Sjoerd - Sharetribe - Spotlight Podcast-MP3 for Audio Podcas...

Wed, 6/10 10:16AM • 41:21

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

marketplace, people, build, airbnb, code, platform, called, tool, idea, company, super, sharing economy, business, share, thought, maker, money, happen, lots, fantastic

SPEAKERS

Ben Tossell, Sjoerd

Ben Tossell  00:00

Hey everybody, it's Dan here founder of make fat, a platform teaching individuals and companies how to build custom software workflows and tools without writing code. This show explores the people behind the no code tools and the stories of folks using them to automate work and launch companies. Today I'm joined by Sean from share drive, I'm gonna let let him introduce himself and what she does.

Sjoerd  00:25

Yeah, so name of Stuart, Ben did a pretty good job at the pronunciation, our fair share tribe. We help people build successful marketplace businesses fast. I think fast is gonna be maybe the key word also for for this talk, because we're really about getting things up and running without having to spend a whole lot of time and money upfront and just test your test your idea of a SharePoint that's been around already for actually super long time.

Ben Tossell  03:00

Introduction. Yes, great. I don't think I knew the smoke machine story. So it's definitely helpful that I have written better story so. So in the intermittence, between what they used to be and what chapter is now they, like I said, to try to sell to universities and communities and I just recently found this out as well when I was preparing for a presentation. And the first transaction happening on their marketplace that was not a university marketplace was in some local community somewhere here in Finland in a remote area. And because we always say, Yeah, like a key idea of marketplaces,

Sjoerd  03:38

like a key ingredient for marketplaces is like rapidly deprecating assets like that. Those are the ones like the first transaction happened happen to be horse manure, like someone had just sold like. I love that. Yeah, humble beginnings. But now we're not now we're a lot bigger. We have we Just past thousand paying customers last week, over in more than 50 countries like Well, many, many, many transactions happening all the time. And yeah.

Ben Tossell  04:14

It was like, How How long did you say chef has been around for

Sjoerd  04:21

a while the very first line of code like spring like 2008 already, like the university platform, but we've existed as a company since around 2011. And this product that we have now like this, really the sauce like this marketplace as a service fully online has been around since around 2014. Okay, so yeah, he pretty long actually. Yeah, yeah.

Ben Tossell  04:42

Yeah. It's a good grandfather in in attack terms. Ah,

Sjoerd  04:46

yeah, we're taking it always very slow.

Ben Tossell  04:50

What do you think it is? Like? It seems to me that like share tribe is a marketplace of people, building marketplaces. For the real marketplace, just like you're selling that thing to help people, you're being the platform for the people to be the platform.

Sjoerd  05:08

Yeah, yeah, I think in a way Yeah. It's always a little problematic when trying to even just writing like ad copy because I forgot to mention, but I'm the head of marketing or the marketing guy that like, basically indeed, were our platform for making platforms and that's always that's always kind of kind of confusing. Yeah, actually, Well, one thing I want to say actually still about the about the male culture because I really I personally, I like, I personally like the no code space and I think also us as a company we're like the no code space. And I think what's cool about the no cosplay is kind of like a movement right? I don't know how you feel about this, but there's almost some sort of ideological sub layer for better and worse. Meaning that like, like this kind of community, like for better for worse as in, like for Well actually, let's start for better Like for better that there's people like yourself many people around like, I think we've gotten in touch maybe about a year ago or something and I've been following you on Twitter and then you slowly dive down the rabbit hole and then you see like, okay, lots of great people having great conversations, talks, always trying to help each other out. But then also there's this sort of dogmatic approach where there's people who are like, because this just came up like a couple of weeks ago, when one of our customers like Mike Williams have a you know him as well. They have this marketplace called studio time, which is like Airbnb for studios. He had posted like, Hey, this is my story of how I build studio time with like, no code. And then someone in the comments and I'm one of these people who didn't start in the comments which I really stopped hearing. But I was like, Yeah, but tear dry. It isn't like a real no code tool. And I think that like I get it because I think that like, I get what I get, but that person is trying to say because I think also like I also we also don't really consider ourselves like a no koto Of course, we use that word to describe it because it's easier way. I think like most of the no code tools are like, like that you can use for multiple use guys, right? Like air table is the database for whatever projects and say pure for whatever automated doesn't really matter. Where is it going to Sarah my train of thought, yeah, but but basically, I don't like even though we sort of pre date that no code like naming thing, I think it aligns like super well with what we're trying to do, which is like, democratizing the sharing economy, like giving people the opportunity to build the string that they want. Like, it's, it's almost like and I think that's why I also like it as an ideology, because it's really, it's really opening up possibilities for people who previously didn't have them, you know, like, I think, yeah, and that's why I really like it. I think that's why also we really like it as a company like this aligns so well with what we're trying to do. So.

Ben Tossell  07:54

Yeah, I mean, there's no need, there's no benefits from like, Having those negative conversations about this isn't the true no code tool. Because at the end of the day, we're just everyone's in a position where they're trying to build something like, if no code tools get you there or code gets you there, it's fine. It's just everyone's still trying to create software in a certain way. So air table wouldn't ever class themselves as a no code tool. They just have happened to be part of lots of no code solutions. So your tool doesn't have to be a no code tool to be part of a no code solution. Otherwise, like, there's no clear black and white. I mean, you could look a segment which is like very, like Cody event based tracking for marketing. But you could plug that in with Zapier to link to intercom and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, it comes part of the nuclear solution they call themselves in No code tool, workflow when they started out, never, like said we are no code, like web builder, but it's, it's like, now this movements coming around people are now just like identify with a bit more and saying yeah, there's no code, like community is also that that's that's what we've been doing we just there wasn't a name for it before, right. So it's like Chaturanga definitely in that same realm as a lot of things.

Sjoerd  09:29

Yeah, no and I feel and I think we feel like perfectly at home here I think. Exactly because we're trying to it's not about like, what you use, it's about what you're trying to build the then I think that Alliance like really well. I just think it's super cool, too. I just like seeing that conversation happen because I think, in a way, it's also kind of important sort of figure out like, Okay, what are we trying to do here and I think it also helps companies figure out like, oh, like, what can we do in this space? Like what, you know, what, like, should we build this or should we build that Like, I think because there's so much people being so vocal about it that I've learned so much like just last week we were we were trying to trying to write a little bit about like, how do we you know different ways of building a marketplace and then I saw this fantastic I actually joining this this maker pad workshop with this Connor Finn, Finn, listen kind of innocent, which was like, I don't know if you listen to this, but that like, That was fantastic. And I just saw I just watched his presentation, and I read the whole present. What's his video? And I read the whole presentation, because also for us, like, at first I was like, is this kind of a threat for us? Like, because we you know, we were kind of an expensive product, I think. I think we're worth it. But we're not like a $10 per month solution. And then if you see like, Oh, well, oh, because that's what people often say, because we have this exit survey. Like why did you end up subscribing or why did you start subscribing and I regularly analyze it For example, already very early on, we saw Bubble Pop Up there like already maybe four years ago or something three or four years ago, like, Oh, I used use bubble and then other things came up. And I said, Okay, well, you know, is this, like, what does this mean for us? Yeah. And then I was I was watching Congress presentation, I was thinking, Well, yeah, like, there's like, there's benefits to it. Like, you can build more what you want. And if you are familiar with that stack, that's, that's really great. But then I was also I was reading and I think he says, even in presidential like, Hey, listen, if you need to learn all these tools still, like, I reserved three months for this, like, if you like, and then even with his expertise, I think it cost him also like, I don't know, two or three weeks to build it. And then also, actually, the monthly cost is roughly about the same as what charity is doing. Like Sorry, no, it sounds like I'm moving into a pitch but like, I feel like oh, no, this is not actually it's not a fret. This is really nice, depending on how you like to work.

Ben Tossell  11:54

Yeah, this works. Yeah, I think that's one of the big the big things, even about any tools or any tool stack? Is that why? People may say Why do I always talk about web flow tables up here is because I've built make that in that. That's how it is built. So they're the tools I know the most on our platform. So I know that I can use those to build all these different types of things. And yeah, I was hosting that workshop with Connor. And then I think he may have posted his no code con talk, which is what maybe you're referencing, but there's Yeah, there's like the separate tools have their own separate cost. If you're the type of person who wants like, complete control, like of every small detail, and you want to make sure you can see something go through webflow and then go through air table in this way. Go through Zapier in this way, and all that stuff, and you want to make sure you have control over that. Then maybe you need to have the separate tools. If you want to have something that's all in one is still customizable. Maybe it's a wall, but there's no better Like I don't think out of the box marketplace solution of just like everything you completely want straightaway shared. Yeah.

Sjoerd  13:09

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, yeah, like I'm gonna jump straight on that not out of my duty as a marketer but also like right now like, I assume that we're airing this like whenever someone listens to this in the future but like right now we're in the middle of this like COVID panic thing Coronavirus panic and we set up we've set up this promotion that if you are doing a nonprofit initiative around this, you can use us for free and this is like it's this is probably like the once in a lifetime situation where shared drives actually at its best because you can literally launch this platform for your neighbors in like half an hour like it's you sign up you change the logo, you upload your picture. You whatever you connect the pay Paul if you need to handle payments, connect The domain did a NetSuite refresh and there is like, like, it says up like it's amazing like and we've already I think within a couple days we had like 40 people using that. Okay, like not of course every Mark plays a huge success because you know, you still need to get attention or whatever but, but the machine works like it like it's up and running literally in minutes. And it's Yeah. Yeah, so I agree.

Ben Tossell  14:22

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I say that because we've been spinning up some projects for this COVID-19 crisis, where we've used glide, I built an app on glide, which is for restaurant owners to be fantastic. I

14:36

think I loved that.

Ben Tossell  14:39

It was I mean, it's fairly simple. I did she did it was in bed took me like an hour and it was just like, a simple simple solution. Ah,

Sjoerd  14:47

I actually meant I actually meant glide. Sorry, I haven't actually seen your face. But I'm sure it's fantastic as well.

Ben Tossell  14:53

So you're praising me But yeah, that was just gonna I was just gonna say it's all down to the fact that glide makes that so easy. Yeah. Like, put that together in that time. So people then started messaging and asking saying, Okay, well, I want to have a platform that has lots of restaurants on there. And then and then they want to take like a platform fee and then split fees and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. And like, that's where stripe Connect comes in. And now it starts getting really complicated. You could build something with workflow, air table, but then you have to like remember these workflows, and you have to make sure this this happens. The best solution I would bet I'd be recommended is just saying just good to share drive and do you set the spins up in 30 minutes and then it's it's got all the all the basics that you need for that one?

Sjoerd  15:43

Yeah. And especially like things like what you said like the fee for example, like, I mean, just creating a payment flow where you like, take money, you hold it temporarily, then you pay out some part beforehand. Or you even if you don't do any kind of delayed payment, but like you take some money some money goes to stripe some money goes to you as the platform owner or some money goes to the person right? Like, it's it's insane. Like it's super difficult to even withdraw or it's not difficult but it's, it's complex and it takes a long time, even with a fantastic tool like stripe. Because we, because we reasonably or reasonably like, about a year year and a half ago, we started building this new platform I wanted to share triplex it's not not so interesting for this conversation because it's more it's more Cody like it, definitely some front end development, some react and stuff. But we needed to reinvent the thing again, and it's I think, just like, well, it's so it's so difficult, like holding that money calculating that like that. I don't think there is a no code. What do you call like multi multi tool approach that would do that, like nicely, easily. I don't know how Connor does it for unicorn factory, but um, but I think it's super challenging.

Ben Tossell  16:55

Yeah, I mean, he just does it based on like an agreement with it. Answer to take a cup and Okay, yeah, so I mean that's pretty straightforward. Yeah, I mean it's a manual I agree with that. But yeah, like I'm sure someone will be I mean, I said on a recent podcast that I'd love someone to build a tool that I can just like integrate with workflow to do the short Connect thing but I say just integrate there is going to be a whole lot of complexities nuances and all the stuff that goes with it for just like adding that to the

Sjoerd  17:32

yeah and I think they like freeze well most marketplace I think like one finger shadow is really good at in this payment fingers that we have, we can hold the money for like stripe as the integration where Wait, like we lost etc. But stripe is the integration where there's some delayed payments which is like which is perfect for any kind of thing where you rent stuff or you you make a reservation. You want to Be there like so the money is actually in no one's head to like the best way to to make a good marketplace transaction happens Oh yeah, I think it's it's it's really nice because once you're inside I'm sure you feel the same about maker pet I'm sure anybody who has made something for no longer than six months something that you you know what you could be doing or you know what is out there and like you are like micro observing also competition so, so it's it's at times it's challenging to keep like a good view of your tool, especially if most of your conversation with users or customers is through the support which is always nobody email support. I love this is great, best thing ever, you know, what's the majority of your interactions is like that. It's like it's, it's not going to be like oh, but actually no. And then when you talk to users or when you see now this inhabited the COVID like lots of great things or or just whenever we Talk to us you have been longer with us than like one or two months. They just love it. Actually, I just did a whole series of interviews. Now this is kind of sound like a humble brag, but just did a whole series interviews who people who actually left us and still love us. They're just like, hey, it did what I need to do like a present. My favorite example is this company called a we had maybe two years ago, they were called next movers was like a platform for moving business. It's great. I mean, sounds great in theory, like you need a mover you go there, there's multiple things moving. problem is that and they only found that out. Because once they started doing this is that no, like, moving, it's not a repeat business. You don't do that like more than once. Yeah, a thing and like, and they were so happy that they only spent well, let's say $500 or something on totally chair drive and some images and whatever, to just figure it out, rather than just spending 500 euros just to get the first

19:56

design from a

Sjoerd  19:58

more traditional way. building software. So,

Ben Tossell  20:02

so yeah, yeah, I think. Yeah, it's pretty interesting when I could have done with a mover recently, but what are the what are some of the the use cases that people obviously this is marketplaces so this is more of a struct like a more of a rigid structure on the type of thing that has happened. Everyone knows things like eBay and, and Airbnb and stuff like that. So what is what is some of the examples, I guess of cool customer stories that you've, you've seen?

Sjoerd  20:33

Yeah, I think that, like a thing that I often think about or thing, especially early on, I was worried about when I joined the companies like, Are there enough? I don't have enough marketplace ideas, you know, like, haven't we haven't we already seen it and like, and there's regularly. I mean, there's so many ideas that basically use these dynamics that I wouldn't have thought about, like, My Favorite Things. They're also no longer a customer, but I'm happy for them that they've gotten a lot fair. I think it's a UK company called CD stash Oracle stasher. Now, I don't know if you know them. But like, like a. So their idea is that their marketplace is about finding a place to put your luggage if you get once you get kicked out of your Airbnb around 11. And your flight is at night and whatever, like this is like, I mean, we've all been there. If you use Airbnb, that's the case. You don't want to drag your stuff around while you enjoy your last hour to the city. So so they have well, they have a agreements with all these, some hotels, but also some kind of like 24 seven, like sort of club seven elevens. And then you can go there and drop your finger and then you can enjoy a couple of hours in the city before picking that up. And I mean, that's an idea like not in 1000 years, would I have thought of that. And I think like we were See these like, things that just are totally surprising and that can people can make that happen with shadow. I think another one of my favorite is one called he mystics. They do like psychic when they do card reading and those kind of things and medium being that people can book another one way I actually looked at a capo earlier. Well, an r1, which I think is has been really great is called VMT. They're about renting classical cars for studio for photoshoots and those kind of things. But like, yeah, people use for all kinds of things. And indeed, like sometimes people use it also internally as a sort of internal marketplace. We have one big fortune 500 company, I'm just gonna drop that here I can do so That's also really interesting once I noticed that myself as well, working in a company that you know, like people, people start to realize that these kind of tools exist. So they also start to use it also just for internal internal kind of proceed with no code the same way we build this whole CRM with like Trello s AP or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I think there is a reasonably one lines that I really like, which is about really, like, gruesome, but they are about getting like a body to talk to if some particular event has happened to you. So they have, you can register there if you've had a terrible life event, okay, for a particular thing. And you can find someone else who had that really thing which because which I think it's really beautiful because you don't find someone let's say that you have a particular disease that you have done. You just want to talk about that and like so well, it's not super political to end on five figures, something more often. But I think that like that that's, that's,

24:03

yeah, there's like

Sjoerd  24:04

anything where you have like multiple people on one side of the platform, lots of parties on the other side, you can probably use shadow for that. There's no money to be exchanged. You can use for example, there's lots of people who just use the calendar function and those kind of things. So,

Ben Tossell  24:20

yeah, there's like a funny first idea. You mentioned the first month, which you mentioned. I found out about that type of idea from before I was doing any notebook for I was teaching no code. Okay. I think it was one of my, like, fake no code ideas. I did like 1010 Mini MVPs in 24 hours. Okay. One of them was leave your bag here for any pay by the hour to leave your bag in a newsagent or something like that. So

24:58

yeah.

Ben Tossell  25:02

Yeah, I thought was a good idea at the time. That's why I spun that up. But yeah, I mean, a lot of people are making bad or anyone in Twitter, email wherever people find me is, like, they talk about an idea. They say, this is how it's gonna work is going to do this because of this. By far, most of the ideas, I just come back and see you're looking for a marketplace. Like, that's what you're trying to build is a marketplace. So you have someone on this side, someone on this side, you want to be the person in the middle, to facilitate that, no matter how you look at it. Like so many of these ideas that people have are marketplaces. And there are like, lots of different ways of building them. But there's lots of there's only a few simple ways of building them. But, um, yeah, I mean, there's, especially now with all COVID stuff going on is a need for empty cabs, the NHS workers would be there's like ways you could donate. donate food, and there's like local things where you can swap stuff or you can find someone locally to help them out with certain services and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

Sjoerd  26:13

even think about like, you know, like, we had this conversation actually today about like, Well, you know, what's the world after this? Like, is this like all these things that now seem maybe temporary? You know, like, remote classroom thing, for example, I think there is a huge, huge opportunity for anybody listening who has this specific knowledge in the kind of fields like whether it's creative skills, teaching creative skills, or teaching very traditional thing or, or any kind of consulting that people now are just being forced with the fact that hey, I don't actually need to be there in person for this to happen. And I think there is like, untapped like ocean of just just in the education space. Yeah. marketplace like hmm, you know, somebody I'm like something that I'm also like, quite often thinking about, like, we use a lot of Google Tag Manager, for example, in work. And so often I just get stuck to something I don't get. And I just want someone to just look at it for like, half an hour or something like just, and, and like, where, like, where would you find that? Like, you need to go? Like, if you go to professional, you need to first write your briefing, what's your stack, whatever, I just want to go somewhere as like, Hey, where do I book half an hour for someone to just like, share the screen talk me through this. I know. I know how to point them to the problem, like, for example, does just one idea but I think there's, there's there's loads of that, I think. And in many of these, like traditional businesses, traditional industries, like especially like b2b marketplaces, and this is something that I didn't came up like this. I didn't make up myself like we interview a lot of people in the industry for for our content stuff. I've spoken to a lot of investors and I think b2b especially I think there's loads of opportunity there still like like the in the consumer business, they think like venture capital thinks that the ideas that that are venture capital worth, he said a billion dollar ideas. They're pretty well, well covered in the business to consumer to consumer with like business to business. I think there's like so much still. Yeah. doable. And I think even besides that, like, there's a whole range, like I think, what always worries me. I don't know how you feel about it x. I'd be very interested to hear how you feel about it. But I feel that like conversations on around startups and Twitter and whatever, they are so much always seen through DPC filter, like always a great idea. Well, it's like, well, you could build, you know, well, I think you I think this maker community, which I think you're also a bit more of a part I think that's a little bit more like that where people run their micro, whatever business. But I think for marketplace, there's so many just small ideas that like yeah, you don't you Okay, you're not gonna make a billion dollars, but you could have like, an easy like, whatever, five people team on this and make a nice living doing something that you really like and in particular nice and I think that especially that's why two white shirt, it would be really nice because you can just try out whatever 10 of those ideas. Yeah, for the price of, like old built enough?

Ben Tossell  29:21

Exactly, I think. Yeah, I mean, it took me a little while to get out of that V that VC built. And think about how to build like a good business that is just like, it's nice to run. You have a small team and you just do and stuff that you like, and it doesn't have to be a billion dollar exit. It doesn't have to

Sjoerd  29:43

Yeah, I think maker pet is exactly like that's a perfect example of the kind of company that I mean, like size wise, like, yeah,

Ben Tossell  29:50

yeah. And I think marketplaces probably have an unfair viewpoint in that. Like, you have Airbnb as like that. To place example for anything ever, ever, you'd have something that's building Airbnb for dog homes, Airbnb for, yeah, whatever it is. So then you're automatically sort of pinning that marketplace to Airbnb has to be like huge. So lots of people were thinking about marketplaces or you've seen any VC chatter on Twitter or even just any sort of startup chatter a lot of marketplaces is, is about are they didn't find enough people to, like, meet the demand and all that sort of stuff. But what if you only started with, like, share time and two or three people? And then you just had like, a nice stream of people coming to stream instead of trying to think we have to get to like, billions? Yeah.

Sjoerd  30:48

Yeah. And I think that especially like, especially with marketplaces, it's really difficult even to scale that fast like because you need this, this this thing in marketplace called liquidity. Actually, if I can give a one marketplace lecture in here like this. Probably The most important thing which means that you have this balance between your demand and supply so that if someone comes, they will find something that they like and if someone posts something, they will get a sale or a rental of that and happen on iPhone and that's really difficult to balance. And without that your marketplace is worthless. Like if you get traffic from whatever one corner of the earth looking for something and you only have supply from somewhere other place, nothing's gonna happen. Like doesn't matter. If you get 100,000 people from Australia, for your Airbnb for something that they're not looking for. It doesn't matter like so I think yeah, I think you're right that there is some unfair unfair advantage here. Also, I have nothing against venture capitalist venture capitalism, per se. I do think that I think something that we often talk about is that, especially in this what they call like the sharing economy, I think it's like companies like Airbnb and Uber who you know, raced up through that angle. They're not like they're not honestly sharing economy anymore. You know, like, there's not nothing really sharing going on. And I think, I think that is where we're ready to capitalism is kind of problematic because they just go for this growth at all costs, and they just sort of lose sight of the actual, you know, like, what's the like? What's the actual value that they're bringing? Like, there's no reason I think for except for a small elite of users why one company needs to operate all of these Uber like things like there's no I'm not traveling every day between you know, I'm happy to install a local app is fine. Like there's not like there's no true reason why it needs to be global players from Silicon Silicon Valley, operating all these things. And I think this is really a future where we are chakra are betting on that, like the future is not some global like, like it's not big globe. It's not for big global players. It's gonna be all these small localized marketplaces and, and the only way to do that and and this is like this, honestly, our mission Like we have this in our, what is called, like the articles of association that like our first mission is to democratize the sharing economy by lowering the technical treshold. Because the the technical treshold is also the thing that puts VC in the picture because previously, if you didn't have the technical resources yourself, the only way to get it was by spending a lot of money to hire these people and, and by sort of like, by lowering one of them, you lower the other one and you just open up like a whole world for everybody. So yeah,

Ben Tossell  33:32

yeah, I agree. I think that like the whole passion economy, everyone's more individual has like something we want to build or run. There's the smaller companies, if they still could be like $10 million a year companies hundred million look, yeah, will be a fantastic

Sjoerd  33:52

life with that kind of money like

Ben Tossell  33:54

Exactly. There is another way that is now becoming more into the light. I think but I think people before maybe panicked or worried about it has to be the IP the tech is that is the thing that like VCs want to see but I actually think it's more about a smaller community and and like people have so much choice now there's so many different products out there there's so much choice you either have to be you can't just get by with a subpar experience or a subpar product or a subpar can meet culture Yeah, like if I decided that I don't like it was culture or their product or something about it there's no other options like there's other things we just do to get me to the same place

Sjoerd  34:40

yeah yeah and I'll even ask consumer but also like for people working there like I would like we have a strong like we have I mean, we are a little bit on the really on the happy side of the spectrum like as Chair tribe, like for sure. Like I admit that but like we are quite worried about this thing about the the future of work and this sort of project. seriousness of work where these kind of, you know, where you hear all these horror stories about Uber about other ones. And, and I think that things like no code and things like shared tribe, and like it really, we say, like allows people to sort of vote with their feet like, hey, if they don't like the circumstance under which they're working, they can go into a co op, whatever, like all of the Barcelona taxi drivers, and for 10 or 100,000 euros, they can have justice, like 90% as good as platform like and just make your own fee own times own conditions, those kind of things. So that's really that's really what I'm hoping for.

Ben Tossell  35:35

Yeah, for sure. Well, I think there's, there's obviously other things like teaching people to be successful in marketplaces, too, because marketplaces do suffer from the fact that they have to have users otherwise. It's not really a marketplace. It's just like a landing gear product or so is this After I'd help with teaching seminars, do you see that often people reach out online? And maybe fail because of this reason?

Sjoerd  36:08

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's our number one, we have this exit survey if referred to earlier, like where we say, Okay, what why didn't work out if you if you if you end up subscribing and I think in many cases, the idea is just not that great. And another is like, I couldn't get it off the ground. And we're always applying the tool, or actually, sorry, quite the opposite. We're not only supplying the tool, we also have this thing called the marketplace Academy. So you can go to share tribe comm slash Academy where you have a whole guide, we also actually have that out as a sorry, I'm gonna go into commercial mode. But we also have that as a book, you can go to the lead marketplace calm, which is basically like our interpretation of the Lean Startup approach for marketplaces. Yeah, so it That's a really like a step by step guide. Like, I think the first four chapters are about everything you should do before, like writing a line of code or starting anything that like, like test your idea just by talking to people like call six people ask them or draw it on a, like, make a drawing and ask them what would they think like? So yeah, we really try to support people as much as we can, and just like lean approach that like, where the underlying idea is this sort of like continuous cycle of like, build, measure, learn to like build through MVP for like, what's your, what's the smallest distinguishable thing that you can build for your marketplace, throw it out there, get feedback, and then either see, like, Oh, this is not gonna work or make some adjustment and then try again. So we definitely do and I think I honestly think that's probably the number one reason why most of our people turn because it's really it's really difficult running a business like any kind of be Like, no matter if you have a good idea, so I mean, there's like, you know, the road to whatever, I don't know what the expression is paced with great ideas like, and what's really great, for example, now, especially is that, I don't know if you follow that, but Andreessen Horowitz recently funded a company quite well called neighbor.com, which is like the Airbnb for storage. Yeah, I think we've seen I think we've seen 10 of those projects on shared drive, you know what I mean? Like, like, and it's didn't like it. They didn't, they couldn't make it work. And they were they were intelligent people. Magic combination of little bit of law, right timing, good positioning, to make marketplaces work, and we're trying to help with the sort of the foundation. But still, I think like after the platform is up, we always try to communicate that, you know, marketplaces they take a long time. They're not like any other thing like, like every weekend like three, three years to get started. So we try to support them as best as we can. So like I said, we have a book, we have an online guide. And we regularly post articles we just did some interviews with with Mike from studio time, who made a couple of videos about very practical things. Yeah. So yeah, we definitely do that.

Ben Tossell  39:19

Awesome. Well, it's been great to chat with you about all things marketplaces. I think it's like I said, one of the most requested things whether people call it a mark bass or not, that's always the answer. These questions, so yeah, I'd recommend people go check it out, share drive. And yeah, is there anything else you want to plug?

Sjoerd  39:42

Well, actually, one thing I want to say that I think the one thing that distinguishes because of course there's we there are some other people offering somewhat similar I think the one thing that distinguishes us and relates to that is that like the like first of all quality, the reliability is really great. But also we have a super Fantastic support team I got I've recently now because we have an influx because of this COVID thing. I've been helping out a little bit. But yeah, we have we have like super great support. So even if you if you if you're not listening to this, you're like, Okay, let's do this try I'm not so sure. You know, there isn't a question. small enough dumb enough that you cannot send us like we will. Like they will this team will help you get going. Or and or also just honestly say that you can do this. Like we're not in the business or from Finland. We're probably the most honest company in the world. We will tell you if it doesn't work, if we can sell it, sell it to you so so please come and try 30 day free trial

Ben Tossell  40:43

at Ola dot commercial at the end. Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, it's been really great and looking forward to seeing what she does in the future.

Sjoerd  40:54

Yeah, thanks to you, Ben. I really enjoy following you on Twitter. I really enjoy maker pet and I really enjoy Like the whole no code space, it's super inspiring. So keep it up.

41:04

Yeah, cheer you. All right.

Ben Tossell  41:06

Thanks so much for listening. You can find us online at maker pad.co or on Twitter at make that we'd love to hear if you enjoyed this episode and what we do next.

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