437: Countly: Building a Privacy-First SaaS Without VC Funding - with Onur Alp Soner

Summary

Podcast Summary: The SaaS Podcast - Episode 437: Countly: Building a Privacy-First SaaS Without VC Funding

Host: Omar Khan
Guest: Onur Alp Soner, Founder and CEO of Countly
Release Date: April 3, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 437 of The SaaS Podcast, host Omar Khan engages in a deep conversation with Onur Alp Soner, the visionary founder and CEO behind Countly—a privacy-first product analytics platform. Without relying on venture capital funding, Onur shares the journey of building a successful, bootstrapped SaaS business that prioritizes data ownership and user privacy.

Origins of Countly

Onur's entrepreneurial journey began in 2013 while he was employed at Huawei. Recognizing the growing concerns around data privacy, he, along with his co-founders, decided to develop a self-hosted mobile analytics tool without extensive market validation. “[We] trusted our gut and started building,” Onur recounts (02:06).

Within six months, they launched a basic MVP as an open-source project. This bold move paid off when a blog post Onur authored landed on Hacker News’ front page, attracting significant attention from major corporations like Intel even before an enterprise version was available.

Early Challenges and Learning Curves

Transitioning from a corporate job to a full-time startup was fraught with challenges. The initial years were "messy," as Onur describes (03:04). The team grappled with fundamental aspects such as contracts, sales strategies, and managing custom feature requests. Their first foray into a SaaS model faltered due to a lack of differentiation and alignment with their privacy-centric vision.

A pivotal moment came when tensions between co-founders escalated, nearly derailing the entire venture. Onur reflects, “We learned to set boundaries, trust our vision, and eventually gave SaaS another shot with a fresh approach that stayed true to our values” (03:04).

Embracing Privacy as a Differentiator

Countly's commitment to privacy has been its cornerstone from inception. Onur emphasizes, “We help companies capture, analyze and act on first-party data... without relying on third-party tracking or giving up control of their data” (04:59). This focus became increasingly relevant with the advent of AI, as companies now require substantial, high-quality data that they fully control.

Attracting Enterprise Customers Through Open Source

The strategic decision to release Countly as an open-source platform was instrumental in attracting enterprise clients. Onur explains, “Our open-source perspective contributed to these large companies finding us themselves” (12:51). A notable early success was securing Intel as a paid customer, who approached Countly after evaluating their robust, open-source SDKs and transparent development practices.

Navigating the Enterprise Sales Cycle

Engaging with large enterprises presented its own set of hurdles. Onur shares, “They came in with high expectations and broad customization demands that didn’t match our scale at the time” (17:40). Initially, the small team struggled to meet these demands without sufficient compensation. This experience underscored the importance of expectation management and valuing not just the software but the expertise and strategic support provided to clients.

The Co-Founder Breakup

A significant challenge arose from a misalignment in visions between Onur and his co-founder, leading to a painful separation. Onur reflects on the importance of compatibility beyond professional skills, stating, “You need to be really compatible in a personality manner as well” (41:16). The prolonged period of unresolved tensions ultimately forced them to part ways, impacting the company’s dynamics and highlighting the crucial need for early and honest communication in partnerships.

Lessons Learned and Strategic Shifts

Through these trials, Onur learned critical lessons about maintaining a clear product vision and setting boundaries with clients. He emphasizes the necessity of:

• Expectation Management: Ensuring clients understand the scope and value beyond just the software.
• Valuing Expertise: Recognizing that enterprise clients seek not only software solutions but also strategic partnership and support.
• Preserving Core Values: Staying true to their privacy-first mission, even when faced with lucrative but misaligned opportunities.

These insights guided Countly’s evolution, steering the company away from overextending resources and towards a more sustainable growth model focused on privacy and data ownership.

Launching Countly Flex: A Renewed SaaS Approach

Countly's second attempt at a SaaS model, Countly Flex, was designed to cater to smaller organizations without compromising their privacy ethos. Unlike traditional multi-tenant SaaS platforms, Flex allows users to deploy dedicated servers tailored to their needs, ensuring data remains under their control in chosen locations. Onur explains, “Flex is not like a traditional SaaS where it's a shared environment... it’s a dedicated server” (36:27).

This approach capitalizes on the increasing regulatory demands and the necessity for data ownership in the age of AI, effectively distinguishing Countly from competitors like Google Analytics by offering unparalleled control and privacy.

The Lightning Round: Quick Insights from Onur

Towards the end of the episode, Omar hosts a lightning round, extracting valuable nuggets from Onur:

• Best Business Advice Received: Onur recalls advice from a San Francisco VC: “You have to do way more chest beating like a gorilla” (49:48), emphasizing the need for confident self-promotion in competitive markets.

• Recommended Book: Deep Work by Cal Newport, highlighting the importance of focused, meaningful work amidst distractions (51:13).

• Attribute of a Successful Founder: Resilience. Onur believes that the ability to withstand the inevitable ups and downs is paramount for founders (52:47).

• Favorite Productivity Habit: Achieving a sense of accomplishment daily by targeting and completing at least one meaningful task (54:05).

• Passionate Project Idea: Developing a game integrated with AI advancements, showcasing Onur’s creative pursuits outside his professional life (55:30).

• Fun Fact: Onur is an avid fan of the Harry Potter series, having watched the entire saga over 80 times (56:19).

• Personal Passion: His family and a deep interest in mechanical wristwatches, drawing parallels between watchmaking and adapting to technological advancements like AI (57:03).

Conclusion

Onur Alp Soner's journey with Countly serves as an inspiring narrative for SaaS entrepreneurs aiming to build sustainable, privacy-centric businesses without external funding. His experiences underscore the importance of staying true to core values, effective client communication, and the resilience needed to navigate the complex landscape of startup growth.

For those interested in learning more about Countly or connecting with Onur, visit countly.com or reach out via email at [e-mail].

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Note: This summary exclusively focuses on the core content of the episode, omitting advertisements and promotional segments to provide a comprehensive overview of the insightful discussions between Omar Khan and Onur Soner.

Transcript

[Omar Khan]

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[Onur Soner]

In this episode I took to honor Alp Soner, the founder and CEO of Countly, a privacy first product analytics platform. In 2013, Onar was working a corporate job when he and a couple of co founders decided to build a self hosted mobile analytics tool. They didn't do much validation, just trusted their gut and started building. Six months later they shipped a simple MVP and put it out as an open source project. That one move changed everything. A blog post ONR wrote hit the front page of Hacker news and suddenly a couple of big companies, including intel, were reaching out, asking for an enterprise version before they'd even built one. ONR decided to quit his job to go full time while his co founders stayed in their jobs a bit longer. And like a lot of early stage startups, their first few years were messy. They didn't have contracts, they didn't know how to sell, and said yes to every custom request, often without charging enough. Their first attempt at SaaS didn't work either.

[Omar Khan]

It looked just like the competition.

[Onur Soner]

There was no differentiation and it didn't align with their privacy first vision. And then things got even harder. Tensions with a co founder boiled over into a painful breakup that nearly killed the business. But Honor stuck with it. He learned to set boundaries, trust his vision, and eventually gave SaaS another shot with a fresh approach that stayed true to their values. Today, Countly is a bootstrapped 40 person team spread across 12 countries, pulling in seven figures in ARR and serving brands like BMW, Coca Cola, AWS and Roche. In this episode you'll learn how Honor used open source to attract enterprise customers without doing any outbound sales. What he learned the hard way about managing expectations and pricing with early enterprise clients why being Bootstrapped helped Countly stay true to its vision even when growth was slow. We talk about what caused the co founder breakup and honors advice for handling those situations before it's too late, and how Countly turned a failed SaaS attempt into a successful second act by doubling down on privacy and data ownership. So hope you enjoy it. Onur, welcome to the show.

Great to be here.

Omer, do you have a favorite quote? Something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?

I do actually and we can do a full podcast about just this quote. You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop. So this is a quote by Rumi, a 13th century Persian mystic. The way I interpret this for business is wisdom, purpose and clarity. They are not out there, they are within you.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Onur Soner]

So I think we have to look more within ourselves.

I love those deep quotes.

You're right.

We could talk about that for hours. Probably not as intelligently as Rumi, but you know. All right, so tell us about Countly. What does the product do, who's it for and what's the main problem you're.

Helping to solve so calmly Is a privacy first digital analytics and customer experience platform. So we help companies capture, analyze and act on first party data across mobile web desktop connected devices without relying on third party Tracking or giving up the control of their data. I guess the biggest differentiator would be the focus on privacy. So we have been privacy focused since the beginning 12 years ago. And the way we see it is in order for the companies to really not only value the privacy of their users, but the importance of data is accelerating even further with the introduction of AI and everything else. So we want companies to own that data, not give it away so to third parties or risk losing the data being stuck in those third party platforms.

And give us a sense of some of the customers that you have. I know you've got some major brands using Countly.

Yeah, of course. So Countly has three editions Omer. So we actually have an open source version, Countly Lite. We have a Salesurp SaaS version called Countly Flex and and we have our flagship product currently Enterprise. So throughout the ecosystem we are serving thousands of small and big companies. But I guess on the count enterprise side we have some great names, for example BMW, Coca Cola, aws, Roche. We have worked with really large organizations throughout the history of the company and.

[Omar Khan]

Give us a sense of the size of the business.

[Onur Soner]

Where are you in terms of revenue, new size of team.

So we are a 40 person team. So we are from 12 countries at the moment. So we are a 7 figure ARR business. We are fully bootstrapped, didn't raise any VC money so far. I'm not really thinking of doing so going further.

Yeah, great. So the business was founded 2013. Where did the idea come from? What were you doing at the time?

Actually I was working in Huawei and actually I was working not with my co founders but we got connected somehow and there was this idea of building itself hosted mobile analytics platform. So we were working in large companies. So I guess it was apparent the privacy aspect of data being exploited too much and we couldn't wrap our heads around okay, how do companies agree to giving away their data to these large companies, to these third parties? This can't be the future. So the future should be like these companies should own the data. And that's actually the core reason why we started Countly and why we still believe in the same thing. So companies should own their own data.

Okay, so you got the idea, you see that there's a potential opportunity. But how did you go out and validate the idea? Did you start kind of building something internally at the time or was this more about let's do some market research and let's figure out if this really is a valid concern.

I guess we just Jumped into it. Omer.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So there wasn't much of a validation. So we loved the idea. Okay, let's just build this and see the reaction. I mean of course the count that we are talking about 12 years ago, we are talking about a very basic self hostable analytics platform that just works for iOS and Android applications. That's it, right? I mean pretty simple. Mvp. But it became quite popular actually back in the day. I mean there is still sourceforge, I don't know, I'm sure you know the sites. I mean we weren't using GitHub back in the day or even Git for that. For that reason we were using svn, the older ones in the audience will remember. But essentially it became quite popular quite quickly. We weren't really expecting that demand and actually we always had the plan of next to the open source version, we all have an enterprise edition. Without being able to do that, the first customers started asking for an enterprise edition with more features, support, hands on, kind of dedicated teams for them. So I guess the market pulled the product from us in the very beginning. I mean things aren't that easy right now, but 12 years ago that was the story.

Okay, so you decided to build this open source version and just put it out there. How long did it take you to ship something and get it in the hands of potential users? And once it was out there, how long did it take for these enterprise type requirements to start showing up?

I guess from idea to shipping the first version, I think somewhere like six months or so. Like the very first MEP type of version I think it took like six months or so. But the enterprise version probably took another six months. So in a year we had an open source version. I mean there wasn't much of a difference between open source and enterprise actually enterprise had just like one additional feature and support on top of the open source edition of currently.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Onur Soner]

And were you guys still working full time? Was this like evenings and weekends thing? Or did you, once you started building it, you decided hey there's enterprise opportunity, let's jump in and go full time.

In the very beginning, yeah, it started as a weekend and after work sort of thing for a little bit, but then I immediately jumped into it. So I quit my job, I had a little bit of money, so okay, I'm very young, there's nothing to lose really. Let me just try this out. If it doesn't work, I will just go back to my corporate job for that matter. So my co founders had a little bit more commitments than I did. So they didn't immediately quit their jobs. So they stayed a little bit, but still supporting me and everything. But yeah, I guess chose to just jump into it immediately, given the age advantage back in the day, I guess.

Yeah. Okay, great. So putting the open source version out there on sourceforge, that was a great distribution platform at the time that people are discovering this and everyone's kind of downloading it and starting to use it. How did the enterprise opportunity. Because you said it was your intention to ultimately build an enterprise version of this anyway, that's what you had been thinking. But those enterprise customers started turning up. How did that happen? And who were some of those initial enterprise companies that you started having these discussions with?

Great question. So after launching the open source version, I guess we tried to do a little bit of content marketing. I remember I had a blog post that I sent to Hacker News and it got to the first page and there was a lot of attention. It was about why I chose the technologies I chose and not some other technologies back in the day.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So talking about the getting out of comfort zone and trying new stuff for your projects and I guess not only that, but also the overall, we were pretty serious on writing proper documentation. We had, you know, a blog, so to speak. So like that content area. So I guess all of that plus the open source perspective contributed to these large companies finding us themselves.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So we didn't really go to any large company ourselves. We were lucky, I guess. One of the first paid customers we had paying customers was Intel.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

And they found us through the open source version because they had this developer platform and they were looking to add analytics into that platform. They came like, okay, guys, this is great, but we need more features. We have a enterprise version of this. We didn't actually at the time. So I mean, we had the plan. I say it was in the works, but the product wasn't really available. So I guess, you know, the first one to three customers reached out themselves and there wasn't even a product to sell yet.

So I'm curious because at that point the product wasn't doing a lot right, because you'd only been spending about six months part time building this. And for some of these larger companies to come along, you know, I think there's often this tendency to just say, let's build this in house. Right? We can do this ourselves. And so why do you think that there was enough interest for them to reach out to you and kind of work with you to get more features into this versus trying to just go off and build something in house, I think.

I mean we sure had certain companies insisting to build in house after having conversations with us.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

But I would say the smarter ones, because especially mobile analytics is very complicated.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So unlike web.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

For web you have a JavaScript SDK and everything is JavaScript based, right. So it's not platform dependent, it's JavaScript, it's cross platform, it works in every browser. But with mobile, for every platform, you need to have an SDK specifically created for that platform.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So I guess the enterprises that know what they are doing, they kind of understood very well this challenge. So we can't possibly do an Android SDK and iOS SDK. Then like these other frameworks started to pop up. React, native, flutter, like, you know, there are a lot of different tools and platforms and frameworks to build these applications for. So I guess that was an early win for us. We were mobile first, right? So we had those SDKs ready. They were fully open source by the way, they were MIT licensed. We wanted the companies to see what we are capable of under the hood.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Onur Soner]

So just look at the SDK, what we've done, how we are maintaining it. It's fully transparent and visible on GitHub. So yeah, I would say that was the biggest reason they would choose us versus build. But yeah, I guess this is still a thing. Omer, after 12 years and us spending millions of dollars on building company, we still get that reaction time to time. Why? I can just build this myself. No one can. Doesn't matter the size of a company if this is not your primary focus. There are too many individual bits and pieces that you don't know and you cannot really know without fully focusing on analytics.

Now you mentioned intel being one of your first customers. On the one hand, that's amazing to be able to attract a customer like that. But as we know, when you're early stages of a startup, you're bootstrapped, you're a small team. Having a big customer turn up with requirements can also become a nightmare very quickly. And so what happened with you guys and working with them?

That's exactly what happened actually, Omer. So they came in with high expectations, not just intel, right? Probably all of the first 10 customers, they came with the same expectations, like high expectations, broad customization demands and a pace that didn't really match our scale. So at this point we are talking about the team of three for max. So of course we couldn't really say no.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

Because imagine like okay, you took the risk of quitting your job you have this software and then intel comes in saying, I want to pay you guys. So I didn't have that business mentality really. Like I met developer by background myself, so we couldn't say no. So we accepted most of those things. We didn't get paid enough. And now thinking about all the stuff we did for them. But I guess after the first 10 or so mistakes, let's put it that way, we learned to stand our ground. So holding firm to a product vision. Obviously this doesn't mean we didn't listen to the customers. We listened to them, but there was a larger vision and if what we are hearing doesn't really align in any way with that vision, we wouldn't do it. And we explained or tried to explain to the customers and they understood. So I think that worked pretty well and that's what we do right now. So still, in enterprise business customization is inevitable because in a way that's the value you bring to the table. Like Google Analytics will not change their product for you or add an additional feature for you most likely, but we can make that happen and suddenly you become very important for that company. We still do that, but again, not in the sense that I remember. We used to do like, okay, we do analytics. Can you add push notifications? Sure. We are talking about like an entire business, not a small feature now. Not anymore, luckily.

Yeah, I mean it's hard in the early days, right, because you've got an opportunity, you want to delight those potential customers, you want to keep them around. And so it's tempting to say okay, it's kind of deep down we know it's not on strategy, it's not part of the vision, but we could do it, right?

I mean it's still not easy. Omer. I would say so you have this big opportunity from this customer, you know, they can't, you can't make this usable for other customers. And like, like, you know, like still there is that perspective, I would say. But yeah, early on I think everyone should be mindful of not overdoing it. I mean, sure, I'm not saying don't listen to your customers, they don't know, etc. Of course they know the market, they know what they need, etc. But those early day stuff can kill the company early on.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So we were lucky, I guess from several angles including not having VC money because certain things took us longer to build properly. And I can't imagine a VC sticking with us for like three years until we figured this out. And you know, we had that time.

So at, at that point you had the open source version which people could download and self host, you had this enterprise version which enterprises could install behind their own firewalls or whatever. How long did it take for you to get to those first 10 customers? I assume they were all enterprise customers. And you mentioned that, hey, we did a lot of work for intel and other people and in hindsight we probably didn't get paid as much as we should have for the value we provided. What did you learn from that and what did you do differently with the next few customers that came along?

I guess. How long did it take? We are talking about 12 years ago. Omer, My memory is a little bit not super clear, but I think I would say the first 10 might have actually took like one year to close.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Onur Soner]

Because one problem with enterprise software is also the sales cycle, right? There's contracts to review, read. I mean I guess we didn't even have a contract as far as I remember. When intel reached out, right? Like suddenly there is panic, okay, you know, let's find the lawyer, prepare a contract, how can we afford the lawyer, the money, like okay, you know, figure something out, etc. So we also delayed, like we weren't ready for that sales cycle to begin with. But also of course, you know, large companies have their own processes, you know, had to go through all of them. So I think a fair estimate would be a full year to close the first 10. So I think what we have learned from the first 10 is definitely that expectation management and charging for not only the software. So I guess that's the biggest learning for me. So I mean as a developer, like a technical person, I guess there is this tendency to think about what you're selling is just the product, just the software. But in these kind of enterprise contexts you are selling the know how experience and you know, the contributions you are making to the strategy of the company on the other side.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

In some occasions this is actually more valuable than the software you are selling.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Onur Soner]

So I think companies like intel made us realize this a little bit better. So that's why we still to this day we don't have public pricing for Enterprise Edition. And the reason is we want to understand the situation as much as possible. How much help do you need from us? Do we need to be there handholding you or you already have an analytics culture, you know what to do and what you're after is just the software. There's a big difference between the two. So I think that's what we had to learn early on. Because if we continued like that, we would be probably dead in a few months. That, okay, there's not enough money. This is not really, I mean, great, of course, working with intel and the likes of intel, but at the end of the day, this needs to grow and expand into other stuff. And yeah, that's how we evolved or what we learned at the end of the day.

[Omar Khan]

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[Onur Soner]

And were these first 10 customers all inbound? Was it just from a combination of either discovering the open source or by coming across the content that you were publishing, like the hack and use example you gave?

Yeah, exactly. Omer. To this day, I guess, you know, we will probably talk about this later on. I don't think we are great at outbound still. So inbound. I guess that stuck. That, that stuck with us. Like, okay, we are inbound. We are organic. You know, of course, being bootstrapped has. This has its limitations and certain way of thinking. Like, you know, 12 years is a very long duration. So we had to really internalize the idea of whatever we do needs to be, you know, having an roi, like, immediately. Like, we don't have two years to, you know, collect the results of a marketing campaign or a cult outreach. So I guess, you know, we had our mistakes, of course, in terms of outbound, but. But inbound was the primary thing then and even now.

And the content stuff, the hacker news example was one. The blog post that you mentioned. I know you were. You were writing content, publishing content, and just sharing what you were learning. When I talk to founders who are in those early stages, one of the things they often struggle with is they don't know what to write about. They don't think it's particularly useful. So they're like, why bother? And often it almost feels like there's some overthinking about who am I trying to write to, who's the buyer, how do I reach them, all of this stuff and you can almost get a lot of analysis paralysis and end up doing nothing. And it sounded like you were taking a slightly more simplified approach, which was, let's just share what we're learning along the way and hopefully somebody will find it useful. Am I oversimplifying that or was there some more thought about target audience and that stuff?

Definitely. So I think, yes, we weren't really overthinking about it, but if I started now, I would also maybe go into that overthinking route. Right now, social media and everything is a different game than, you know, compared to like 12 years ago. So we should always, you know, keep that in mind. But even now, like, I mean, okay, like I, I also go into this time to time, like, should I share things on LinkedIn? How frequently? Like, whatever, just don't think about it, right? So like, you, you know something, maybe everyone knows about it doesn't matter, just go at it, share it, write an article. I mean, don't make AI, write your blog posts or just write as much as you can with what you know. That's pretty much what we did. I mean, you know, I was what, 20 something years old at the time. I didn't really know much, right? So I only had like three years of prior work experience. And you know, the first thing we wrote was actually a proper documentation, right? Just talking about the product. Not like technically as in, okay, this is what this dropdown does, but rather if you are a product person, this is how you can use this feature for like our documentation was very broad, not only covering, okay, these are the API endpoints or the ui and here is an explanation of the ui, but rather if you come to countly and see the dashboards, what can you do here? How can it be useful for you? Basically we wrote about everything we can think of. And then the block, you know the one I mentioned about Hacker News, I'm not a particularly, you know, especially at the time I wasn't any sort of expert in any of those technologies. But the, the point of the, the post was getting out of your comfort zone, right? I, I was a C programmer back in the day and currently was built on Node JS and MongoDB and before that I guess I tried Python and some other stuff and I wrote about like, okay, I'm not comfortable with any of those stuff, but it's okay.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Onur Soner]

So that was the post, right? So there is almost always a unique aspect of these founder stories. You face something, there's an obstacle, right? There is something unique to you for sure, right? So don't try to be like those bigger influencers, I guess, is a good way to think about it. You don't need to be famous from day one, two, three. I mean, @ some, you know, maybe a few months, maybe a few years, no one will care about you. But at some point, if you're doing the right stuff, yeah, people will notice what you do. So I think that should be the thinking, but it's not, you know, I guess it's easier said than done, sort of.

[Omar Khan]

I think a useful tip that I.

[Onur Soner]

Came across was that when people are reluctant to write because they don't feel like they're an expert is maybe just reframe it and think about if you were writing for yourself one year ago, what do you wish you could teach yourself? What's the thing that might help you that's probably useful enough without feeling like you have to come across an expert?

Definitely. I mean, with that thinking, I shouldn't be here. In your podcast, so you had guests that had built unicorns. Why am I speaking with you? Because I have unique angles to share that probably they didn't, you know, face. Or maybe it will be useful to a specific person in the audience. Same with writing. I just share whatever you can.

Yeah, yeah, totally. Now you, you also now have this, you mentioned this SaaS version of the product, the, the Flex version of, of Countly. And, and you've been working on that for, for a couple of years now. You, you tried to build a SaaS version before and that failed originally. Can you talk about that? Like, what happened? Why did it not work out the first time?

Yeah, of course, of course. So actually the first time was very close to. I now question that decision. But after launching Enterprise Edition, like a couple of months later, we launched the SaaS version too. So we didn't wait like, okay, SaaS, like, you know, won't be a thing, but rather we just wanted to go full in.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So enterprise, open Source and then SaaS version. The problem was first of all small team and distraction. So that's the biggest problem because here you have found a clear angle that's going to like product market fit direction very rapidly, which is like the enterprise and open source combo in the SaaS area especially because we are talking about a privacy centric solution. We didn't really differentiate enough. So what is the difference of currently from Mixpanel, from Google Analytics? Nothing. So it's a shared environment, It's a shared SaaS service. There is no, no separation of data, there's no security feature. Other than the normal security stuff everyone does like encryption and all that. So basically it quickly turned into, I mean it started making money, right? So that part, I mean not a huge amount, but we immediately had paying customers. Very quickly it got to a certain point, but then it couldn't past that point, right? So we were stuck at some MRR and it never really went above that number. And the reason I think is again we were the small player in the market. We didn't really fully put much thought into building Can't Be Cloud. It was called Can't Be Cloud back in the day by the way.

Creative name.

Creative. Yeah, exactly. So we decided like, okay, this is not really aligned with this privacy perspective we are trying to pursue. And we can't really differentiate content with the cloud version right now. So we killed it at that point to focus fully on enterprise and open source combination.

Got it.

And why we did it again. Maybe I can also talk about that. So we wanted to do it again, right? Because with Enterprise Edition there is always the problem of that kind of business model only works well if you are dealing with large. I mean the customer doesn't need to be large per se, but the contract value needs to be large because we don't have thousands of enterprise customers. So it will be in hundreds for any player in the market. But because, I mean because of all the after sales interaction, because of the way how closely you are supposed to work with the customer, it's on purpose built that way. So this will be a limited operation. But at the same time, Calendly is a pretty capable product, especially now, maybe not 12 years ago, but now you have analytics, we have engagement capabilities like you can show surveys or send push notifications. And all of this is in a single platform. So this is super valuable even for small companies. So we were like, okay, we need to be able to give this to smaller organizations. So you don't need to be like a Fortune 500 to make use of these features. But at the same time we wanted to preserve our privacy perspective. Thus this time we did it differently. So Flex is not like a traditional SaaS where it's like a shared environment and everyone is using that shared singular database, but rather just like a cloud provider. When you go into Flex, you create your own countless server. So it's still a dedicated server. You choose the location. Okay, I want a server in Germany, Frankfurt. And we launch your server there and you start using your server that's dedicated only to you. So we basically preserved the story. So this is still about privacy we still want you to own your data and keep it in a location or region you want, et cetera. So that's why we wanted to go and try it again because we know clearly SaaS is a booming market and we don't have anything there in that market. So we wanted to basically make count available for a larger audience especially preserving our core values of privacy being, you know, data ownership, centric, etc.

So it's not a true sort of multi tenant type SaaS. But you're basically making it easier for people to self host, right? Because you're saying you know the Flex version rather than you taking the code and figuring all that stuff out. It's almost like being able to go to like a digital ocean and just do a one click and it spins up something for you.

Yeah, exactly. DigitalOcean was a big inspiration actually. So the way how it's easy to launch a droplet and get started with WordPress, whatever, the same idea, I mean we could have launched I guess in these marketplaces of cloud providers, but then we want to have a little bit more control over the whole setup. So it's not just a singular solution you launch, but rather there are a lot of things you can do within the Flex ecosystem itself.

Now I've seen other analytics products out there that also talk about privacy, but they, they, when they're talking about privacy, it's from like a different perspective. Like you know, we're not going to use your data or like Google might be using it with Google Analytics. But when you talk about privacy you're like being hardcore. You're just saying hey, it's going to be a, a completely dedicated environment. It's your data, you control it and so on. And so when you talked about doing this the first time and not being able to have a clear differentiator versus some of these other products that were out there. Was this the one thing that you decided to get behind and did it resonate with the market? Was it a matter of just doubling down on privacy and creating that differentiator for the product?

This time the topic of privacy Omer, is an interesting one because on one hand no one seems to care about it unless Google, Facebook, whatever does an oopsie about losing customer data. But you know, most of the, at least back in the day, right, 12 years ago, it's super, it was super different than how it is right now. It was like, you know, okay, privacy like sure, like I don't really care, but tell me. But now it's mostly regulation driven thinking I would say right there are all these things like, you know, GDPR in Europe, California privacy act like there are multiple different versions of this within the US in different states. Then Middle east has its own regulation, then Turkey introduces a similar thing, then China. So this quickly spread and it's a regulation driven thing. But I think especially in the last few years the value is even more understood because for a topic like AI, I guess we owe that to AI. You need enormous amounts of structured data data because AI is not magic. So it needs to be trained. You need to have proper data for your internal, external, whatever AI applications you're trying to develop. So I think apart from data privacy, the ownership became the important aspect. So I guess this goes hands in hand. The ownership like me having direct access to my raw data or keeping it close to my AI model so that I can just feed whatever information comes into my model immediately in real time, or instead of trying to use the API of Google Analytics to fetch the data and then get limited by bandwidth. And not only that, but also the depth of information that you can collect in a tool like Google Analytics is pretty limited compared to not only us, but the wider product analytics market. So I think the demand for quality data really made the data ownership concept more and more important. And as a side effect, I guess customers or end users, they get to enjoy the privacy aspect. I can't really say like customers or large companies care about privacy and that's why they self deploy. It has to be something in IT for them. And that topic is right now data ownership. So having direct access, unlimited access and control over the data.

I want to talk about founders or co founders. You mentioned your two co founders. And so in the early days, very early days, there was like three of you. But once the dust settled and as you grew the business, it really was really just two of you who kind of ran the business together and grew it. And then we were talking earlier about a dispute between the two of you that almost killed the company. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. So I guess for us as the business grew, right? So I guess this is quite common in every company, co founder disputes, etc. But for us there is an added dimension. Currently is quite an old business, right? 12 years, that's not a very common thing to see it okay, 12 year old startup and we are still calling ourselves a startup. So I think over those years, you know, I never believed in people when they, they told me like okay, co founder relationship is like a marriage, be careful who you start the company with. Not like be careful, like that's a bad person. But rather you need to be really compatible with each other, right? You know, beyond what you initially imagined. So it's not just about like, okay, I know technical side, this guy knows sales side, we will be a great team. Not really, it doesn't work that way. You need to be compatible in a personality manner as well. Right. So the vision, I mean that compatibility is I think the most important thing in the long run. Especially after like five years, things start to get a little bit different, right? So you have been together forever, it feels like forever, and you start to notice or pick up onto like these individual things you notice on the other side sort of thing. So I guess ultimately we started having different visions for the company and for ourselves. So this misalignment started to affect execution, decision making. Like this tension started becoming visible across the larger team, which is something you would want as the last thing to happen, right? Because people look up to you like you are the founders of the company and you're fighting with each other. So that doesn't really work out. So yeah, I mean, at some point I wish we handled the situation, I guess cleanly. It didn't end up clean, unfortunately, you know. Yeah, that unfortunately, like we broke up and I, I remained in the company. Of course I'm not talking about like, you know, he's kicked out, didn't get anything, etc, so of course there was, you know, compensation and everything. But I wish I could have kept a relationship, right? So I guess if I look back and question, okay, how could I have kept the relationship? I think we waited too much to address the apparent issues, right? So we always thought like, okay, let's focus on building the product, the business. But we didn't really build, build our relationship. We just, you know, put under the rug all the problems and then after a very long period of time those things come up, right? And at that point we still tried to fix, but unfortunately it was too late to go back to where we were.

When you look back now, how long do you feel this was going on? It's like when you're kind of going through the process, you don't really sort of, maybe you have less awareness until it gets to a point where it gets really bad. And then maybe there's this three month period or six month period where things get intense. But when you look back you go, honestly there were signs of this like two years ago, three years ago that there was something that was not working. But we tried to kind of, as you said, like Brush it under the carpet and just move on.

I think before the peak, I would say things started like three, four years ago. It already started to not be like the same relationship anymore.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So I think, I mean, of course we ignored the signs, but like, but, but anything is a sign, right? So you have to remember like, okay, you know how, like you have to look into how are you really resolving the conflicts, for example, are you really resolving them or are you just like someone, you know, decides on the next step and you go with that person's decision and not talk about what the other person is thinking?

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So I guess we had many of those and you know, like many other topics, of course. But yeah, I think this is definitely not like a it immediately happened kind of topic. So I think the final, final stages are. It doesn't take too long. So I would say for us it was maybe six months, three months, three to six months. But yeah, like there is a, like four year history before those final.

If you were back in those days, in the early days stages when you realized that there was some potential issue, or maybe somebody's listening to this who's in a similar situation right now that maybe things aren't quite working with their co founder or co founders and they're trying to ignore it, the outcome might still be the same. But if there was one thing maybe you could have done back then to at least get to a resolution or closure faster, is there anything that you would have done differently?

Definitely, I think I would have. I think, I mean I, I was more, I guess I, I was sugarcoating things more back in the day, I would say I. Sugarcoating as in, okay, I'm sure he didn't think that way or I'm sure he didn't mean that. So basically without speaking to the person, I made my conclusions in the most positive way and that's how I continued essentially going forward. But I think I would recommend having those harder conversations as soon as you notice something is off. I don't wait for something to happen that's already a very bad stage. Like I can tell you that breakup period probably took like eight months from my time in terms of emotionally not being able to work. And I don't know whether we will be able to actually solve the problem. So that could have killed the company because at that point no one really owns the company. What happens? So I think initially addressing that, it would have been better if we had those hard conversations, even if we fought in those early signs of conflict or misalignment. It would have been a better result. So I think basically have that those crucial conversations very early on. I don't wait for anything significant to happen would be but I would change. I guess I apply to that to everything right now. So even with the people I work, I try to be to the point and concise when it comes to those critical conversations. Because this is the same with every relationship or like any team member you will have in the company. Don't wait until that significant one event. Just talk about the topic immediately.

There's probably a lot more we could unpack for the last 12 years of building this business, but I think this is probably a good point for us to. To wrap up. So let's get on to the lightning round. I've got seven quick fire questions for you.

Sure.

[Omar Khan]

All right.

[Onur Soner]

What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received?

I still remember to this date. Right. So a famous VC in San Francisco. So in the very beginning we were speaking with some VCs to understand the market. He told me you have to do way more chest beating like a gorilla.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So he was, he talked me into like, okay, this is what we do in San Francisco. And that's one of the primary differences. Everyone here is a great marketer. They will talk about things that they don't even have yet and they will sell it to you and you have this great thing but you don't talk about it enough. Was I think, I mean, is it like a super unknown advice? Not really. It's very obvious thing. But I still remember the gorilla reference and how it really captures the way you should do it very properly.

Yeah. And I think especially for maybe founders in Europe or other potential places where culturally it's not normal to do that kind of chest beating. Right. But once you're in the US market, it's almost like you kind of almost come across as underselling yourself. What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

Yeah, I think I would recommend Deep Work by Carl Newport Omer. Right. Not that I agree with every single word in the book, but I think focus is an aspect we are more and more forgetting. So we are all over the place. We want to do everything now. So we are not focusing on that one thing we should be really focusing about. And I think I usually work that way. But that book kind of reminded me the importance of having like a mentality around really dedicating time to do your deep work, meaningful work versus the everyday tasks. So, you know, not a very, I guess, deep read But I would still recommend to anyone in startup world, business or creative work, I think they'll find something they can relate to.

Yeah, yeah, I totally get that. I think that's, that's a great book. And also I found that, you know, my natural mode is to be kind of almost this ADHD mind which tries to do like 100 things in a day. And the rare moments where I'm able to just say I'm going to focus on one thing in one day and just do something meaningful, it is so rewarding to be able to do that. But it's also a very hard switch to make mentally if you're not wired to be able to do that. This is definitely great advice. What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

I would say resilience. Omer.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So I guess it doesn't matter if you are the smartest person in the world, you have the best products or you have the best team. It will get tough, right? It will then get better, then it will get tougher, then it will get even better. So this is inevitable. Even if you're OpenAI, this is the story, right? So it doesn't matter if you're small startup or like a super large company. So I would say this journey is nothing to be afraid of, right? So, and I would do it all again if, you know, if I, if I was asked, okay, would you do it all again? But you need to be ready to embrace all the ups and downs, right? So remember, like, I think, sure, there is like the, okay, what's your exit strategy? And you know, we can talk about that, but at the end of the day, exit is just one point and like this is a full journey that you're going through and it will have ups and downs, but you are doing it for the journey. You should be doing it for the journey. And to go through it, you need to be really resilient. I think that's, that will be my 1 pick.

What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

I really don't have one, Omer. But I would say at least I try. Like for me, what works best is even if it's small, I need to feel I accomplished something in that day and I need to go to bed with that feeling and wake up with something I will target that day.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Onur Soner]

So basically it's end to end, filled with some accomplishments and something to do that's meaningful. So I try to keep at least like one thing for the next day. And I kind of, that's My win for the day. As long as I have that back to back, I'm productive. Of course, I can do it all the time. So this, you know, is not 100% schedule. I can follow the moment. I don't have that anymore, you know, especially if you are the founder of the company, like, whatever, you will be dragged into all sorts of different places in the company with customer conversations and everything. And those feel like productive things, but I would say usually they aren't contributing anything. So you just feel productive because you stayed in a meeting for an hour with this random person.

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

I won't tell you exactly. I might still do it, but I think I had before. Currently, I hate this idea for a game, and especially with the advancements in AI, that game would be super nice if done right now with the introduction of AI. So I guess that would be my project. I even drew, like, some pixel art for that game, by the way. It was that serious. I was almost, you know, doing it, and then, you know, calmly happened. So, yeah, that would be my pick.

I'll keep a lookout for it.

Yeah, I'll definitely let you know if I ever do that.

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

Okay, so this. This. I will hit you from a different angle for sure. So I think I have watched the entire Harry Potter like, 10 times. So I feel like that's like. Like the movie series is like eight movies. And like, basically I watched, like, 80 Harry Potter movies in that calculation. So I feel like that's. That's like a reset button. Like, I. I love the concept. Like, I just want to go back to that. Okay, we are starting again, like, the whole story and everything. So, yeah, I would say that's a fun fact.

That is a fun fact. And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

I should mention my kids at this point because if I jump into other things, my wife might be listening. And of course, my wife. So my wife and kids. Not just kids, but I think if we go into a hobby kind of angle, I'm. I'm really obsessed with mechanical wristwatches, especially lately. I would say I'm. I'm. I'm into those, like, for several years now. But I think it's mesmerizing to learn and explore all the inner workings of such complicated watches. And actually, when you think about it, they went through just, like, the tech business. So there was this introduction of the quartz movement, like the first battery powered moment, and suddenly these, these brands, they need to reimagine what they do.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Onur Soner]

Because what they do is not unique anymore. Or it's not like they can only do this masterpiece, but some cheap manufacturer just puts this movement into a watch and it's more accurate than what, what you do as a, as a 100-year-old watch brand.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So basically they need to readjust. So I guess the way I think about is this feels like AI maybe. So like, okay, AI is the quartz movement. So how do you adapt to it? Do you live with it, integrate into what you do, or you try to do a different perspective?

That's an interesting parallel. I never thought of it like that. It's like, what about AI?

Yeah, I guess I'm trying to add everything I think about the AI is part of it. I mean, I'm not really an AI nerd in any way, but what we do, of course, is, is very much into the topic of like data and training and all this stuff. So inevitably that topic is always there.

Totally awesome. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure. If people want to check out Countly, they can go to countly.com. that's count L Y dot com. And if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

I guess, you know, I'm happy to give my email directly oas. So that's my initials OAS at Count Ly.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Onur Soner]

So we actually got the Countecom domain later on. So our first domain was Count Ly, so we still use that for emails. And also I'm on LinkedIn. I'm not super active on X, you know, I mean, I'm not a social media person really for that sense, but yeah, I'm an email person still.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like Cal Newport would be disappointed in you if you were spending too much time on social media, right?

Yes.

All right, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure and I wish you and the team the best of success.

Thank you very much, Amar. It was my pleasure. Thank you.

Cheers.

[Omar Khan]

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