems with it um as everything there's there's a price for everything um you know yeah it's sometimes yeah there's someone that we would love to have on the team that's remote maybe even at like a salary you know a beneficial like salary kind of like decrease because they're in a different Market um but if I'm going to be like some of my desire for the office is completely ideological and based around my own personal desires um I I like to think of my life in movie scenes and like everything that I do I like to think about it as a movie scene with like a beginning a middle and an end um and if I was like watching a movie about our startup being built um I would rather watch a movie where there's an office than not an office and if I'm being honest the like the the decision to have an office like 50% of that just comes from like my like personal like oh like this is a better like movie scene um there's like you know people downstairs like right now like chatting laughing it's fun like and I think you know you can build internet companies and be 100% free and like sometimes I have those desires and feeling like I'm like stuck here when I I could have all the freedom in the world um but I think a lot of really good things come from constraints um and like boot trapping is an example of that you give yourself budget constraints you have to get hyper creative and you have outcomes you wouldn't exist if you had like unlimited Capital same thing with an office it's like you give yourself this constraint it takes some things off the table put other but it puts other things on the table um that you can't even come close to fathoming without the office and so I think it's it's a trade-off in a million different ways but I enjoy it I think everybody else enjoys it um and like luckily we're based in Canada um where in our businesses um like our office based in Canada you know our main denomination you know of like collecting revenue is USD there's a pretty favorable um there's a pretty favorable exchange rate on that um for Canadian talent so that's another piece um and then the other thing like very tactical uh Canada has like a lot of really good research and development for software specific Tax Grants um and so hiring like for me hiring Canadian developers is highly incentivized um and so there's probably some really great developers in Portugal that would be great for the team but they're not going to be in office so we're losing kind of just like that whole culture piece um and then we lose on the grant side so like that's like another reason but you don't need an office to do that but it's like a supporting reason to like hire Canadian developers specifically I mean it's good it's good a good like um initiative by the Canadian government as well to incentivize like you know entrepreneurs right people who are building businesses um and I like I like the uh the thing about creating a movie maybe that's something you should actually or maybe you already are but you know there's there's you know building public but I haven't seen many people you know create like a movie about the I mean there's Silicon Valley but you know I haven't seen anyone create a movie about um building a stop I think that' actually be I think that like would be a winning concept on YouTube like a series of of you know bootstrap and a startup um I think so good like I think it's like a huge distraction but could be like one of those like super creative like acquisition channels like I would love to do it like if I if I if I met like the perfect guy to like run that right now i' pull the trigger on it like immediately you know like if I found like the perfect videographer like wants to build like documentary style stuff he's in my office right now he's like I really wanted to come in do this for a year I would pull the trigger on immed imately so for anyone who's watching this that like lives in Toronto that wants to do that I'd be so down I don't think you'd struggle like there's there's a guy who's blowing up on YouTube at the moment I'm I'm gonna mess up his name but it's Dan or Daniel um and he's doing like POV style Vlogs and I'm pretty sure um he has a a full-time videographer um just following following him around you know I don't know the situation I guess he just pays him like a you know a salary literally follows him everywhere and he uploads like weekly Vlogs and he's blown up to like he's exceeded over 50k subscribers now I think just absolutely blown up I mean you know your version of that um probably a a young person um like a kind of intern situation just turn up to work every day film no 100% like it would be super cool another thing I've wanting to do and I actually had dinner last night with one of our customers um they have like a really sweet operation like an hour outside of Toronto um and I want to start doing like walkthroughs of like our customers like businesses you know like I think that would be super cool content um you know almost like interview style but like very casual like walking through showing like how they run their business with people behind their business I think would be like really cool to start highlighting and so yeah it's like a very top of Mind thing for me I think I think it would be really cool nice another cool side project um so last question here so what I know you said you're you're working on like a new um new product what may maybe the answer is that but you know what's something that you know you're waking up every day and and working on at the moment what's like a big priority that's on your radar so we have this very large moonshot marketing campaign um that I won't like spend much time it's a I'll summarize it it's a contest um so that's like what I'm spending most of my time on right now started about two weeks ago I've got another like two weeks to put into it and then we'll launch it two weeks after that that's taking up a lot of my time um and then we're building the new version of spider specifically which is like the new product which I think will allow us to go up Market in a lot in a lot of other Industries outside of e-commerce and I've always felt like our business has the opportunity to go two directions uh One Direction is to become [Music] a SAS platform where people are clicking and dragging every single day which is kind of where we're at right now and I I'm going to continue down that path but I've always been very aware that we have the opportunity to become a big data company um there's been a lot of really large data companies built around competitor advertising analytics um and they like one for example Mo got you know acquired by Oracle for 700 million you know semrush went public mainly focused around SEO um and so I think the new version of spider is still very much forward fasing customer um but the back end of it there's going to be a lot of sawdust that's created where we can start creating some Ikea furniture that is like big data and start selling it like that yeah nice nice yeah interesting and it's also a beautiful Mo for the business right um yeah what what separates from competitors cool all right well cheers for the conversation appreciate it um is there any way you'd like to direct viewers you know to to check you or or for play out yeah I mean uh so I'm most active on Twitter forplay Zac z um forplay forplay.com and then I also have my own podcast as well called dun this week um I do it with my friend actually named Steven who has another bootstrap sauce company just talk about like business stories interview other bootstop SAS Founders um so yeah if you like podcast and stuff like that that might be that might be interesting to you um yeah thanks for having me man I I we haven't like caught up in like a while now so this was super fun um and yeah that's definitely yeah let chat more more often good stuff all right cool well I'll put those links in the description all right cheers Zach all the best