Quitting Startups/VC to $25k+/Month Solo Bootstrapped

0:04[music] Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Building Now podcast. Today's guest is Martin Donahue. He is a founder that left the startup and VC world to build his own products and he scaled his product Capgo to over 25,000 MRR. And today I'm really excited to explore, you know, building an audience, built scaling his product and um learning about everything he has to share with us about building products. So welcome

0:32Martin. Thank you for coming. Layla. Thank you. Yeah. Um I would love to know a little bit about your story and your journey to, you know, entrepreneurship in general. Like what got you started? Well, uh what got me started? Um Honestly, it's it's come back from school. I went to a developer school, you know, at the time it was something if you want

0:56to learn code, that's the best way. [gasps] And in the school was in France in Montpellier, uh the guy was the director of the school was um a guy who really like entrepreneurship. So he he did some pep talk about entrepreneurship, about how it's good to do your own project on the side of the school to learn about uh different stuff than the school is teaching you and it was really like uh um nice incentive and at the time we also had um uh YouTube channel in France who started to talk about a lot about entrepreneurship and it was like um a place where you can raise money. Uh a

1:40bit like they were copying YC kind of, but with way more content because they believe in France we were lacking of content. So I started listening and I was like, "Okay, let's let's do my own startup." So with some friend in school we started to to work on on things and obviously, nothing worked. Um but at one point we got something that was a bit like

2:02interesting into the medical sector. But obviously, because of regulation, we couldn't pursue this. But we keep, you know, a bit building on the side and at one point we had a project kind of working with some medical person who wanted to use it not in a medical context, but around it. So, it was fine

2:23in term of regulation. And it was a choice like between like continuing the school of pursuing to pursuing the the startup and personally, since I did loan to do the school, [gasps] and my parents were like, "Can you keep finishing the school, please?" So, I give up the project and let them my friend continue it and I went I continued the school. It was, you know, a master's degree in in in in

2:52development in software engineering. And so, I stopped at the time, but I really enjoyed the experience, enjoyed building, seeing results, you know, and the fact like you you go to see some customers in real life and talk with them, see how they use the product, struggle to use it, but at the end, you know, manage to help them. I really like this process like he it means so much to me to be able to help people by building something. It's like so cool, you know, it's like

3:22Yeah. you use your hands and you build something and it become useful. So, I keep that in my mind and when in the fourth year of of the school, you need to go into like another country to do a year abroad. And while I was in Finland, I got a job in a startup. So, I started

3:44working in a startup who raised money. And it was a amazing adventure, but I also saw the problem of raising money. It's like you know, you have your customer, you have a good mission, and then you have the VC. And your VC became your customer as well because they put money in you. And I realized over time you I don't know for this startup at least, uh you start to care more about the VC than uh the end customer because that's not the one who paying right now or not

4:14paying enough. So, I kind of hate the experience because we were doing less and less good job for the and turning it just to a cash machine for the VC and this didn't uh make me enjoy it because sometimes we were doing very dumb thing that were useless, but it was pleasing the VC, so we were doing it at

4:35the time. And um sorry, I have to I have the dog with me. He wants to get out. [laughter] You're all good. And [clears throat] um and so I tried again to do some uh other startup in that way without We tried without raising money, but ended up like everyone is raising money, so you want to raise money and you have co-founder, they want to raise money. It's also ego thing uh startup making startup, you know, you want to prove to the rest of the world you're you're valuable and one of the you know, milestone is to raise money, so I ended up multiple times into this uh

5:12loop of raising money and at one point I I made it to stop. The last startup I was co-founder of the project was amazing. We were doing it in open source. It was like uh data science uh tool for people data scientist to be able to push code in production directly without having the

5:29need of a developer. And the project was super cool, but we were struggling because everyone around is raising money, so you don't look serious when you don't raise money and I was keep talking with my co-founder like I don't want to do that. It's stupid for many reason that I I just said before.

5:45I mean, for my own opinion. And at one point I realized like I'm just like make them fail by staying with them while that's what they want and that's what they see from the market. So I just quit my role of CTO in the startup and I want to entrepreneur to become entrepreneur on my own without raising funds this time and took me a bit of while to understand everything. Realize also like having co-founder who knows like marketing and sales is very useful. And when you go on your own it's quite became quite a learning curve that you thought like you could do better in 5 minutes but in

6:22fact not. But here we are right now. We have a business working. Didn't raise money and I'm pretty happy about it. Nice. No, that's awesome and I think definitely relate with the marketing and sales part because I've definitely been struggling with that myself and trying to share whatever works but yeah, it's not easy so Yeah, thank you for you know, kind of talking about like the VC route because I think on X and everything you see like two sets of people like the people who are building independently and then also people trying to raise money and I think it's good to get a perspective about like you know, you get kind of trapped a

6:59little bit when you go that route so but yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I think that on that matter there was like something it really depend on who you are and what you want to do like I'm not really ego driven like I don't want to be in the media and you know, in TechCrunch like my startup or raise million that I really don't care about that but I'm ego driven the way that when I talk to my customer and then say the product is fabulous then you know, I I I close my

7:27day and and make me happy. Adding raise million dollars does not so it's it's really depend on you like if if you are really ego driven like public ego because that's mean you know, your customer is private so it's it you But if if you need this ego thing, then raising money make makes a lot of sense. I I do not, and also I wanted to have full freedom on how I build my company and how I can I can have my own freedom, you know, like that was one of the reason I wanted to create also a business is to be able to be free the way I want and to not to

8:04report anyone beside my customers, of course. But you know, I reach a point where I can say to my customers, you know, I'm not working today because I'm helping my mom or whatever, so I will take care of you tomorrow. And I'm really understanding about that. And they know, you know, I build this business that way, so I think it it's also attract other customer people that

8:27have a bit the same beliefs. And I really like that to be in a you know, in this bubble where I can do things more humanly. Yeah, no, that's that's really awesome. And I think you mentioned like you were talking to customers a couple times. So a little bit of a tangent here, but like for someone who's just getting started out like like maybe less than maybe 50 60 customers, like like how would you recommend the best way to kind of like get feedback? Because I think sometimes like personally I do a lot of like emails and I feel like it's very hard to get someone on the phone or like on a

9:04call to talk to you and give you feedback. Um maybe it means the problem or the product that I'm building is maybe not that good, but but I think when you're really early stage, like what would you recommend is the best way to kind of get in touch with your like ICP and your your customers, like um and

9:23kind of get feedback? I think it's really depend of the niche you're working on and how is the habit of people. Me, my project is targeting developers, so people that usually like you and me that not really willing to do a call easily, but they are willing to write you a piece of thing if you ask and if you give them incentive to. So, what I've done is try to make like writing to me the most easy possible and the most personalized possible. So, all my email doesn't have like, you know, headers or forms. Everything is text written. So, and and in the footer of every email it says, "If you reply, I

10:05will reply personally. There is no AI. There is no support person. This is the founder replying to you." And this help people, you know, to create a trust and believe like, "Okay, if I have something to say, I'm not talking to a robot or a guy who doesn't give a about my feedback. It's the

10:22founder." And it create like a link with people. So, this link also help a lot to get feedback. Then, as you say, like sometimes people don't reply. It probably means what you have done they didn't care yet or not care enough or didn't invest enough. So, often if you if you try to target something that bring a lot of pain to people and you try to solve it, or they will be super happy you solve it or super mad you

10:47didn't do a good job. And I will say that's what you should aim for because you will get a lot of hate and you have to give a lot of care of people give you hate. Say you are there for them. You understand like it's not working as they want, but you're really trying your best to do so. So, any feedback will help you to do it

11:06better. And that is amazing like many people are having a bit of fear of people getting mad at you, but you should not not have it at all because people got mad that's mean what you have done touch them somewhere. That just mean mean you you you missed the the right place, but that's mean it's important to them and that's amazing news. You just should uh try to find a path with them and usually it's your best supporter after all. And that's is like to me uh like a secret sauce that I've done many times. Like I've done a lot a lot of that didn't work, but helped people

11:45badly and they got mad and took a lot of care of them and now they're like biggest supporters. Yeah, no, that's that's really good advice and I think it also gives a perspective like, you know, if you're trying something for like several months and it's like you're trying every every channel and it's not working, it maybe is like a product problem or like the

12:04pain is not deep enough for them. So, that's good to kind of get like a perspective on that as well. I wanted to switch focus a little bit on like, you know, because I know you started a podcast um and also like, you know, you you built an audience on Twitter um or X. But yeah, so I'd love to know a little bit about like, you know, um building an audience, maybe starting something like a newsletter or podcast um like I remember you mentioned it kind of helped you get started on your journey as well. So, I'd love to hear more about

12:37that. Basically, if I am doing well right now it's because of the podcast. And podcast was my little secret for a while because I got access to amazing guys in the in the field I wanted and they were super happy to talk like we're doing right now because, you know, it's a it's feed your ego to to have someone asking you a question about how you do things and it's also a bit of free marketing or you saw. That was huge for me. I've met the podcast was in French and I've met like the top SaaS entrepreneur of French and I basically stopped because I feel like I

13:13I got all of them already, [gasps and laughter] like the one I wanted. So, I was like, maybe let's start an English and I realized then I didn't need it so much because I did the podcast I think 3 years. Mhm. And and then like I was like, okay, now just need to to focus on building." So, the podcast is is a really a good way to get yourself started and ask your

13:35question as you're doing right now. And yeah, I don't know if I have answered well your question. I got side uh No, no, this is No, this is a good This is a good answer and something that I think a lot of people are struggling with now and I personally struggle with is because I At my core, I want to build a product and I want to solve people's problems, but in order to get that product out there, you have to like create content and like that's probably one of the best like free avenues to get people to like look at your product and I think it's hard to get mixed up

14:06between those two things. Like um I guess when you were building the podcast and for you said for 3 years, you were also building your product on the side, right? So, how did you like kind of divide your time or kind of think about, you know, this is the time I'm going to put into content versus like building? Um something I did that is usually not like uh into what everyone recommend is I didn't try to build a podcast or an audience because I didn't see the podcast as a distribution, but more as a network effect. So, I built the podcast to make friends. And most of the people that

14:46have been in the podcast, we are friend uh now and I create good relationship and I'm still like emailing them sometimes. One became even my best friend. We live in the same place in Madeira. Um so, this created a lot of network effect and that was the best part of the podcast. And because it was a friendly conversation between people and it was really like personal and not like uh you know, kind of corporate or uh very in surface. I was asking very deep question that I care about. Then, people start to listen and and they came because of that because they feel like they were in the room with us, you know,

15:28and and that created the whole like snowball effect and and it get more and more recommended. So, I didn't try to, you know, spend a lot of time on it. I was like spending probably each episode was an hour 1 hour 30 and I was probably spending 3 hours by week maximum on that. Um I had the like editors. Uh I was paying for it basically. It cost me money the podcast. But it was kind of an MBA in entrepreneurship, you know, because I met the best people uh I could in France and and it give me a lot of experience, a lot of contact, and a lot of ability

16:08to uh to ask question afterward even like, you know, because you have this relationship. You have ask this person many many question. And he probably, you know, some will not enjoy you as a person, but depend who you are and who is this person, but you will find some affinity and then you you have like a a preferred canal with this person that you can use uh to keep creating a relationship and over time also have some help from this person just like, you know, some mental support sometimes or just like

16:43basic stuff, but it really helps. And when I start the podcast in English, the same like all the people that I have in the English podcast we are very close friend now. And I speak with them like very often and it's super helpful, you know, when you have a down time, when you're not sure about the you're doing because the journey of

17:02entrepreneurship is very hard. Right. Then you can share with with this friend that that are the same uh you know, hobby than you. [laughter and gasps] And that's the most helpful for me. So, I I build each time I did the podcast whether in French or in English, I saw it as a as a network tool

17:24more than building an audience. Got it. And the audience came because of that authenticity and I was sharing things authentically. Got it. Yeah, I know that's that's totally true and I think I've only done like I think this is my fifth episode and I feel like I already have like people I can reach out to if I have questions about like mobile apps or like just anything product-related. So, I'm really grateful for that and I think I think a lot of people like especially on Twitter now like I think it's good to kind of think of it as like you know making connections rather than like you

17:56know just building up followers or doing vanity metrics. So, um but yeah, no that's really good and insightful. I wanted to ask about um you know I know you said that you know you were stuck in like the two to three KMRR range for a little bit of time um and then things started to take off again. So, how did you keep yourself like motivated and like what avenues did you see that like really paid off and like kind of um my question is essentially like what kept you going

18:24essentially? I think uh to be an entrepreneur you need to be very stable. Mhm. Uh that's that's the thing and then you have to respect yourself a lot because there's some moment you will hate your project and if you don't take care like try to look around a bit and do something else then you you will just not be able to keep keep going because like you hate everything you do, nothing works, everything seems like uh a mess and and it became very difficult you know to to progress and sometimes you're stuck and you don't know why. So, you need to a bit around you know like

19:04Mhm. Yeah. Try to do other things or things differently. What I've done a lot also is to share with people like or publicly or with friends or the friends from the podcast to be what I'm doing and I got a lot many times because of it. You have to be really open because sometimes you're really convinced about what you do is the right thing on the right direction and then you will talk with someone and this someone tell you you are an idiot. And when I was at 3,000 MRR, it's what happened, you know, I was like not able to grow more. I was not getting more

19:37people discovering my product daily and I was like, what I'm doing wrong? And I start stalking on on X about like my SEO like what I'm trying to do and the guy DM me and say, let you know, let's call and show me your your SEO like I don't believe what you're saying. And we did a call and during the call he look at me and say, your SEO is totally like you're doing nothing good. Like I don't

20:03understand how even you get customers. And I was like, uh me neither. [laughter] I thought I was doing great. And he asked me many question, I share my screen and he end up finding like uh in Capgo, people find Capgo not because they find an article or whatever, they find Capgo because they look for

20:27Capgo. And he was like, I don't understand why people look for you already if they don't know you. It makes zero sense. And I was sharing with him and we discover like together that because I was building Capgo in this niche and I found out so many tools were off-baked or not really well done or not working anymore, old getting old, you know, because in Capgo it's like a niche around Capacitor apps, it's mobile app made with web technology and you need a lot of plugins a bit like Expo, you know, you have a plugin for camera, you have a

21:02plugin for web browser or whatever. And this plugin it exists many thousand of them in the capacitor niche, but they are not well maintained because it's open source. Someone did it, then you don't need it anymore, and you keep it in GitHub and it's dying. So, I started at one point to fix my own plugin because I needed some

21:21for the app I was building. And this plugin had the branding of Capacitor on it. And while we did the audit with the guy, like he did like freely, you know, he's just like because he was pissed off what I was saying. He wanted just me to understand like what I was doing wrong. Uh he told me like, "I think it's your

21:38plugin what happening." And what was funny at the time is I got paid sometimes to fix plugins because like I did some and people contacted me like because you know the niche of Capacitor is people doing web thing, so they don't know native thing. And often I get paid to fix plugins. And I explained that to the guy and he says, "So, you are basically your marketing is making plugins. People pay you to do your own marketing, and you want to stop

22:05doing that." I was like, uh yeah. Yeah, now you say it like that, it look idiot. [laughter] So, thanks to this guy, I doubled down on plugin, and I had like, I don't know, 28 at the time. And I in a year and a half now that he told me that, we are like more than 150 plugins. And this is that the number of people discovering Capacitor by day like did 10x uh because of that, because of the

22:35plugins. And the effort I put on it because I got a call with a random guy because I was sharing I was struggling with SEO. Yeah, and that's awesome. And I think like one of the things that I just like, you know, take away from you as well is like, you know, you have to be able to take really blunt feedback and not like, you know, take it personally. I think that's like a trait you need to have to succeed here,

22:56so. Yeah. I mean it happened also with your own data, with everything like if you put ego on on what you're you're doing, you will often miss, you know, the the true in between what you've seen. So, sometimes you need external people, sometimes even yourself. Uh but to me often it's when I I talk to my partner about what I'm doing or friend, and then I realize, you know, I try to explain what I'm doing and or I realize I'm an idiot because just trying to explain it make me realize it. You know, that's the the the the duck

23:35technique in coding. Uh otherwise, it's the person telling me bluntly like you make no sense. And the the same happened in January like my wife Janie started to work with me in January. She quit her job to work with me. And I ask her like to get to know Kapgo. She's not a technical person. And so,

23:54she use AI to try to onboard on Kapgo. And and she had so many stupid bugs and I had no answer. Each time she was like, "But I don't understand like the onboarding doesn't start." And the onboarding was basically you go to Kapgo, you register, and you say, "Okay, use the CLI to onboard your app because it's in the code, you know, so you most of the onboarding cannot be done in the web." And she she run the command who say use the CLI and nothing works because I never tried to use the CLI if you didn't install Xcode or Node.js or, you know, all of the basic stuff a

24:26developer had, but I did the CLI was not even checking it like to just verify you have what you need to start working. And we fixed many stupid bugs like that that she found out because she was checking what I was doing, and it like the conversion rate exploded since January because of that because like we had many people, not everyone is like ready to use my software, and I didn't even realize that because I'm so much into it since like forever that I was

24:55missing these important things. Right. Now, I think it's definitely important to like experiment and like kind of have someone else also check your product. Like a family or a friend. Um I think that that definitely helps catch stuff that and I think one thing is like, you know, if you can't explain your product in like one sentence or like in a way that a non-technical person can understand, I think that says a lot as well. So, I think um that's

25:20important. Yeah. A good test I will say is to ask someone which is not your client to read the landing page and try to see if he understand. Cuz if someone who is not your client understand what the product is for and is not for him, that's mean the person which is for him will understand. That's very important. And sometimes we miss that, you know, because we are in a niche, we thought like everyone knows or, you know, in now with the AI bubble, everyone below uh believe that uh they know the latest model or tool or

25:56CLI and stuff, but most of people don't. Mhm. And you cannot believe they are idiot and they should because that's will not work, you know. So, you need to place yourself in the shoe of your potential customers and I help them the most you can to understand what the you do. Right. I wanted to end on like this question. I actually saw, I think, your tweet where you're you said you're building like a couple things in stealth. Um and then you kind of like publicly said you're going to start building it in public. So, I know in mobile apps like there's this big um kind of

26:30move to like build in private because of just like the nature of it and kind of how easy it is to clone now. But like, I guess for web apps and other products, like do you think building public is still, you know, worth it or like, I guess That's a very good question. Um So far, while I was building in in public and I had no fear about it. And then I get some copycat, and it start to to take, you know, space in my mind because I see everything I release, the guy release it, and sometimes better than me, sometimes worse, but you know, it it touch your ego, you

27:08know, because you have someone copying every step you're moving. And I like the more the less public it is, the more time I have people to give me feedback, and then uh have like an edge. Um but lately I've decided that I think the edge is why I'm is not like timing, and I believe because I'm building in public, because I get this feedback, because I am doesn't have fear compared to others, this is my edge. So, I'm coming back to stop building in stealth because of that. I will publish everything. Most of the things I do on top of that is open source, so it's very

27:45easy to copy. And you can copy as much as you want, but you cannot copy the conversation I have. Uh you know, the edge now is about the unspoken knowledge you have, and this happen into conversation with our customers, feedback you have because you do things, and I think my edge is finally being public because by doing that, then I have feedback that

28:12you can never never have otherwise. Yeah, no, that's that's a really insightful kind of thing because I was thinking about it, and then I was like, okay, should I build in stealth? Should I keep building in public? And I think a lot of people probably have similar thoughts now, but I think I think the Outbid thing like it kind of reminded me like, you know, people are going to make clones of like your product, like hundreds of them, but people will remember like the person who started it and kind of like did that, so that's really Yeah, and and at the end is the guy who

28:42made the most money. Yes. [laughter] True. True. But yeah, thank you so much for like, you know, just this conversation and I think it's really helpful for someone getting started out. So, I really appreciate you taking the time. You're welcome. It was super cool to be here. Thank you.