Lessons - Scaling a Marketplace Through Founder-Led Growth | David Ciccarelli - CEO & Founder of Voices.com

In this lessons episode you'll discover how to scale a marketplace by overcoming early challenges like the chicken and egg problem of supply and demand learn the importance of founder driven outreach in acquiring your first customers adapting strategies as you grow and focusing on tasks only you can do to drive long-term success. I want to understand how did you even scale the first like how did you get the first customers on the platform how do you get your first thousand customers on the platform and then I want to understand after you switch that domain. You can talk numbers or not it's up to you but what your MRR was pre domain and then post domain and how that kind of helped you ramp up. Yeah sure so the pre MRR would probably be something like I think that the first goal was always to get to 8,000 a month because that would be the 10 or 100,000 issue a year. And then so that was certainly kind of a pre I think we had like one other employee we did not pay ourselves Stephanie I very much at all. And I think we got up to about five hundred thousand dollars in annual annual recurring revenue. And that was you know before kind of the domain and you know it's really been almost a you know a doubling virtually every year. And of course the law of big numbers starts to kick into place where it becomes much harder that's what's so admirable when you see these like big tech companies. Or like zoom like in the kind of thick of the pandemic like I think through like three or four hundred percent you're just like holy smokes. That must have made it quite mine mine boggling number it's yeah for sure yeah it's like there's another thousand employees here they weren't here three months ago. No but for us you know we're much clearly a much much smaller scale but you know I you know it's it's it's it was a while back but I would definitely say in kind of like that you know doubling kind of brief before and after. So to get you know these the two sided marketplace or you know at you know an online marketplace kind of these terms are used a little bit interchangeably. They're actually really difficult businesses to pull off because they require what's known you have to solve the chicken and egg problem where you have supply. So in this case talent but for Airbnb it might be rooms available for Uber might be right you know drivers available to take you for a ride. I mean you go down the list of you know open table it's like seats and tables available at restaurant that's the supply. And then you have the demand people looking to make a booking or to hire a talent or a freelancer and the supply's not going to show up unless there's enough demand. But the demand's not going to go if they don't think anyone's going to be there to fulfill their request. And so there's a couple of approaches. One is and the one that we used is what I was kind of like this equal blood balanced approach where Stephanie and I divided and conquered. Stephanie was always the voice talent you know gal and she built relationships with talent reaching out one at a time and saying you know literally by email going to their website just searching around going to the website and inviting people onto the platform one at a time. And my job was to reach out to those clients which I called called like old school called 10,000 calls over the first kind of like first five years. I just made all the calls to as many people as I could finding you know lists or directories or you know conferences or somebody was you know sponsoring. I would just give them a call and invite them. That was the whole thing was just invite invite invite and it would be at their discretion whether or not they wanted to we want to sign up if you will. So it was it wasn't some some platforms go all in on one side and then shift their direction. I think for us as we started it was each side very incremental. And more recently where we expanded from just voice over into these new complimentary categories as I was mentioning you know audio production and music in particular and translation. Here the approach was a little bit different and it's kind of like let's go to the playbook initially. We started with a think a few hundred talent before the first clients would come on and post jobs but maybe not quite that many few you know up to around a hundred. And so by that same product you actually need a lot less supply than you would think because let's just get enough that we can fulfill that first request. So at one point I just want to ask quickly sorry before you go and just to clarify something when when you cold call these 10,000 people or when you're reaching a cold email. You're just getting everybody like you're again that that program doing things that don't scale mentality like that's like the step one. But you're not you're not charging these people you're just bringing them into that you can keep you have that sort of that. That baseline that you can now exact now charge and okay. Okay. Okay. Sorry but I don't want to clear my. And so yeah I know a great point and it is exactly that like it did not scale and actually have a funny story about that. That when we went to expand to these new categories were like wow how do we how many free how many freelance translators do we need in order to go live right. And in speaking with our board member one of our board members who was a previous like SVP at upwork. She's like well you know we always kind of use this proxy of like 10,000 freelancers to make a category to have sufficient was referred to as marketplace liquidity. And I thought seemed like a huge number to me so that took us we plan that was going to take us six months. And by just welcoming in inviting freelance translators and auto produce we end up with 50,000 translators over about a four week period. So clearly there's a lot of supply if you will or creative talent there out there that are wanting to participate in the gig economy. And so we read that was a huge lesson we did mostly I mean the most effective means was through online advertising you know Facebook and Instagram. A bit of Google AdWords what we tried to repeat that was successful more than 10 years ago was those one on one emails and just calling you know calling people from again directories that we found totally did not work just cold like cold setting an email saying we're expanding to and these people hadn't heard of us at all did not work at all we spend a couple weeks trying to do that. And I think our big takeaway when we did our retrospective which is another great you know I think is a nicer term than a post mortem right it's it's a retro like what worked and what didn't about this launch was recognizing that we have to do things that scale at this point we don't it was just very inefficient. And so that was you know that that was just a small kind of lesson learned it just because it worked in the past doesn't mean it's going to work again in the future so therefore try it and be quick to let it go and that was that's what we we found and then pivoted accordingly. Do you think there's a reason why it worked because for an entrepreneur that's very disheartening right because for a not sure they don't have capital to test at scale they can't. $10,000 into ad words and see if people are converting for a new product category they have to call they have to aim yes was a nuance as to why it didn't work now. I have a hypothesis I think it's very different when you're a founder making a personal plea for somebody new to try something out versus. You know have utmost respect for our team members but I think they were it was it was an assignment right and it's like okay we're all going to send 300 emails right to all these people and it was just it may have lacked the. It was templated like we went through and kind of like it may have lacked the personality and the you know that the not personality like the personal approach that was like we i've listened to your you know i've reviewed your credentials I think you would be great to the platform like. A founder can say that with such authenticity and in a convincing manner and it's like if you don't you know if this doesn't make sense to you like let me know your own like there's such a thirst for feedback amongst founders. That you're willing to try whatever it is and even if someone says no it's like we'll help me understand why not so I can learn for next time so I think that would probably be the nuance Stephanie did it such a phenomenal job the first time the personal plea and so forth and maybe there was something there that that would be kind of the only. Yeah you know that's my hypothesis that's a smart it's a smart lesson to and it's a smart lesson for founders it's a very smart for founders because sometimes they they fall into this trap of not understanding why. The employees don't have the same evangelism and conviction but it will never be and I think that's something you have to just be okay with and that's something that you are running into when you actually try to replicate the the founder led strategy that you know originally got you that success very smart yeah. Yeah I mean it reminds me it reminds me Scott of like when determining where you should be spending your time as as the founder or as the CEO is to do those things that only you can do. And I'll say that again because it's so powerful when you're evaluating do I do this or that and what's the most important on my might to do list. What are those things that only you can do and some that might be talking to an investor it might be leading the you know for new employee training doing the here's who we are in how it and sharing the vision here's our cultural norms that is so powerful. Coming from the founder as one of those things that only you can do with that enthusiasm and compared to perhaps a number of other. TAS which might be interesting might be you know they might inspire you but you might not actually be the best person to do so and I found you know myself in a lot of those situations as well where and I see that another entrepreneur is like man you're kind of in your own way here like you are preventing the company from scaling. Now there's things that you can do and only you can do and therefore go all in on those and let other people thrive in their own right and cut us stepping into your shoes there fine you can provide some guidance and mentorship along the way but you know if if four people can do it and it doesn't have to be you then just don't don't insert yourself unnecessarily so I hopefully that was that's helpful to somebody listening out there. 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