419: Dux-Soup: From Side Project to Bootstrapped 7-Figure SaaS - with Will van der Sanden

Summary

Episode 419 Summary: Dux-Soup – From Side Project to Bootstrapped 7-Figure SaaS with Will van der Sanden

In Episode 419 of The SaaS Podcast – SaaS, Startups, Growth Hacking & Entrepreneurship, host Omar Khan engages in an insightful conversation with Will van der Sanden, the founder and CEO of Dux-Soup. This episode delves deep into Will’s entrepreneurial journey, exploring the challenges, strategies, and pivotal moments that transformed a side project into a successful bootstrapped seven-figure SaaS business.

---

1. Introduction to Dux-Soup and Will’s Journey

Will van der Sanden introduces Dux-Soup as a tool designed to help B2B sales professionals efficiently find and connect with potential customers on LinkedIn through automation. The idea for Dux-Soup originated in 2014 when Will, a software developer, struggled to launch successful startup ideas. His breakthrough came unexpectedly through a side project intended to assist his wife’s book-selling business.

“See you need to fill a need.”
– Will van der Sanden [04:27]

---

2. Early Challenges and Learnings

Before Dux-Soup, Will spent approximately eight years working in various startups, predominantly as a head developer. He observed a recurring issue: despite building solid products, these ventures failed to gain traction due to difficulties in selling and communicating their value propositions effectively.

“It was just too complex.”
– Will van der Sanden [09:55]

This realization underscored the importance of not only developing a product but also ensuring that it aligns seamlessly with customer needs and is easily understandable.

---

3. The Birth of Dux-Soup

The concept for Dux-Soup emerged when Will's wife needed a more efficient way to compile and manage contact lists for her book sales to schools. Dissatisfied with manual methods like copying from Yellow Pages, Will developed an initial version of the tool that automated data scraping and organized it into Excel spreadsheets. Recognizing the potential beyond this specific use case, he pivoted the tool to focus exclusively on LinkedIn, targeting the burgeoning social selling trend.

“I thought, yeah, that's exactly it.”
– Will van der Sanden [04:27]

By transforming the tool into a Chrome extension and listing it on the Chrome Web Store, Will lowered the barrier to entry, enabling easy distribution and adoption.

---

4. Growth Strategy: Leveraging the Chrome Web Store and Influencers

Positioning Dux-Soup as a Chrome extension was a strategic decision that facilitated effortless user acquisition and streamlined payment processes. The freemium model allowed users to try the basic functionalities before opting for paid features, significantly boosting initial adoption rates.

Influencer Marketing: Collaborating with influencers like John Nemo played a pivotal role in Dux-Soup’s growth. Will highlighted the effectiveness of influencer partnerships in reaching broader audiences without extensive marketing budgets.

“We slowly saw people subscribing over these initial months to a point where I thought, well, I'm gonna have to try this one.”
– Will van der Sanden [27:05]

This combination of strategic placement in the Chrome Web Store and leveraging influential advocates propelled Dux-Soup to its first million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) within two years.

---

5. Overcoming Legal Challenges with LinkedIn

Success brought its own set of challenges. LinkedIn identified Dux-Soup’s automation activities and threatened legal action, ultimately leading to the shutdown of Will’s personal LinkedIn profile. Despite these setbacks, Will remained steadfast, choosing to preserve the business over maintaining a personal presence on the platform.

“If after so many years you don't have trouble, then you clearly do something right.”
– Will van der Sanden [42:57]

Will emphasized the importance of ensuring that Dux-Soup’s operations did not jeopardize customers’ LinkedIn accounts, maintaining ethical standards while providing valuable automation tools.

---

6. Bootstrapping and Team Building

Dux-Soup’s growth was fueled entirely by bootstrapping, with no external funding. Initially, Will managed all aspects of the business—development, customer support, and marketing. This hands-on approach was instrumental in refining the product based on direct customer feedback.

Hiring the First Employee: As the customer base expanded, Will recognized the need to professionalize support. Hiring a dedicated support team member allowed him to focus more on product development and strategic growth.

“Seeing that the traction is still growing and growing, it just gives you plenty of energy to run those long workdays.”
– Will van der Sanden [36:21]

Today, Dux-Soup boasts over 80,000 customers and a team of 20+ employees, all while maintaining a seven-figure revenue stream.

---

7. Ethical Considerations and Automation

Dux-Soup navigates the delicate balance between automation and ethical use. Will argues that when used correctly, automation tools like Dux-Soup enhance sales professionals' efficiency without crossing into spam or unethical practices.

“It's really about making sure that you target the relevant audience.”
– Will van der Sanden [47:58]

He advocates for targeted outreach, ensuring that automation enhances personalized interactions rather than detracting from them.

---

8. Key Takeaways and Insights

Focused Product Offering: Will stresses the importance of delivering a product that solves a specific problem exceptionally well before expanding its feature set.

Customer-Centric Development: Continuous engagement with customers to refine and enhance the product based on real-world usage and feedback.

Low Barrier to Entry: Strategic placement in accessible marketplaces like the Chrome Web Store can significantly boost user adoption with minimal friction.

Persistence and Adaptability: Overcoming legal challenges and evolving market conditions requires resilience and the ability to adapt swiftly.

---

9. Lightning Round Highlights

In the concluding segment, Omar Khan conducts a lightning round with Will, extracting personal insights and lighter aspects of his journey:

• Best Business Advice: Stay critical of your offering to avoid tunnel vision.
• Recommended Book: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for its inspiring narratives.
• Key Founder Attribute: Listening to customers.
• Productivity Tip: Planning the day by dividing tasks into specific work segments to maintain focus.
• Crazy Business Idea: Enhancing commuter traffic experiences through gamification using GPS and augmented reality.
• Fun Fact: Persistent but struggling attempts to learn guitar since age 17.
• Passion Outside Work: Music, live concerts, and family travel.

---

10. Conclusion

Will van der Sanden’s story with Dux-Soup exemplifies the essence of bootstrapped entrepreneurship—leveraging technical expertise, strategic marketing, and unwavering perseverance to build a thriving SaaS business. By focusing on solving a tangible problem, maintaining ethical standards, and fostering a customer-centric approach, Will has positioned Dux-Soup as a significant player in the LinkedIn automation space, all without external funding.

For those aspiring to replicate his success, Will’s journey underscores the importance of resilience, adaptability, and the relentless pursuit of delivering value to customers.

Connect with Will van der Sanden:

• Website: duxsoup.com
• Email: [e-mail]

---

This detailed summary captures the essence of Episode 419, providing actionable insights and a comprehensive overview of Will van der Sanden’s entrepreneurial journey with Dux-Soup.

Transcript

[Omar Khan]

Welcome to another episode of the SaaS podcast. I'm your host Omar Khan and this is a show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business. In this episode I talked to Will van der Sanden, the founder and CEO of Ducksoup, a product that helps B2B sales professionals find and connect with potential customers on LinkedIn. Back in 2014, Will was a software developer trying to get various startup ideas off the ground and he was getting increasingly frustrated because nothing seemed to stick. Around that time, he also built a simple tool to help his wife find customers for her book selling business, and he had no idea his side project was about to change everything. Will saw an opportunity to adapt the tool for LinkedIn. He turned it into a Chrome extension and put it on the Chrome web Store and people started downloading it. The tool gained steady traction and within six months Ducksoup was generating enough revenue for Will to quit his other work and focus on it full time. But the first few years were tough. Will did everything himself, writing code, doing customer support, and trying to get the word out. He worked long days and weekends, and even when he took his family on vacation, he always had to bring his laptop along. Eventually, all that hard work started paying off. The Chrome Store helped the tool spread quickly, and Will teamed up with influencers to reach even more people by keeping the product simple to use and affordable. Duck Soup hit the first million in ARR in just two years after launching, but success came with its own problems. LinkedIn eventually found out what Will was doing and threatened legal action and shut down his personal profile. But Will stood firm, and to this day, he runs a LinkedIn automation company without having a presence on the platform himself. Now, almost 10 years later, Ducksoup brings in seven figures in revenue, has more than 80,000 customers, and a team of over 20 people, and the business is totally bootstrapped. In this episode, you'll learn how Will spotted a gap in the market and filled it with a focused, affordable product when everyone else was selling expensive, complicated solutions. Why building Ducksoup as a Chrome extension was a game changer for getting users on board and handling payments. How Will dealt with the tricky business of building on LinkedIn's platform and dealing with those legal threats why putting in the long hours and wearing all the hats was crucial in those early bootstrapping days, and how Ducksoup walks the line between the ethical concerns of LinkedIn automation and helping sales pros do their jobs better. So I Hope you enjoy it. Are you building a software product? Then you probably know how challenging it is to find competent engineers. You don't have to micromanage. And then you have all those worries. Will this app work correctly? Can it handle millions of users without crashing? Can I trust these developers when I don't know what they're doing? That's where Axle Hub comes in. With 10 years of software experience, they do things differently. You'll work directly with Phil, their CEO and technical leader. No middleman, no managing multiple developers. Phil guides the entire process and personally oversees your product. Think of him as your technical co founder minus the equity stake. He brings his expert team to build your app right from day one. Ready? To make quality software without the headaches, visit axlehub.com that's a X E L H U B Com this episode is brought to you by attio, the next generation of CRM. Now imagine a world where your CRM is powerful, easily configured and deeply intuitive. Well, Atio makes that a reality. You can set it up in less than a minute and and in seconds of syncing your email and calendar, you'll see all your relationships in one place, all enriched with valuable data. You can also build zapier style automations, get powerful reports and seamlessly handle any go to market motion. From PLG to sales led, Attio is designed for the next era of companies like yours. So it's time to say goodbye to inflexible one size fits all CRMs and join industry leaders like 11 Labs, replicate modal and more to scale your startup to the next level. You can try Attio for [e-mail] that's attio.com Will, welcome to the show.

[Will van der Sanden]

Omar, thanks for. Thanks for having me.

[Omar Khan]

My pleasure. Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, absolutely. It's a quote from actually from an animated movie or it's not really cartoon, but it's. See you need fill a need. It's from the robots movie and I actually came across it when I was just starting up with the Duck Soup and I thought, yeah, that's. That's exactly it. So yeah, that for me, that was very inspiring.

[Omar Khan]

Love it. Nice and simple. So tell us about Duck Soup. What does the product do, who's it for and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?

[Will van der Sanden]

So TechSoup is a piece of software that helps you to find customers on LinkedIn. It's targeted to especially B2B sales development people who are looking to reach out to people on LinkedIn and do that at a scale so that you, via automation, you can reach out to many people and you basically are able to pick out those responsive prospects that you can then continue the conversation with in a, in a usual sales role.

[Omar Khan]

Give us a sense of the size of the business. Where are you in terms of revenue, customers, size of team, the size of the business?

[Will van der Sanden]

Well, I'll give you some context. So we nearly 10 years that we're running and we've built a customer base of around 80,000 and annual revenue in the seven figures. And we're doing this all at the moment with 20 plus employees. So not all full time, but yeah, it's a big team that is working on this now.

[Omar Khan]

And so the business you said founded 2015, you haven't raised any money, right? The business has been bootstrapped.

[Will van der Sanden]

It's been. Yeah, fully bootstrapped. No external money at all? No.

[Omar Khan]

Great. Okay, so let's talk about where the idea for this business, this product came from. And I know it wasn't a straightforward journey. You had some other attempts at trying to build startups and products before you got here. So maybe kind of tell us a little bit about that journey and some of the things you worked on before you came up with the idea for Ducksoup.

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, sure. So my background is in software development and especially product development. And in that role I worked at a number of software companies or startups that. Well, where I saw a repeating sort of problem occurring. And those companies where I was part of the initial team that actually built the initial product, initial offering that we were building and building and we would never really get the traction. And so that, yeah, the businesses, they all ended up fizzling out, even though I always felt that the products, the products that we built were solid. But yeah, we just, we couldn't sell it or explain it.

[Omar Khan]

So that was. You were part of a startup and trying to get this thing off the ground. How long were you working on that?

[Will van der Sanden]

I think about four years in one company and then another four in another one. In a similar sort of. Yeah, a similar context as a sort of head developer of a small team.

[Omar Khan]

Right. And then you also had an idea for another product and you spent some time building something yourself.

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, as a developer and especially when working in the product development and you know that you built. And you can build stuff that is, that can do some things that customers really would really like. It is just. It's felt very well, I find it quite frustrating and it drove me to try another product once the previous one failed. And always sort of keeping in mind how the other products ended up failing, but always still believing that surely, yeah, if the technology works and the product does something useful, then we should be able to get this off the ground. So yeah, there was a number of times where really we found that we built something that did something that was a bit more technical very often. So it wasn't like the product was not easily understood by the customer. And yeah, there was, was always a struggle, always, always pushing uphill or uphill struggle to get this first, to get this explained. And then even after a first sale of one customer, the next customer would have to go through the same, the same cycle of explanation. And yeah, that meant, yeah, you were just, yeah, you were bound to fail because it was just too complex.

[Omar Khan]

What was the product that you were building at that time?

[Will van der Sanden]

The one that I talk about now with the last one is called Swivel Script.

[Omar Khan]

What did it do? You gotta explain it to me now. Right.

[Will van der Sanden]

It was basically a tool that allows you to script together different Web applications using JavaScript on the desktop. So you could basically optimize processes by automating some copying and pasting and making sure that the user of the system was always presented with the right application at the right time. The end users were, generally speaking, people working in a customer service center or call center. And those people tended to use quite a lot of different applications. And there was a lot of, well, there was a steep learning curve for them to know which one to use. And so there's a lot of training involved and then a lot of room for error to get to the right system to copy the data. So it seemed like a slam dunk to come up with a solution there. But it turned out that, yeah, that it was, yeah, it didn't succeed, let me put it that way.

[Omar Khan]

So a lot of, you know, I talk to founders who are non technical and they'll say, you know, my problem is I don't know how to code. And then I talk to founders who are technical, who are developers and they say, my problem is I know how to code. And so often I, you know, it's easier for me to build something than to go and spend time talking to potential customers and doing the validation stuff. Did you go through a similar process? Like did you spend time talking to customers trying to figure out what specifically what to solve or did you get to like, I understand the problem, I can go and build it, I'm just going to go and do that like which kind of approach did you take?

[Will van der Sanden]

It was probably more the I know the problem I can build it approach initially although I was always quite often, well in a customer facing sort of role as well. But then the customer that you ended up talking to tended to be the end user while the actual customer they're trying to sell to is tends to not to be the end user, at least not in the sort of software that I was working with servoscript. So I would say the. Yeah, it's definitely. Well the benefit of being able to code yourself is that you can more quickly try different approaches, try different products. You can throw them away. When you're just. When you're only the thinker and not the developer, then there's going to be a lot of confusion or problems explaining what you want to the two way developer. And well if it's a co founder then you should be able to do that as well. I mean clearly lots of people do that like that. But there's a big benefit I find obviously being a developer that yeah, you can just quickly try new ideas and then try them out and throw them away if it works.

[Omar Khan]

You also said you had a really hard time explaining or communicating the value prop to customers and it was an uphill struggle all the time having gone through that experience and then also now having gone and built ducksoup. When you look back at that, what was one lesson you feel you maybe learned about the just generally how to. How to do a better job at communicating with customers about your product?

[Will van der Sanden]

I think the main, well yeah, one of the main things really is that to not just build a product but you really need to think about and build the entire. And I know it's a bit of a cheesy term but the customer journey. So from the customer hearing about your product to go to your website to try new products and then telling other people about it. And so that has to be as, yeah, as barrier free as possible. If. Yeah by just putting a product out there that people can download and then have no idea how to use and always so complex is so feature rich that they require training that is just not where you want to start. At least not. Yeah, not in my experience.

[Omar Khan]

Great. So you had a number of, I guess, you know, false starts trying to either working on somebody else's startup or your own products to get that off the ground. And then where did the idea for Duck Soup come from?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, well actually the idea came. My wife was at that time trying to set up a business selling Mainly selling books to schools. And she, well she needed a way to get a list of schools or a list of contact people to contact at schools and also a way of actually getting to engage with them. And she ended up getting basically some cheap labor via Fiver or something like that to in effect copy and paste lists from. Well from in those days you still had yellow Pages but a number of different resources that you could use to find A businesses and then B the contacts within the business that you could then yeah, try and talk to. So and I figured well that sounds like a horrible thing to ask someone to do to copy and paste it. And so I figured well and then I built an initial version of DocSub that would actually work against different systems, not just LinkedIn but also Yellow pages and other ones for that purpose. So basically a list builder.

[Omar Khan]

So what was it doing? Was it just kind of web scraping?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, scraping and putting it in Excel. There was always the sort of the key from what people needed were lists in Excel. I mean I think people still use Excel a lot, maybe less so now than 10 years ago. But to go from having well from different systems like in let's say Yellow Pages or Google or other systems, I can't think of the names anymore but if you can present that to someone, well here's all the data in Excel, then they can work with that. So it turns the sort of scattered data into a usable list and it's only a small value prop in a way but that, yeah, well it mostly got me their thinking when I was talking to people about this and that's when I heard that well LinkedIn was really what people were after in terms of where their go to platform to finding these lists. Yeah, so what we found in we're talking about the products at that time, as I said before, I was always looking for products that could be of interest to customers. So um, it turns out that especially LinkedIn was popular for this list building exercise or just generally finding leads. Uh, it was this pretty much the start of the whole social selling wave in at that time. Uh, so yeah, I decided to basically just tweak the product or make it focused on just doing LinkedIn. And by doing that I was looking at the uh, the other products in the market that were well obviously filling that particular need. And I found that there were some basic automations that people needed and so I added those which was not a massive, massive amount of development. And before I knew it I had it all in the Chrome web store and it was ready for people to try it.

[Omar Khan]

So this was a Chrome extension, because that's an important distinction as well, that you and I were talking about this earlier, that LinkedIn doesn't have an API and so it's not particularly easy to go and integrate with the platform. You have to kind of have these workarounds. How easy or hard does that make your job in terms of building this product?

[Will van der Sanden]

Well, it definitely makes it challenging. There are a number of factors that are at play. As I said, there is no API. Well, there was an API at some point, but that API has been cut into basically being a really pointless API. And that combined with the fact that there was a clear demand for people to run some sort of automation on LinkedIn that just meant, well, it was an extra technical hurdle for the competitors to take, which, well, for me made it also more interesting of something to try because jumping in a really crowded marketplace is obviously a lot harder to get noticed and when it's clearly not super straightforward. So, yeah, building the initial development, especially around the detection or anti detection elements, several aspects of the product that were really just built to work around or with LinkedIn so that people would not get banned. That was a big, big part of it.

[Omar Khan]

Okay, so you've got this product in the Chrome Store. Did you start charging for it right away? Was this a free tool initially? How did you get started initially with that?

[Will van der Sanden]

No. So initially it was free? Well, there was a free version with basic functionality that was already quite useful and that people could pay for additional, basically additional features. It was the freemium model people use and it just meant that for people to try out the products and get a feel of what it does, it was really just a matter of a few clicks to go from learning about Duck Soup and then actually trying it out to see if it would do what they were after. And I think that was quite key in the initial uptake that the barrier to actually just trying out the product was really, really low on purpose. There was things also around using the Chrome Web Store. Chrome was a big. Pretty much the standard already then people already had a Google account. So there was like a whole sort of ecosystem that ducks just all worked in and that the audience was also working in. It just meant that it was a really. Yeah, really a low barrier to trying it out.

[Omar Khan]

So putting into a product, into a marketplace like the Chrome Store is great for distribution if people can find it. What was your experience with that?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, people generally didn't find it really via searching for or searching in the web store or searching Google even. I Think most people found it because they heard via. Well, at that point I was working with an influencer called John Nemo who was really. Well, he was very active, great guy. I mean, he was super, super active on all. Yeah, you know that these, some of these influences that they can be really overwhelming, but it's really good for getting the word out. And he was really excited about Duck Soup. And it was that combination also with the fact that the people who tried it out generally became immediate advocates as well because at least for those who downloaded and tried it, it did what it said on the tin and they would just tell their colleague, oh yeah, if you want to do some work on LinkedIn with getting data or working with some bit of automation, you should try this. It's really easy. And so most of the initial growth really came from death from this sort of word of mouth and also the influencer marketing where. Yeah, where in different geographical regions. We suddenly started out seeing all this uptake.

[Omar Khan]

How did you meet John? How did that relationship come about?

[Will van der Sanden]

I really just went on LinkedIn and posted about Ducksoup and yeah, the exact. It must have been just. Yeah, me reaching out or talking about Ducksoup in the context in different groups on LinkedIn really sort of the same principles that we teach our own customers on how to get your, your message in front of the right people. It's. Yeah, but then it was, it was a lot more manual, but yeah, it must have been one of those groups, I think probably. And where, where, where John then. Yeah, picked it up and got in touch.

[Omar Khan]

So this wasn't. Did you have to pay him or was this. He was just interested in the.

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, it's. I mean, I think you find it in many markets where there's always influencers who are always on the outlook or on the lookout for products that work and do something that people are really looking for and that is not really super commonplace. It's also for the influencer that they are showing that, well, if you, if you listen to what I'm saying, then you can see what's hot. You can get a competitive advantage. And so these guys are always looking for products. So he saw that there was a clear value in, in telling about Duck Soup.

[Omar Khan]

I think that's the best thing, right, to find somebody who's naturally interested, who wants, you know, want. Wants to be kind of part of the journey and, and, and, you know, provide feedback and test this thing. I mean, you can't, you can't ask for more. From what I understand from the point where you got started with this business to hitting the first million in ARR. It was about a two year journey. Were you. At what point did you start working on this business full time? When did you realize that this was more than just a tool that you'd built for your wife to something that had some business potential? And given your experience with several false starts that we talked about earlier, what gave you the confidence that this was the thing that you were going to jump in with both feet and commit to?

[Will van der Sanden]

So the, I think was about half, half a year in from the initial release to actually, yeah, going at it full time. And so it was also, I mean, just to come back on the sort of the fit with the ecosystem. What was so nice again in lowering the barrier is by fitting in with the Chrome Web Store, you automatically had the. An easy way for people to pay for the product. Basically you had to do some work to obviously to integrate with that, but lots of people had already the payment details in Google, which meant that prompting a customer to subscribe after they used it for people then to purchase it was really again as barrier free as I could get it. So. And that just meant that, yeah, you slowly saw people subscribing over these initial months to up to a point where I think I reached probably about 5,000amonth. €5,000. At which point, yeah, given also the way that the uptake went, I thought, well, I'm gonna have to try this one. It seems to be sticking.

[Omar Khan]

The payment infrastructure you talked about, so that was like just built into the store and it was like Google payments or whatever. And could you. You could actually set that up for subscriptions as well?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, yeah.

[Omar Khan]

Okay. That makes life a lot easier, doesn't it?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, absolutely. It's obviously for people. Yeah. If people need to be able to buy a product and if the system, if the ecosystem already provides you with a payment engine, then yeah, that makes it a lot easier.

[Omar Khan]

Okay, great. So six months in and you're like, okay, there's enough revenue here now to give me a strong signal that this business has a lot more potential. I'm going to go in and work on this full time. It was just you at the time. You're still obviously bootstrapping, self funding the business. What was the next step? How did you continue to grow, get to the first 10k? Was it just doing more of the same, working with influencers like John and trying to get this word of mouth out there or was there anything else that you did?

[Will van der Sanden]

I think there was generally getting a web presence there was more than just a WordPress website that was quite. Just to give the brand a bit more of a. Yeah. Of a status and also make it more recognizable for the customers that this was actually a company behind this product. But I think the main part of the growth was really I did all the support myself at that time as well. So I would hear of all the things that were wrong or people were asking for and then yeah, just a matter of making sure that. Well, you take away all those things that don't work and you add things that do work that people ask for obviously within having some vision yourself of where you're aiming for. And so that's. Yeah, that way the Pro edition, which was the paid version at the time, just got richer and richer and supported more and more scenarios. And yeah, more people ended up being willing to go for the paid version because of that.

[Omar Khan]

Now, Ducksoup wasn't the only product around at the time that had this kind of functionality. What do you think was it about this product that was resonating with people? Like what else were you seeing going on? And was LinkedIn navigator around at the time as well?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, Navigator was there. The other products were generally really expensive between eight times and maybe even 15 times of what we were asking. They tended to be quite invisible in who was behind the products as in which we made it came across a bit sketchy and the support was pretty abysmal in my experience. And the. Yeah, I would say that. But the actual products were. Tended to be not so. Not so user friendly and as what Ducksoup was offering. So it was multiple. And we also found is the Dachshund brand just came. Just was really friendly. People really liked the brand, it being a positive. And while some of the other brands were a bit more clinical or technical. That just helped I think.

[Omar Khan]

Why did you call it Duck Soup?

[Will van der Sanden]

Well, it was my wife who came up with the name and she. She was googling it when we looked for a name and there was an expression in English or actually I think it's an American expression by these. Yeah. Comedians. But if you Google for the sentence easiest, Duck Soup, you'll find the sort of reference that I'm talking about and it's. Yeah, it means something that is seemingly easy to do. And then the duck, the CK was turned into an X because of Excel, because that was still the main part of the value proposition in being able to get all this data into a spreadsheet. So yeah, there you.

[Omar Khan]

Okay, great. So the Chrome store is helping you with distribution. You've got influencers like John. The word of mouth also going into a market and being the cheapest is probably not the best strategy. But at this time when you're getting started, you have a new product, you know, it's, it's a, it's a gap, it's a, it's an opening there. And you took that. Tell me about. You also tried like your own list building to reach potential customers and doing cold email and stuff like that. How did that work for you?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, we tried buying some lists basically but this was actually for the, for the Swivel script product as well. But also as part of the getting the word out for Ducksoup buying buying lists of companies or contacts that could be of interest and also hiring a, the marketing company to send out an email send and track the clicks and stuff like that. But. And I ended up doing some of sales calls or cold calls myself as well, which was not my, yeah, not my favorite thing to try but you got to try these things I guess. But yeah, the end result was always very, very. Yeah, very much nothing. And I think a lot of it is because it's because of the cold approach. Some people might even have an interest or show some interest but they have no commitment in continuing. So when something else comes up in the day to day work, whatever you build up on these calls or in the emails just is gone within seconds. So. So that definitely didn't work for us. Just also quickly on the pricing, I think what's also worth. Well, one of the things I've noticed over working on Ducksoup is that because obviously you're always a resource constraint in where you can put your time and how you build your product and your business. But I think the offering of offering a product that only does a few things but does it really well at a low price. But it does give you, it gives you a reason why the price is so low because it doesn't do a lot. But if it does something that is actually very useful to a lot of people then it does give you an entry to that market and once you're there then you can. That's basically what we built as well here. And that's sort of the years after the next edition which is a more involved, well, a more complex product with more features that you can sell at a higher price but just to get a foot in the door without having any sales teams working for you. I think the. Well, for us in any case the approach of yeah like I said, having a really focused product like that really got us into that market.

[Omar Khan]

So, yeah, yeah. You know, I was talking to somebody the other day who was saying, you know, I want to get into this market, but I get so put off by these big established players that have these, you know, rich feature set. And, you know, where do I start? And it's like, well, if you're trying to compete with them and launch a product that has all those features, you're probably taking the wrong strategy, Right. There's probably a segment of people who only need one or two features. And if you can figure out what those are and do those, deliver those really well and carve out your own niche is going to be a much smarter way to go. And then, yeah, eventually, over time, you can add more features and grow and charge more as you deliver more value. I want to talk a little bit about those first two years because I think people listening to this might be like, oh, yeah, Will had this idea, two years, he hits seven figures, hits the first million. Give us just a taste of what it was like in those two years. You don't have yourself funded, you don't have a team.

[Will van der Sanden]

I don't have a team. No. There was basically. So it was, well. Well, obviously it was a lot of hard work. So everyone will tell you this. So what I found is really, because there was a clear pull coming from customers, the work was really not an issue at all. Just having an audience that is actually trying your products, I mean, that was just pure gold. So then just gave me enough energy to do those long hours also. Yeah, all the weekends we were always working, developing, doing supports, bug fixing. I also ran the service, basically. Yeah, the whole technical side. My wife did a little bit of work on Twitter at that time. So I said it wasn't just me, just to be clear, and. No, but that was really helpful as well. Just pinging a few people here and there. And yeah, I just found that the. Yeah, just building, doing the support calls at a set time, doing some troubleshooting, then doing some extra. Some development. You just fill your day with lots of different sort of slices of work. And then, yeah, just seeing that the traction is still growing and growing, it just gives you plenty of energy to run those long workdays and also to take the laptop on your holiday. I mean, my family, they were actually quite surprised in the last years after that. I wasn't working when I was on holiday because I was always working on the holiday as well. But it was really just to keep the show running and this is really a small price to pay. Yeah, for the years after that. So definitely worth it.

[Omar Khan]

How long was it before you were able to hire your first employee?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, it was very intense. It was, yeah, the, it was really a matter of just. Yeah. Dividing your time into. Because, yeah, because you're doing the. All the different roles. Right. Of the business. And as a developer you tend to. Well, it's easy to just do the development, but if nobody's doing the support, people will be unhappy because there will be bugs because you also do the testing. Right. So you got your hands full, but there's all these balls and you got to spend a bit of time with all these areas.

[Omar Khan]

So were you doing support calls and saying, yeah, I'll let our development team know?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, absolutely. No, but also on the support side. Right. Because it just shows how the technology that was available, that was also made. It really facilitated doing all this. For example, I was using the Chrome remote support feature to do remote troubleshooting. Right. Because people were running this extension locally. And as you probably know that when people run stuff locally, there's always things that are slightly different and. Right. But being able to do all that. Yeah, just on my laptop from anywhere, it just meant that I could actually put in time regardless of family commitments and other things that I needed to be.

[Omar Khan]

So who was the first person you hired as an employee? What role was that for?

[Will van der Sanden]

It's a board. Yeah, yeah. It was basically to take over and professionalize the support. At that time it was just a big email box and calendly was also a big part of it. But no, but yeah, to professionalize that and to especially take off the first line of support, to take that away from me so I could just spend more time on things that were more, well, more valuable. They would bring more value to the company. Because obviously, and the thing is, that was quite interesting, the initial 10 or 20 customers then having just this conversation over email, then you really understand where they're coming from. But at some point when there's like 100 or 200 a day, you can't have this conversation with all these people. And you need to take a step back, which is quite. Yeah, that was quite a big moment, to be honest. Yeah, great.

[Omar Khan]

Okay, so you, you've gone through this journey where, you know, we, we talked about the, the, the attempts to build different businesses and products and they didn't work out. You came up with the idea of duck soup through helping your wife and then grew this business and eventually through just persistence and wearing every hat and working 12 hour days, eventually you got to the point where you found traction, product market fit, and then you got the attention of LinkedIn.

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, well, I think that is a. Did something that especially I would say five years ago was a big part of this, of this journey to make sure that the product that you build does not cause trouble for your customers. Right. Because that's. Yeah, people are just tend to be really careful with their LinkedIn accounts and they put a lot of value in that. So if the customers would have a problem with LinkedIn, then I would have a problem with the customers and the thing would all would collapse in one go. Right. So that was a big part of my time in making sure that the software that was out there was as LinkedIn proof as I could get it. So, yeah, and as you probably have noticed, trying to Find me on LinkedIn is also not a. It's not possible because of that, because LinkedIn got in touch and they decided that they were going to remove my profile.

[Omar Khan]

But why was that? Just like did for debt. So did initially contact you and just say, look, you can't do this, you can't build this product?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, they came to me and they said, well, you can't do this for these, and these and these reasons. And all these reasons were null and void. But, well, obviously there's a lot of legalese that you get. So I did end up getting a local lawyer just to look at stuff as well. We had all these, the things that they were throwing at me were all not really relevant. But the one thing that they could do to stop me is to remove my LinkedIn profile. So it was either that or remove duck soup. So, yeah, I mean, I think I took the right choice there.

[Omar Khan]

I mean, I don't know the full details of this, but if you're running this product and you know, was it like arguments about like you violating terms of use or something, or did you feel like, you know, you're, you're, what you're doing is, you know, is you're kind of doing things the right way. Like, how do you feel about that in terms of why there was pushback from them? Presumably because they prefer everybody was using Navigator anyway. Right. Rather than any, any third party tool. Yeah, yeah, but, yeah, so just tell, tell me about that. And it's like, you know, I just wonder, it's like, is this the kind of thing that still keeps you up at night even though you've still been in this business for like 10 years now?

[Will van der Sanden]

No, no, it doesn't keep me up at night. I mean, we've been doing this now for a good while and we have. Yeah. If after so many years you don't have trouble, then you clearly do something Right. But the sort of, the. What I want to say is that with LinkedIn their stance on this subject is really quite two faced. So on the one hand they are selling licenses to Sales Navigator by the truckload. Sales Navigator is getting more and more salesy with automatic in mail follow ups. And then on the other hand they are obviously trying to get everyone to create a profile on LinkedIn because without this fully, well the full network of professionals on there, the network does not have value. And then they can't sell Sales Navigator or Recruiter. So and today, and then they mentioned that terms and the terms of service. But even that when you, when you look at it, you can't even if you were to follow them by this, the rule, by the, by the rules you can't Even systematically browse LinkedIn as in, to be honest, if you read their rules, you can't use LinkedIn for sales. Basically that's what the rules say. So yeah, they are so extreme in the way that it's stipulated and because they clearly also want people to actually use Sales Navigator it just doesn't really seem like a very honest principle that they have there. It's more, I guess they don't want their network to be polluted with robots talking to each other. Right. Which is fair enough. But a bit of automation just to make sure that the sales people are spending time with, communicating with customers who are showing interest instead of spending their time on manually doing, sending lots of, lots of connection requests. I mean it's obvious that the sales people would prefer to do the part of the process where they add the most value, which is convincing someone who is showing some interest not in going through lists of loads of people to find the ones with interest. That part you can actually automate. That's basically what ducks up does.

[Omar Khan]

So one of the things I've been seeing with, we talked about this earlier that you know, with LinkedIn is like I'm getting more and more crap in my DMs from people and I've noticed quite an increase in the last five or six months and I think in large part it's to do with AI and how easy it's becoming for you know, people to kind of do kind of prospecting if someone's looking at ducksoup and saying, hey, well I think you guys are kind of making it easier for people to send this kind of spam and Stuff like that. What's your response to that?

[Will van der Sanden]

Well, my response is that the purpose of using ducksoup on LinkedIn is really about. It's not to spam people. It's really, first of all to make sure that you targeted the audience that could have an interest in your product or service. I mean, there's no point in sending, I mean, sending thousands of in meals or whatever out to people that are never ever going to buy or have a need for what you're trying to sell them. So it's always, we always tell our audience, tell our customers that, make sure that you target the relevant audience. And then it's really just a matter of very often that maybe you got the wrong person at the wrong time or some other reason why they either not picking up on the, on the initial sort of interest that you want to get out of them. And that's fine because there were, there were lots of other reasons why people are not at that point want to talk to anyone about their particular service or products. But if you already start out with, with a scatter approach, then yeah, then you're going to be annoying lots and lots of people on this. And yeah, probably also getting your own LinkedIn accounts into trouble because when enough people complain about being approached by someone who is offering services that are of no interest and they don't know this person, at some point LinkedIn will also close their account. I mean, that happens.

[Omar Khan]

Still, I agree with you. You know, I think It's, I think LinkedIn is a great platform. There's, there's so much potential there. And I think, you know, I've connected with some, you know, amazing people because of LinkedIn. But yeah, it's definitely going to be this ongoing challenge between increasing noise and then how do you do a better job at being able to connect with the right people, whether, you know, you're a buyer, seller or whatever. It's kind of fascinating space. And yeah, it's an interesting relationship that you have, like building this business on that platform.

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, it's a big challenge because obviously it's always evolving, it's always changing. We never get, they never tell us when a new update with a new feature or they remove a feature, which also happens. Right. So, yeah, no, it's a moving target and it can be a bit of a challenge to use it as a base for a product that you want to sell to customers. But that also makes it an interesting sort of field to work on. For myself, I find.

[Omar Khan]

Well, 10 years, almost 10 years in, you're at your end of 10 year anniversary next year, you're still working on this business. You're still enjoying waking up and helping customers. So that's, I think what matters the most right at the end of the day.

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah. No, it's still. Yeah. Because it's an ever evolving landscape of how people. Yeah. How they go about trying, finding customers and there's always new areas that you can work on.

[Omar Khan]

Cool. All right, we should wrap up. So let's get on to the lightning round. I've got seven quick fire questions for you.

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah.

[Omar Khan]

Okay. What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received to stay critical.

[Will van der Sanden]

Of your offering and to avoid tunnel vision?

[Omar Khan]

What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

[Will van der Sanden]

For me, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is, even though it's not business relevant, it's very inspiring in many ways.

[Omar Khan]

I love that book too. What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

[Will van der Sanden]

I would say listening to your customers.

[Omar Khan]

What's your favorite personal productivity tool or.

[Will van der Sanden]

Habit to plan your day and to divide your day into specific work as into specific tasks. Don't just go on email and be scattering, just stay focused. Do this for a couple of hours and this for a couple of hours and you get the most done.

[Omar Khan]

What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah, Commute, commuter traffic, entertainment. It's something I've been looking at when commuting and there must be. Yeah, there's a ton of ideas I have in how you could make that commute more, more enjoyable.

[Omar Khan]

So, so entertaining people while they're stuck in traffic commuting to work. Is that what you're saying?

[Will van der Sanden]

Yeah. Yeah. So to turn the actual being stuck in traffic into a, into a, into a sort of a, into a game area by using GPS and augmented reality and other things. So yeah, I think there is, there is something there.

[Omar Khan]

One idea. What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know that.

[Will van der Sanden]

I've been, I've been learning how to, or trying to learn how to play the guitar since I was probably 17. In a number of times I've tried it and failed. But yeah, I'll, I'll keep on trying.

[Omar Khan]

I've got a guitar right here. It's probably like similar, it's been, we're talking about well over a decade and I'm, I'm still like on like a first couple of chords or something. So it's, it's been really, really a terrible, terrible thing. And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

[Will van der Sanden]

For me, music. Both. Well, to just listening on Spotify especially and, but live going to concerts and going a holiday traveling with my, my family.

[Omar Khan]

Cool. All right, well, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure. Kind of unpacking the story and kind of sharing that journey over the last nine, almost 10 years. If people want to check out Duck Soup, they can go to Dux, which is d u x-soup.com and if folks want to get in touch with you, it's not on LinkedIn. What's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

[Will van der Sanden]

Well, you can email me just. It's Willucksoup.com yeah, I'm always happy to talk to anyone in the. Yeah. About possible businesses or just other things, as long as you don't try to sell me anything.

[Omar Khan]

All right, cool. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure and I wish you and the team the best of success.

[Will van der Sanden]

Thank you. Thank you for having me over.

[Omar Khan]

My pleasure. Cheers. All right. This episode was brought to you by Attio, the next generation of CRM. ATIO is powerful, easily configured and deeply intuitive. You can set it up in less than a minute and in seconds of syncing your email and calendar, you'll see all your relationships in one place, all enriched with valuable data. What's more, you can also build zapier style automations, get powerful reports and seamlessly handle any go to market motion from PLG to sales led. Attio is designed for the next era of companies like yours. So it's time to say Goodbye to inflexible one size fits all CRMs and join industry leaders like 11 Labs. Replicate, modal and more to scale your startup to the next level. You can try Attio for [e-mail] that's attio.com. remember those development headaches we talked about? Look, building software shouldn't be a worrisome experience. Innovation should be fun. That's where Axle Hub comes in. They've been building software for 10 years, but here's what makes them different. You'll work directly with Phil, their CEO and technical leader. No middlemen, no managing multiple developers. Phil guides the entire process and personally oversees your product. Think of him as your technical co founder, minus the equity stake. He brings his expert team to build everything right from day one. Want to focus on your business instead of managing developers? Visit axlehub. Com. That's A x e L H u B com.