Smart Bear Live

Jason Cohen (00:01)
All right, and welcome to

Dmytro Krasun (00:02)
I just...

Dmytro Krasun (00:04)
Okay.

Jason Cohen (00:05)
just just when we first started this conversation, Dimi said, well, you could call me Dimitri or Dmitro or Dim some people call me Demi. What I thought was funny though is you said, people on Twitter called you call you Dimitro.

Dmytro Krasun (00:21)
Ha

Jason Cohen (00:22)
And that's probably a thousand times more people than you actually talk to in real life. Is that true?

Dmytro Krasun (00:28)
Yes, yes, yes, I think yes.

Jason Cohen (00:31)
So that's overwhelmingly

Jason Cohen (00:32)
what you're called, even though it's probably

Dmytro Krasun (00:33)
Okay.

Jason Cohen (00:34)
nobody that you know.

Dmytro Krasun (00:36)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like... Yeah, it feels like my public name, yes.

Jason Cohen (00:43)
Yeah, I guess

Jason Cohen (00:43)
it is. yeah, Twitter's so weird because you're talking to people every day and yet are they are they people? I don't even know.

Dmytro Krasun (00:53)
yes, yes. I met many of them. You probably too.

Jason Cohen (00:57)
Yeah. But then there's so many more that aren't people. I don't know. okay, so the way this happened was I think you were maybe complaining into the void that growth has

Dmytro Krasun (01:08)
You

Jason Cohen (01:08)
slowed or stopped and and WTF and someone said, you should talk to somebody and one way or another we got connected into let's do a podcast where you show the entire world all your numbers and tr and travails and we'll go through it and I'll be an asshole and maybe by the end of it we can figure

Dmytro Krasun (01:26)
Hahaha

Jason Cohen (01:26)
something out.

Jason Cohen (01:27)
So here we are, which is very strange. have you ever done anything like this?

Dmytro Krasun (01:32)
No, I think it's like like somebody looking at my numbers completely, you know, like open and talking about this I think it's the first time probably we talked,

Jason Cohen (01:42)
Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (01:42)
you know in some podcasts a little bit about something different but like diving deep inside this numbers. No

Jason Cohen (01:49)
Yeah, you know, people are always worried about giving the numbers. I don't know why, maybe because they're worried that they're not good enough. But what I figure is whatever they are,

Dmytro Krasun (01:56)
Hahaha

Jason Cohen (01:58)
most people watching don't have numbers that are even that good. So they're impressed and in fact wanting to be inspired by something that you're doing or learn s or get to the place where you are. And people that have let's just say they have a bigger company, which does not mean they're more successful, but let's suppose that's the case. They know how hard it was to get there. They don't look down and say, you know, that's terrible.

Jason Cohen (02:19)
They say,

Dmytro Krasun (02:19)
Ha

Jason Cohen (02:19)
yeah, I was there. We're the same kind of person. I you know, we're we're we're we're connected in a fundamental human way. So really I'm trying to think of what is the person who looks at that and actually thinks a a real bad thought. And that's gotta be a just a person, I don't care what they think. That's not a good person. Like they just what?

Dmytro Krasun (02:40)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (02:41)
They don't value you because your MRR should be twice as big, and then we care what they think about anything? I don't care.

Dmytro Krasun (02:46)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (02:47)
Anyway, so but it's still scary nevertheless, 'cause it is. It's private

Dmytro Krasun (02:50)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (02:51)
normally. so you wanna set up what was I mean, I guess I don't really care what you were originally thinking. What do you want to accomplish today? besides the fact that it's not growing. Like what is it that's your like are you looking to are you looking to gr grow again? And that's what you want to come away with today, is how to do that, or just diagnose it or what?

Dmytro Krasun (03:13)
It's an interesting question in itself. I'm happy to see you. I appreciate taking time to talk and to discuss all this. You're way more experienced in this and I can learn a lot. So when I posted this post about growth,

Dmytro Krasun (03:35)
It was kind of like, you know, my recurring topic of the past few months, maybe even more, I don't know. But one of my initial goals was to build business on my own and to have this 10K MRR, whatever. And then I reached this goal and maybe I wasn't ambitious, you know, I don't know. But then I started to grow it, to grow it. And then realized, you know, like it's pretty boring.

Dmytro Krasun (04:03)
I noticed that there is no... like the growth itself is not growing. And it started to trouble me, like is there some fundamental issue? Maybe I can do something? Because if I project all numbers, I see there will be plateau. And I know right now that I won't be past this plateau. I have kind of a new goal, you know, like in my mind I want to reach I want to reach...

Dmytro Krasun (04:32)
now one thousand one hundred thousand dollars of emerald and it feels for me like that having the current numbers it doesn't lead me to this goal at least like maybe i don't know in five ten years 20 years still not bad still don't complain and super happy about everything yes but it feels for me like a real interesting challenge to tackle and

Dmytro Krasun (05:02)
And having a partner or somebody with whom I could discuss this and to see on the outside, especially with experience, it would be super helpful. Yeah, so that's my idea.

Jason Cohen (05:17)
So you wanna get to a hundred K MRR,

Jason Cohen (05:19)
but at the current course and speed you won't get there and it not even close and

Dmytro Krasun (05:22)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (05:24)
so you gotta figure out something to you gotta do something different 'cause if you keep doing the same things you're doing, you won't get there.

Dmytro Krasun (05:30)
Yes, yes, yes. And maybe there is some, maybe, you

Jason Cohen (05:33)
Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (05:33)
know, kind of collateral lateral questions to this. Maybe I also could sell it. Maybe I could build a new product. I don't know. But that's like another, you know, like philosophical question on this.

Jason Cohen (05:43)
Yeah, so so

Jason Cohen (05:45)
what what that does is you're jumping right from the problem to like what should I do about it? In other words,

Dmytro Krasun (05:51)
I

Jason Cohen (05:51)
growth has slowed. That's a pr that's something we have to really understand, like why, what's going on. And then separately the question is what do you want to do about it? Like one thing you could do is and so I don't want to do this company ever again. that's one path

Dmytro Krasun (06:05)
Ha ha ha!

Jason Cohen (06:05)
to to deal with that. Another path is to find it is to solve whatever it is we found in the problem of growth.

Jason Cohen (06:12)
That's another and and indeed keep running the company. That's another solution. But how do you even know what that option is if you haven't identified what what the in detail what's causing the the problem with growth, right? So so

Dmytro Krasun (06:22)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Cohen (06:24)
I hear you on that. That's right. But you can't really tackle that until you figure out what the problem is. Now some people are are too dogmatic to me about this thing where you have to first identify the problem in great detail and only

Dmytro Krasun (06:37)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (06:38)
then go do the solutions.

Jason Cohen (06:40)
Well, I I just said that. So so like in general, I think that's right. But the way human brains really work is what you just did. When I want to jump to the solution, and then I jump back, but wait a minute, and you jump back to the problem and you jump back. And that's

Dmytro Krasun (06:51)
Ha ha ha!

Jason Cohen (06:51)
is how we think. And it's good because one can inform the other. Because, for example, you start saying, Well, maybe I'll sell the company, you go down that path, and you realize I would get so little for the company, and I'm just making this up because we haven't talked about it yet. I would get so little for the company. I don't like that. Okay, well.

Jason Cohen (07:09)
We still go back to identifying the problem, but now you have a renewed motivation to s to solve the problem because you didn't like one of the other options. So this kind of a path is normal. In general, it is better to figure out what's going on and and really get to what what some people call the crux of the problem. Like n okay, the the general problem is growth is slowed or stopped. But why exactly, like what exactly is the challenge that's going on? We get to that, because that's the thing to solve specifically.

Jason Cohen (07:38)
And then we find the solution. That's usually a better path. So it's okay if we bounce around a little, but like in general, that's a better way to organize it. So do you want me to pull up this dashboard so we can get the general numbers out there?

Dmytro Krasun (07:50)
Yes, let's try, let's

Jason Cohen (07:52)
Okay, here we go. So

Jason Cohen (07:55)
okay. Approximately,

Dmytro Krasun (07:57)
Maybe you can skip it.

Jason Cohen (07:58)
which this not approximately, or is it? Like this is the numbers,

Dmytro Krasun (08:00)
Yes,

Jason Cohen (08:01)
right?

Dmytro Krasun (08:01)
most of them, like most of them are correct numbers except for if you scroll down a little bit, there is like four.

Jason Cohen (08:08)
Okay, well let's just go through it and you can you can correct what's wrong. So

Jason Cohen (08:11)
the MRR is thirty two K, which is great. I mean, really, like you just said, you wanted the when you started the company, you wanted it to get to ten K of MRR. It's three times that.

Dmytro Krasun (08:20)
you

Jason Cohen (08:21)
So I guess my first question actually is what's wrong with that? Like you said, I wanna I wanna get to a hundred, but what's wrong with thirty two?

Dmytro Krasun (08:28)
It's a great question. getting to 10k MRR actually was kind of, you know, like identity crisis because I was living in this perpetual identity of achieving this 10k and then I

Jason Cohen (08:42)
Right.

Dmytro Krasun (08:42)
achieved it and then I felt like kind of empty. So I kept seeking answers like what can I do next and so on and I kept improving the product, working on terms and so on and so on. And then I realized, okay, so...

Dmytro Krasun (08:58)
I started to slowly to realize that my business is separate from me and it can have goals on its own and for business it would be better to grow and because of many reasons like you know inflation we need like

Dmytro Krasun (09:17)
Like, even if I'm not growing in 10 years, probably the money, the business earning now, it will be like two times less of purchase.

Jason Cohen (09:28)
Yeah, this isn't the reason. This is not the reason. I'll tell you why. I'll

Jason Cohen (09:33)
tell you why. Because if you said, because if it were really true that you were happy with 32, except for inflation, then the challenge that you would say is, I'm very happy, but I need to grow 3% a year, or I won't keep up with inflation. How should I grow 3% a year, you would ask? But you already know how to do that. That's not the problem. That's a that's a

Dmytro Krasun (09:49)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (09:53)
just that's a rationalization for the actual thing that you

Dmytro Krasun (09:55)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (09:56)
feel.

Jason Cohen (09:56)
You want to get to a hundred, that that's triple what it is now. So

Dmytro Krasun (10:00)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (10:01)
to me, when I hear that number, what I hear is over a million dollars a year. That's just what I hear. Cause we all know what that a million dollars is eighty-three thousand and whatever. Threes, lots of threes, right? Right?

Dmytro Krasun (10:10)
Yes, yes, with some buffer.

Jason Cohen (10:13)
Plus a little. So that's what I heard is a million dollars a year, over a million dollars a year. That's what I heard. That's what you're thinking, right? Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (10:21)
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (10:22)
So but you also said, and I know, I know we'll get to the growth, but

Jason Cohen (10:26)
You said I got my whole identity was getting to 10k. I

Dmytro Krasun (10:31)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (10:32)
got there, and then I felt empty, i.e.,

Dmytro Krasun (10:35)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (10:36)
that wasn't really a fulfilling goal after all. And your

Dmytro Krasun (10:39)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (10:40)
conclusion after that was: well, when I get to 100, I

Dmytro Krasun (10:43)
I swear I did.

Jason Cohen (10:45)
won't feel empty. It'll be different that time. Which it might

Jason Cohen (10:48)
be, because there's another zero. So you might be right. but probably you're wrong.

Dmytro Krasun (10:56)
no, no, no, here I agree with you I know that when I know that this one will not will not like I will not get fulfilled from this one but is but if I separate like business from my identity like from who I am and having a separate entity like

Dmytro Krasun (11:15)
business as a separate entity and having it's growing for me it's it's kind of like a nice challenge you know like a nice puzzle to solve like in that way yeah so it's it sounds nice and i'm building

Jason Cohen (11:28)
I see what you're saying. You're saying I you you've converted your mindset

Jason Cohen (11:30)
from this is who I am to I have this thing called a business. N it's a game and it's a good game because it it pays me when I do well. and and that's a different mindset now. And so it's a healthier mindset where you're not looking for personal fulfillment. So that okay, that's fine. I still kind of don't believe you because I don't know any founder who doesn't care at all. Actually, that's not true. I know some people that flip things and I guess they don't

Dmytro Krasun (11:52)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (11:53)
care, but I only half believe you, but

Jason Cohen (11:56)
It it it's fine. So okay, so so there really isn't a reason other than playing the game and and and making more money. It's not inflation. Do you wanna Is there an isn't there another reason or is it just I just want a successful business because that makes me impressive and puts enough money in the bank that I can, you know, I'm not let's just let's

Dmytro Krasun (12:15)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (12:15)
not say it makes me happy but or fulfilled, but let's say it removes all kinds of things that money can fix. Is that it?

Dmytro Krasun (12:24)
Yes, it's interesting. You get pretty quickly to the core, you know, like of the...

Dmytro Krasun (12:31)
this stuff because I actually don't believe it when I person what I say about like a narrative but I'm like in the process of building it like it's it's kinda that's one of the reasons like that was original post on x-high post that yes it's like contemplating about what I want to do and it's like it feels like a narrative that pulls me you know this one and yes I like actually I'm I'm happy like everything is good you know like but but but okay

Jason Cohen (12:58)
No, everything's not good or we wouldn't be talking. Okay, so it

Jason Cohen (13:01)
w we'll we'll leave it for now, but but you see that this is not clear actually. And

Dmytro Krasun (13:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Cohen (13:07)
the reason it matters is because later on you want to talk about should I sell the company it should in other words, should I what do I want to keep playing this game or not? And so that's

Dmytro Krasun (13:15)
Yeah

Jason Cohen (13:16)
when all these questions we're just asking do matter, right? Because

Dmytro Krasun (13:19)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (13:20)
if running the company is fulfilling, then selling it may not be.

Jason Cohen (13:24)
But it could be vice

Dmytro Krasun (13:25)
Listen.

Jason Cohen (13:25)
versa. So so these things do matter later. Like they don't they don't necessarily matter in terms of diagnosing what what's happening with growth, but they will matter later. And it just gives me some context of how you're thinking. So okay. I think I think I understand enough. So you have a thousand customers and

Dmytro Krasun (13:41)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (13:41)
a third of a million in in annual revenue, thirty-two K in MRR. and

Jason Cohen (13:47)
And it's very profitable, of course, because I'm I'm guessing it's just you. There's no employees and so this is just normal business expenses, or

Dmytro Krasun (13:53)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (13:54)
maybe there's a consultant, or what's what is the few expenses that result in that profit?

Dmytro Krasun (13:59)
Yes, currently it's like infrastructure, servers, many soft tools and some marketing.

Jason Cohen (14:06)
So not people.

Jason Cohen (14:09)
Yeah. When you

Jason Cohen (14:10)
say I want to get to a hundred K, are you thinking and still have no employees?

Dmytro Krasun (14:15)
It doesn't matter, I think.

Jason Cohen (14:20)
It doesn't matter? It

Jason Cohen (14:21)
does matter.

Dmytro Krasun (14:23)
No, no, I mean like if it would be Let's say it can be it can be with employees. Yes, it can be it can be

Jason Cohen (14:34)
Well but two minutes ago

Dmytro Krasun (14:35)
Because it's

Jason Cohen (14:35)
were you thinking that you needed to hire someone soon?

Dmytro Krasun (14:42)
No.

Jason Cohen (14:43)
Hm. Why not?

Dmytro Krasun (14:45)
Why not to hire

Jason Cohen (14:48)
You have the money?

Dmytro Krasun (14:51)
Why not to hire?

Dmytro Krasun (14:55)
I just like, because I don't feel the reason it.

Jason Cohen (15:02)
Yes, you yes, there is. You

Jason Cohen (15:03)
just said you're there's a huge problem, which is you're not growing and you wanna

Dmytro Krasun (15:06)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (15:06)
you wanna triple the company and it's not growing at all. There's obviously a need. But you didn't think that that like another person could be helpful in that. Whether whether that other person is focused on growth like marketing, or whether that person is focused on tech so that you could focus on marketing, regardless, that did not cross your mind. Which which is interesting because it tells me like that's not the way you're thinking of solving the problem. And maybe you're right, maybe not.

Jason Cohen (15:32)
maybe it makes sense to go solo to a hundred. I mean, especially nowadays, that's that's more possible than ever, I think. But I'm just trying to get a sense of what you're how you're thinking about it. Like if you had three people

Dmytro Krasun (15:42)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (15:43)
if it was a hundred K and you had three people that you worked with and let's even suppose you like them, just for fun, does that sound good? Or you're like, that's not what I meant.

Dmytro Krasun (15:56)
Yes, yes, I'm a bit afraid, yes.

Jason Cohen (15:59)
Yeah. and

Jason Cohen (16:01)
sometimes sometimes the issue with is we don't know what they would do. In other words, like I didn't hire someone because I don't know what to tell I don't know who I would hire or what I would tell them to do, which again is going back to like I'm not actually sure what the problem is, so I don't know what I'm solving.

Dmytro Krasun (16:13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (16:19)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (16:21)
Maybe, but that's not that that's not emphatic. So maybe not. Maybe it's just okay. So of course I see the revenue churn at nine percent and I can already tell that that's my main problem. maybe you've already can come to that conclusion. Let's find out. now here's what's funny. I'm looking here at this NRR growth chart, and what I see is growth. Now this is a one year chart, right? Twelve months.

Dmytro Krasun (16:46)
Yes,

Dmytro Krasun (16:47)
yes, yes, 20, 20 months.

Jason Cohen (16:48)
Okay,

Jason Cohen (16:49)
and so all I see is it's going up with occasional bouts of not going up.

Dmytro Krasun (16:53)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (16:54)
Okay. So I have a but I have several questions. One is it's been going up for six months straight, and then you had one month where it went sideways, and your conclusion is it's not growing anymore. But what I see is five out of the last six months it grew. So why are you saying it's not growing anymore?

Dmytro Krasun (17:09)
No, no,

Dmytro Krasun (17:12)
was about the... it's maybe because of my language or how I speak. It was about the... the growth of growth. Like the growth itself, like... like every month the product is adding like one thousand dollars monthly, yes, on average, yes. And then the growth itself, like zero, the growth of growth, yes. So it's like... Yeah,

Jason Cohen (17:34)
Yeah, I understand.

Dmytro Krasun (17:35)
yeah, yeah, so...

Dmytro Krasun (17:37)
That's what I mean, like, that's not the MRR itself yes Yeah, correct. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Cohen (17:40)
Yeah, we call that acceleration.

Jason Cohen (17:43)
Right? Getting faster and faster. but

Dmytro Krasun (17:45)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (17:46)
that doesn't usually happen.

Dmytro Krasun (17:49)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Cohen (17:50)
Usually growth is linear.

Dmytro Krasun (17:54)
Okay. But that's...

Jason Cohen (17:56)
Like you've seen all those graphs

Jason Cohen (17:58)
of of there's a lot of startups that that I mean, not a whole lot, but you there's dozens of s of of startups of this general size that have shared their numbers.

Dmytro Krasun (18:06)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (18:06)
And you've probably seen them. And they don't what what generally happens is it looks like a line, and then sometimes

Dmytro Krasun (18:12)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (18:12)
there's a bend in the line, like something structurally has changed and the line bends, but then it's still a line again. Now,

Dmytro Krasun (18:18)
Yes, yes, yeah.

Jason Cohen (18:20)
where you see something more like acceleration is

Jason Cohen (18:23)
huge runaway successes, you know, Facebook or whatever, where like, all right, you know, it's it's it's accelerating. Sure,

Dmytro Krasun (18:30)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Cohen (18:31)
but like that's that's not you you don't necessarily expect to do that.

Dmytro Krasun (18:38)
It's interesting what you're saying right now. It's like I have inflated expectations in a sense. That's what you say. you say that usually that doesn't happen. So, but why?

Dmytro Krasun (18:57)
Okay, okay.

Jason Cohen (18:58)
Well, okay, there's why, but like before we get to why, like you're saying it's important that growth accelerate and and yet your growth is fine and normal, but you're you're just not happy with that unless it accelerates or or did you just not know that?

Dmytro Krasun (19:15)
Yes, it was like if we take this initial goal of that that maybe like That maybe I don't believe fully yes about 100 K that I was working backwards from it yes like if I if I want to reach this number

Jason Cohen (19:36)
some data. So this is this is a this is an article of mine. So that's that's always, you know, very self serving to do that, but whatever. where but because this is some of the data. So here's here's Pally's four year MRR. So it's flat.

Dmytro Krasun (19:52)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (19:53)
And then it's then it's something, but look at that something. It's like a line. In fact, it looks like yours,

Dmytro Krasun (19:57)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (19:58)
up I mean mo sort of, right? Like close enough.

Jason Cohen (20:00)
Up, up, up, up, up.

Dmytro Krasun (20:00)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (20:01)
a little f a little flat period, up, up, up. Right? That's kind of like you. by the way, that's a million in MRR. that this is a million in MRR. That's what that's what that is. And then here's

Dmytro Krasun (20:11)
Beautiful.

Jason Cohen (20:11)
convert kit. And I mean, yes, they they had this big growth swing, but look for for a long, long time, years, it's this linear thing. And then even when it bends, it's a new line. See, it's still a line so okay, so that's a very fast growing line. Fant fantastic, but it's not, it did accelerate at this one point.

Jason Cohen (20:30)
But then it would turn into a line again, just at a much faster pace. That would get you to 100K in MRR, a faster pace of growth, but not necessarily constantly accelerating. Here's another one. This is

Dmytro Krasun (20:40)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (20:41)
convert kit later on just to see it. Look at that. Look how look how straight a line. This is this is like 10 years. Right?

Dmytro Krasun (20:47)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (20:49)
That I mean that's that's very, very straight line, except for a change, which I think is what you're saying is you want this change, this bend in the curve, right? Okay, so

Jason Cohen (20:58)
So let me, so that's enough of that. I just wanted to show you what what I meant. so yeah, so so I could

Dmytro Krasun (21:03)
Yes, yes, yes, I see, It's... yes, I...

Jason Cohen (21:05)
I so I look at your graph and you're you don't have the bend is the issue. If we showed a longer picture of this, it's what you said, like you're saying, look, I'm adding net a thousand dollars of MRR per month. So I'm just seeing like, all right, so in a year it's 12. And and so if I just stack 12s on top of each other, that's too many years. And also that's not what's gonna happen over that time frame.

Dmytro Krasun (21:26)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (21:28)
and also your cancellation rate sets a cap, which I think you know already because you have a thing here. New MRR is colliding with churn. You want to explain that?

Dmytro Krasun (21:39)
Yes, yes, it's... Maybe you can scale it a little bit down, but it's like... It's the moment when approximately, approximately the number of... The number of the volume... Revenue, churning revenue and the growth, like...

Dmytro Krasun (22:05)
will, how to say it, like, annihilate each other, like, in a sense that,

Jason Cohen (22:09)
Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (22:09)
they will be, like, I will be, if I keep growing with the same rate and my charm keeps up, like, at some amount it will be like zero, it will be, like, I cannot add some MRR. So this is approximately at 40k, this number. So even if I wanted, yes, even, so even if the growth, even if I continue to grow, I will, anyway, I cannot go to 100k.

Jason Cohen (22:33)
Yeah, yeah. So so this is the the the a a a way for for other people who are listening to to understand this is if marketing is putting in net is putting in a thousand dollars of MRR per month, let's suppose. Ooh.

Jason Cohen (22:55)
something changed with your video.

Dmytro Krasun (22:58)
with my video? Neuroconductor started due to changes in your devices. Okay. Do you think it started from the beginning? Okay,

Jason Cohen (23:11)
No, it just changed.

Dmytro Krasun (23:13)
okay.

Jason Cohen (23:18)
You wanna fix it?

Dmytro Krasun (23:20)
do you think...

Dmytro Krasun (23:23)
second let me check no everything is the same like I even didn't touch anything

Jason Cohen (23:32)
Okay, I'll just we'll just proceed, it's okay.

Dmytro Krasun (23:35)
Okay, okay.

Jason Cohen (23:38)
Okay, so so yeah, so the way to think about this if for people that are listening is you're adding one K of MR per month in new revenue, but cancellation is, let's see, is nine percent, let's say. And so as the company gets bigger and bigger, that nine percent is nine percent of a bigger and bigger number. But marketing is still putting in

Jason Cohen (24:07)
I say marketing, but your your inbound is still 1K, 1K, 1K each month. But the churn is going up every month because the company's growing and 9% of a bigger number is a bigger number. So effectively the dollars of churn go up every month because of this 9%. But marketing is not going up every month. It's just staying at 1K. So at some point, you're at a size where the number of cust number of customers or revenue, either one, that walks out the door in churn.

Jason Cohen (24:37)
Is equal to the amount that that new revenue that that that marketing is bringing in. And at that point the company is literally not growing. and you're saying that's at 40k MRR, which makes sense to me. And a simple formula to derive this, by the way, which you probably know because you made this this this chart

Dmytro Krasun (24:55)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (24:56)
is you take your MRR and you divide it by, or sorry, you take your new MRR every month and you divide it by your cancellation rate. So if you have one.

Jason Cohen (25:06)
one K MRR and you divide it by the cancellation rate of of nine percent. that's actually much worse. So so I'm guessing one percent is probably net of cancels. Or I'm sorry, that one one thousand dollars is net of cancels. I'm guessing more than that comes in and that net of cancels it's one. Is that right?

Dmytro Krasun (25:23)
Yes, something like that, yes. It's like not just one.

Jason Cohen (25:26)
Yeah, here it is. June June,

Jason Cohen (25:27)
yeah, here it is. June, it's 3K. That's right. So 3K of MRR comes in, but at 9%, so div divided by 9%, and you get about 30, 40k in MRR, which is about where you are. And that's why this chart was flat, because you brought in 3K, but 3K left. And you're saying, yeah, even in other months, this is still the case. And so I I can't ever get past this.

Jason Cohen (25:55)
Because of that nine percent cancellation, which that's the first thing my eyes went to is this revenue is so high there's no way you can grow past a a very small limit. So you've seen the same thing. So the obvious question is, why is your cancellation rate so high?

Dmytro Krasun (26:11)
Yes. Yes.

Dmytro Krasun (26:14)
It's a good one. It's a good one.

Jason Cohen (26:17)
Well what's the answer?

Dmytro Krasun (26:22)
It might be a few reasons. What?

Jason Cohen (26:24)
Well then he might be.

Dmytro Krasun (26:27)
Yes. Like, yes, I don't know for sure. I don't know. Yes. But

Jason Cohen (26:32)
Why?

Dmytro Krasun (26:32)
why I don't know for sure? No,

Jason Cohen (26:34)
That that no one ever talks to you when they leave? You don't ask?

Dmytro Krasun (26:38)
no, they have answers. But I assume... But like...

Dmytro Krasun (26:44)
But let's say I trust this like 99 % like I have like people leave answers and actually I shared them also but

Dmytro Krasun (26:58)
But there is two layers to that. For example, I can say that the reason of charm because people having, they say that they have short-lived use case. They just use product for some feature of theirs. I don't know, uploaded some file and then just canceled. And...

Jason Cohen (27:19)
Right.

Dmytro Krasun (27:21)
Or I can say that the reason, initially, that I was somehow attracting this type of customers, yes. So it's like, so it's a bit mixed, but because I have like, from what I see, I have the most charm on the smallest plants, like on the cheapest plants. And...

Dmytro Krasun (27:44)
Like, so maybe it's not... So maybe it's not... Initially it was a good fit for this kind of product. That's like what I think globally, maybe, yes? But if I check for reasons, there are like many of them. And the most popular one, written manually by many people...

Dmytro Krasun (28:11)
And it's like they just needed product for a month for some feature, for some project, something like that. Yes.

Jason Cohen (28:19)
So when you say temporary slash no longer needed, those are not the same thing. So in other words, there's a really big difference between a person who says, I know going into this that I need it for two weeks, and a person

Dmytro Krasun (28:33)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (28:34)
who says, I've been using this for two years, but now I don't need it anymore. Presumably because some projects ended. so do you have a sense

Dmytro Krasun (28:42)
Yes,

Jason Cohen (28:44)
of of how this splits? Is it is it mostly temporary?

Jason Cohen (28:47)
Or is it or is there a lot of people who use it for two years and then then

Dmytro Krasun (28:50)
Thank you.

Jason Cohen (28:51)
don't need it anymore?

Dmytro Krasun (28:53)
The latter... Yes, yes, I think it's mostly temporary for this

Jason Cohen (28:59)
Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (29:00)
one. Because I know, like, I have many customers who are still using the product for more than two years. But many of these... Yes, yes. Intuitively, yes, I cannot back up with numbers, But it was a mistake.

Jason Cohen (29:16)
And when it's temporary,

Jason Cohen (29:17)
how quickly do they leave t typically?

Dmytro Krasun (29:21)
I think it would be something between 1 to 3 months, something like that. It might be even just a month, you know, like just subscribe and use the product.

Jason Cohen (29:28)
So one thing that

Jason Cohen (29:29)
would be really good to do is to segment your customers be in let's say the first hundred days and everything else as two different segments, because what's happening

Dmytro Krasun (29:38)
Yeah

Jason Cohen (29:39)
is all this stuff, now whether that's okay or not, or good or bad, even setting that aside for a minute, that's most of the people that are going through the product. Like just adding up the temporary and the free plan is enough and this kind of stuff, it's it's like already 50%. So, so

Jason Cohen (29:56)
That's drowning out the other metrics, which are also important, which is when peop when it's not temporary and they use it all the time and they've used it for a year. In other words, when it seems like an ideal customer, that data

Dmytro Krasun (30:10)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (30:11)
and that those effects are being drowned out by the people where again it's not necessarily a problem. It's just that it's not this ideal, sustainable business sort of a thing. and so

Jason Cohen (30:25)
Not right now, obviously, but in future that would be good idea to completely segment those customers so you can

Dmytro Krasun (30:30)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (30:31)
get information about when it's temporary, what is that about? Is it certain kinds of use cases? Do I get those customers in certain channels? Am I saying the wrong thing? Am I attracting the wrong thing? Is it fine? It's just they're just not long-term customers. and I should have a either a different sort of an offering, like maybe a different price point. There's like the the hundred day

Jason Cohen (30:53)
plan or something where they pay a certain amount. It's more like one time revenue because that's what they actually want. Or maybe don't do that, but segment them anyway just so that you're not worried when they cancel your like, I expected that. You know? And and but you would tune things

Dmytro Krasun (31:06)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see.

Jason Cohen (31:07)
like, well, how much can I spend on things like marketing or even tech support on a person that w is definitely going to churn in the next tender days. Definitely. And you go, a little bit, but very little. Right. Because

Jason Cohen (31:23)
This is not

Dmytro Krasun (31:23)
Thank

Jason Cohen (31:23)
a lot of revenue and I have to think of it like one-time revenue because it effectively is. And so I have to the rest of my business metrics or business decisions have to be aligned with that. But then there's these other kinds of customers where I do expect them to be with me for years. And so I can afford more spend to acquire them. I can afford to work with them more and support. Maybe there's integrations they want help with. That's very technical.

Jason Cohen (31:49)
but that's worth it because that means they're here for three years because they've built you into some system that they have, some permanent system. So it's worth it. So you want to be able to segment them so that you can be you can react and behave and and spend money separately. And and that's hard. Like maybe you have to ask ahead of time, even if this is just in the product, what this is for or what this is like, so that you can know ahead of time. Because people just sign up. How would you know? Well, what you could

Dmytro Krasun (32:14)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Cohen (32:15)
ask them what it's for, what they're doing, this and that.

Jason Cohen (32:18)
You also could have different pricing plans that would naturally self-select people. So that the people who for whom they know it's temporary, it would be more attractive for them to pick a certain pricing plan. And then for people where it's where where it's long term, there would be a different pricing plan that'd be attractive to them. And then they they somewhat self-sep segregate. That would be good. So there's different ways, again, not just jumping right to the conclusions, of course, but there's different ways to.

Jason Cohen (32:46)
To figure out what that segmentation is, because it

Dmytro Krasun (32:49)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (32:49)
may be that on the temporary, all you can afford to do is stuff that that's incrementally free. Not not free, but incrementally free, like social media and SEO, where of course, it's not free either in time or money, but but getting one more pe person to see it is is free. as opposed to advertisement, where that probably doesn't work for the temporary customer. There's just no price.

Jason Cohen (33:13)
That's that's not you know, ridiculous, where you can afford to buy customers that are gonna, you know, spend a total of twenty bucks, right?

Dmytro Krasun (33:21)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (33:21)
but you could afford to buy someone that's gonna spend thousands of bucks. And so anyway, so so so do you have a sense right now of what those use cases or those things might be, or is that just an an interesting homework problem for the rest of today and tomorrow?

Dmytro Krasun (33:41)
Use cases for customers who would stay or for customers who are leaving.

Jason Cohen (33:47)
Both, of course.

Dmytro Krasun (33:48)
For both. Yes, yes, I have examples of this.

Jason Cohen (33:55)
Well, w what's a category? Like think about a c the customers who stay forever and are happy.

Dmytro Krasun (34:01)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (34:02)
I'm sure there's not just one kind, but what's an example of why that is? What have they done? J generally speaking.

Dmytro Krasun (34:10)
What have they done?

Jason Cohen (34:12)
Like why are they using it forever? Did they build it into, for example, what one answer could be sometimes the act of taking a screenshot on the web gets built into a feature in a product that they sell their customers. So that feature unless they rip that feature out, they're gonna be a customer forever. And they certainly don't want to build all that infrastructure themselves. That's a distraction. They've got their own product to work on. They don't want to do this. This is hard.

Dmytro Krasun (34:38)
Yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (34:40)
But since it's a built-in feature, like they're just gonna stay forever unless they rip the feature out, which typically features are not ripped out. Therefore, they stay forever. And so the the in that case, the the generalization would be people who build in screenshots as part of the product that they themselves sell. So that might be an example. Is that an example? And if and

Dmytro Krasun (34:56)
Yes,

Jason Cohen (35:01)
are there other examples of categories like that?

Dmytro Krasun (35:05)
This one, like one of the most, stickiest ones are these that you described. And also there is kind of category. For example, I have a company who is using,

Dmytro Krasun (35:20)
who are screenshotting hundreds, of websites after deploying updates and then checking if there are any changes and then reverting back their deployed. It's kind of like the main feature, but it's very important for them and they don't want to spend on this kind of task. it's...

Dmytro Krasun (35:43)
like secondary importance i don't know how to say it like yes yes

Jason Cohen (35:46)
Okay, that's called inte integration testing. or or or

Jason Cohen (35:49)
or end to end testing, something something like that. Okay. it it do people build it into products like I said, or did I just make that up and that that's not whatever happens?

Dmytro Krasun (36:00)
No, no, it's not. This one is not like a part of the product, I think. It's like for, but for that...

Jason Cohen (36:04)
Okay, that never happens. Besides integration testing, what's

Jason Cohen (36:06)
another example of a of a category that actually does happen among the people who who stay forever?

Dmytro Krasun (36:14)
stay forever. For example, companies... a few examples I think... company that...

Dmytro Krasun (36:27)
Let's have

Dmytro Krasun (36:32)
I'm just sending cold emails and in cold emails it's like one of their main features. And in cold emails they have templates for, let's say, one of the templates is sending cold email with a screenshot in it of the prospect website and

Dmytro Krasun (36:51)
think about it. And it's like one of the main features, let's say, of such a customer. Yeah, so it's like.

Dmytro Krasun (36:59)
maybe one of the top 3 top 5 features of such a customer.

Jason Cohen (37:02)
Gotcha. So

Jason Cohen (37:03)
so someone's doing some kind of personalized automation campaign like hold emailing. And part of how you get someone's

Dmytro Krasun (37:09)
Yeah, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (37:11)
attention is you put their screenshot of their website in the email, whether just to get

Dmytro Krasun (37:16)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (37:17)
their attention or because you're pointing something out or something like that. in the same way that there people say, although I disagree with this, but there's that

Dmytro Krasun (37:25)
you

Jason Cohen (37:25)
thing that where you're supposed to use the other person's name when you all the time.

Dmytro Krasun (37:30)
Yes. Yeah, that's good.

Jason Cohen (37:30)
because because that means because they like it. I just think that's weird and then I think I you're doing

Jason Cohen (37:35)
that on purpose and that means I don't trust you. And so to me it has the opposite effect.

Dmytro Krasun (37:38)
Thank

Jason Cohen (37:38)
But okay. This kind of like that. If you if you show me my own stuff, then it seems more personalized. In any way, maybe I'll look at it and like it doesn't seem quite so cold of an email. Okay. So

Dmytro Krasun (37:49)
Yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (37:51)
integration testing of of websites or web apps, who knows? cold or well, things where you want to customize some kind of outbound like emails.

Jason Cohen (38:00)
with their w with

Dmytro Krasun (38:01)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (38:01)
their website. Okay. Is there any other things any

Dmytro Krasun (38:05)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (38:05)
other c categories among the people that stay forever?

Dmytro Krasun (38:09)
Like forever, yes. It's a dream. But for example, in some SaaS products in onboarding sessions where they need to fetch like company website and extract some colors from it and to personalize their SaaS for their customer and to speed up onboarding. Yes.

Jason Cohen (38:39)
that sounds

Dmytro Krasun (38:39)
what?

Jason Cohen (38:40)
really cool, but I would be shocked if hundred if you had a hundred customers doing that.

Dmytro Krasun (38:45)
No, not a hundred. Yes, it's like I think about use cases where like I know like customers who are still using the product and it's like

Jason Cohen (38:55)
Yeah, but how many people do that?

Jason Cohen (38:57)
The onboarding sessions with the colors, how many people do that?

Dmytro Krasun (39:01)
Yes, it's not a lot. Yes, it's not a lot. Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (39:03)
Is it more than one? Is it two?

Dmytro Krasun (39:10)
It feels for me it's like... Yes, it's good question. It's a good question. I probably... Yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (39:15)
Okay, so that the answer is it's not ten. Okay. So so that one I

Jason Cohen (39:18)
that one's fine. I I I I mean, so so I mean, of course, there's gonna be case one off cases, which is awesome. They just won't be patterns that you can easily that they'll be easy to exploit. These other ones feel

Dmytro Krasun (39:26)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (39:29)
a lot more exploitable to me. This one sounds really fun, actually, really interesting, great idea. I just it just doesn't feel like something that that that's widespread.

Dmytro Krasun (39:38)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (39:39)
That would be easy to you scale or something. Okay, so

Jason Cohen (39:44)
Obviously the the th

Dmytro Krasun (39:44)
Yo.

Jason Cohen (39:45)
well, not obviously, but we should spend our time mostly on the successes and getting more of them. Because we could talk about why people do things temporarily, but my guess is there's a huge number of reasons why people do things temporarily. Like, why do I need a screenshot for a few weeks and not again? I mean, there's probably infinite reasons, even including just hobbyists doing weird stuff with AI and stuff that you're just trying crap. Like, there's probably all

Dmytro Krasun (40:10)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (40:11)
kinds of reasons.

Jason Cohen (40:12)
And it and in a certain sense it doesn't matter because you don't want any of them as customers.

Dmytro Krasun (40:18)
Hmm. Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (40:20)
Now it's okay that they sign

Jason Cohen (40:21)
up, but they're gonna sign up and leave. And so for your for your goal of getting to 100K, right? Or really even just a goal of not capping out at your current size, right? Like the even setting the hundred K

Dmytro Krasun (40:31)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (40:32)
aside, just saying, I just don't want to stop growing like I am. Like just start stu you know, even without a goal of of where it should be. these people that come in for two for two for two months and leave are not going to be the solution.

Dmytro Krasun (40:46)
No, no, can be once, like, yes, it can be some nice one-time revenue, you know, having this, maybe even... Yeah.

Jason Cohen (40:52)
Right. But they're not going to be how you grow because you can't afford

Jason Cohen (40:55)
you can't afford to spend time to get them because they don't give you any money. Okay. So

Dmytro Krasun (40:58)
Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Jason Cohen (41:03)
so so so that's why there's probably, you know, hundreds of use cases and it kind of doesn't matter because that's not what you want to do. It's okay when they show

Dmytro Krasun (41:10)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (41:10)
up and and they leave, especially if you've segmented your metrics so that you're not getting confused as to

Jason Cohen (41:19)
What metrics and activities are important for you to focus on to get the actual goal, which is people that stay a long time because that's where the growth is going to come from. That's how you're going to get

Dmytro Krasun (41:28)
Do you?

Jason Cohen (41:28)
your cancellation rate down, right? Versus all these people. So I'll just take the integration testing for the web. for websites, how many software companies do integration testing of some kind with either a website because it's marketing or

Jason Cohen (41:47)
A website because it's some web app and they're doing some kind of integration testing. Maybe it's in a continuous integration server, maybe it's manual, maybe it's a QA team, but somebody's doing that. How many software companies, let's just say, I mean, I don't want to be too America centric, but how many companies, let's say in America, do you think there are as a power of 10 only who do integration tests right now with websites?

Dmytro Krasun (42:16)
think this is a lot, but this one specific, like the moment you said about like numbers, how many, like we talked about forever customers, yes, but how many of them I have. Like this one specific use case, it's not even like any random companies that's doing integration testing, but they're like more like a hosting provider, you know? So it's like.

Dmytro Krasun (42:41)
It's much less than any company that's doing integration testing. It's a company that hosts hundreds of websites, thousands of websites, yes. And then this number, this number is interesting.

Jason Cohen (42:57)
Okay. Well let's focus on that then. This is bad news, of course. But how many how many how many companies in

Dmytro Krasun (43:00)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Cohen (43:04)
the world do you think host at least a hundred websites and thus might want something like this? potentially. They just potentially might want it. That we don't know if they do, but just they're in the they're at least in the category where they might want to use screenshots to make sure they haven't screwed anything up during a deploy or whatever whatever the use case is for the integration testing.

Jason Cohen (43:27)
Just as a power of ten, how many companies do you think there are that have more than a hundred websites that they're hosting?

Dmytro Krasun (43:38)
I feel there is no more than 1000 hosting providers in the world. It feels like...

Jason Cohen (43:42)
That's not true.

Dmytro Krasun (43:44)
You think it's more? You know for sure. Probably yes.

Jason Cohen (43:46)
Ha ha ha.

Dmytro Krasun (43:49)
But it feels for me... I can probably tell 50 maybe. It's like, you know, counting AWS and many other companies like... Yes, yes,

Jason Cohen (43:59)
Those are the largest ones in the world, but that's not what I said.

Dmytro Krasun (44:02)
yes, but for this like... And then it feels like...

Jason Cohen (44:08)
I went to a bootstrapping conference called t MicroConf that I'm sure you know. And there were several

Dmytro Krasun (44:13)
Yeah

Jason Cohen (44:14)
several people at that conference alone who had hosting companies with more than a hundred websites in it. Those are little bootstrappers going to a conference.

Jason Cohen (44:26)
So yeah, there's AWS, but I mean

Dmytro Krasun (44:28)
Yeah, because I'm not like if I take the top ones and then I go to the smallest companies, it feels like...

Jason Cohen (44:35)
Let's just call it 10,000

Jason Cohen (44:36)
because there's there's more than a thousand, but let's not assume there's just a hundred thousand. That sounds like a lot. So let's call it ten thousand,

Dmytro Krasun (44:40)
Yeah,

Jason Cohen (44:41)
right?

Dmytro Krasun (44:42)
let's set them. OK, OK.

Jason Cohen (44:44)
Yeah, getting one percent of them to do integration testing like this sounds hard. But maybe plausible. Does that sound fair?

Dmytro Krasun (44:55)
Hmm... You there's 10,000 of them?

Jason Cohen (44:59)
No, forget that. We already said there's 10,000. We're just saying that. Now, with

Dmytro Krasun (45:02)
Yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (45:03)
however many there are, does it sound plausible that maybe we could get 1% of them, however many there are, we could get 1% of them maybe to be convinced that they should use some kind of screenshotting technology as part of the deploy, presumably to say screenshot let's say a hundred sample websites if you're co that you're hosting, run your deploy, then screenshot them again and make sure nothing's changed.

Jason Cohen (45:28)
Roughly speaking, because we all know that's not quite how websites work, but let's just let's let's keep it simple just for discussion's sake. That's a good

Dmytro Krasun (45:34)
Yeah, that's true.

Jason Cohen (45:35)
idea. We actually do that at WP Engine, by the way. So it's a good idea.

Dmytro Krasun (45:39)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (45:40)
what do you think maybe one percent of people who have this problem could be convinced theoretically that that's a good idea for them to implement?

Dmytro Krasun (45:51)
Yes, yes, I think I could use already I have customer stories related to this.

Jason Cohen (45:57)
Okay, so one percent okay, do you think you can get ten percent of them

Jason Cohen (46:01)
to say yes to that and actually implement it?

Jason Cohen (46:07)
This is every every hosting company in the world with more than a hundred websites.

Dmytro Krasun (46:13)
That's a very good question. That's a very good question.

Dmytro Krasun (46:19)
Yes, 10 %?

Dmytro Krasun (46:23)
I would need to try at least to reach out to a few of them to see like you know like to see how they respond like how they work and like like their like approval process how do they integrate because yes

Jason Cohen (46:36)
Well, let's put it this way they can't just buy your software,

Jason Cohen (46:38)
they have to build a whole integration system.

Dmytro Krasun (46:42)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (46:43)
or or

Jason Cohen (46:44)
retrofit their existing one in a significant way. This isn't like a quick afternoon, right? So can we convince,

Dmytro Krasun (46:49)
Yes, yes. There's a of work.

Jason Cohen (46:52)
can we reach out, talk to, and then convince 10% of the market, however big the market is, to do all that.

Dmytro Krasun (47:03)
Yes, if I could solve already a lot of like integration issues around this, when you integrate my product, yes, and assist them maybe and provide some like more features to to make integration smoother. Yes,

Jason Cohen (47:22)
Really ten percent.

Dmytro Krasun (47:24)
No, no, the number itself, I don't know.

Jason Cohen (47:29)
Well, that's all I'm asking. Can you get to ten percent of the market,

Jason Cohen (47:31)
you think?

Dmytro Krasun (47:33)
I feel it's pretty painful problem for them.

Dmytro Krasun (47:40)
Should be. I'm

Jason Cohen (47:40)
Yes, but that's not the question.

Dmytro Krasun (47:43)
trying to see like how, like how, is it really possible to sell to them like by ripping out like...

Jason Cohen (47:51)
That's not the question whether it's possible to sell. I'm assuming it is possible, but like can we convince

Jason Cohen (47:56)
ten percent of the market to build an a integration testing system or retrofit their existing one around screenshots?

Dmytro Krasun (48:07)
Yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (48:09)
Really? Okay.

Jason Cohen (48:10)
I I would I would be shocked if you could get ten percent of the market.

Dmytro Krasun (48:14)
No,

Dmytro Krasun (48:15)
it's not. You said could we convince to do them this? Yes.

Jason Cohen (48:20)
Yeah, I would be shocked if you

Jason Cohen (48:21)
could convince them 10% of the market to implement all this because it's a lot of work and and but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe maybe the after all WP Engine did it, so we had the pain. So maybe I'm wrong. And and like they in at a certain scale, you just have to, and this is an easier way. So I hear that. So I I I would guess it's one percent, but let's but it's 10%. Let's say it's 10%. It's not a hundred percent. We can all we can definitely agree on that. So it's ten percent. Okay, so so there's ten thousand, there's

Dmytro Krasun (48:45)
No, even some close-ups.

Jason Cohen (48:48)
ten thousand customers.

Jason Cohen (48:50)
or potential customers and maybe you could get to a thousand of them and then each of them pay what? like what are the current p customers paying for this per month that do this?

Dmytro Krasun (49:03)
Let's say like

Jason Cohen (49:04)
It's just a power of ten.

Dmytro Krasun (49:06)
power of 10.

Jason Cohen (49:08)
Do they pay a hundred dollars a month, ten dollars a month, a thousand dollars a month?

Dmytro Krasun (49:12)
It's between 100 and 1000.

Jason Cohen (49:16)
Okay. And so three hundred?

Dmytro Krasun (49:19)
For example, yes, I'm just not sure if you know it can be a customer identifiable information in a way, you know, I don't know. But yes, let's say we can cut it later. Let's say for... Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (49:31)
Well mo most of those ten thousand are small. That's just

Jason Cohen (49:34)
how it works. So the smaller ones pay what?

Dmytro Krasun (49:38)
The small ones... It's like $70, like $100. Yes,

Jason Cohen (49:46)
Okay, so we'll call it a hundred.

Dmytro Krasun (49:48)
yes.

Jason Cohen (49:49)
Okay. So if a thousand customers were paying a hundred dollars a month, that's your hundred K MRR.

Dmytro Krasun (49:59)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (50:00)
So we just figured out a path to a hundred K MRR is that you have a thousand small hosting companies. Obviously, if you can get a big one that's paying you more, that's good. Right. We're not we're not we're not saying don't do that, right? That's not what we're saying. It's just that like

Dmytro Krasun (50:11)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Jason Cohen (50:16)
you can't you can't depend on that as easily. But if you could get a thousand small hosting companies to implement this, you would reach your goal of a hundred K MRR on that basis alone.

Dmytro Krasun (50:29)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (50:30)
Now, again, I think ten percent is too high. but still what we the the what we've done by doing this is what we've established that this is a path that's plausible. Plausible doesn't mean likely or unlikely.

Dmytro Krasun (50:47)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (50:48)
It just means it's possible, given what we said,

Dmytro Krasun (50:50)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (50:50)
it is it is at least possible. Most of the ideas that you or I would have for how to grow a screenshot API company, most of them

Jason Cohen (50:59)
Will not even plausibly work. In fact, I think this one probably does not plausibly work because I don't believe in the 10% number, right?

Dmytro Krasun (51:07)
No,

Dmytro Krasun (51:08)
I just wanted to go with you to explore this area, but it feels like...

Jason Cohen (51:12)
Yeah, yeah. So

Jason Cohen (51:13)
I think it's it's probably more like 1%, in which case it's another 10K a month, which is still not trivial, but pretty far away from the kind of change you want. And so while

Dmytro Krasun (51:25)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (51:26)
it could be good to have so what that would tell me, i i if you believe those numbers, then what that that downgrades it from the complete strategy of the company, that which it would be if you think it can achieve the goal by itself, it downgrades that

Dmytro Krasun (51:39)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (51:40)
t idea to

Jason Cohen (51:42)
This is a decent idea, but only if I apply a certain amount of time and money. So if this is a certain marketing campaign, maybe even a s outbound sales campaign, specifically to those kind of companies. And I can't afford I cannot afford to make 10 new features and lots of custom work for them, but I can do a little bit to gain that to gain that 10k of MRR.

Dmytro Krasun (52:07)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (52:08)
That's the amount of effort I'm willing to put into this. And I still have not solved my root problem, but maybe I've pushed it down the road a little. That would, that's how I would think about that, if those are the numbers. So the the point, of course, is we've we're obviously not gonna automatically find all the right answers on the call today. that would be very lucky if we did. But this kind of mindset is how you can have an idea of like,

Dmytro Krasun (52:29)
Gracias.

Jason Cohen (52:30)
okay, who are my good customers that I'm already able to serve? That's what we first did. We said this web integration.

Jason Cohen (52:37)
We said the cold email content and stuff like that. And then what is the possible, even possible market for this that I could get? And then if I do those numbers, is it even in the ballpark of the result that I want? If it's not even within a power of 10 of the ball of what I want, then even if that it's just too it's not the answer.

Jason Cohen (53:03)
Right. The numbers are just

Dmytro Krasun (53:03)
Okay.

Jason Cohen (53:04)
too small. Now, obviously we made up all those numbers and they're not exactly right, of course. But if that's but if it's off

Dmytro Krasun (53:08)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (53:09)
by a whole power of ten, it's just wrong. It's just not the not the likely

Dmytro Krasun (53:13)
you

Jason Cohen (53:13)
way forward. So let's try it again with the custom emails just to just to run it run it again. So of course it doesn't have to be emails, but that does seem like the that does seem like the most common thing 'cause if I'm calling on the phone, I don't know what I need a screenshot for exactly. So this case of

Jason Cohen (53:33)
I'm doing outbound emails and I want to include a screenshot for whatever reason to get their attention or it's relevant, whatever.

Dmytro Krasun (53:39)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (53:41)
How many companies for how many companies does it make sense for them to include a screenshot? Maybe they don't do it today, of course, but that it would make sense for them to do that. What how many companies do you think do that? Obviously, millions of companies send emails. So that's a very,

Dmytro Krasun (53:56)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (53:57)
very big number. But how many of them want to include a screenshot, do you think?

Dmytro Krasun (54:06)
It's a good one, because I have like two different types of customers doing that. But if we talk about forever customers, like customers who perpetually like... Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (54:15)
That's all we're talking about because anything else is not something you can afford to invest in, whether that means marketing,

Jason Cohen (54:22)
whether that means ads, whether that means support, whether that means adding features. You can't afford

Dmytro Krasun (54:26)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (54:27)
in that sense to to do stuff for customers that don't stay. So they're f they're fine. We're happy if they come and they give us some money and they leave as long as we didn't spend money on them and as long as their metrics don't poison the metrics of our ideal real customers, then we're okay with it.

Jason Cohen (54:46)
but we're not focused on them. Can't be. That's not how you're gonna get to where you wanna be. Of course, because their cancellation rate is atrocious, and that means you're never gonna build the the kind of business you want off of that. So the customers who do the emails, how many really wanna do that?

Jason Cohen (55:08)
Forever.

Dmytro Krasun (55:12)
I also want to answer something like 1,000. But I don't have many of these two, you know? Like it's like

Jason Cohen (55:21)
Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (55:22)
if you go category by category, use case by use case,

Jason Cohen (55:26)
Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (55:27)
I'm not sure I like one, I need to check this. need to, for sure I need to work. Yeah.

Jason Cohen (55:34)
Well, i if there was an obvious one, you'd know. Just just by j

Jason Cohen (55:37)
because you wouldn't need data to know if it was one jumped out at you, right? Okay, so let's we don't have to go through that. I a a thousand is

Dmytro Krasun (55:39)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Cohen (55:46)
so low that that tells me you don't think people do this really. because that's

Dmytro Krasun (55:51)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Cohen (55:52)
because that's like point one percent of all companies who send emails want to do it this way, which is you're probably right. In other words, people just don't want to do this. And you can find every once in a while you can find a a strange company that

Jason Cohen (56:03)
does it. But like this is not this is not something to build a business around, is what I'm hearing from you.

Dmytro Krasun (56:09)
Yes, it's like, for example, you want to email potential prospects about like how you want to improve their design of the website.

Jason Cohen (56:16)
No, I get it. But you're but what when you say a thousand companies in

Jason Cohen (56:19)
the whole world would want to do it, you're telling me

Dmytro Krasun (56:21)
Do this.

Jason Cohen (56:21)
either, this is this is so rare, it's you know, that that just it's just silly to even talk about it, or you're just so not confident that this is something people that that that people would want even if you tried to sell it to them.

Dmytro Krasun (56:39)
Yes, I feel that there is not so many companies that really do it. But those who are doing this, they are forever customers.

Jason Cohen (56:48)
Yeah. So the so once

Jason Cohen (56:50)
we start with a number like a thousand, that's the entire market. And again, you might be wrong, but the point is if that's your conviction, it's there you go, like close enough.

Dmytro Krasun (57:00)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (57:01)
then it doesn't really matter what the other numbers are. How many can you convert at what price? It doesn't matter because it's just not enough. Like your whole company's a thousand customers now. So like that just

Dmytro Krasun (57:08)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (57:10)
isn't gonna do it. So so all right, so let's take a step back and say, all right.

Jason Cohen (57:17)
There isn't a use case that's a healthy use case in a clear market that you can go target. There's just a bunch of scattered stuff people sometimes do with screenshots. There isn't

Dmytro Krasun (57:30)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (57:30)
really a pattern that leads to a market big enough to get to your goal. Is that possible?

Dmytro Krasun (57:37)
This is one of the scariest questions, but still need to ask yes. It might be the real question.

Jason Cohen (57:47)
I think it's more than it might be a real question.

Jason Cohen (57:49)
I think it's the problem. I think the crux of the problem is there isn't a big pull for getting screenshots via API. That's just not something that's very important to a really clear area of the market who needs to do that forever. That doesn't mean nobody wants it. People want it. You you listed use cases where people want it, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently.

Dmytro Krasun (58:11)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (58:13)
It does exist. It's not like there's never a pro never a problem to solve. That's not the case. It's just there isn't a clear market where here's a use case where literally a million people do it. And so if you and you can definitely get a nice chunk of them, it's valuable to them, so they'll pay more. They'll do it forever. I know the of course forever is a big word. I'm just, you know, I'm I'm trying to be brief

Dmytro Krasun (58:36)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (58:37)
about, you know, about it.

Jason Cohen (58:39)
if until further notice, they'll do it because it's integrated with something important to them. and it's just it's just hard to see what that what that is, and you're not seeing a pattern with your current customer base that would identify that. So, how old is the company? Four years. So, in four years,

Dmytro Krasun (58:55)
four years.

Jason Cohen (58:58)
and many, many thousands of customers, because there's a thousand now, but they've come and gone as well.

Dmytro Krasun (59:02)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (59:03)
In four years of experience doing nothing but this and seeing thousands and thousands of customers come through, you have yet to find an example of a use case where there is a decent number of customers in the world for that use case who want this and want it for more than a few months.

Jason Cohen (59:24)
Is that true?

Dmytro Krasun (59:26)
Yes, it's pretty close, yes. You know, every time I try something new and I have this big hope, you know, like, maybe there is new, like, for example, AI agents now. Every agent needs screenshots, Yes, yes, but, but, but,

Jason Cohen (59:40)
We're getting distracted now with AI. You have yet to find it in four years, right?

Dmytro Krasun (59:46)
but if you look at the... Yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (59:47)
No, I I understand what you're saying. But but right now,

Jason Cohen (59:50)
you have yet to find it, right? Okay.

Dmytro Krasun (59:52)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (59:54)
So this to me is the cr but before we get to the solutions in AI, maybe AI changes stuff. Maybe it does. But before we get to whether AI is changing it, right now, you have not found a way, or you have not found a market that cares enough to sustain this company in the way that you want to, which is to triple it. What you have done is built a company where

Jason Cohen (01:00:17)
Probably you could continue running it just as you are now. And let's see, let's go up to these things. I'm guessing you could run a company where this and this. in other words, I bet you could run a company that makes let's just call it twenty five K per month in profit.

Jason Cohen (01:00:42)
Maybe thirty K per month in profit for years to come.

Jason Cohen (01:00:48)
Because you could just do what you're doing now. There would be a lot of temporary people coming in and out, but that's okay. If sometimes people will stick because they have a weird ass use case that almost no one has, but they do, so they stick. Hooray. And so you stay at this, let's say, three 30 to 40k a month top line, 25 to 30k a month bottom line. You stay there because people still need screenshots. It's just scattered like

Dmytro Krasun (01:01:14)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:01:14)
it is now. And

Jason Cohen (01:01:16)
You just continue. And of course, incrementally you'll improve it. Incrementally, you might save some money, some costs, and make make profit go up. Incrementally, you might make a feature that makes more people stickier. you might find

Dmytro Krasun (01:01:27)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:01:28)
like some of these use cases we identified. You could do some campaigns specifically for them and maybe pick up another 10, 20, even 100 customers in that use case. So again, that's not tripling the company, but you could probably pick up some other good customers intentionally.

Jason Cohen (01:01:43)
getting closer to that 40, maybe even 45, 50, pushing up a little by having better higher quality customers, at least of some of them. I I totally believe that. This is a path. So let's call this option A. Option A

Dmytro Krasun (01:01:55)
June.

Jason Cohen (01:01:55)
is you look at this the crux of the problem, which again I think is there isn't a good market for this. There's not a market,

Dmytro Krasun (01:02:03)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:02:04)
meaning customers who have a like a sort of consistent sort of problem that they want to solve in this way. There's enough of them. They want to pay enough

Jason Cohen (01:02:11)
All this kind of stuff I listed before. That's what I mean by a good market. There isn't a good market for this tool. Again, this is just a this is a crux of the puzzle. This might, I might be wrong. And like you're about to say, AI may change it. I know. We'll we'll get to that in a second. But first, let's really agree on what is the crux of the current issue. So I'm proposing that the crux is this thing of there isn't a good market. We have not in four years and thousands of customers, it is not

Jason Cohen (01:02:39)
a a mar a good market is not materialized, which tells us either it doesn't exist or it's so hard to find, we can't find it. Option A is yeah, that's right, there isn't one. Continue to run the company, like I said, incrementally improving, being a little bit smarter, maybe targeting a couple of use cases to get to just change the customer mix a little, to to bump it up a little. And in this way, incrementally

Dmytro Krasun (01:03:01)
Thank

Jason Cohen (01:03:02)
improve the the company. That's option A, incremental improvement. But actually let me let me pause there.

Jason Cohen (01:03:08)
Do you agree that that's the crux? No good market has materialized. or do you not agree that that's the crux of the of the problem?

Dmytro Krasun (01:03:17)
I feel that it might be true, intuitively, because if I found some use case... Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,

Jason Cohen (01:03:23)
Well, let's put it this way, you can't name one. This whole conversation, you haven't named one yet, so

Dmytro Krasun (01:03:29)
yes, yes, like it feels for me like no because I would have one use case dominating I would see it and I would it would be easier for me to double down and yes yes

Jason Cohen (01:03:41)
Exactly. Well, that's why

Jason Cohen (01:03:43)
it's a crux because because if it were obvious and easy, you'd be doing it already,

Dmytro Krasun (01:03:47)
Thank

Jason Cohen (01:03:47)
like you just said. The fact is it's not there. And so you're sitting there going, It's not there. I don't I'm stuck. I'm stuck. Because it's you clearly

Dmytro Krasun (01:03:54)
Eww.

Jason Cohen (01:03:55)
just doing the same thing as you're doing now will not achieve a hundred K in revenue in in in MRR.

Dmytro Krasun (01:03:59)
Well.

Jason Cohen (01:04:00)
And and it's not obvious what to do. Like that's that is the crux. I don't know what to do because there's no good markets that I found yet. So option A

Dmytro Krasun (01:04:06)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:04:07)
is incrementally running the company.

Jason Cohen (01:04:10)
Another op another possibility is there is a good market out there for this, but you haven't found it yet, which means to find it, you will need to go do something intentionally that you are not currently doing. You can't just sit back and look at your customer base and say, Where's the good market? You have to go seek it or even create it. This is another possibility. So it could be let's let's let's talk about the integration testing again. I could make the case,

Jason Cohen (01:04:40)
Anyone with a website in marketing should be doing this. They have a marketing website. Marketers change websites all the time. They run A B tests, they change headlines, they add a new landing page, they do something weird with the home page, they screw with the pricing page, and even more subtle things. And they don't want anything else to break as a result of them doing the one thing. So they should have some sort of what engineers would call integration tests. They would not call it that because they're marketers.

Jason Cohen (01:05:10)
And you're saying you could say there's 10 million marketing departments in the world. They all ought to do integration testing. They don't. I'm not saying I can take 10% of the market, anything nutty like that, but I think I could be the champion of marketers actually doing regression testing. I'm gonna bring regression testing to the world of marketing. We know we understand it in in software why to do it.

Jason Cohen (01:05:38)
Marketers should do it, but they don't know that yet. So I'm going to educate them. And I will be the one. Prometheus bringing the fire of of regression testing to the world of marketing. in doing so, and so I'll have a product for that. It'll involve screenshots. And in doing that, I'll I I'll literally create a new little category in marketing that'll just be me until other people realize it's a good idea, but that's okay.

Jason Cohen (01:06:08)
And why screenshots? Because maybe I should be looking at the content of the page. the thing is, you can look at the HTML, you can look at the CSS, you can look at JavaScript, you can have AI do it. And at the end of the day, you don't actually don't know what it looks like. Stuff happens.

Dmytro Krasun (01:06:21)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:06:22)
A lot of that code, by the way, is dynamic and does weird real-time stuff.

Dmytro Krasun (01:06:24)
Okay.

Jason Cohen (01:06:26)
So you really you can't look at the source code. You gotta look at the website. In fact, with the tool really I'm making this up now because it's just an example, right? In fact

Dmytro Krasun (01:06:34)
Yes, sir.

Jason Cohen (01:06:35)
What you need to do is show a before and after screenshot and show that to the marketer and maybe show them 10 pages of that, 10 pages that they've configured as being important. And the human being is going to look at them. Because sometimes web pages are different simply because they're dynamic. So just asking, is the page different is actually also not sufficient. Cause let's

Dmytro Krasun (01:06:55)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:06:56)
say an image rotates on the home page or there's a video. So the exact

Jason Cohen (01:07:02)
the exact frame the video's on depends on when you take the screenshot or javascript is pulling something live. And so there's all these reasons why the screen the it's not identical and that's okay. And a human being would know that if they saw the before after they would see the differences, maybe even highlight them for the human. and the human could tell whether that's okay or not. And so it really it does take that human still. Maybe it's AI in the future. I don't care.

Jason Cohen (01:07:30)
So I'm gonna build a product that does all that and bring it to marketing. Now, is that a good idea? Do marketers care? Could you convince them of that? Could you make a good product that that marketers could use, given that you're an API company today? These are all questions I don't know the answers to. Maybe the whole idea is stupid. But what I'm saying, but but the point is that this is an option B. Option B is rather than I mean, obviously run the company you have now because it's paying the bills and everything. So I mean, don't just stop. But option B is in order to achieve my goal.

Jason Cohen (01:08:01)
I have to build a different product, but I need to take my expertise and technology that I have into that because that's whatever that is is gonna be part of my strategic advantage, is my experience, knowledge, tech, et cetera. I obviously have to leverage that. What is a market that I could that exists or that I I think I actually could make, create that that would

Jason Cohen (01:08:25)
That would leverage that into a into a product that doesn't exist, or or even if it exists a little bit that you know that you could make a good one of.

Dmytro Krasun (01:08:31)
serious.

Jason Cohen (01:08:32)
So maybe that marketing idea is good, maybe it's bad. I don't know. but this is

Dmytro Krasun (01:08:36)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:08:36)
option B is find another market that's actually good. now the how does that strike you? Like when I say all that stuff, emotionally is your reaction, hell yeah. Like APIs are, you know, that's what I know, but god damn it, it's dead. Like that sounds so fun.

Jason Cohen (01:08:54)
Or

Dmytro Krasun (01:08:55)
Ha

Jason Cohen (01:08:55)
is your reaction something more like, yeah, you know, I get it. And if I were outgoing and I liked talking to people and I liked being a and I liked being a an evangelist for a new idea, I could see that I guess, but like I just want to be in the background doing APIs under the hood, talking to engineers, just going on Twitter and yapping with other indie developers rather than selling to marketers. I don't I don't

Dmytro Krasun (01:09:21)
you

Jason Cohen (01:09:22)
even trust marketers.

Jason Cohen (01:09:24)
I wouldn't like selling to marketers. now obviously these two emotional states of I'm super excited or that sounds like death are not the only two emotional choices. But emotionally when you hear option B the way I said it, how does that strike

Dmytro Krasun (01:09:35)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:09:36)
you?

Dmytro Krasun (01:09:38)
It's interesting because I have this problem that I have many founder friends and sometimes I want to tell them about my product and they think maybe they could use it, yes, but you it's very niche, it's very rare and it doesn't...

Jason Cohen (01:09:52)
Okay, but you're not answering the question.

Jason Cohen (01:09:53)
How does option B strike you emotionally?

Dmytro Krasun (01:09:55)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:09:57)
Do you are you like, yeah, hell yeah. Something like that. Maybe it's marketing, maybe it's not, but yeah. Yeah. Or are you saying or are you more like, I don't like that? Like just emotionally, not rationally. Not what happens when you talk to some random founder who's not a customer.

Dmytro Krasun (01:10:12)
It's interesting, I would check it. It's not hell yeah, it's not sounds like worm, but it's interesting, I would love to check it, know, like to...

Jason Cohen (01:10:21)
Okay. So you're you're not sure. That's fine. That that's good. That's that's

Jason Cohen (01:10:25)
a good answer, I think. like it's it's it's it's more useful when you already know that you do or don't want to do it because it eliminates or highlights the option. So it's it's great when it's exciting or or or rejected.

Dmytro Krasun (01:10:40)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:10:40)
But obviously it's valid and common to go, hmm, I'm gonna have to learn more before I know if I'm excited or not. Like that's that's very valid.

Dmytro Krasun (01:10:47)
Yes, yes, yes.

Dmytro Krasun (01:10:49)
I could do it, but I'm not sure. It's not like...

Jason Cohen (01:10:52)
Okay, that's a no,

Jason Cohen (01:10:53)
by the way, because you could do anything. You could you could learn how to play you could learn how to play the clarinet, but you're not excited to do that, right? so so but that's okay. you might get excited. It's totally true that sometimes we're

Dmytro Krasun (01:11:06)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:11:07)
like, I don't know. And then you try it and you're like, actually, this is cool. Like that that happens all the time in life, right? So if the door's not closed,

Dmytro Krasun (01:11:13)
Yes, sir.

Jason Cohen (01:11:15)
then what that means is it's a default no, right? Status quo is no. But if you're like, but I'm curious.

Jason Cohen (01:11:21)
Good. Then you go explore that because you you absolutely could change your mind with exposure. So that's that's good. What about let me go back to option A real quick, which is incrementally run the current business or run the current business incrementally improving it along these edges to make it better and be happy with the let's let's call it 30k a month profit with a well, very well run solo entrepreneur business. how does that strike you emotionally? Are you like, yeah, that's who I am, that's fulfilling? Or are you like?

Jason Cohen (01:11:51)
No, didn't you hear me when I said I wanted to triple the company? Like that's not good enough. Like it maybe it should be, but it isn't. Like, like how does it how's option A strike you?

Dmytro Krasun (01:12:01)
I will answer honestly. I'm tired.

Jason Cohen (01:12:05)
I hope so. Otherwise, what's the point?

Dmytro Krasun (01:12:09)
Let's say... Not super excited.

Jason Cohen (01:12:14)
Yeah, of course. That's I that's what you said at the top. So I'm not I'm not shocked. It's still we like the point of these options, of course, is we're trying to list w everything on the menu. You're gonna end up picking something on the menu. Maybe you need to try it first before you know which which which one you want to order. But of

Dmytro Krasun (01:12:30)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:12:31)
course, of course, you want as a big of a menu selection as possible. First, because you know, the more choices, the the more likely the right choice is there.

Jason Cohen (01:12:40)
And also because sometimes they intersect or collide somehow, or there's some there's some better idea that wasn't on the menu. But just going through the things in the menu, thinking them through, and why do I like it or not, or what's the good or bad, just that can trigger some even better idea. So it's always a good idea to put lots of options on the menu, even if you hate them. they're useful in getting to an answer that you don't hate. So okay, the option A, you hate. now.

Dmytro Krasun (01:13:05)
Not hate,

Jason Cohen (01:13:07)
No, but let's let's just yes, like like it is. It's unfulfilling and

Jason Cohen (01:13:11)
you would it you do hate. l I mean it's funny for me to tell you what you hate. But let me explain what I mean though. You

Dmytro Krasun (01:13:13)
Okay. Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:13:17)
would be unhappy if for five years that's what you did.

Dmytro Krasun (01:13:22)
it's pretty good. Yes, it feels like that. Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:13:25)
You would feel like you

Jason Cohen (01:13:25)
wasted five years of your life. In fact, maybe five of your best years.

Dmytro Krasun (01:13:32)
It's a good framing, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:13:33)
How old are you right now?

Dmytro Krasun (01:13:36)
34.

Jason Cohen (01:13:37)
Right. So these are your best years because you're old enough to have experiences and some wisdom. And but you're not old you're not so old that you can't think properly anymore. You can't your attention spans lower, you need more sleep than before, your body's starting to break down. Right. Like

Dmytro Krasun (01:13:55)
I'm sorry.

Jason Cohen (01:13:56)
you have a lot of wisdom, but man, you just can't, you know, this and that. Now I I'm not a fatalist. Of course there's lots of things you can do

Dmytro Krasun (01:14:02)
I'm

Jason Cohen (01:14:03)
to make it better or worse, but like also as as

Jason Cohen (01:14:06)
As Seinfeld says, father time is undefeated. Right. So it's not good. Not good news. So you're you are in a what you might say 30s are probably some kind of a optimum. And so you don't want to spend your optim the next optimum five years incrementally running this business. What whether other people would agree or not or what they think about you, that's how you feel.

Dmytro Krasun (01:14:28)
Yes, yes. It feels like...

Jason Cohen (01:14:29)
And that's why you

Jason Cohen (01:14:30)
would hate it, because you would you even even after the fact you'd look back on that saying, I I could have done anything else with those five years, even something that would fail, at least I would have been doing something instead of puttering around for five years in in this

Dmytro Krasun (01:14:41)
What?

Jason Cohen (01:14:42)
mode. So okay, so option A, not exciting. Now, what what is interesting about that though, if I'm gonna digress a little into option A, is it is the easiest and clearest path forward.

Jason Cohen (01:14:55)
Is run the current business and make it a little better. Like clearly, that's the easiest and clearest thing to do, right?

Dmytro Krasun (01:15:00)
Yeah, that's good.

Jason Cohen (01:15:01)
but you don't want to. So when what's interesting is either you'll pick something else to do with this business, like an option B, or let's come let's think of more options too. but you might decide, I don't like any of these options. But

Dmytro Krasun (01:15:15)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:15:15)
what's nice about option A in general, like, is it's very clear how to do it. And so if I were to sell this business.

Jason Cohen (01:15:25)
Or otherwise, or maybe I don't sell it completely. I get a new partner and I but but I I peel off, or there's different ways of divesting yourself of the business, but still having some financial benefit, right? this is a business that someone else could run. It's one person could run it because one person is

Dmytro Krasun (01:15:44)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:15:45)
running it. Now that's a little unfair because often one person that when the founder can run it, that doesn't mean that and just some random person can also run it. Of course, that's not what it means.

Jason Cohen (01:15:54)
But someone else who's also founder material, let's just say, could run it. Cause you've built a business that makes a quarter million dollars a year in profit that one person can do. One very talented, devoted, you know, experienced person, yes, but still, that's freaking amazing. And there's many, many, many people on Twitter who wish they were in that scenario. Good. Maybe they should be. Maybe they should run this business.

Jason Cohen (01:16:22)
And there's lots of ways to do it. Maybe you continue to get a salary essentially off of it and and it's funded that way. Maybe someone does buy it because that does happen, of course. or maybe it's some combination where they give you some money now and some over time as the business supports it. and that way you can get enough money in total, but not all at once because that person can't afford it. There's lots and lots of ways that could go, but let's not try to solve that right now. Let's just say there's ways.

Dmytro Krasun (01:16:46)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:16:46)
Because you've built a business where, okay, it's not obvious how to get it to a hundred K.

Jason Cohen (01:16:51)
Maybe it's even impossible. It's maybe. But it sure as hell can go from 30 to 40. And I would say from from from from 40 to 50, like like you said, not with the current customer base, but there's enough use cases, enough ideas you could get some other better customers, not completely transforming the whole business, but just incrementally and get it to maybe 50k and and 30k in in revenue and 30k a a month in profit. I believe that entirely.

Jason Cohen (01:17:21)
So that's that's that's an ideal business for many, many people. So that's one of the great things about option A is there's other people who would love that. That's good because that that gives you a way out if in fact leaving the business is what you end up wanting to do. so I suppose we could call that option C. Option C is sell the company or otherwise leave the company but don't leave the company and get some sort of payment for that.

Jason Cohen (01:17:51)
Like I just listed different ways you could get payment for it. So we won't we won't

Dmytro Krasun (01:17:53)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:17:54)
try to stipulate what that is. But option C is you're like, you know what, I just don't want to do screenshots anymore. I've done it for four years. I'm tired of it. But this is a

Dmytro Krasun (01:18:01)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:18:02)
good little business. So I want out, but I want to get paid somehow. That's somehow that's that works and is fair. But I want to move on. I don't know what move on to what. But I'm just done with screenshots. I just don't want to do screenshots anymore.

Jason Cohen (01:18:18)
Like even if I could do that stuff with the markers, I just don't want to do screenshots anymore.

Dmytro Krasun (01:18:22)
Ha ha.

Jason Cohen (01:18:22)
So how does that strike you when I say that, when I say, I just don't want to do screenshots anymore? Do you think, yes, exactly, that's exactly how I feel? Or are you like, no, I don't hate screenshots. I just I just need a product that's working better.

Dmytro Krasun (01:18:38)
This one is interesting because even if we talk about option A Yes, this one is the most exciting in a sense It's interesting

Jason Cohen (01:18:49)
Option C

Dmytro Krasun (01:18:51)
Yes, kind I feel like I can kind of know like Transform myself to like it for more time, you know, but it feels like if we talk long term like you said about five years

Dmytro Krasun (01:19:06)
Let's say if I still run this and I still do option A for five years, okay, it's cool, it's nice, small business as you said, but it feels there's so much more to do. Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:19:18)
Okay, and then what's the answer to the question?

Dmytro Krasun (01:19:21)
Yes, see.

Jason Cohen (01:19:22)
No, but thy question was emotionally when

Jason Cohen (01:19:24)
I said, I just don't want to do screenshots anymore Are you like, Right, that's how I feel. I just don't wanna look at it I just don't wanna think about a screenshot ever again.

Dmytro Krasun (01:19:37)
No, no, no.

Dmytro Krasun (01:19:42)
It feels... I can do it. Yes, I can do it.

Jason Cohen (01:19:47)
I know you can do it. You can do anything. You can learn to play the clarinet. Poorly, pro probably. So please

Jason Cohen (01:19:54)
don't do that. when I say I don't

Dmytro Krasun (01:19:58)
am I.

Jason Cohen (01:20:00)
when I say, God damn it, I never want to see another screenshot again, are you like, hell exactly right? Or do you say, No, screenshots are fine. I just I just need a but but this this product, meaning the market and the customers selling, this product isn't working and that I can't abide.

Jason Cohen (01:20:17)
But those screenshots are fine. It's just I just I need a market that's working.

Dmytro Krasun (01:20:24)
Yeah, so it's fine. This one resonates more with me. It's fine. It's okay. just... Probably, yes, like...

Jason Cohen (01:20:29)
It's fine. Okay. Here's here's

Jason Cohen (01:20:32)
why here's why that's important because I hear I did hear you that option C, sell the business and just do something else, is most exciting. Gotcha. But here's here's why this emotional thing is important. If you were to say, I'm just done with screenshots, then that means option B is also off the table.

Jason Cohen (01:20:52)
But if you say, I'm done with this product, but the technology and my expertise, that's fine. Then option B is still on the table. Because option B is, of course, not really selling screenshots. It's selling regression testing to marketers or whatever, some other idea. Screenshots just happen to be how you deliver that value. And so

Dmytro Krasun (01:21:16)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:21:17)
If you hate screenshots themselves and you ever want to do screenshots again, then you don't want a product that's still doing that, right? But if you're like, no, no, no, that's fine. I just don't want to sell the product of API screenshots. I want to sell a different product. But screenshots, that's fine. I would say, good. Then then option B is still on the table because you just said there's so much else to do. Right. If there could be something else to do that's unrelated, that's fine. That's option C. Option C is get rid

Dmytro Krasun (01:21:42)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:21:44)
of it so you can go do the unrelated thing without being distracted

Dmytro Krasun (01:21:46)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:21:46)
by this company, right?

Jason Cohen (01:21:48)
But it could be that the totally something else is still something where your current expertise and technology helps you get an edge. So like it could be that the next thing you do is play the clarinet, but then all of your current experience doesn't give you an edge. So you're just like

Dmytro Krasun (01:22:04)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:22:04)
everyone else who's learning to play the clarinet, except you started late. It's actually kind of bad. Right? whereas if

Dmytro Krasun (01:22:12)
Just.

Jason Cohen (01:22:12)
you do something that leverages what you currently do, you're ahead of the competition.

Dmytro Krasun (01:22:18)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:22:19)
Right? Because you're leveraging

Jason Cohen (01:22:19)
some the asset that you have, which is your experience and your tech and all this stuff. So if you don't hate screenshots per se, then it's then option B still possible, possible, because that could be that next totally different product that just happens to leverage the stuff that you you are an expert in, and thus you can build that product quicker and better than a competitor who also had the same idea or wants to copy you. Right? Because, like, let's say you did the marketing thing.

Jason Cohen (01:22:47)
And now it's January of 2027. And now the marketing thing is out there. And then someone else goes, man, that's a good idea. That's easy to do with Claude. And then they build it in Claude. they're wrong because as you know, screenshots are actually really hard to do. And get rid of all the bugs and all stuff is actually quite hard. And so

Dmytro Krasun (01:23:07)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:23:08)
they don't know that. So while they're struggling for the next year or two to get the bugs out, you're adding the next feature and the next feature, and it's just way ahead. You see what I mean?

Jason Cohen (01:23:16)
But why? Because you've

Dmytro Krasun (01:23:17)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:23:17)
already, because you're leveraging this asset and experience that you have, which is this knowledge and tech around screenshots. You're leveraging that so that keeps you ahead, at least a for a bit. Like, okay, it's not, you know, you haven't like invented Uber

Dmytro Krasun (01:23:30)
Yeah, that's good.

Jason Cohen (01:23:31)
or anything, but but this is good. This is a good kind of strategic advantage. It's pr it's good. So this is what I mean. If you don't hate screenshots, option B becomes possible because that is a different product, but leveraging something you have.

Jason Cohen (01:23:44)
They're vo thereby making a great strategy for you, as opposed to option C, which is I gotta get out of that. I can't look at screenshots anymore. It's the end. I just can't. I'm burned out on screenshots. Okay, then you need a clean break. That that's that. So I what I'm hearing you say is option C is the most interesting thing because there's so much more new stuff. But option B is not impossible because maybe that new thing that I want to do, maybe if it could leverage what I already have.

Jason Cohen (01:24:12)
To give me an advantage,

Dmytro Krasun (01:24:12)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:24:13)
okay. Like, yeah, I guess that would actually be even better.

Dmytro Krasun (01:24:17)
Yes, yes, yes,

Jason Cohen (01:24:19)
Okay.

Jason Cohen (01:24:20)
All right. So we've we've established

Dmytro Krasun (01:24:24)
if a plausible option B exists.

Jason Cohen (01:24:26)
Yeah. Yeah. Well I mean,

Jason Cohen (01:24:28)
well the bottom line is you said I want to do you said option C is exciting because there's so much more to do, which I I took to mean there's so many other product ideas, company ideas that you could be doing that you would have a lot more excitement for. Is that right?

Dmytro Krasun (01:24:42)
Yes, yes. It feels like also like when we talked after the whole conversation for me it's obvious now that option A it would be like we wouldn't have this talk probably you know there's like option A just continue to do whatever I'm doing it's like

Jason Cohen (01:24:56)
Well, option A is not to continue doing whatever you're doing.

Jason Cohen (01:25:01)
It is to incrementally improve the business. So like you weren't thinking about or you weren't you right now you don't have an outbound campaign

Jason Cohen (01:25:10)
where you've identified people who send emails with screenshots

Dmytro Krasun (01:25:12)
Yeah,

Jason Cohen (01:25:14)
and you've and you've identified a group of a thousand of them and you're targeting them with a marketing campaign to try to get more of them. You're not doing that right now. So I'm saying you could. So option A

Dmytro Krasun (01:25:25)
Yeah

Jason Cohen (01:25:25)
is yes, run the business.

Jason Cohen (01:25:28)
But increment but but get much more targeted and tactical about how you're incrementally improving it so that you

Dmytro Krasun (01:25:35)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:25:36)
do bust beyond this 30 to 40k of revenue ceiling. And I can stop sharing this, I guess. you do you do bust beyond that ceiling. You're not gonna get to the 100k, probably, but you get past this little the this little lump because you're being smarter about identifying these valuable use cases, targeting them better with marketing.

Jason Cohen (01:25:57)
segmenting out the customers that are temporary. You're happy to have them because they represent a lot of revenue and profit every month. So no problem. But you get much smarter about who you're targeting, where you're spending your time and money on

Dmytro Krasun (01:26:09)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:26:09)
and support and features so that you do evolve the company in a way that gets past this this this this current plateau. So option A is not running the companies now it's everything I just said being a lot smart smarter about incrementally running the company.

Jason Cohen (01:26:26)
However, I agree it probably doesn't get you to 100k because because the the markets just aren't there. Right? They're not there's not that many good markets, or there's not any good markets, there's just little pockets of things. But you could still be smarter about it. That's option A. But I still hear you that you don't want to do it. No problem. I just want to be really clear that option A is not just just running the business as now. It's more than that. It's just I hear you that you you say, yes, but I don't want to do that, right?

Dmytro Krasun (01:26:56)
Yes, kind of, yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:26:58)
But the

Jason Cohen (01:26:58)
next person, if you were to do option C and sell it, you would expect the next person to do option A, not run the business as it is now, but do option A. Run the business, but better.

Dmytro Krasun (01:27:10)
Yes, interesting.

Jason Cohen (01:27:13)
So okay, option A is that, option B, so I guess we won't do this now, but when you think it when you say there's something new I could do in the future, what what I would do as you ex as you as you think about what that could be, if there's a way for screenshots to be a part of it, even a small part, like the marketing thing, that will give you an an advantage, and so that would make it a better product for you.

Jason Cohen (01:27:44)
So it's not a requirement

Dmytro Krasun (01:27:44)
Even if you

Jason Cohen (01:27:45)
that you do that, of course. It's not of course it's not, but it would be better because you would

Dmytro Krasun (01:27:49)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:27:49)
be the the more you're lever the more you leverage experience and and even technology that you have, the more that strategy is correct for you. And the more it's something you've never, you know, none of it is something you're you're you're even you're talented at or good at. Well, it's not clear why you are even doing that. So

Dmytro Krasun (01:28:07)
you

Jason Cohen (01:28:08)
right. So it of course that's not a hard and fast rule. I'm just saying that would be better.

Dmytro Krasun (01:28:13)
Yes. Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:28:16)
So you were so before we were talking, you were about to talk about AI and how that changes everything. So I'm guessing you're gonna tell me because of AI agents, AI needs screenshots. Therefore, if you were an MCP server for AI getting screenshots, that would be potentially amazing because then AI could use it a lot, even even more than people know, the users of them know, and and that could be a whole nother way to have the current API product.

Jason Cohen (01:28:45)
g breathe new life because it's a brand new use case. Is that what you were gonna say? Or tell me, if not, what what is the AI case you were gonna make about how that's gonna change everything?

Dmytro Krasun (01:28:56)
That's how I thought, let's say maybe six months ago that it could change. But then I had customers who were using screenshots within Codex, Clot Code and with agents and then I realized, okay, they also, there's like...

Dmytro Krasun (01:29:15)
It's just a tool, know, like they're using this through a tool and there is like no one use case. It's not like this AI agents, it's not a use case actually. Also after we talk about all this, like I see.

Dmytro Krasun (01:29:27)
The same example, marketers are using codecs and then use screenshots for some analysis of some websites for a short period of time and then they churn. It's not like... It's kinda changing. I see many new customer profiles like product managers, marketers, designers. But it's not like... They also churn a lot. And it's not like some repeatable, scalable...

Dmytro Krasun (01:29:57)
I could say this is like agents, like AI agents use case, but it's not a use case because how people actually use it, it's just a tool. Like it's the same as I would say like a script for Java, you know? Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:30:10)
Yeah. Well well wait w wait a minute, but do you have an MCP server?

Dmytro Krasun (01:30:16)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:30:17)
And nobody uses it.

Dmytro Krasun (01:30:19)
A few customers like... They use it, yes, but not like a lot, no.

Jason Cohen (01:30:26)
And you advertise the MPC C P server? Like if I search on Google for C P screenshots, you're gonna appear?

Dmytro Krasun (01:30:39)
I don't know, it's a good question. I want to check this one, mcpscreenshots.

Jason Cohen (01:30:49)
Well, let's see.

Dmytro Krasun (01:30:51)
No, I think it's like-

Jason Cohen (01:30:52)
This is gonna be

Jason Cohen (01:30:53)
fun.

Dmytro Krasun (01:30:55)
Yes. No, no, no. I'm not appearing here.

Jason Cohen (01:30:59)
Okay, MCP

Jason Cohen (01:31:00)
market. Capture process screenshots with MCP. Screenshot as a dev tool. Okay. There's a GitHub one.

Dmytro Krasun (01:31:06)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:31:09)
Cursor Community has one. Take screenshots with Playwright MCP. yeah, that makes sense. But you have to have playwright. So okay, that's fair, but you have to have playwright. Pulse MCP enables AI to capture and analyze screenshots from the desktop on demand. Okay.

Dmytro Krasun (01:31:23)
No, no,

Dmytro Krasun (01:31:24)
no, oh it's desktop, no.

Jason Cohen (01:31:28)
All right. Guide to taking screenshots with a server. Page pixels. That's fun.

Jason Cohen (01:31:37)
Okay, let's just for fun see what this is.

Dmytro Krasun (01:31:39)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:31:41)
Learn how to connect. got let's see.

Jason Cohen (01:31:49)
Mm-hmm.

Dmytro Krasun (01:31:51)
Yes, it feels like a brother.

Jason Cohen (01:31:52)
Yeah, this looks like you, right?

Dmytro Krasun (01:31:54)
Yes, it could be. Yes, yes. It could be. Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:31:55)
Okay, so this is a competitor. And they're

Jason Cohen (01:31:59)
they're and you're not there. I didn't see you yet.

Dmytro Krasun (01:32:02)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:32:04)
Let's see, where are you? They're there. There's

Dmytro Krasun (01:32:07)
I-

Jason Cohen (01:32:08)
a lot of people chatting that didn't say you. You're not on the first page, which means you're not there. So,

Dmytro Krasun (01:32:13)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:32:14)
okay. So obviously Google's not the end all. In fact, it's much more likely people would search, I think, in in AI for this, right? Rather than Google. So let's just say

Dmytro Krasun (01:32:23)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:32:24)
that little test is not conclusive. But what I would say is you're probably not giving it a good try yet.

Dmytro Krasun (01:32:31)
It might be. Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:32:32)
Right.

Jason Cohen (01:32:32)
Like it's like what I would want to hear from you is

Jason Cohen (01:32:39)
While I have 30k of MRR from human beings doing screenshots and you know, maybe I can go to 40k, stuff like that, that's fine. Here's where the magic is. If I can get someone to configure an MCP server in their AI system, don't even say the word agent. It doesn't matter. Codex and Cloud Code, maybe it's an agent, maybe it's just their cloud code project. I don't care. If I can get them to do that, and I can get them to wire that up, then AI just uses it. Like

Jason Cohen (01:33:06)
The person may not even ask for a screenshot, but the AI decided. I need a screenshot. Right. It goes off and gets one.

Dmytro Krasun (01:33:13)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:33:15)
Right. And so that's the future because how many people are going to do that? in the future? everyone, whether they know it or not. Okay.

Dmytro Krasun (01:33:25)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:33:26)
Or whatever it is, it's an is a j an unthinkably large number of people are going to be doing stuff like this. Like even just saying what's the size of the market is sort of silly. It's like, I don't know, like a lot.

Jason Cohen (01:33:37)
And so the question is when someone searches for MCP screenshot, I need to come up so that they do it. Because if I

Dmytro Krasun (01:33:44)
Well.

Jason Cohen (01:33:44)
can get embedded in thousands and then tens of thousands of projects, yes, many many of them are temporary. Yes, many of them only do two screenshots a month. And so they'll stay on the free plan or whatever. But that's how I'm that's the that's the future. That's how I'm gonna get in the future. And and actually, like maybe sometimes people

Jason Cohen (01:34:06)
For months don't do much, but then suddenly they just happen to do something with AI that requires a lot of screenshots. And so they end up paying me that one month, you know, right?

Dmytro Krasun (01:34:14)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:34:15)
Because their credit card's on file. So that one month they run up a bill, but then the next month and they're not anymore. But they're a customer in the sense that they have an account with me. I have a more flexible pricing plan where it's pay by usage with a free tier. So most of the time it's free, but then they use the if it's variable, it's fine. And when that's plugged into AI.

Jason Cohen (01:34:34)
It's easier for that to be variable and it's easier for that to just stay in. In fact,

Dmytro Krasun (01:34:38)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:34:39)
if person A configures the system and person B uses the system, person B might generate a lot of screenshots and not even know it because person A is the one who made it, and person B doesn't even know exactly what the AI is doing or why. That's fine. This is all this is the future. You could say I'm just I'm just I'm just very verbosely describing what this strategy is, what this future is, this view of of how.

Dmytro Krasun (01:35:03)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:35:03)
company could transform.

Jason Cohen (01:35:05)
And so step one of all that, of course, is when someone intentionally searches for MCP screenshot, you gotta show up so that you they pick you. They, you know, that where they

Dmytro Krasun (01:35:16)
Yeah, that's it.

Jason Cohen (01:35:17)
even have a chance to pick you. And you're not, you're not really like intentionally doing that. So it's possible that AI does save it and AI does get you to 100K and and beyond with

Jason Cohen (01:35:29)
Being visible that way, maybe you need a CLI as well as MCP, because a lot of people don't like MCP, but okay, you clearly you can do all that. That's that's that part

Dmytro Krasun (01:35:35)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:35:36)
is in fact not hard, actually, right? So you

Dmytro Krasun (01:35:39)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:35:39)
you have all the ways. You have the MCP way, you have the direct API way, of course, which you already do. Maybe you have an SDK. Yeah, you have an SDK

Dmytro Krasun (01:35:44)
If I have cell phone too, yes, yes, I'll just start.

Jason Cohen (01:35:47)
for to for for TypeScript and for and for Python so that AI could get it that way. you have

Dmytro Krasun (01:35:52)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:35:53)
CLI. Okay, so you have all these different ways that AI likes all these ways.

Jason Cohen (01:35:57)
So that no matter how you do your AI, there's a way, an easy way for you to wire it up. And then you promote it that way. You you market it intentionally that way to try to get people to do that. And those Reddit threads that I just saw on Google, you need to come up there. And if you're not, then you need to say then you need to be watching Reddit and answering eventually. Hope hopefully other people do that for you. Of course, that's better. But this is what you would do if this. So let's call this option D is

Dmytro Krasun (01:36:23)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:36:25)
It's the current product under the hood, but it's AI. AI is the future. AI is the way it's so the current business will still be there. And it's how

Dmytro Krasun (01:36:33)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:36:34)
you're gonna maintain the business and maintain the profit and maybe go from 30 to 40k just by natural activity. under you know, that that that's fine. But option D is yes, I'm not gonna, you know, you know, stop doing that, but but the way this company's gonna get to 100k is.

Jason Cohen (01:36:55)
AI in including AI, which means I need every integration possible. I need to be visible in a marketing sense in every way. in in those AI ways. I need to make I need to talk about

Dmytro Krasun (01:37:05)
Yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:37:06)
AI. I need other people who are influencers in AI to talk about me, all that kind of stuff. That's what needs to happen because I'm going to grow through AI integrations and a pricing plan specifically for that, which probably is again variable so that people can use it as much or as little as as as makes sense.

Jason Cohen (01:37:25)
Or not. Like I don't know, you'd have to talk to customers to figure out what the right pricing plan is. But maybe something like that would make sense. So it's easy for them to sign up. But also if if AI happens to use it a lot, you get paid. So this would be option D. And again, like what I just articulated is unlikely to be exactly the right plan of action because we just made it up, right? But something along those

Dmytro Krasun (01:37:45)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:37:45)
lines where the strategy is get embedded in AI and let AI do the activity for you. with everything else behind that.

Jason Cohen (01:37:55)
supporting that integration's pricing it's and scaling and so on. that's option D, let's call it. It's time to it's time to plug into AI. How does that strike you?

Dmytro Krasun (01:38:09)
It's exciting. There is one caveat. Like I'm not... I'm not sure 100 % that it might work in a way... Because when I myself personally use Codex or CodeCode, yes, they have access to my browser. They have access to all these tools and how often do I really need screenshots in this use case? For example, if we talk about personal usage, yes, but if we talk about... It's...

Dmytro Krasun (01:38:39)
It's interesting, yes, it's one of the options I would consider. At least because I didn't try it.

Jason Cohen (01:38:43)
What you just did is you articulated a

Jason Cohen (01:38:45)
very good part of your sales pitch. In other words, your sales pitch to someone who says, Why would I need that? I can just tell AI to take a screenshot. And you would say, Well, let's think about that for a second. If it's on their server, they're not taking a screenshot. They're like pawing through the HTML.

Dmytro Krasun (01:39:04)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:39:06)
And often they're like, I got a 404 error. I get that all the time. Or a 500 error doesn't let me do that, or it doesn't know how to

Dmytro Krasun (01:39:12)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:39:13)
render the site. Like all the time. It it doesn't work. And then

Dmytro Krasun (01:39:16)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:39:16)
you say, No, no, no, but I can run it locally. And in my browser, it can take the screenshot. I would say, that's true. All you have to do is give it access to your browser, which means literally everything in your life, which is incredibly

Dmytro Krasun (01:39:30)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:39:31)
scary. And in many

Jason Cohen (01:39:32)
corporate contexts not allowed, right? And so, and so

Dmytro Krasun (01:39:35)
Yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:39:38)
in many corporate contexts, that's not an option physically, because they don't allow it. And just in general, that's not such a good idea. You know, just for a screenshot, they have it also has access to all your email in your bank. Just because you wanted to screenshot an Amazon listing. Not sure that's a great idea. Right. And so

Dmytro Krasun (01:39:54)
yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:39:55)
so this is so what you just did is articulate a sales pitch, which I like a good sales pitch. I like it. But it did not answer the question which was

Jason Cohen (01:40:02)
How does it strike you in terms of emotionally? What is how exciting is that? Are you like, hell yeah, let's go get a let's let's go do AI screenshots.

Dmytro Krasun (01:40:13)
It feels like one of the most exciting options. Let's say out of four, it's pretty... I really like it. And because I also didn't invest in it, you know, like I didn't promote it much. It's interesting at least to try, at least to be in the first position and to see what happens. It feels...

Jason Cohen (01:40:36)
Mm-hmm.

Dmytro Krasun (01:40:37)
I cannot say it's like 100 % yeah, but it's one of the top.

Dmytro Krasun (01:40:43)
It feels like...

Dmytro Krasun (01:40:47)
It would be one of the top priorities to test.

Jason Cohen (01:40:49)
If

Jason Cohen (01:40:50)
you okay, good. If if if you just went with option C and sold the business and never tr never even tried for a week to do the AI, do you think later you'd regret not trying? Or would you say, I mean I had a better idea anyway.

Dmytro Krasun (01:41:15)
I might regret, because this kind of product and this step...

Dmytro Krasun (01:41:22)
a door, a door in this AI experience, AI market. Like I already have it, I can just open and check like how's it going. But starting from scratch again, like entering this, you know, like AI agents and all this, I think it will be painful experience to sell it and then start again from scratch without anything, you know, like from zero, like it feels like I might not regret it, but it feels, yeah, okay, regret, yes, okay.

Jason Cohen (01:41:52)
Yeah,

Jason Cohen (01:41:52)
I mean it right, because starting from scratch, of course, it always sounds exciting. I mean, we're we're we're we're entrepreneurs, so like of course we like st starting a new thing. Like that's the part of what it is, right? and on the other hand, we remember, but most of the time it doesn't work at all. And it's really hard. Even

Dmytro Krasun (01:42:09)
I'm

Jason Cohen (01:42:10)
when it does work, it's really hard. It's a hard scrabble. Like to get to where you

Dmytro Krasun (01:42:14)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:42:14)
are now is hard and unlikely. So doing that again is like, like it's really exciting and also god dang.

Dmytro Krasun (01:42:22)
Yeah

Jason Cohen (01:42:22)
Again, like,

Jason Cohen (01:42:23)
man, I don't know. I I already got here. Do I really have to start over? So it can be again emotionally, it sounds like you're on the fence there, 'cause it is exciting to start over, but you can see you also see that emotional thing of Man, I have all this. Like if if that next thing could still be this thing, but but pivoting, that would be way easier than, you know, like

Jason Cohen (01:42:48)
It sounds like you're also there, like, and again, like it's okay not not to really know. I mean, that's a good thing to ponder, right? It's a good thing for you to continue to ponder because it's the right question. Okay. So, what's nice about option D is you can absolutely right now go try it and do better than you were doing. In other words, right now you could go through the top

Jason Cohen (01:43:15)
You could go through the first, let's say, three to five pages of Google listings and Kagi Kaji listings and duck duck go listings for this, see what kinds of things show up, and start to get a feel for like what would I need to do? What do I want to do? Where do I need to be seen? Should I go talk should I go leave a comment on one of those Reddit forums today? I I just can't I you know

Dmytro Krasun (01:43:36)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:43:37)
probably one work to leave one comment one forum, but if it's the third search result on Google, it might be worth it.

Jason Cohen (01:43:44)
Is there now? Here's where I do actually think that with AI coding, you could do some things very quickly. Like you have your MCP server, but maybe it needs better documentation or a certain GitHub repository.

Dmytro Krasun (01:43:54)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:43:55)
I don't know. Well, with AI, you could get all that real fast, right? maybe you have

Dmytro Krasun (01:43:58)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:43:59)
it already, but if you didn't, you could do that really fast. same with a CLI. I also need a CLI. You could do that in an afternoon with Claude because you've already done all the other work, right? Because

Jason Cohen (01:44:10)
You already have the API, you already have SDKs, you already have MCP server. So like because of that, you could you could do the CLI that that Claude likes in an afternoon and put it up on a GitHub repository or or include it in your existing one or whatever. Absolutely, you could do that in an afternoon with so there's some things like that where you could like, you know, in a couple of afternoons, it could be really pretty solid in certain areas like integrations. you could you could also say, you know what, I'm gonna have a plugin. Sorry, I'm gonna have a Python.

Jason Cohen (01:44:40)
package. I'm gonna have a TypeScript NPM package. I'm gonna have maybe one other thing, maybe not. and again, Cloud could given that you already have all the stuff and it's just wrapping an API that already exists, Cloud Code could absolutely make those. And you just get accounts with the right places and and you know

Dmytro Krasun (01:44:57)
Yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:44:58)
so in other words you could have this nice array of integrations that people who do AI generally like and I know you have some of these already, whatever. I mean by the end of the week you could have those or at least by Monday you could have those.

Jason Cohen (01:45:10)
just pr a pretty strong offering in in terms of the integrations. And now getting the word out is okay, that's a little harder, but you could just start doing stuff. You could start, you have a big Twitter account. You could start tweeting about it. You could start tweeting at certain things. You could you could again you could get on this some of these Reddit things. You could post your own things there. You could

Dmytro Krasun (01:45:29)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:45:31)
is there someone who also makes YouTube videos or tweets or whatever where they're also technical and I don't know, just the kind of maybe you know them already.

Jason Cohen (01:45:40)
And you could say, hey, I'm just trying to get this MCP thing off the ground. Maybe we could do a podcast together, or maybe, maybe just as a friend, you would you know, make a tweet about it just because like we're friends and help help me out, you know? Like you could so obviously none of these things are quote unquote scalable, or how you would, you know, right?

Dmytro Krasun (01:45:57)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:45:58)
Of course not, but that's not you're doing on step one. Step one is how quickly can I get a decent product together? Quickly, I think, in your case. and and like what could I do to test the waters or just see?

Jason Cohen (01:46:11)
can I drum up a drum up a little bit of attention? What is that like? And of course, then talking to those people. So you have some people using the MCP server. Now you need to talk to them with a structured conversation. You know, I have articles on this and everything about how to do that to understand them. And again, you could do some of this, let's call it quote unquote, you know, manual marketing. And and again, if that generates even a little bit of activity, great. Like try to talk to them again.

Jason Cohen (01:46:37)
understanding this better. So you get a better view of like what is this? What could this be like? So that's that's that's what I think of when I think of how would you test option D. You don't have to select it. But like in the next so it's July 1st now. By the end of the month, could you have fully tested whether option D is good and also

Jason Cohen (01:47:00)
I don't I also have a in greater detail what is option D. Like we know what it is generally, plug into A AI, but there's all these open questions. What for, how would I find customers, what language do they use? What kinds of integrations do I need? What use cases should I talk about that are more likely for people to actually need in the context of AI specifically? Cause it's not this necessarily the same use cases. So what are those use cases? The people that do use AI, why? And and and right. And so by the end of the month, could you know?

Jason Cohen (01:47:31)
here's what option D would be, and here's some answers to some of those types of questions that would fully articulate what our option D really means. You

Dmytro Krasun (01:47:41)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:47:42)
could decide that's my goal for this month, period. I'm gonna run the business the way it is. obviously, like if there's something catastrophic, I have to fix it. I have to keep up with my tech support tickets. I can't stop doing marketing because this pays the bills. But other than running the business at a just the lowest possible level, that's not.

Jason Cohen (01:48:01)
harmful to the business or your customers. Every other second is gonna be sp this month is going to be spent vetting option D with the kinds of questions I just said.

Jason Cohen (01:48:12)
So that I so that I can decide, A, what is option D? Exactly. What are we talking about? And B, am I super excited to go do that or not? Or or after all of that exploration, am I like, yeah, I see it now and gosh, no, I don't want to. Like we right, like that's possible. But like maybe, maybe

Dmytro Krasun (01:48:29)
Yes, yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:48:31)
you need to go see in order to find out, right?

Dmytro Krasun (01:48:35)
Yes. See?

Dmytro Krasun (01:48:40)
I thought about option C.

Jason Cohen (01:48:42)
yeah, maybe you need you need to go explore and in in order to find

Jason Cohen (01:48:46)
out like what is option D and do I like it? Right.

Dmytro Krasun (01:48:51)
Yes.

Dmytro Krasun (01:48:53)
Yes, it's a good phone.

Jason Cohen (01:48:57)
So that could be a good plan for this month. Run the business at a skeleton level, basic level, and spend all of your time vetting option D, meaning that you're doing all these things I said. You're creating this full integrations, you're talking to people, you're doing manual marketing to drum up some attention and just seeing what that's like. How easy is that? What's the feedback like?

Jason Cohen (01:49:26)
You're interviewing both existing customers who use MCP and these new, this new attention. You're doing interviews or otherwise finding out answers to all these questions. You're gonna get a list of questions. You're gonna make a list of questions. Again, I have that I have that article about how to interview customers, right? So you're you're gonna have these goals like the ones I just listed. You'll come up with your own as well. And then you're gonna come up with your hypotheses of what what are the answers to those. You know, half of them are wrong. That's okay.

Jason Cohen (01:49:55)
Then you're gonna invent really good questions and then you're gonna execute that. This is what the article lays out, as I'm sure you know already. so you're gonna do

Dmytro Krasun (01:50:01)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:50:02)
that, and that's what I mean by vetting option D, right? Like you build integrations, you get some attention, you do these kind of structured interviews. Even on Twitter, where it's not so structured, you can still ask these questions. Like if you have good, if you generated good questions with that method, right? You have again a big Twitter following, you can still ask some these questions in general. Now, of course, asking

Jason Cohen (01:50:24)
In the general Twitter audience, you're gonna get random answers. That's not very high signal compared to a real customer.

Dmytro Krasun (01:50:29)
there.

Jason Cohen (01:50:30)
So of course, you're gonna modulate your what what you do with that information accordingly. However, it's still information, it's still good, especially at this stage. That's still good. And you're leveraging something you have,

Dmytro Krasun (01:50:41)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:50:42)
which is a Twitter following, to get some more information. So you can do that too. And so I just made up one month just because it's it's if you only did it for three days, you wouldn't really find out.

Jason Cohen (01:50:54)
And you don't want to be exploring for six months because it shouldn't take that much time and you don't have that kind of time. And it just doesn't make sense. So it doesn't have to be the end of the month. It's just a convenient something like that. you know, something like three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, something like that makes

Dmytro Krasun (01:51:08)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:51:08)
sense to give it a good attempt, especially with interviewing customers because it's hard to schedule. I I could do something next Tuesday, then on Tuesday they don't show or they reschedule, right? Like that's what happens when you try to talk to customers, right? So you need

Jason Cohen (01:51:23)
calendar time in order to actually pull that off, it turns out. So that's what's in my mind when I say something like like four weeks or even longer. But but you could set an an intention of like that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna I'm gonna spend all my time that I can vetting option D.

Dmytro Krasun (01:51:46)
expense like and putting the business like on the slow burner let's like to not yes yes

Jason Cohen (01:51:57)
Otherwise you don't have the time to really do it. You need to be doing it for hours a day. Yeah, because you're really trying.

Dmytro Krasun (01:52:01)
Yeah, yes, yes. have actually,

Dmytro Krasun (01:52:04)
yes, yes, I actually hold all, I have all this stuff that you mentioned, like CLI, MCP, like integration page, like everything, but I never actually really promoted it. I never was focused on it. Like, you know, 100 % like I'm just doing this stuff and that's it. Like I didn't do it that way. I just, you know, I shared a little bit here and there and I found some customers and oh, okay. Okay. So it's like.

Dmytro Krasun (01:52:30)
I didn't see that face.

Jason Cohen (01:52:33)
Yeah, and and and that's fine. And so so you've already built it. So I I think what you could do though is you could say, well, I built it, but now that I'm thinking from as a marketer, I not only want to document there is this MCP, there is this CLI, there is this Python library, I want to convince someone to use it, which is different from just documentation. It's both, it's both,

Dmytro Krasun (01:52:58)
Yes. Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:53:01)
but

Jason Cohen (01:53:02)
Like the headline of the page is different when it's just reference material versus when it's trying to convince someone to implement this for some reason. So

Dmytro Krasun (01:53:12)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:53:12)
when you get into the details of how the API works, then it's just technical documentation. Fine. But that's not what the homepage is. I say homepage, but the main page that you land on when you search for MCP screenshots isn't just a boring technical document, it's marketing.

Dmytro Krasun (01:53:29)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:53:30)
So

Jason Cohen (01:53:30)
I think what you could do is say, all right, I have basically have all the tech. I'm going to take a pass now. I'm going to think about it as a marketer now and take a pass over that, saying, wait, how do I get someone excited about this, not just tell them what it is? And and so again, maybe that's just an afternoon, right? Like does that be a lot? But like,

Dmytro Krasun (01:53:49)
you

Jason Cohen (01:53:50)
but you wanna do that. That's gonna be part of this, is it's marketing. You're gonna wanna go to your actual homepage of the whole company and also talk about this.

Jason Cohen (01:53:59)
Maybe there's special landing pages for it, or maybe maybe the MCP stuff is the landing page. But anyway, you're gonna direct some traffic there somehow. SEO

Dmytro Krasun (01:54:08)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:54:08)
obviously is hard to is hard to do quickly. That's one of its disadvantages, is that you don't just rank really fast. Nevertheless, you could try by thinking about SEO for those very pages and also with things to write, or maybe even guest post something because that might rank more quickly.

Jason Cohen (01:54:27)
Right, but you could try to think how do I how do I generate that that way?

Dmytro Krasun (01:54:31)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:54:32)
but again, there might be a lot of more manual marketing, because again, you're just trying to do it. You could even spend some money. Like the good news is your profit, you're you have good profits. You could decide to spend $10,000 in advertising for this. Again, not that you would do this forever, not that that's a great way to go. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't know. But that's not the point. That's not what we're doing right now. We're trying to find out is this a good idea and what is the idea exactly? Right. And so you could spend money, whether it's AdWords or something else.

Jason Cohen (01:55:02)
On something like MCP and screenshots to drive people there. Find out.

Dmytro Krasun (01:55:06)
it.

Jason Cohen (01:55:07)
Then put a web chat thing there, a live web chat, so that when you drive them there, occasionally you actually talk to them. So, right,

Dmytro Krasun (01:55:13)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:55:14)
these are all these are all the kinds of things one does, including spending money to explore and discover. And you might say, my gosh, like I spent 5k and sure, I had some conversations that was useful, but that is a terrible way to get a customer. And I would Yeah, I believe you. Right.

Jason Cohen (01:55:31)
But you know, it's a very different question to ask. How do I find out? Is a very different question than now how do I have a repeatable sales

Dmytro Krasun (01:55:41)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:55:41)
process? And by that I don't necessarily mean a human being doing sales. I mean the the process of marketing to find someone and then selling is closing them, even if it's all hands-free, right? The question of how do I do an automated and efficient marketing and sales process is a very, very different question from is this a good idea and what is the idea? And so

Jason Cohen (01:56:01)
Think about spending money

Dmytro Krasun (01:56:01)
Yeah, course.

Jason Cohen (01:56:02)
and time answering that question. It's worth 5K to find out, 10K to find out, given that you're so profitable that you have the money, it's worth that to discover is this exciting and the next thing for the company? Or you might say, Nope, this sucks. And now I'm

Dmytro Krasun (01:56:19)
you

Jason Cohen (01:56:19)
sure because I I put in all this time, I even spent thousands of dollars. Now I'm sure it's a bad idea. And that's fantastic to know that. You probably learned something else in the process as well that you can bring to.

Jason Cohen (01:56:31)
then the the final decision.

Dmytro Krasun (01:56:33)
Yes, yes.

Dmytro Krasun (01:56:39)
Okay, okay.

Jason Cohen (01:56:41)
And it's gonna be a slog. Like I think I think some of it's exciting because it's new, but I f well at least I now I'm projecting myself onto you. But

Dmytro Krasun (01:56:49)
and

Jason Cohen (01:56:50)
I find that kind of stuff can be a slog. Doing the pay landing pages, testing things, getting ads. They usually don't work. Posting on Reddit and then people say nasty things. you know, trying to

Dmytro Krasun (01:57:00)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:57:04)
get other people to to tweet, then finally someone does, and you know, three people go to the website, no one talks to you.

Dmytro Krasun (01:57:09)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:57:10)
and just

Jason Cohen (01:57:11)
It's such a grind, you know this, but such a grind like you have to a ask ten people to even help before one person helps. You have to run a thousand ads before ten people click.

Dmytro Krasun (01:57:20)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:57:22)
you know, it's just you have to beg to get customer interviews even for people that are already customers. It's just a slog, you know. So I g I I know, but I think you owe it to yourself to do the slog for the and and

Jason Cohen (01:57:38)
It's also a reason why it's useful to set a date because it's useful to know I'm doing this slog, but I'm doing it for 30 days or whatever, right? I'm doing it for four weeks. It gives you like it's easier to do it when you know like it's gonna end. And at the end

Dmytro Krasun (01:57:51)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:57:51)
of it, I'm gonna really know either this is the future of the company, and I even know what that looks like, which is gonna be freaking insanely amazing. Or I'm gonna say, I absolutely know that this is not one of the options, and now I have a better idea of what.

Jason Cohen (01:58:07)
Options are okay, and now I'm sure and that was also worth it. So time bound being time bound helps you get through the slog part.

Dmytro Krasun (01:58:20)
Yes, yes. My brain is exploding from all these options. Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:58:28)
Well, we only have four options. There's maybe more, but this is good.

Dmytro Krasun (01:58:33)
D is kind of like... it's a combination of some of them, like it's... also it's A in a sense, like I can still go with A, like it's also... it's also...

Jason Cohen (01:58:46)
Yeah, but not for the next month, you're not.

Dmytro Krasun (01:58:48)
yes, yes, yes, not for the next one.

Jason Cohen (01:58:50)
Right. You need

Jason Cohen (01:58:50)
all of your attention on it's gonna take all your time to do a good job in vetting option D.

Dmytro Krasun (01:58:57)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:58:58)
You're gonna be tempted to do option A because it's easier. I can hide in Visual Studio and add a feature. Right?

Dmytro Krasun (01:59:06)
Yes, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:59:07)
that's easier than trying to get a customer on the phone and ask them questions. So

Dmytro Krasun (01:59:11)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:59:12)
you're be tempted to go do option A because option A is smart.

Jason Cohen (01:59:17)
They're all smart. All these options are smart. That's why they're on the list at all, because they're all fine, you know. But

Dmytro Krasun (01:59:22)
Yeah, I see it.

Jason Cohen (01:59:24)
but it but if you allow yourself to slip into option A, what you're doing is you're ensuring that you will not find out whether option D is a good idea.

Dmytro Krasun (01:59:36)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (01:59:37)
You will do a bad job of it, probably conclude option D can't work.

Jason Cohen (01:59:44)
But that was an incorrect but that that you wrote you would have arrived at that decision incorrectly because you didn't really try. So that would be like the the the founder who makes a product and then like makes four tweets about it to their 300 followers. Sales don't immediately appear. And so they go, that's stupid. I'm moving on to my next idea. And then they they think they're smart because they did 10 of these in a year. But in fact, it's dumb because what they did is just ensured they planted a seed and never gave it water and then it didn't come up.

Dmytro Krasun (02:00:13)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (02:00:13)
They're like,

Jason Cohen (02:00:13)
yeah, but I planted lots of seeds that didn't come up. Okay. No.

Dmytro Krasun (02:00:17)
It's interesting because

Dmytro Krasun (02:00:20)
in this case it's interesting because like one month feels it's good enough period to invest time and to build something but will I get like all this feedback you know like from customers in one month?

Jason Cohen (02:00:32)
Maybe not. Maybe not. So so

Jason Cohen (02:00:35)
of course you will decide in fact what to do. I made that I made that up as a as a stake in the ground because the answer's not

Dmytro Krasun (02:00:39)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Cohen (02:00:42)
one week and the answer's not six months. So I put that as a stake in the ground. But what's really gonna happen is just what you said, three weeks in, you're gonna see the end of this timeline coming up and you'll just decide. Yeah, I think one

Dmytro Krasun (02:00:54)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (02:00:54)
more week's enough, where you'll say, Man, I got three customer calls on the books. Of course I'm gonna see that through.

Jason Cohen (02:01:01)
Of course, like that we made up this deadline. It's it's we can do whatever

Dmytro Krasun (02:01:03)
you.

Jason Cohen (02:01:04)
we want. Right. So the really

Dmytro Krasun (02:01:06)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (02:01:06)
it's just a week is not enough, six months is is too long. You need to drive to this result because you need to decide whether it is or isn't right so that you know whether you're picking it and what it is, or you are selecting a different option and getting going on that other option, whatever it is. You don't want to be in this, in this, in this weird spot for six months.

Jason Cohen (02:01:29)
Also, again, I'm insisting, you'll do what you want, of course. It doesn't you don't have to do what I say, but I'm insisting that you not do option A. Okay, but if you don't do option A, you can't just do that. You can't just do nothing for a year and expect this company to be okay, right? I mean,

Dmytro Krasun (02:01:44)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (02:01:45)
I know you know this, right? You you gotta work on the company. So for a month you can get away with that. Not a year. And so this is again why why I'm trying to time bound it, because you wanna you do want to set option A aside, but you can't do that.

Jason Cohen (02:01:59)
for a really extended period of time or you'll you'll ruin the company that you have. So

Dmytro Krasun (02:02:05)
So, why did you say do not go with option A for a... like why do you insist to not go with option A? Or I just misunderstood you.

Jason Cohen (02:02:17)
Well, so I I'm just explaining why I think a a year a a month or maybe two, you have to figure out option D because I'm telling you to not do option A during that time. And and but if you were to do that for six months and just explore and ignore the company for six months effectively, that's not okay. So that you need

Dmytro Krasun (02:02:38)
Yes, yes, No, no,

Jason Cohen (02:02:40)
a time balance. It's okay to ignore it for a little while while you look work on option D.

Jason Cohen (02:02:45)
But that can't be

Dmytro Krasun (02:02:45)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (02:02:46)
a long time. So that's why I'm trying to so if it ends up being five weeks, six weeks, of course that's fine. But I'm just, you know, we're trying to limit it to something like that. So it doesn't, it's not accidentally, you know, 10 weeks and and actually hurts the company in

Dmytro Krasun (02:02:59)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (02:03:00)
in fact.

Dmytro Krasun (02:03:02)
Yes, yes, I thought you meant the option A in isolation, like, do not go with option A at all. Yes, yes, I see, I see. I see.

Jason Cohen (02:03:10)
Okay,

Jason Cohen (02:03:10)
well, this is fun. Maybe there's more options, but I always find that when I explore like this, some hypotheses I had are found to be true or directionally true, but now I have a better idea of exactly what direction. And half of them are false, which is very useful. And then there's all this stuff I never thought of that I then discover. And I don't even know what they're gonna be, right? Like d definitionally

Dmytro Krasun (02:03:37)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (02:03:38)
I don't know what they're gonna be.

Jason Cohen (02:03:39)
So, what I think is we've already identified four plausible options. Surely there are more, but hey, that's good. And I think in exploring option D, there will be new things that neither you nor I know at this moment. And whatever those are, those will help you make a better decision later. A more informed,

Dmytro Krasun (02:04:01)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (02:04:02)
confident decision. Because after all, if you find out this is also a bad idea for a product.

Jason Cohen (02:04:09)
You might be more certain that option C, selling the business, is correct. Because you're like,

Dmytro Krasun (02:04:14)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (02:04:15)
no, like the single best way to stay with the business was option D, and it's wrong. And even that's wrong. Even AI can't save this business. I gotta sell it. Okay. Now you're way more sure. Like that, that's great. Because right now you're you're like, I'm excited about that, but I'm not so sure. If you could just get more

Dmytro Krasun (02:04:31)
Yeah.

Jason Cohen (02:04:32)
certain, that would be really great, you know? So

Jason Cohen (02:04:36)
Or vice versa. You discover option D is super exciting, absolutely possible. And my gosh, we just and it's the answer. That's how we're gonna get to 100k. We did it. Maybe. So I just think in the in the exploration, who knows what else you'll discover that will help inform that. Or it often often what happens is option E and F appear in the process of discovery, and those are better. You know, again, great, you know. so I would you know, your mindset is explore.

Jason Cohen (02:05:06)
Discover. So you're not leaping to a judgment. You're not making decisions about the future yet. You're exploring what is the truth, what's going on, how do people actually think? What do people actually do? What do people want to pay for? How do people pay for it? What the it's a discovery, not judgment. And

Dmytro Krasun (02:05:28)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (02:05:29)
so with that mindset, just for this time period, and you can go back to it, you know, then you go back to the other mindset, right? In this

Jason Cohen (02:05:36)
Period. That's the mindset. You have the company running as as with as l little attention as possible, and you're in a discovery exploring mindset for the next roughly four weeks, six weeks, to be open-minded and discover about this thing. Even if the result is hell no, the only way you're gonna confidently say that is if you have truly explored with

Jason Cohen (02:06:05)
complete open mind and excitement and right in that mindset, only then,

Dmytro Krasun (02:06:09)
Yes, sir.

Jason Cohen (02:06:10)
if you still decide no, will you be very confident in that. So that's the right attitude f for this period.

Dmytro Krasun (02:06:17)
Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (02:06:19)
Yes, yes. I feel, I feel I need to feel it, you know, like it's an exhaustive option. Like I tried everything to make it work and it doesn't. Yes. And I didn't.

Jason Cohen (02:06:29)
Yeah, I mean it sounds like there's nothing else

Jason Cohen (02:06:31)
that even plausibly could get you there. That's incremental, the option A, right? This one at least is possible, so you gotta go find out. Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (02:06:35)
I still would check... Yes,

Dmytro Krasun (02:06:39)
yes. I still want to check customers, like to check every customer, their use case and maybe I will see some pattern again, yes, but... But I didn't see it, like... Yes. I still want to make sure that... I didn't miss anything.

Jason Cohen (02:06:50)
Yes, you can go check. Yeah, you know, I

Jason Cohen (02:06:53)
I would never say don't go check, right? but but I think you said it earlier. If it was

Dmytro Krasun (02:06:55)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (02:07:00)
a clear one, you would just know that already because you would have ten examples in your head immediately or twenty and you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's this. And since since it's not, like I I don't know why poking around would suddenly make that appear.

Dmytro Krasun (02:07:16)
see a logic as yes

Jason Cohen (02:07:18)
Right. Now

Jason Cohen (02:07:18)
z w sometimes that does it is the case in a bigger organization, when any one person cannot see everything that's going on. Right. Everyone has some fog of war in a in a larger organization. In that case, it's quite possible that there's this thing that's true, and yet you can't you don't know that because you don't s you can't see that. You're not close enough to that thing to know it's true. That happens constantly in a big company. It's one of the

Jason Cohen (02:07:48)
One of the difficulties in operating in and and managing that organiz a larger organization is that you can't know everything. so then

Dmytro Krasun (02:07:56)
Thanks

Jason Cohen (02:07:56)
it's true you need to dig and find out because maybe there's a pattern that's obvious when you look. But that's not your situation. You do literally everything. You see every support ticket, you know, you talk to every customer who wants to be talked to, you see how they use the product, you get the feature requests, and so on. You see it all. Now, maybe you could poke in an interview more. Okay, maybe.

Jason Cohen (02:08:16)
But you see it all. There is no fog of war for you in that sense. so like if if there was an obvious big pattern, how would you not see it all? Like what why would you quote unquote looking be information you don't already have? Now, could there be a subtle small pattern that you never noticed? Yes, that I believe. That I that I believe. But a subtle small pattern, that's back to option A. Small, small pattern is not how you get to 100K,

Dmytro Krasun (02:08:41)
yes.

Jason Cohen (02:08:43)
right? That's

Jason Cohen (02:08:44)
That is how I would think about option A is ask. this is only 5% of my customers that do this. But they're great customers. So maybe if I just get if I get more customers like that, then I could move that from 5% of my base doing that to 10% of my base doing that. It's still a tiny amount, right? But those are but if those are great, profitable long-term customers, then adding those, that's very good. And incrementally, that's how you get like.

Jason Cohen (02:09:12)
All right, now I got from 30 to 40, 40 to 50. Right? That's how I do that, is I find these little pockets. Then going back to the metrics and really looking, that I believe. That then I'm I agree. Because that kind of subtlety isn't necessarily obvious when you're not looking, even when it's just you. That I agree with. But with option, but but if we're talking about a big new thing that's gonna save the whole company that's lurking, it's unlikely. So

Jason Cohen (02:09:37)
You you should still go look for your own s sanity because if you don't go look, you'll always wonder. I didn't look though. I didn't look. I needed that I could have been there. So I agree with you. Go look. I'm just saying why why yeah, I'm just saying, like,

Dmytro Krasun (02:09:44)
If I mean... Just for peace of mind.

Jason Cohen (02:09:52)
look, I don't expect you to find anything, and that's okay. You know, that's okay.

Dmytro Krasun (02:09:55)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (02:09:56)
Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (02:09:59)
it's like it's like also you know like to to kind of close this option like a in a sense like like to make sure like I tried everything click and now I see for sure and I have hard data to see that okay so there is no pattern I can actually see but but it's like yes it's it's on this on the side

Jason Cohen (02:10:18)
Yeah.

Dmytro Krasun (02:10:19)
yeah

Jason Cohen (02:10:20)
Okay, we've been going for a long time. We're full. We have some good options. We know what

Dmytro Krasun (02:10:23)
Yes.

Jason Cohen (02:10:26)
to do next. So of course I'm excited to hear how it goes. So let me know how it goes. even along the way, or if you want to, you know, poke me with if if there's questions or things you want to share separately, that's fine. but I'm really curious. I'm really, really curious to see how this goes. I mean, this is your life. This is your whole life we're talking about.

Dmytro Krasun (02:10:46)
Yes, yes,

Dmytro Krasun (02:10:48)
I am super grateful to you. I appreciate all this conversation and it's my mind is exploding now, know, it's kind of there is is a lot of information and thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all this.

Jason Cohen (02:10:57)
I'm I'm well look. Yeah. Well, you're welcome. And also, I'm grateful

Jason Cohen (02:11:03)
to you as well because I mean almost no one is willing to just go share that all their numbers and do all that kind stuff. And also this is this is selfishly great for me because I can maybe, you know, edit this and put it on YouTube and get tens of views, maybe hundreds, and the way that's gonna be great. may then then I can finally retire.

Dmytro Krasun (02:11:25)
Thank you, thank you. Yes, it was actually pretty... a lot of questions you asked and like many perspectives I didn't think about. Well,

Jason Cohen (02:11:34)
Good.

Dmytro Krasun (02:11:36)
thank you. Thank you, Jason.

Jason Cohen (02:11:37)
Well I appreciate it and yeah, let me know how it goes. I wanna hear.

Dmytro Krasun (02:11:42)
We'll do, we'll do.

Jason Cohen (02:11:43)
Okay, see ya.

Dmytro Krasun (02:11:45)
See you.