How Ecom Pilot Found Its First Paying Customers With 1 Active Subscriber at $27 Per Month (Interview with Founder Jakub Lenski)

Introduction: Jakub Lenski and Ecom Pilot

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Jakub Lenski. He's building a very cool tool, ecompilot.net. It's a product research tool for dropshippers. He's 20 years old. He's got a degree he's he's a 20 year old degree apprentice, meaning he works full time as a software engineer and part time completing university, which paid for. In his spare time, he's working on this business, a SaaS product research tool for dropshippers. They're pretty on trying now, but they've lucky enough

00:21to find some partners who are working on a completely complementary tool now, raising a series A. Also working for affiliate tree, which is more of a bootstrap effort at a social enterprise looking to do some good. Jakub, are you take us to the top?

Jakub Lenski

00:35>> Yep.

How Ecom Pilot Got Its First Customers

Nathan Latka

00:36Alright. How does ecompilot get its first customer? How do we get you to revenue?

Jakub Lenski

00:40>> Yeah. So, you know, even though we're prelaunch, right, we've had some revenue already. We've had four paying customers.

Nathan Latka

00:46Oh, nice.

Jakub Lenski

00:46>> We've had a Yeah, we've had more of a silent launch. This was kind of my first effort in tech business, right? Before this, I was working on an e commerce business for the past three years. So you probably heard of Amazon selling and dropshipping and things like that. I was doing that as a side income alongside my software engineering job. And that's kind of where I came across the idea for ecompilot. Yeah. Currently So it looks

Nathan Latka

01:09>> beautiful.

01:09I mean, the site looks beautiful. So how did you find these first four customers?

Silent Launch on Reddit and Quora

Jakub Lenski

01:13>> So, yeah. So the way it started is I started building this June last year. We launched around December time for a silent launch where I wanted sort of testers, I wanted some early feedback, right? The last thing you want to do is build in silence. This is where I reached out to certain people in Reddit and other social media platforms. I feel like my main source of feedback was from mainly Reddit and Quora. That's where I

01:41>> got the first four paying customers. Apart from that, we've had a 100 free users, and currently, you know, alongside of our partners, we're doing some market research. We're basically reaching out, trying to, you know, find out if there's any sort of specific niche or market gap we're missing, see if there's any of the problems people want to solve with the tool, see, you know, whether we can patch up a leaky bucket, right, before What

Nathan Latka

02:05of Quora threads and Reddit threads were you engaging in to find customers? What'd you search So

Jakub Lenski

02:11>> one interesting So especially within a dropshipping niche and e commerce, things like Shopify platforms, right? Any Shopify kind of thread. There's also specific dropshipping communities which you could reach out to. But yeah, mostly think of e commerce or website building platforms, right? Where would dropshippers and e commerce sellers hang out?

What the First Four Customers Paid

Nathan Latka

02:31And what did those first four customers pay?

Jakub Lenski

02:33>> It was $27 a month.

Nathan Latka

02:35Are they still paying?

Churn: Three Customers Lost, One Retained

Jakub Lenski

02:37>> No, we've had three churn, one's still paying.

Nathan Latka

02:39So why the one's paying then churn?

Jakub Lenski

02:42>> So we've spoke to them. This was early on when we sort of presented the product as, you know, we wanted to get the feedback, we wanted to get some paying customers, see how hard would it be. And the main three churned because one, it was still, you know, it was an early product, right? There's still plenty of things to fix. There's still plenty of things to improve. The one paying customer has stayed on. He's still happy

Converting Churned Customers to Free Lifetime Users

Jakub Lenski

03:05>> with giving feedback and he's been using the tool weekly, which is great. Another thing is those three paying customers have now converted to lifetime customers for free, right? We've appreciated their feedback and their early sort of early adopter mindset, and we found them, you know, useful. They're not going to If they're happy to, of course, provide feedback for a lifetime supply, you know, that's very That's much more useful than a customer that's gone.

Nathan Latka

03:27Okay. Well, you're completing your degree now. We don't want you to have to go get a real job after this. So, how much revenue do you need to start generating so you'll do this full time after school?

Revenue Goals and Path to Full-Time

Jakub Lenski

03:35>> Yeah. I think, you know, originally we were aiming for, let's say, you know, 3,000 a month, right, in terms of profit. So I'm thinking, you know, let's say revenue, you know, our costs are pretty low, right, it's a SaaS product. Of course, you know, we're not sure what the customer acquisition cost will be yet, right. That's still more to find out once we launch.

03:56>> But I think the aim would be around 6,000 to 7,000, right, revenue a month. That was sort of my goal. Speaking with my partners, you know, they're thinking much larger. They're saying, you know, in our first launch, when we do it properly through product owned, through the correct mediums, we could go definitely to, let's say, 100,000 in the first month, right? And instead of paying, you know, instead of providing a monthly subscription, we provide a lifetime

04:18>> subscription, right, model, especially for early adopter products. That works great And for

Equity Split and Partner Relationship with Glorify

Nathan Latka

04:24And when you say we, do you have a co founder and if so, how much equity do you still own?

Jakub Lenski

04:28>> No. This is the partners that we're speaking with.

Nathan Latka

04:32So how much equity do you own in Ecom Pilot? 60. 60%.

Jakub Lenski

04:36>> Who who

Nathan Latka

04:36and the partners on the rest?

Jakub Lenski

04:38>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

04:40Walk me through how that negotiation worked. Like, what are they bringing to the table? Are you and are you doing all the development?

Jakub Lenski

04:45>> Yes. So I reached out to them in December mainly because they were working on a complementary part of the Glorify. This was in the same area What was the URL?

Nathan Latka

04:54Glorify what? I feel

Jakub Lenski

04:56>> like it's glorify.com or glorifyapp.com. You should be able to reach it. They basically provide a tool for e commerce sellers to create graphics, right, and marketing images, things like that. And, you know, since this is a complementary product, I thought it'd be great. They're targeting the same audience. I wanted to learn some more from them. And one thing that was great is, you know, they eventually reached out and they said, we like your product. How about

05:19>> we just, you know, get on a call, discuss it? And then what we started off as being maybe just an integration where we both work together as company managed product, they eventually jumped on board and said, you know what, we're happy to be partners, we're happy to follow through. Of course, you know, I believe Glorify is run So I feel like it's quite a large team now, I think 20 to 30 employees, but it's run by

05:40>> mainly sort of two guys, which are, you know, 30 and 40 years old respectively, so way more experienced in business than me. One thing I know though is as a software engineer, I'm able to build a tech stack. I'm able to, you know, actually create the product.

Nathan Latka

05:52So, Jakub, how do you go out and get, you know, a 100 new customers, right? Well, like, that's obviously what's going give the flexibility to do this full time. So what's your best idea there? How do you go do that?

Growth Strategy and Distribution Plans

Jakub Lenski

06:01>> Yeah. So I guess distribution is something I'm continually learning, right? This is something that's much more based on experimentation, right, seeing what works. I believe that, you know, we're one of the strongest sources for bringing people in, especially within the e commerce market and especially in dropshipping and Amazon selling will be through affiliate marketing, right? There's plenty of YouTube, there's plenty of content out there covering how to, you know, get into this ecosystem. It's more working

06:28>> with those sort of

Nathan Latka

06:30you reached out to any of them?

Jakub Lenski

06:32>> No. Not yet.

Nathan Latka

06:33No. What are you waiting for?

Jakub Lenski

06:35>> Like I said, right now we're focusing on the market research. Right? Want to market research.

Nathan Latka

06:39You have a you have a beautiful thing up. You can start selling it. You already have people that are paying for it. Don't need to do more research. You'll research until Yeah, you

Jakub Lenski

06:47>> yeah. Well, yeah, I can promise you it's not a point of stalling. But it's Yeah. Again, we completely understand that no product will ever be perfect, right? It's more about slowly letting in sort of like a cold Yeah, just basically pouring in some cold customers, seeing their feedback.

Nathan Latka

07:03Why are you doing the build this? Did you sell a bunch on Like on your teams, did you sell a bunch of, like, ecom product on Amazon or something?

Background: Selling Lanyards on Amazon

Jakub Lenski

07:09>> So, In 2018, I started as an Amazon seller. Right? I was selling lanyards. That's still running that website.

Nathan Latka

07:16What was the website?

Jakub Lenski

07:17>> Yesterday. So if you go on Amazon, it's a listing for lanyards 25. But

Nathan Latka

07:25yeah. How much and and how what year did you do that in?

Jakub Lenski

07:28>> I started 2,018 and by How 2020

Nathan Latka

07:32much did you sell?

Jakub Lenski

07:32>> Yeah.

07:33>> Yeah. We had around a revenue of £15,000.

07:37>> Total. Right? Just from a customer.

Nathan Latka

07:38Yes.

Jakub Lenski

07:39>> Total. Total.

Nathan Latka

07:40Yeah. Interesting. So what

07:43are some people saying for you now? Like, what do you think is gonna happen? They're gonna use your tool and basically find new products to to ship where they can make money on? And and if that's the answer, how are you gonna identify trends when you're competing against these other big tools that have more computing power to find trends faster?

Product Differentiation: Supplier-First Tracking

Jakub Lenski

07:57>> Yeah, so, you know, this is where, you know, being a seller, being in the market, understanding your sort of customer base comes in useful, right? I've been a user myself of certain tools, right? I've used Jungle Scout for Amazon selling. I've used ZIK Analytics for eBay. When it comes to dropshipping, there's no real market winner and there's no tool that really sort of, you know, properly works, right? There's a lot of tools I've noticed that will

08:19>> do manual handpicked products where every week they'll show you a new product you can sell. What we're looking for is automated product tracking, right? We track products from a supplier first mindset, right? Why would you try and, for example, let's take Jungle Scout, right? Jungle Scout tracks different niches within Amazon, right? The thing is you're missing is those products are already being sold, right? That means that market is already fairly saturated. If you want to find

08:42>> a good product to sell in e commerce, you need to find a supplier first, right? One that's not yet being sold on Amazon, one that's yet not being dropshipped, which is where we come in, right? We track products on AliExpress, on CJ dropshipping on these different platforms, abstract that all for you and provide you basically, you know, assorted, you know, assorted products in terms of demand or in terms of how many stars they have or in

09:02>> terms of how many sales they're getting each week.

Nathan Latka

09:04Why isn't somebody else doing feel like there's got to be a bunch of people doing that.

Jakub Lenski

09:08>> So, yeah, that's one thing I was expecting. When I originally joined, I used the manual sort of handpicked products. There's a

09:17>> Which was useful. But one thing I noticed is, you know, the automated tracking is so much better. I feel like there was a competitor, I believe, NicheScraper, which also aimed to basically track products on AliExpress. The main thing you're missing with AliExpress though is, you know, these are Chinese products, these are quite low quality. It's important to include other selections, such as CJ dropshipping, dropshipping UK and other sort of suppliers within US. Does that make sense?

Nathan Latka

09:44So that's your yeah. So we'll see if that ends up I mean, I just think that there are there are software teams much larger than you that can go scrape the same data. What I'm hunting for in these questions is trying to find what your unique advantage is that you can really capitalize on.

09:55So maybe it is one of those things.

Customer and Revenue Targets for End of Year

Nathan Latka

09:57Maybe just out execute them. Maybe you'll beat a team of 10 engineers. I hope you do it. I think that'd be great. What do you wanna hit by the end the year? What do you wanna hit by the end of the year in terms of a number of customers?

Jakub Lenski

10:05>> Yeah. We're definitely aiming for around 8,000 customers. And the main reason for that is

Nathan Latka

10:10By when?

Jakub Lenski

10:12>> By December.

Nathan Latka

10:12By any

10:13You're doing 8,000 some 8,000 paying how much per month?

Jakub Lenski

10:16>> Not 8,000. 1,000 paying customers.

Nathan Latka

10:18Oh, 1,000.

Jakub Lenski

10:19>> Paying 27 a month?

10:21>> No. No. Lifetime fee. So $97.

Debate: Lifetime Deal vs Monthly Subscription

Nathan Latka

10:24Why do you save the lifetime fee? If you do a lifetime fee, you're ruining all your SaaS economics. You can't make hiring decisions. You can't do this full time when you graduate because you have to do new revenue every single month. Why sell lifetime?

Jakub Lenski

10:34>> So the important thing about selling lifetime is, one, you capture the customer, which then can provide you feedback over the years, right? You don't have

Nathan Latka

10:42to worry about the paid once. Why would they keep giving you feedback five years No, from

Jakub Lenski

10:46>> because then you don't have to be worrying so much about churn. Does that make sense?

Nathan Latka

10:49Well, no, because they can't churn because they already paid you.

Jakub Lenski

10:53>> Yeah, exactly. Of course

Nathan Latka

10:54you can't churn if I had a one time fee, you also don't have any recurring revenues. Right? And customers that love your product have no problem paying every single month. I just wonder like, why would you give up all that? And also, by the way, it's not true. Right? Because if you sell a lifetime plan, what you're gonna be around and you're gonna support this no matter what in fifty years, Like, no, it's going end at

11:11some point. So there is no lifetime, which is like it's sort of a false sale.

Jakub Lenski

11:15>> One thing that you notice within sort of the, I guess, early startup ecosystem is one thing that Lifetime provides that, I guess, a monthly subscription doesn't is, you know, one, when I speak about churn, of course, right, when they're paying, let's say, 100 instead of $27, right, that's the four months they're paying up front in a way. One, that helps you build capital much faster, from my understanding. And the second thing is right now, when we're

11:39>> focusing on feedback and the early adopters that are happy paying more, that are happy being more engaged in feedback on the tool, that's what we're focusing on, right? Eventually, it makes sense for all SaaS companies to go into a model where it's monthly payments. But until you've really

Nathan Latka

11:52those That is what points out SaaS is. Software as a service thing, like it continues over time. Doing a lifetime thing one time, it's great for like an initial cash bump, which is fine, I get that. But like relying on that as your model to me is just silly. It doesn't allow you to build a meaningful big company or hire great talent around you to build a better product.

Jakub Lenski

12:09>> Yeah. I I completely understand that. And I think, you know, this is sort of advice I've gotten from my partners. Right? They've started off as a lifetime fee subscription model. And eventually, they're looking to move to, I guess, a monthly subscription model. Benefit of What doing

Nathan Latka

12:23a a lifetime subscription? Subscription implies like you're subscribing and you're paying multiple times. So what, you're going to come back a second lifetime and pay for another lifetime? No, it's a one time fee.

Jakub Lenski

12:33>> No, no. Yeah, yeah.

Nathan Latka

12:34You're giving them the product for life. Like, it's not a subscription.

Jakub Lenski

12:37>> Yeah. When I say lifetime subscription, I mean lifetime subscription. I mean lifetime deal, and then they're going to move to a subscription model, right? Yeah. The benefit of doing lifetime, like I said, I'll just reiterate, is, you know, because those customers are paying more, they're much more likely to be engaged, right? It's like you said as well, you get that early cash flow, which is beneficial. But yeah, I think the focus is on getting those early

12:59>> adopters that are happy, you know, being part of the lifetime of tool, right? They're not only buying the tool that's current, that you currently have, they're also investing in the future of the tool. Does that make sense?

Nathan Latka

13:08Of course, it makes sense. I've heard this like, of course, I've heard this like a thousand times. I'm just saying like, I've seen an end in like tragedy. Educo is a good example of this. Came on, was bragging about how he made all this money on AppSumo, and he shuts down the company six months later. So he just basically frauded all those people. He sold a lifetime plan because it only lasted six months. Like it's just,

13:26that doesn't make me feel good. Like I just don't think it's a good way to treat people and you don't know, like you might feel really good right now, but in eight months, you wanna do something different. You're gonna be like, crap, I can't do something different because I sold these lifetime plans. That being said, I don't I'm not against this. I think it's a good way to do like market research. So I'm rooting for you.

Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

13:40We're over time now. So let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, Jakub, what's your favorite book?

Jakub Lenski

13:45>> Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Nathan Latka

13:47And number two, what is your is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Jakub Lenski

13:51>> Hopin CEO, Johnny Boufarhat.

Nathan Latka

13:54Okay. He's got number three. What's your favorite online tool for building a business?

Jakub Lenski

14:00>> I well, Notion. Notion.

14:01>> Notion. By the way, Johnny never sold lifetime plans. Just saying.

Nathan Latka

14:05Number four, how many hours of sleep do you eat every night?

Jakub Lenski

14:10>> I look I have eight. Eight.

Nathan Latka

14:11Married, single, kids, I'm gonna assume not married and no kids. Right?

Jakub Lenski

14:16>> Yeah. Just a relationship.

Nathan Latka

14:18Twenty

14:19years old.

Jakub Lenski

14:20>> What's something you wish you when you were 10?

14:23>> The fact that even, you know, stable businesses are constantly testing things. They're constantly figuring things out in the way. There's never that eureka moment where you feel like you understand everything.

Closing Summary and Wrap-Up

Nathan Latka

14:30Guys, he sold $15,000 worth of lanyards online and his team's now launching ecompilot on that and help other people find profitable things to sell on Amazon using other sources like AliExpress. We'll see if it works. He had four beta customers, one still active paying $27 a month. His goal has a thousand customers by the end of this year. Jakub, we're rooting for you. Thanks for taking us to the top.

Jakub Lenski

14:47>> Thanks a lot.

Nathan Latka

14:50One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM

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