How Hopscotch CEO Rahul Anand grew to $19.6K revenue and 3 customers in 2024.

hey folks my guest today is cam sloan he's a canadian entrepreneur who works the full stack developer until he was laid off in 2019. instead of finding a new job he said you know what i'm gonna start freelancing and his goal was eventually starting a product business today he juggles both as he works towards building a profitable software company he's building hopscotch.club cam you ready to take us to the top yeah let's do it all right what is hopscotch so hopscotch is an app for doing interactive customer onboarding tours uh for sas companies and you're a developer so i'm sure you looked at other solutions out there before you started building this what are you building that people can't currently get at tools like pendo or other onboarding tools yeah so in terms of right now you know still an early stage product and so in terms of like product differentiation uh i wouldn't say that it's quite where i'd like it to be with hopscotch but there's another huge problem in this market is that all these other solutions have gone so far up market that they're really inaccessible to the majority of people who are trying to get their startups up and running so the pricing in a lot of these tools will start at like 300 a month 500 a month and so that's kind of where i'm starting with uh competing and then you know as i catch up on feature parody and then go beyond that there will be some interesting plays on the product side well that's what i'm asking sell me the future like you you didn't do this just build a copy of something already existed you believe something like should exist that currently doesn't exist what it once you reach feature parity like what are you gonna do differently that no one's doing right now yeah totally um so a lot of you know there's a lot of complaints and issues with product tours and i think a lot of it is warranted um you know they can be too long they can be just uh in the way maybe they're there when you uh don't want them to be but then when you do want that information they're not available and so a lot of what i intend to build uh with hopscotch is the ability to um you know recall product tours at the right time and kind of have these subtleties of being able to make it a better experience for the end user so if someone does want tours and they are that type of person who wants a little bit of hand-holding while they onboard into your app then they can get it and if they aren't then we should get out of their way and so i think there's a lot missing in the market there so that's kind of where i'm planning on going uh with some of the functionality side and right now on the site i can join a wait list does that mean your pre-revenue you're just building off demand right now i have a few early access customers um and so yeah pretty much pre-revenue as i'm just trying to build out yeah a product that's going to work for the current customers before i really open up the floodgates there how many current or testing uh i have three pain customers and i have you know a handful more that are kind of piloting it out seeing if it's something that they want to use but i wouldn't say actively like heavy users well congrats the hardest one is the first one so you're already up to three that's great what are they paying per month uh so i have a couple different um like i'm really testing pricing and it it's really depending on the company's size and scale um and so um you know i have someone paying 20 bucks a month i have another paying 99 per month um and then somewhere in between um so i'm figuring that out it will either be a combination of like number of seats and or like number of tours or potentially um number of monthly active users because that's kind of where my costs are going to scale so i'm still figuring that out right now it's just like a set price um you know if you're an indie hacker and you want to you know just try it out then it's going to be like 20 bucks a month but if you're a business and you want to remove the hopscotch branding and you're kind of up and running then that's when you look at like 99 per month this is the beauty of launching right you got to figure out the pricing and it's all manual when you start and then you'll figure out a sweet spot and then put up a pricing page right yeah yeah it's i really like this strategy of kind of launching quietly or like doing all this in the background and and onboarding customers manually to start with because then i can have this like data and this information to know how i should go about it when i put it up and i'm not just gonna be you know trying to guess from metrics like i can know from experience of talking to these people like that hopefully i'm coming out with something that uh makes sense from the get-go no cam you're bootstrapping right you haven't raised yeah that's right and and how did you get these first three customers where'd you find them um honestly most of the work that i've been doing i share publicly on twitter and so twitter's been really helpful even though most of the people who follow me are not like great customer fit they will often like refer other people who are asking about it and they'll they'll mention the product so that's been pretty cool and then um also just getting some natural like sign ups through uh google even though i haven't put a ton of work into that it's kind of starting to rank albeit low but starting to rank for some of the keywords like interactive product tours and product tours yeah that's important i mean seo is important so taking back to that moment you know now we understand what you're working on taking back to that moment in 2019 when you were laid off i mean what was going through your head when it happened oh man i it was i was in a pretty good position where i wanted to go and do my own thing but i i wasn't quite ready and i feel like you're never really ready and so i wanted to uh have some more time with this job but then it kind of got lifted out from under me and so that was the perfect excuse to just go start doing my own thing i um so i felt pretty lucky that i had some savings built up and i was in a place where i was just ready to go and try it at the very worst i would go and find another job and uh and so that was you know it was a mix of like really scared but also like what's the worst that can happen and it kind of gave me the kick that i needed cam how old were you in 2019 when you when you that you lost the job i guess i would have been 31 31 okay so this is like a key thing which is anytime you want to leave a full-time gig into your own thing you try and build a cash buffer to give yourself some runway right until your new thing starts making money how did you think about that you had some cash saved up i mean do you mind me asking about how much you've saved or how much like life runway you had yeah i don't remember exactly because like between investments and such but uh let's say like i don't know between 40 and 60 grand canadian uh and then i also knew that i was gonna get uh some freelance work that was gonna be coming in and so that really like helped me to know that i was gonna be able to keep you know cash flow positive as opposed to just going into burn mode yeah and another you know the key thing is how much you save but it's also how much you keep so it's about keeping your expenses really low as an entrepreneur especially an indie hacker how low up there in canada were you able to keep your total living expenses per month back back in 2019 so i don't track like super closely on this stuff but i do um share uh i was sharing a one bedroom apartment with my partner and uh and it's around 2k per month and then you know maybe would spend another thousand dollars or or so on top of that um but you know sometimes that goes another like two thousand dollars a month but yeah i do try to keep my expenses uh low in comparison to like even while i was built while i was salaried i would try to keep my expenses fairly low and stay in a relatively affordable place that may sound expensive in some parts of the world but um in toronto that's kind of like entry level for a one bedroom so um so yeah i was trying to just keep it low and i still continue to do that and um and just especially now yeah without consistent income it's important to just uh to keep chugging along at a good burn rate well yeah i mean 40 50 000 saves spending between like two and four grand a month you have plenty of runway into the life expenses i mean what i'm excited for is i'm waiting for you to put up that tweet maybe later this year or early next year that says making more from my side project than i did at my full-time job in 2019 like that's the magic tweet yeah and i'll say this like in terms of you know when i quit like i have much more runway now because of freelancing and doing some contract work as well which was kind of unexpected i wanted to just like you know have it float my side project but it's gone above and beyond with that and working about half the year on my contracting freelance stuff uh was able to surpass my revenue at my full-time job uh and and so yeah same same kind of deal this year has been similar like i'm already on track to go past where i was full-time and it's only june uh and so you know if i take on more contracts that'll be just added runway and so really stretches that out and and really means like i can go at my own pace with my business i can make my own decisions my own rules i don't have to answer to investors and there's a lot of great things that come with that cam can i ask what your full-time salary was back in 2018 when you were working yeah so it was just over 100k canadian probably like 125 or so so um yeah like roughly around there i just love stories like this if we have someone listening right now stuck in a job they hate maybe they get laid off or they need inspiration they listen to a thing like this and they go you know what i can do it i can hustle on freelance work i can launch a software side project i'll be fine my living expense is low and i'll they'll they'll be the next camp [Music] yeah i really you know i see a lot of people trying to do it in a while they're still in a full-time job and they burn themselves out and i was kind of trying to do that too and i just can't like i can't go all day at a full-time job and then all night and weekends like it burns me out so this is like a really viable option for a huge number of people i know it's not everyone that can say this but if you're a developer if you're a designer and you're looking to go become an entrepreneur anyway then like probably one of the best ways to start is to go and find some freelance clients it's going to get you comfortable talking with people doing sales and you know selling yourself selling your product services and it's just a great way to kind of like transition and then you can work like half the hours or less or more however much you want to and then kind of like manage your runway accordingly cam where did you get freelance work from do you go on like list yourself on top towel or one of these sites or how did you do it i you know started looking when i first started looking into freelancing i was like oh i got to go on top towel or uh you know upwork or something but like those i i actually was lucky that i didn't get accepted to any of those and so i ended up my first client was the company that laid me off i helped them for like another set number of hours on some work that they had and then i found another company through a friend that is in the city here who is another web developer i just let my network know you know on linkedin on twitter on like slack groups i just said like hey i'm a freelancer now and like so many people don't do that but if you just put it out there then it starts coming your way and i've been lucky enough that like you know you only need one or two clients like every so often you know i i think i only needed like five or six throughout the year last year to to make a decent wage and so um you know it's really not that difficult it's just getting it's it's a flywheel getting that up and running and and knowing you know who to reach out to um you know maybe an old boss or an old co-worker and then go from there yep yep that's exactly right what a story hey real quick question i'm very curious what is this collection you have over your right shoulder under the light oh yeah so that is um a bunch of kind of guitar music pedals and so um i have over here some keyboards i i mostly run them through keyboards and uh and i used to do a lot of electronic music production kind of ambient chill out music uh production and nowadays they mostly sit up looking pretty but um you know i do try and play with them every so often well you you seem like a very chill guy um on the verge of creating a very interesting sass product so we're rooting for you let's uh let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite book so i am actually i think the book that i just discovered recently called hell yeah or no by derek sivers might be one of my favorite business books um yeah really enjoying it number two is there a founder you're following or studying right now another derrick actually uh derek reimer who's building savvycal is kind of doing this whole solo like from trying to do it all himself product design marketing at least in the beginning and it's really inspirational to me that's kind of how i'm trying to do everything as well number three what's your favorite online tool for building hopscotch i gotta say it's probably figma it just is so nice so easy to to design in yeah number four how many hours sleep to eat every night uh it varies four six eight it depends how stressed i am and what's the situation married single kiddos uh single just like well with my partner here but no kids yeah not married and uh yeah all right plans yet i'm 33 now 33 last question what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 [Music] i wish i wish that i knew that you don't have to go do college education the standard path you know i was really trying to do all that kind of by the books and fighting against my creative self my urge to do self learning online and this type of stuff i wish i just followed my own journey and and trying to make her going to be the best way that you can live your life and and enjoy it guys there you have it cam sloan he was laid off in 2019 from a job where he was making over six figures over a hundred thousand dollars he had saved up 40k by keeping his expenses low so he said you know what i'm gonna start my own thing and it's a combination between freelance and his software company called hopscotch.club he's now landed his first three customers that pays caught between 20 and 100 bucks per month he believes there's a better way to do product onboarding that's what he's building at hopscotch.com check it out cam thanks for taking us to the top thanks nathan one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas 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 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2pm central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the subscribe button below here on youtube the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live i wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the sas world whether it's an acquisition a big fundraise a big sale a big profitability statement or something else i 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