Transcript
Torbjørn Thomsen: All right, and we are going. So today I'm talking to Ben Spack, an Air Force veteran, a developer, operator, founder. You've worked across multiple avenues, Ben, SEO, web development, consulting, project management, startups.
Torbjørn Thomsen: And now you're building builders.to, which is focused on helping builders avoid building a alone, basically, right? And I feel like that's an important thing because a big part of getting something to work is sticking with it long enough to get it to work, right? Like, and so that's what I i feel like builders to is about helping people stay consistent. And, and that's kind of a it's kind of a unique angle. And so I was wondering, when you first realized that the hardest part of the building wasn't just the technical work itself, but the isolation, what kind of happened to trigger that thought?
Ben Spak: Yeah, honestly, the the impetus of this entire project was just a little bit of a revenge play or frustration on my part. I had went and just posted on the Build in Public X community and was like, hey, you know, I had tried multiple posts and most of the mods just slapped them down. So, you know, typically it was just like, hey, what are you guys doing? What are you working on That sort of thing.
Ben Spak: And a lot of those posts got slapped down. So I'm like, all right, screw it. i'm going to create my own community. From there, decided to create my own community, and I realized, well, what's the main or major problem that I have when I first started out as a developer?
Ben Spak: Well, the first problem is getting enough eyeballs on projects, just getting that marketing and that sort of stuff. So I'm like, all right, cool. Let's build a community and then build a launch platform for these folks.
Ben Spak: So that's how it really started off was just a Web2 SaaS launch platform. So now we have about 350 projects and And yeah, we're we're always evolving. i would say right now, especially off of the the recent meeting that we just had, we're primarily going to focus on user reviews and just build help.
Ben Spak: um You know, there are a lot of fantastic technical founders out there, but there are also a lot of like forced entrepreneurs out there that are just getting into vibe coding and don't really understand how to take it from vibe to like production.
Ben Spak: So that's where we're going to be trying to help out that and detailed product reviews.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm-hmm.
Ben Spak: We realized that a lot of folks really struggle with that as well. And the, um, Our initial thought process of getting you know more eyeballs on projects is kind of still present, but I would say less so just because we're um we realized that there really wasn't much value captured in that. A lot of people will just market themselves um and and do outreach themselves anyway. So no sense in charging for it if you know there's no way we can capture value or provide value. So that's that's kind of our thought process at the moment.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Okay. So basically, well, so if I'm hearing you right, it's about supporting each other.
Ben Spak: Exactly, yes.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. And so do you have a sort of a, was there a concrete moment where you realized that that was ah an important thing for you?
Ben Spak: Oh, the support?
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, for you.
Ben Spak: um Yeah, honestly, it's just scratching my own itch. you know As someone who's been a solo developer and solo founder for such a long time, I realized that the only Real times that I stick with a project or when I have co-founders, otherwise I'll just burn myself out going through the, well, I don't want to do sales process. That's what I call it at least.
Ben Spak: It's okay, I can market. No problem. I can build. No problem. And now I need to sell. I don't want to do sales though. ah So I'm finding co-founders and co-builders to really kind of buttress that that weakness and
Torbjørn Thomsen: OK. Yeah.
Ben Spak: Ironically, I'm still doing the majority of the sales and outreach myself. So that's how it goes, though. I mean, you repeat mistakes until you finally get back to that lesson. That's like, okay, I guess you need to sell directly to people.
Ben Spak: Yeah.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right. And sales is kind of hard to avoid, huh?
Ben Spak: Yeah. we We had just discussed today that sales kind of cures all. And that's that's kind of where we're at.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: You know, it's like we made um about 100 bucks this month. And it was honestly just through like personal connections of like, oh, this person already knows me. Sure, I'll give you 50 bucks for XYZ.
Ben Spak: But they're not like active members or anything like that on the platform. So it's just like, okay, we need to rethink this. We need to not just go off of like personal connections for sales, but like build more personal connections with other folks.
Ben Spak: So that's why we're doing, you know, like podcast outreach, why I'm, you know, appearing on podcasts and why we're having people appear on our podcast, just so we can have a meaningful conversation with folks and then try to upsell along the way.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Okay.
Ben Spak: We're using that as ah a sales tactic and it seems to be working pretty well. ah We've also had a couple of notable guests. We've interviewed Robert Scoble, who's been prolific in the X community since its inception, and a couple of YC founders as well. We're hoping to get a ah large catalog of YC founders together for the podcast.
Ben Spak: We just think it's a not only a valuable way to get feedback from them and from YC indirectly, but it's also a target-rich environment. A lot of these people have just received funding and they need help with like product iteration and feedback and that sort of stuff. So um yeah, that's that's our thought process, the moment where we're we're iterating. We're always pivoting though.
Ben Spak: Every single day, we're well, not every single day, but every week we're we're iterating on something and and pivoting in a new direction if we need to.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. What was the last thing you pivoted on
Ben Spak: um Great question. I would say today we just discovered that we're doing way too much for free.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm-hmm.
Ben Spak: and You know, we have a freemium model for folks that are coming on and we are getting them more eyeballs. um But we had... integrated and built in, you know, like a review system, a payment system, a bunch of other stuff.
Ben Spak: And we just realized the payment system isn't there yet. You know, we don't have those daily active users that we need to really build that out. And most projects that get, you know, like sponsors or funding on like say GitHub or Patreon, for example, there's still that personal connection with the person.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: It's not just like, oh, I like this project. I'm going to go fund it. So we were thinking, cred You know, we would have to do a ton of work to try to get micro investors and investors onboarded onto the platform as well to get eyeballs on these projects and finally provide value.
Ben Spak: So we realized that that that feedback loop was just too unmaintainable. You know, we're offering too much for free.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: And, ah you know, it's like, well, we could spend our own reputation trying to connect them with investors, but how do we capture value? How do we actually make money out of that? So instead of taking like a portion of, you know, a company's equity or something like that, we're just like, why don't we just go to like a sales business model?
Ben Spak: So that's been the the recent pivot is from the freemium model to more of a sales focused approach where we're just going to start pushing the the product reviews and the the building help.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Okay. And how are you? How are we? Where are you? You mentioned the pot, you guys have a podcast where you're doing it, but are there any other ways you're you're pushing it?
Ben Spak: Yeah, so X primarily, we have a builder's account. It's BuildersXOfficial or BuildersXOff for official.
Torbjørn Thomsen: hmm.
Ben Spak: And yeah, we just promote um you know consistent changes, you know like whenever we do, like a major update or something, we'll we'll post on there. But we are looking for a head of growth at the moment that will help with like you know additional outreach, top of funnel type stuff.
Ben Spak: um So yeah, it's it's always a work in progress, man, as as I'm sure you know.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, 100%. I'm still very, I'm still very new at it. And for me, it's, it's just a lot of outreach, basically, is what it is, right? A lot of outreach and a lot of prep, right?
Torbjørn Thomsen: But absolutely.
Ben Spak: Yep.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, 100%.
Ben Spak: man.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And so, Ben, I kind of, I was checking out your LinkedIn. And one of the things that kind of caught my attention was your you got discharged from the Air Force more than 10 years ago.
Torbjørn Thomsen: And so you kind of went from this very structured environment and then you went out on your own. And then I'm sure you must have felt that absence of structure after after being discharged.
Ben Spak: Yeah, 2012, 2011, 2012 was very tough for me. um I was very lost on just like what I wanted to do, how I wanted to focus my time and even what career I wanted to go into.
Ben Spak: Um, luckily at the, the end days of my, my time in the air force, I had already considered search engine optimization. I had picked up this book called, SEO secrets by Danny Dover, probably still relevant. If you're into SEO a little bit less. So nowadays because, AEO and all that stuff, but excuse me, um, or AI optimization, whatever it's called nowadays, I think it's AEO. Um,
Torbjørn Thomsen: I was about to ask, so
Ben Spak: yeah um So yeah, i just kind of got started with his stuff. And then ah serendipitous encounter. I was just like browsing Craigslist for SEO type work. um I had moved out to Vegas after living in South Dakota for a few years for the Air Force. I had had an ex, her family was from Vegas. So I'm just like, all right, cool. Not that close with my family right now. Let's go to Vegas and see what it looks like.
Ben Spak: And lived there for a couple of years. Did a meetup called Las Vegas SEO. um I think someone might have picked it up, but I'm not sure if anyone's decided to shoulder that or not. But yeah, did a meetup.com group for a while there. Got some clients that way.
Ben Spak: i Got a couple of partnerships with folks that way too. So that was ah that was kind of my foray into it. And when I was browsing Craigslist, I just happened upon this company that needed SEO help.
Ben Spak: And well, funny story, they wound up being an adult company, which I was not familiar with until the end of the interview. I'm like, well, I'm out of the military. I desperately need a job.
Ben Spak: Here we go. ah
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Ben Spak: So that was a strange experience, man. I'll tell you that. um Because you have like a very... you know, it was a corporate office and it was located away from the, the adult, you know, content aspect of things. So it was just like coming into a normal office, but on a daily basis, I would be like updating the website with like, you know, adult content and that sort of stuff, you know, sales or excuse me, marketing pushes, features, that sort of stuff. And I would have like the CFO come by who is, you know like, uh,
Ben Spak: clean cut woman who's like really well dressed, short hair, kind of staunch, sweetheart, but staunch. And she's, you know, the first couple of weeks was like, how's it going? and it's like, ah, it's great. You know, try to hide my screen. Like, ah wait, this this is my job. Okay.
Ben Spak: So that, that was an adjustment period. Yeah.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. ah When and so and so, okay, yeah, that's, that's very interesting. I went through through a similar thing when I was, I spent about three years in the army.
Torbjørn Thomsen: And I went, I went through an absolutely similar thing, ah missing that structure, I could very much relate to that.
Ben Spak: Oh, nice.
Torbjørn Thomsen: And so I found that pretty interesting. um And so then you started sort of building for other people, I guess, and you started learning all these things, SEO and development and full stack development. yeah And you started sort of did that for about 10, 12 years before started going out on your own.
Ben Spak: Yeah, so I've always been kind of out on my own. Like, as soon as I got out of the Air Force, I was like, crap, how can I start building a personal brand? And I started to do that on like, um you know, LinkedIn and X to some degree from from about 2011 to 2012 was when I really started that.
Ben Spak: um But its aside from building, sorry, go ahead.
Torbjørn Thomsen: How'd you do that? I'm sorry. No, sorry. I just how did you do that on on on on LinkedIn the next like how did you build that personal and what did you do?
Ben Spak: Honestly, it was easy. I just spammed a bunch of requests to a bunch of people. Back in 2014, they didn't have read limits. So I remember for an entire summer, I would just sit down and whenever I would sit down and be like, oh, LinkedIn time. And I'll just connection request everyone from companies that i found interesting.
Ben Spak: um
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right.
Ben Spak: And honestly, I would recommend that's a that approach to anyone nowadays, too. Just find companies that you're interested in with interesting folks and just add as many people as possible. um especially if you don't spam the connection right away, because that happens a lot nowadays.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: You know, if you send someone a thoughtful, meaningful request, it still matters. And then if you don't spam them, like after, you know, recently adding them with like some sort of AI follow up, then um it's, in my opinion, more of a warm lead than it would be if you were spamming them.
Ben Spak: So yeah.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: I don't know. Yeah, that's my suggestion.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: of Just follow and connect with as many people as possible.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, that's, that's, ah yeah, that's, that's, that's funny, because that's exactly what I'm doing. Like, pretty much exactly what I'm doing.
Ben Spak: Nice.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Just reaching out to people, and try try to be warm about it, you know, and, and figuring, you know, if I'd be kind and stuff, people hopefully see that I'm being real and genuine. And it'll hopefully that's
Ben Spak: Yeah, that's what I got from your request. And I was like, all right, cool. Let's do this. Let's do the the podcast episode.
Torbjørn Thomsen: awesome.
Ben Spak: Um, I just, the reason I said that is because that's top of mind for me.
Torbjørn Thomsen: That's awesome.
Ben Spak: Like I had to go, excuse me, through like two months of LinkedIn messages because, you know, just the past couple months I've been so busy and I realized that like every single message that I received um,
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yep.
Torbjørn Thomsen: if
Ben Spak: I would say the vast majority of messages that are received, maybe one out of a hundred aren't AI automated nowadays. Um, I just get like this spam chain of stuff like, Hey, are you doing? Here's a service I offer. Hey, let me ask you a question. Hey, here's a service I offer. Hey, a quick follow-up. and It's just like, come on guys.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. Wow.
Ben Spak: ah You know, um, I took to actually making a template so that I can just respond back to them really quickly. Like, Hey, thanks for your interest. Please actually take a look at my business.
Ben Spak: I mean, I don't frame it, phrase it that, uh, directly, but it's like, how you doing?
Torbjørn Thomsen: Candidly. Yeah.
Ben Spak: Take a look at my business and then give me targeted feedback or a targeted pitch. Um, couple of people took me up on that. Uh, most of the people that were just spammers. So,
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. yep Yeah. Very interesting. Is it is it easy for you? to Because I still struggle sometimes seeing what's sometimes it's very obvious what AI what's AI, right? But some of them are very good at at this kind of can is it hard for you to spot sometimes?
Ben Spak: Yeah, sometimes. um Because some people will use like personalized AI messages, which I think is the way to go. i mean, you can tell it's AI generated because no one does that in-depth level of review on a person unless they're doing like a podcast or something like that. Yeah.
Ben Spak: So, I mean, that's kind of obvious. It's just like, oh, you know something about you know me from like 10 years ago and you know about these other projects. It's like, I haven't talked about them in years. Clearly it's AI scraping my LinkedIn profile, creating a unique message and then sending that out.
Ben Spak: so
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I wanted to sort of ah talk a little bit about because you've founded a lot of stuff over the past couple of years.
Torbjørn Thomsen: um Pop via launch kit testers, um and builders and some other things as well.
Ben Spak: Yeah.
Torbjørn Thomsen: um And all within like a year, year and a half or something?
Ben Spak: Yeah, like I said at the beginning, I am terrible at pivoting when it comes to getting when I have to actually do sales.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm hmm.
Ben Spak: It's just like, I can do marketing, I can do building. But then when it comes to like doing direct sales, I'm just like, What's easier? Well, just create something new.
Ben Spak: So like good example there with, um, Popvia, we had been a services business for the longest time.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Very interesting.
Ben Spak: And, uh, you know, i was just kind of a solo operator, you know, built up a decent portfolio and then decided to pivot it to a SAS company.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm hmm.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm hmm.
Ben Spak: Um, so we had decided to make it a, uh, customer service platform that had like AI, AI chat bots and automation on, um,
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm hmm.
Ben Spak: stored knowledge base items and that sort of stuff. It would also scrape websites and internal databases for any sort of documentation that folks had. And then they would provide, it would provide a, you know, pretty decent response.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Okay.
Ben Spak: But it came down to sales again, and I had to do sales outreach. And instead of doing that, I just decided to pivot, which was really dumb because, Because it it wasn't a bad business idea. And we had actually gotten some, some interest after we had like submitted to a roast my, uh, my startup sort of feedback thing on a podcast.
Ben Spak: Uh, we had gotten like a ton of traffic based off of that. And there were actually some interested parties, but the ironic thing is we had already started to spin down the servers and all that stuff by the time we, you know, got the review and got the traffic. So we could have continued, but it was a, um,
Ben Spak: expensive and challenging problem set. um So we just decided to to lean things down and and pivot. um So builders is really much, very much me scratching my own itch, you know, finding people to work with that are just cool to work with and and chat with like this.
Ben Spak: And, you know, find people that are like, decent to co-work with and that need building help.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: So I mean, um I'm really trying to lean into my strengths on this one, trying to find, like I mentioned, a go-to-market head who can you know just handle a lot of the sales and the marketing. And um yeah, that's that's kind of where we're at.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, so you've you've kind of realized that for whatever reason, you're not you're not a you're not a sales guy and and you're kind of looking for, so basically looking for someone else to do it. Is that right?
Ben Spak: Yeah, that's correct. Like I can still do it and I can develop a sales process, but then when it comes to like interest and like me actually doing it on daily basis, it just gets so monotonous for me. I'm just like, I like people, but I like people to the extent that I can have meaningful technical conversations with them. You know, if I'm just having like a sales conversation and it's like a very repetitious process, then it's just like, oh man, I'm so bored of this. So that's on me. That's ah that's something I have to consistent consistently work on and improve, but you know that's how it goes as a founder.
Torbjørn Thomsen: you do Do you know? i'm I'm curious as to why. why Do you know why? is it Is it the superficiality of it or is it what what happens there?
Ben Spak: Yeah, yeah. It's just not like a meaningful, like deep conversation like this one, for example, you know where we can like pause and ask each other like meaningful questions. It's just kind of like...
Torbjørn Thomsen: All
Ben Spak: um the frame of like, Oh, what do you do? And is it relevant to me right now? And you have to kind of like fit into that frame.
Torbjørn Thomsen: right.
Ben Spak: And then if it's, they're not one of the 3% of people that are like ready to buy now and convert now that is like, okay, let's keep the lead warm. And honestly, I always forget to follow up and keep the lead warm.
Ben Spak: So, um, Yeah, that's something that I'm working on and we're working on internally is developing that that sales pipeline that can actually be a repeatable process and we can you know just kind of give to someone else. so
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right, right. And so, um yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense, actually. That makes a lot of sense. um Do you have a... So basically, I was... Because one of my things I was looking for was, like, what's your sort of... What was your what was your gateway to this, right? And who was your gateway to this? what was the what was the What was the thing you observed or saw that made you think that this was a good idea, but it was it was from you, basically? Yeah.
Ben Spak: Yeah. um So for builders itself or just entrepreneurship in general?
Torbjørn Thomsen: for for build yeah For builders, for builders itself.
Ben Spak: Yeah, honestly, just wanted more control over the the marketing aspect of what I was doing from a personal branding perspective and a project perspective.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: I think even if I create another project and that's my primary focus for income, I'm still going to have builders because I need somewhere to launch it.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm-hmm.
Ben Spak: I need somewhere to like stay up to date on like what the company is doing and the project is doing. So yeah. I think it's it's really serving a need, but the problem there is the value capture. you know um We can serve a need, but I'm still at at the end of the month you know operating at a loss because I'm not getting those sales. So it's just a more expensive hobby if you ask me.
Ben Spak: It's like buying you know a cheap guitar every month.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: So ah yeah, I mean, that's that's kind of where we're at. So like I said, I'm still leaning into the sales process and try and trying to get better at that.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, yeah, I guess that that is what it is, right? You're you're kind of putting money into the something and hoping that it'll pay off one day, right? Basically.
Ben Spak: Right, exactly. It's definitely an asymmetrical bet.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so what um so ah what specifically, Ben, are you trying to are you hoping that people will be able to get out of of builders? Like what's the, yeah, what are what are you hoping people going out of it?
Ben Spak: Yeah, I'd say three primary things. We we were operating on three pillars um prior to our recent pivot. ah Those three pillars were get more eyeballs on people's projects, which we've effectively done, but there's no value capture there for us.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Okay.
Ben Spak: So we moved on to feedback. ah You know, give detailed feedback on projects. We're going to do one to two minutes for free, just as like an initial feedback thing and then go up to like $99 for an entire hour of feedback.
Torbjørn Thomsen: OK.
Ben Spak: on You know, go to market strategy, onboarding process, all that good stuff. Um, so I'd say that's our primary pillar right now is just making sure that we get feedback on people's projects because they're awesome at, you know, marketing, as we had mentioned, marketing on like X and, and sharing their stuff and getting, you know, top of funnel eyeballs, but none of that feedback is really meaningful. That's what we've really determined. You know, a lot of people will be like, Oh, nice project, create landing page, you know, et cetera.
Ben Spak: But they're not gonna actually like go through and like, say oh this sign up process is great but it's kind of confusing you need to like edit this and edit that like we've had 1300 people sign up and we've probably had um maybe 10x that actually like take a look at the site prior to signing up and then the actual feedback that we get from people is even less so i'd say out of like all of the top of funnel traffic that we got maybe we get a one percent conversion rate on just free feedback from folks um
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: you know, just as a, like a startup founder, that's what we've realized has been the process throughout in the, the, the familiar thread throughout all of the the stuff we've gone through is most people ship. And then they have something that doesn't match what the market wants and they don't know what to do or how to pivot to get out of that to actually, you know, continue progressing. So that's the problem we really want to solve is just, you know,
Ben Spak: Be that first initial kind of customer that can go behind the scenes and be like, hey you know this is a sticky aspect of your app. Maybe reduce the the friction necessary to sign up for you know the next stages, um just as an example.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right. Right.
Ben Spak: um
Torbjørn Thomsen: right
Ben Spak: So yeah, I would say the biggest thing i want people to to realize is that we're here for builder support. you know As I had mentioned, or as you had mentioned, I've been a developer for probably about 15 years at this point with a combination of SEO and and full stack development. So yeah.
Ben Spak: Yeah, we want to provide reviews to people from a technical and marketing perspective and provide builder support if there's anyone new out there that hasn't had an opportunity to take something from zero to one, to to take a project from inception to like a working MVP and then iterating on it.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right. Right. And so, okay. Interesting. So who do you have? Who do you have given the how many people do you have given the feedback? Because I guess you need some people to give the feedback, right? Like some people that are pretty knowledgeable.
Ben Spak: Yeah, yeah. So our CTO, AJ, has worked in a combination of different industries, from QA to engineering, DevOps, and development. So they have, a I'd say, probably 10, 15 years of experience themselves. And they're the ones that are primarily going through and and offering that ah that feedback.
Ben Spak: We um just got it, you know, because they don't like showing their face on camera and they don't want to actually use, like, their real voice. So...
Torbjørn Thomsen: and is Yeah.
Ben Spak: I was like, okay, we'll work through this.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm-hmm.
Ben Spak: We'll get creative. They decided to come up with a voice changer option. And, ah you know, it's still sounds pretty regular.
Torbjørn Thomsen: this
Ben Spak: It's not like a super deep, like voice changer that's going to sound off or anything. And yeah, they're like, dude, I will give the best feedback possible in one to two minutes. If they ask me to be um super brutal, I will be brutal. And I'm just reminding my co-founder, i'm like, well, we want to be brutal, but only if they pay us.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, yeah, of course.
Ben Spak: So yeah, that's that's kind of where we're at right now.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, yeah, that makes that makes a lot. Yeah, that and i I can certainly relate to that. that your Having your voice out there is scary, man. like I get that. Yeah.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Very interesting. Okay, so yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So feedback and and reviews basically. Yeah, very interesting. And so do you have any sort of um how are people receiving this?
Ben Spak: Um, so, so far confusion has been by far the biggest, um, response, even from people that I've known for like close to a year, you know, I had someone who was focused on the sales and marketing side of things, Justin results French.
Ben Spak: Uh, you know, I was talking to him a bit and he was just saying like, dude, it took me three months to figure out what you actually do. now Okay. That's not good. So that's going to be our our recent push or our next push next week is to minimize, and we've already started that process this week, is to minimize the amount of features that we offer.
Ben Spak: Like we had had a wagers game that allowed you to like utilize the tokenization system inside the app to then wager and possibly win more, but the odds were against you and Anyway, it was a very superfluous thing that I think only one or two other users used. So we looked at the usage analytics for the site and we're like, okay, you know this is only getting maybe 5% of the attention on the site, no need for it.
Ben Spak: And it's not bringing us any value anyway. So... um Yeah, we're we're trying to get more ruthless with like what we're offering and trying to just trim all the fat as much as possible so that we can, um you know, reinform or tell people of our our new direction, which is reviews and build support.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right. So did you kind of at the beginning, did you end up having a whole host of features that you didn't really need or people didn't really want, I guess?
Ben Spak: Yes, I kind of went through like a six or five or six month process because we've we've been operating since December of 25.
Torbjørn Thomsen: hmm.
Ben Spak: And yeah, I would say the core features that people want is largely just a feed, a map, or some way to browse and connect with other users.
Ben Spak: And um uh feedback and those those the things i think we're going to try to focus on also the the project aspect but you know we have things like um let me pull up the site real quick and see what we can actually get rid of because that's on my to-do list uh after this call actually so why not do both at the same time
Torbjørn Thomsen: All right. All right. All right.
Ben Spak: um Yeah, so we got the feed, the map, projects, companies. We got a streamers section for folks that are on like YouTube and Twitch.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm-hmm.
Ben Spak: Honestly, that's not visited too often, so we'll probably get rid of the streamer section. um Then we also have like the testers section, which gives people, you know, peer feedback and that sort of stuff so they can earn karma on the platform.
Ben Spak: That's not netting us any money. And while it's beneficial for some folks, it's just kind of, like I had mentioned, superficial responses of like, oh, you know this is good, that's OK, and then just like very short feedback. So we may do away with the testers aspect as well and just put up a service page of, hey, here's the testing that we offer.
Ben Spak: um We also have a bounties section that I might do away with. um
Torbjørn Thomsen: Very interesting.
Ben Spak: Yeah, so a few things that we can probably edit or remove oh right now, but so still working.
Torbjørn Thomsen: That's great. Like that,
Torbjørn Thomsen: So do you find out because there's a there's a balance but there right between sort of making money on the one side and on the other side, creating value for people that they're willing to pay money for it creating enough, I guess, creating maybe creating enough free value that people at some point are willing to convert to a premium version, right?
Torbjørn Thomsen: Like, what's that?
Ben Spak: That's what we were hoping for. But honestly, the vast majority of sales that I made were just through my personal brand, like people that I knew or through a connection, like our former CMO had set up a couple of X spaces and they were able to convert like two people this month based off of that.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah,
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm-hmm.
Ben Spak: But it was all personal outreach and personal connection. It wasn't, you know, let's get a bunch of top of funnel and they'll convert. That's what we were hoping for. um Because, you know, that's that's what we've been good at.
Ben Spak: But so nope, not the case.
Torbjørn Thomsen: No, interesting. Yeah, because that would make sense for me that that's how you that but I don't, you know, I'm not, I'm not that versed in building that would just make sense to me that one of the ways is just get a lot of people who are using the free model on your page and at some point, x amount will convert, right?
Ben Spak: Yeah.
Torbjørn Thomsen: It's very interesting. Do you? Do you have any idea where that i don't want to say like where that conversion doesn't, cause you have a, you have a fair amount of free users on your site, right? Do you have any idea about where, how come they aren't converting?
Ben Spak: Yeah, um
Ben Spak: not a compelling enough offer, I think, and just too much of a confusing offer. um You know, because we're kind of the social network, but also a services company and also kind of a SaaS. So it's, um you know, as I mentioned with, you know, Justin, he was just like, dude, what do you do? You know, it's been three months and I finally figured out what you do. So,
Ben Spak: Um, yeah, I mean, that's, that's what we're going to be focused on is just simplifying stuff and making it easier for people to be like, oh, this is what they do.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Roger.
Ben Spak: You know, I might even do like a personal rebrand of like Ben the builder or like builders.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right.
Ben Spak: Uh, I don't know, something like that. This has been from builders and like, you know, just kind of loop in my personal brand with, uh, with the, the actual brand. We'll see.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, yeah. So it's it's been, on it's it's sort of been, i guess it's been unclear exactly what value it is you can provide people, I guess.
Ben Spak: Yeah, that seems to be the the general feedback that we've, we've, um it's not even direct feedback. We've got the direct feedback from just one person. um It's just kind of like that indirect founder feedback that you get. We're like, all right, this isn't working. We're not getting product market fit. Let's try some pivoting and see if that gets product market fit. Yeah.
Ben Spak: And nowadays, i mean, that's that's good because we're getting all the experimentation out before we actually get the funding and, you know, go after VCs and that sort of stuff.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: ah Because we want to have product market fit before we go pitch VCs. Nowadays, everyone wants traction and at least $5,000 monthly reoccurring revenue before they even open the door and have a conversation with you to invest. So, yeah.
Ben Spak: Yeah, that's kind of where we're at. We also need to evolve so that we have more of like a a billion dollar market potential or something like that. Because most of the time investors don't want to invest in anything that doesn't have a huge upside.
Ben Spak: Because that's how they invest, you know, with their portfolio in general is they just, oh, this could make a billion dollars. This can make a billion dollars. This can make a billion dollars. All right, let's spray money at everything.
Ben Spak: And we'll get maybe one or 2% of those companies that actually make that money. And that's going to be our outsized return compared to everything else.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: That's that's how they operate. So um yeah, from a VC perspective, we're not an investable company at this point either. So yeah. yeah
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah, so that's, that's sort of the that's sort of what you're working towards right now is becoming a VC investable company.
Ben Spak: Exactly. Yeah. So the first step is to just make sure that we're profitable, scale up to five, 5,000 per month, and then start seeking small micro investors that want to help us grow.
Torbjørn Thomsen: All right.
Ben Spak: um Our goal for users and that sort of stuff, we're going to stay freemium, I think, until we get 10,000 users. And we're estimating that that'll give us about a hundred active users on a regular basis.
Ben Spak: Um, That's typically just how conversion rates work and how power users typically work.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right.
Ben Spak: Most power users are only like 1% of the platform.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right.
Ben Spak: Then you have occasional users and then lurkers. And I would say the vast majority of folks are just lurkers. so
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: ah So yeah, we got a 10x that in addition to finding profitability. So never a dull day.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. Yeah. yeah do you Do you enjoy it?
Ben Spak: I do. I wouldn't do anything else, honestly. um Can't do anything else. I just, I've tried working a normal dev job and it's like 40 hours of the same thing, staring at a terminal.
Ben Spak: And, I just can't do it. I have to wear multiple hats. You know, the longest I think I've worked at a job in recent years, aside from the military is like two years. Most of the time it's like, you know, six months here, six months there.
Ben Spak: And you know, they're they're not full-time things. It's mostly like, ah you know, in the past it was contract work and, and freelance work. So
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm-hmm.
Ben Spak: I would say that's that's always been my interest is just like having to wear multiple hats, having to sell, having a market, having to use all of my skills and bring you know all my experience to bear.
Ben Spak: um i like to say that ah running a business is kind of like the advanced mode of being an adult. you know You're an adult, you pay your bills, no one else really gives a fuck. It's like, excuse me, no one else gives a crap.
Ben Spak: It's just like, okay, cool, you're adulting, you're fine. And then you run a business and you're like, oh crap. Okay, not only do I have to be decent at like the basic things like, you know, finances and and personal branding, but I also have to worry about sales and outreach and pivoting and and all this stuff.
Ben Spak: And um I love it, man. i couldn't Again, i couldn't do anything else. um Even though I'm losing money every month, I still enjoy doing it.
Torbjørn Thomsen: That's great.
Ben Spak: That's how much I enjoy doing it. Yeah.
Torbjørn Thomsen: So um I'm wondering, Ben, like, tell me about one of your projects that you really believed in that that that didn't work. Like, and and walk me through what went wrong and and how long did it, specifically, how long did it take for you to sort of admit that out loud?
Torbjørn Thomsen: Does that make sense?
Ben Spak: Yeah, ah my first and probably worst mistake, um my first and worst startup, I would say, 2020. twenty twenty I had started Code Career. And Code Career was just essentially a job board for folks that were junior developers and were looking for work.
Ben Spak: ah So at that time, I was a bit of a junior developer or more of a mid-level developer. And I was like, okay, cool. How can I help people behind me, you know, come up easier? At this time, you know, this was 2020. we actually had to put together a team of like a designer, a couple developers and, you know, someone from DevOps.
Ben Spak: So I did that, you know, I put together a team of like 10 folks and brought on like way too many interns.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: And that just muddied the waters for one. Um, the second aspect of it is it was just a poor business model.
Ben Spak: You know, people are looking for work, so they don't have money. So how are they going to be able to pay your job board or, and, you know, really capture any value from that? Um,
Ben Spak: So we thought, well, like maybe we could do advertising or that sort of stuff, but we didn't have enough top of funnel. So the business model was terrible because, um you know, we just couldn't make money at at any stretch of the imagination for that sort of thing. You have to have that, you know, huge volume like Indeed or LinkedIn or something like that to have it make sense. So yeah.
Ben Spak: Um, yeah, I spent a year, ah spinning my wheels on that one before I even realized it was a bad business model. Um, so that's, that's one of the iterations as to why I, know, started doing what I'm doing now, because again, I just want to help people behind me. It's like,
Ben Spak: Okay, cool. The coding problem is solved. um You know, everyone uses ai now. No problem. You know, so I can't help from that perspective, but I can still help, you know, give detailed feedback and and utilize my experience. So that's that's kind of been my thought process recently.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. Very interesting. Very interesting. And so, and this is kind of, this is sort of in the same ballpark, a specific time where you got the,
Torbjørn Thomsen: where you're sort of at a crossroads where you're about to shut it all down or keep going, um where you got it wrong, where you took the wrong road, where you either shut it down or you kept going when you shouldn't have. Does that make sense?
Ben Spak: Yeah, Papthia, quite honestly. If we had just done more marketing and more outreach and it actually stuck with like the core value proposition, I think at that point in time, AI chatbots had a sour taste to them. But if we had um kind of like promoted it as like a knowledge base and low funnel customer service, um deflection, you know, like, oh, deflect 90% of your customer service questions using this chatbot or this internal knowledge base, then we probably would have gotten a lot better conversions.
Ben Spak: And it's ironic, we started to see some of those interested parties and conversions after we got that roast, which he did a brutal job. He's like, this is vibe coded. This looks like crap. You know, this is, uh, you know, really, um, inconsistent branding and like the prices make no sense.
Ben Spak: And he did a, you know, a decent job of tearing it apart, which he was supposed to do.
Torbjørn Thomsen: yep
Ben Spak: And, um, Ironically, we got just a ton of interest in and possibly interested customers because of that. So we still have like um a wait list of, I'd say like 10 to 20 people that are still interested in that solution that we had provided.
Ben Spak: um So if we had stuck with that, iterated on the pricing, iterated on the messaging, and it actually followed up with those warm leads, then who knows?
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: um That could have been a a very profitable business, but I was spending so much money on like hosting costs every month to keep the the system up and running. At that point in time, I just didn't have the bandwidth or the finances to to see it out long-term.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. yeah Yeah, that's a rough one.
Ben Spak: Yeah.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. Very interesting.
Ben Spak: Yeah, B2B sales is something i have yet to crack, but I'm working on it.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. Do you you have sort of any sort of signals to that are surefire for when you stop or when you keep going?
Ben Spak: Honestly, no, it's um just kind of been by the gut and like by experience and circumstantial things. You know, if I don't have enough money to, to operate at a loss for a while, then, you know, it's probably not going to be a business that I pursue.
Ben Spak: um I would say in the past, what I did was, primarily focus on saving a bunch of money, starting a business, and then trying to see that business through, and then realizing I run out of funds and you know back to work, and I just repeat that whole process.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm-hmm.
Ben Spak: And that's been, That's been the process for the last six years. But finally, um you know i was able to get financially independent. um I'm a disabled veteran, so I have that going for me, which is nice.
Ben Spak: And I'm able to use those funds to now finance all my projects that I'm, well, not all my projects, but this one project that I'm particularly interested in. so I think the circumstances are going to work out in that me and my co-founders are currently out of work and we're looking for the most profitable way forward, first and foremost. So we're probably going to lean on those services and ah big ticket review items. And yeah, if we can get that down, then I think we'll be in a good spot. Honestly, I think this business,
Ben Spak: You have to be delusionally optimistic to be a startup founder in the first place, right? We can agree upon that.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Spak: But I feel like this one's really going to work out because it's got a more solid business plan. We have a way of capturing value. And we're finally deciding to stop providing value for free to people.
Ben Spak: Yeah.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Right. yeah I was gonna, I was gonna say it to me, it sounds like ah it sounds like a great idea, but like, and then again, what, what the heck do I know? Like, you know, just but it's, it seems like ah it seems like a solid, it seems like a really good idea.
Torbjørn Thomsen: It seems like a really good idea.
Ben Spak: Whoa, what the heck does anyone know, right? Unless you're, you know, even Elon Musk, who's the, you know, first trillionaire and allegedly first trillionaire in history that we're aware of.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Yeah.
Ben Spak: It's just kind of like, I'm sure even he has doubts. I'm sure even he has moments of like imposter syndrome and like, ah, this might work out. This might not like SpaceX, for example, which just IPO didn't made him a trillionaire. Um,
Ben Spak: He had enough money after PayPal for four rocket launches. He failed the first three rocket launches. They just blew up on on the pad. And he had to take out like a personal loan from a friend to keep the business going.
Ben Spak: And a lot of people don't know that.
Torbjørn Thomsen: yeah
Ben Spak: But yeah, he took out a personal loan and bet on that fourth rocket. And if that didn't work, that would have been the make or break for him.
Torbjørn Thomsen: yeah big time yeah yeah
Ben Spak: But, you know, the rest is history. It did work out. So... Um, that's, I kind of feel like where we're at. I mean, we're no means going to be a trillion dollar company or anything like that, just based off of what we're offering. We can't scale that way, but, uh, to be like a lifestyle business, I think we're, we're pretty well positioned for that.
Ben Spak: Um, especially with the team and the founders that we have, um, I'm really excited to, uh, just provide quality feedback to folks. So, um, yeah, hoping that that takes off.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Very cool.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Very cool. So Ben, we're getting towards the end here. Is there something that you feel you haven't said something you're missing?
Ben Spak: Um, no, honestly, you've asked very thoughtful and thorough questions. I can't think of anything else that comes to mind.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Oh, thank you
Torbjørn Thomsen: Do you work and people working people find out more?
Ben Spak: Yeah. Uh, check out builders.to. As I mentioned, it's a little bit muddied, so feel free to check out, um, our X accounts as well. Uh, builders X off for official and, um,
Ben Spak: Let's see, we also have a Discord and Telegram server if you're interested in, you know, different ways to to get in touch with us, that sort of stuff. But I am pretty much always on X. So if you guys, if anyone needs to to contact me, you reach out on X. We also have LinkedIn. you know, you can just find my name, Ben Spack, on pretty much everything.
Ben Spak: um Yeah, and pretty pretty reachable.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Perfect. Perfect. And so I always ask this last question. Do you have one or two people who you think I should, i should talk to next?
Ben Spak: Oh, great question. um Well, it depends. What what sort of conversations do you want to have?
Torbjørn Thomsen: um Basically anything with, with ah mostly builders or founders or anything related to that. Right. So basically the, the, the show is called good build anyways. Right. And it's about, it's about building and kind of, And the good part of it is is about honoring the struggle in building. um So basically anyone that's related to building, it's a fairly wide net.
Ben Spak: Well, hell yeah, man. um You can just go on the Builders platform and we actually have a section called, let me pull this up real quick.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm-hmm.
Ben Spak: I'll get you to the direct link. uh so if you go to builders.com and i'll put this in the messages as well uh or excuse me builders.to we don't own the.com that's a hundred thousand dollars i've already inquired builders.to uh slash member recognition so we have a bunch of different projects on there that have more than five votes um
Torbjørn Thomsen: Perfect.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm-hmm.
Ben Spak: And I think those guys would be a really good approach. So to give you two, we have Mohad Anas. And he's a full stack developer. And he runs MarketingDB.
Ben Spak: And he also, i believe, set up a competing space that is similar to what we're doing now called List Your Idea. um So yeah, definitely someone to talk to. He's very focused on the builder side of things. And then let me see the second person I would recommend talking to. It's probably someone we've already spoken to from our podcast. Let me go ahead and pull that up real quick.
Ben Spak: Because he and I had like an awesome, just like back and forth conversation, just like this one. um John C. Phillips would be a good guy to talk to.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ben Spak: He's got like,
Ben Spak: I think he's making like 10,000 MRR according to him on, um, you know, just newsletters and that sort of stuff. He's been around for like a long time in that space. Um, Ooh, Cy Mahadehan.
Ben Spak: Let me go ahead and link this episode. He's got a huge network. He's a Y Combinator founder and, uh, I don't think he graduated, but he's a ah Brown dropout.
Ben Spak: So, you know, Ivy League funded and just a super nice guy, you know, just super laid back. And I think that a podcast episode alone got us like 500 views.
Ben Spak: Most of the other episodes do way less than that. So he's got a strong network, would highly recommend connecting with him as well.
Torbjørn Thomsen: Very nice. Very nice. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Ben Spak: Yeah, no problem.
Torbjørn Thomsen: That's great. Okay. So, um yeah, let me just, I'm going to stop the recording here. Do you miss a second?
