How hype4 Passed $500K in Revenue in 2020, Growing About 40 to 50% a Year (Interview with Michał Malewicz)

Introduction and hype4 Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Michał Malewicz. He's in design education building a venture studio called hype4.com, designer since 1998. He's also a university lecturer and author. Michał, you ready to take us to the top?

Michał Malewicz

00:12>> Yep. Perfect.

Nathan Latka

00:13Okay. There's a lot of folks that are just great builders going from zero to one that have really started, you know, leaning all into this venture studio model. Help us understand what hype4 is doing.

From Agency Work to Venture Studio

Michał Malewicz

00:22>> Okay. So, yeah, I started quite a long time ago doing designs and at some point, of course, it obviously after working in some agencies, you transitioned to figuring out that you want your own company. And at some point, obviously, you also realized that you don't want your company to be like all those other companies that you worked before.

00:42>> The goal for hype4 was to start by client work, obviously, because we needed to get money from something. But the goal was always to start building our own things. We started doing startups, a couple of them pretty unsuccessful. But we learned from those failures. And then we went into education and we had huge success there. So we're kind of What do you mean by that? But we're also building smaller

Nathan Latka

01:05startups When like you say you went to education, what do mean by that?

The Designing UI Ebook Origin Story

Michał Malewicz

01:09>> So when I started teaching at the university, basically, I started creating like a PDF versions of the classes for the students and they started asking me like, what's what book or what content like are those from? And I said that I was just creating them myself. That kind of led to people asking for a book and that led to actually building the book, creating the ebook in fifteen months. And that ebook is currently revenue wise, our

01:38>> biggest product and our biggest sort of selling point at the moment. That kind

Nathan Latka

01:42How much revenue has the book done?

Michał Malewicz

01:44>> Sorry?

Nathan Latka

01:45How much revenue has the book done?

Ebook Revenue and Sales Numbers

Michał Malewicz

01:46>> It's currently at $170,000 in a little over a year.

Nathan Latka

01:51That's great. How many sales?

Michał Malewicz

01:54>> 4,000 or something like that. Between three and four because we have a couple of, external customers not from the platform, so it's a little bit hard to calculate because some companies just prefer it that way.

Nathan Latka

02:05Where can we find this eBook?

02:06What's the URL?

Michał Malewicz

02:08>> Designingui.com.

Nathan Latka

02:10Okay. So designingui.com. Now keep keep going forward here with the story. What's next?

Michał Malewicz

02:14>> Okay. So, basically, the book was a pretty big success. A lot of The US based universities we know that are using them. We know that a class at Stanford was actually being taught using the book. So we went further and we started doing other things. And those other things are culminating right now with, my very first, video course premiering tomorrow. And we also released a book for developers called Front End Unicorn. So we're starting to build

02:40>> a community around the company that's not really client focused as it was, but product focused and education focused heavily.

Nathan Latka

02:47Mhmm. Yeah. So so designingui.com is doing very well. You've now done this playbook with others like startupbook.com and others. What are you using the audience you're building via these ebook sales and the revenue you're generating? What are you using that all to build long term? What's the longer term vision?

hype4 Academy and Long-Term Vision

Michał Malewicz

03:03>> So we decided at some point that we needed long term goal, which wouldn't be just creating an ebook and possibly updating it. So we're starting an initiative called hype4 Academy, which is gonna be a place for both free and paid content for designers and developers alike. And we're actually on a very far stages of building that. We're building it all in house because we have, like, you know, designers and developers so we can actually build something

03:30>> that's completely custom to our needs.

Team Size and Engineering Makeup

Nathan Latka

03:33How many people do you Sorry?

03:36How many people do you guys have in house?

Michał Malewicz

03:38>> 12 people currently.

Nathan Latka

03:39How many engineers?

Michał Malewicz

03:42>> 80% of them actually. There's like three or four designers currently only. Mostly engineers.

Nathan Latka

03:49Got it. And so you're building this content course for what though? Let's say the course is a massive success. You sign up thousands of people. You make $500,000 in revenue. What's next? Mean, do you see yourself ever building like a Mural or a Figma or InVision, a better version of InVision?

Michał Malewicz

04:03>> Well, not necessarily, but we do know that we can build a better version of an educational platform because I've done the Google course on Coursera and I think that this platform itself, the whole experience of it and the learning experience and the certification and everything, this can be done a lot better. Basically this is what we're doing. So that course is basically like a test bed for all of our future educational endeavors. And also, actually sold

04:27>> a thousand pre orders in like three weeks. So it kind of shows that people are really interested in that content that we're providing.

Nathan Latka

04:34So you don't necessarily have an interest in building a SaaS play to upsell to your community about your courses and your ebooks?

Michał Malewicz

04:40>> Well, in a way we are because the academy is gonna be not only about buying courses or ebooks from from that website, but it's also gonna be a pay monthly platform, with a lot of content added for those paying customers.

Nathan Latka

04:55Well, I understand the content play, but are you going to build tools for folks at any point? Software that they can use to execute your design and development, you know, teachings?

Michał Malewicz

05:05>> Well, not not in that that sort of typical SaaS sense of being a design tool because there are enough design tools there already. So we think that we can actually tackle it from the angle of helping people just to understand better, to learn better and to use the tools that are already basically there.

Nathan Latka

05:25What are some of your favorite tools that you recommend in your ebooks and your courses?

Michał Malewicz

05:29>> Well, that's a tough one because a lot of people use Figma right now, but I'm not a fan of Figma for various reasons. I work pretty fast and just the workflow doesn't work. So I work primarily in Sketch and we actually built the books in Sketch as well. So that allowed us to iterate very quickly and that allowed us to actually update the books. So they're like living ebooks with the industry is changing so fast that

05:50>> we need to constantly be on top of things. And also because I accidentally coined a couple of very popular design trends worldwide, it kind of led to also adding these to the book because we have to be If I created a term called like neumorphism or glassmorphism that became popular in the design trends or the design

Nathan Latka

06:10Say it again. Say slower.

Michał Malewicz

06:12>> Say the term. A neumorphism, then glassmorphism.

Nathan Latka

06:15Neumorphism.

Michał Malewicz

06:17>> Yeah. It's like a new version of skeuomorphism. It was very popular in, like, 2020. It got thousands of people creating videos and articles on it just after I coined the term and created the very first thing. So we wanted to add all that content that we create and add to the community and to the industry to our own books and to our own courses, basically.

Nathan Latka

06:38How many people do you have paying you a monthly fee right now for your content? Or is that not launched yet?

Michał Malewicz

06:43>> Well, that part is not launched yet. But as I said, we got a thousand people, basically a little bit over a thousand people pre order the course in three weeks. That's How

Nathan Latka

06:52much does it cost per month?

Michał Malewicz

06:53>> Currently, it's $35 for just a standard sort of quick preorder, but it's 70% off.

Nathan Latka

07:01So they'll pay $35 per month?

Michał Malewicz

07:04>> No. That's gonna be just one time payment for that first edition of the course. And then per month, we're aiming between $5 and $10 depending on what kind of content they will access in the full platform.

Nathan Latka

07:17And how many of those initial 1,000 presales for $35 do you think you'll be able to convert to a $5 a month sort of plan? So you have more stable cash flows to reinvest in your ebooks and courses.

Michał Malewicz

07:26>> Well, we do have more than that number of people from various different industries. We have 15,000 people in our newsletters and in our other channels. So I think that we'll be able to actually because 5 or $10 is a lot less than 35. So I think that we'll be able to convert at least 2,000 people in the very initial stages, but possibly we aim for 10,000 to 15,000 by the end of the year. Very cool.

Nathan Latka

07:51Yeah. You're building this beautiful community. You mentioned you have 15,000 people on your newsletter. What's the newsletter called?

Newsletter, Community, and Open Rates

Michał Malewicz

07:56>> Well, it's part of the newsletter connected to the book, so it's called Designing UI.

Nathan Latka

08:01Designing. And how frequently do you send an email out?

Michał Malewicz

08:03>> Every two weeks because we don't really want to spam those people. But we have an idea for the newsletter to not only show our own content in it, but also to show relevant content from other people. But not just links, but instead, I kind of read those articles myself and then I write what I think about them to give, like, a context or perspective to people.

Nathan Latka

08:22That's great. And when you send out an email like that, about how many people open usually?

Michał Malewicz

08:27>> Between 50 or 55, sometimes around that. So we try to purge it. Obviously, with, like, the recent Apple changes, it might be difficult to to see if people opened it in a short while. But for now, we try to purge it every few months.

Nathan Latka

08:41Sketch is your one of your favorite tools. Any other design tools you recommend or developer tools you recommend?

Michał Malewicz

08:46>> Well, I use InVision also quite a lot. So this is also like one other thing. And from the typical tools perspective, most of my work is done in something called iA Writer, which is a writing tool because I'm pretty active on Medium and other writing platforms. So iA Writer is definitely my go to tool and for all the videos and YouTube stuff, Final Cut. So I just use four tools.

Nathan Latka

09:09If there's somebody listening right now that's building a tool like InVision or Mural, they might be thinking about how do we build our own community. They're jealous of HubSpot buying The Hustle. They're jealous of Outreach buying Sales Hacker. Right? You're seeing this happen more and more where SaaS brands are buying communities led by characters like yourself, right, that put out great content. If somebody like InVision, one of your favorite tools came and offered to buy the

09:32company, right, and have you lead everything they do that public facing, would you do that deal?

Staying Bootstrapped and Whether He Would Sell

Michał Malewicz

09:38>> No. Why? It's not that I don't want to kind of grow it in some way, but I still prefer to be bootstrapped. We actually had some opportunities with our other startups with our apps that we've been doing to take investment. And we always wanted to actually do it on our own and to build our own thing. Obviously, if the price was like super crazy in in a way, then maybe we would even consider it.

Nathan Latka

10:02What's super crazy?

Michał Malewicz

10:04>> No. I mean, like, crazy in terms of, like, like they say in the startup that sort of kind of money that you don't really need to do much anymore. So

Nathan Latka

10:13how much would that be for you?

Michał Malewicz

10:16>> Well, that's a tough question, but probably around 5 or 10 mil.

Nathan Latka

10:20Okay. So if InVision said $10,000,000, Michał, come on, join the team. Let's rock and roll. You'd have to think about that.

Michał Malewicz

10:26>> Yeah. Because because like for me right now, it's not really about the money because I have like a couple of different income streams. So I'm most mostly focused on just doing high quality stuff and it's actually really rewarding because a lot of the people from our community are getting jobs, you know, that like with our help, they're getting actually hired in this economy right now. And it's kind of funny and also very motivating to see that

10:49>> somebody on the other side of the world that you help is actually doing better, which is in a way kind of fifty fifty with the money. It's like really, really a cool way to go forward.

Nathan Latka

10:59Michał, Twitter wants me to ask you to break down your revenue stream. So what's your number one revenue stream currently?

Revenue Streams Breakdown

Michał Malewicz

11:05>> Well, currently, it's the book sales course pre orders combined with a little bit of on demand classes done for some companies.

Nathan Latka

11:16Okay.

Michał Malewicz

11:17>> And then on the second part is the sort of hype4 company revenue, which is I'm not really taking a lot from there. I'm just kind of just taking like a very small salary just to to sort of, you know, keep me going, but it's not really like a huge thing. I have a couple What is the smallest salary?

Nathan Latka

11:34You're talking like $5,000 a month, something like that?

Michał Malewicz

11:36>> Well, a little bit less than that even. Okay. But I have a couple of even smaller revenue streams like every month Medium pays me like $1,500 and then YouTube pays me a little bit more every month because the channel is growing. So a lot of different, like, little How much from YouTube? Like, a $100? Currently, between 6 and 7.

Nathan Latka

11:58Wow. Okay. So okay. Interesting. This is super interesting. Now how does hype4 make money?

How hype4 Makes Money as an Agency

Michał Malewicz

12:03>> Well, hype4 still works mostly for clients for like 80% of the time. So we have clients basically, we've been doing this for a long time often as like a subcontractor for larger companies. So we had the opportunity to work on the like big Fortune 500 brands. And we've done hundreds of projects literally in the last

Nathan Latka

12:22So it's like a dev shop. Design plus development.

Michał Malewicz

12:25>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

12:26Interesting. How many people work at hype4?

Michał Malewicz

12:28>> 12?

12:29>> Yeah. 12.

Nathan Latka

12:30Nice. We have

Michał Malewicz

12:31>> a couple of extra people around the company. If we need somebody very specialized in something, then they can just join in for a couple of months.

Nathan Latka

12:38That's cool. How much revenue do you think hype4 will do this year total?

Michał Malewicz

12:42>> Well, that depends. We're aiming for for a mil, but we'll see.

Nathan Latka

12:46What did do last year?

Michał Malewicz

12:49>> A little over half.

Nathan Latka

12:51Okay. That's great. So it's like your own little agency growing nicely.

Agency Growth Rate and Client Count

Michał Malewicz

12:56>> Yeah. It has year over year growth of about between 50%, 40%. And this year has been a little bit better than before for a couple of reasons, mostly my growing popularity, I guess, that kind of led to more people wanting to talk to us. Also those design trends that I created led to a lot of people wanting their products done in those design trends. So they started to ask, you know, in the source at the source,

13:21>> basically.

Nathan Latka

13:22And last year, how many clients did you work with to make the 500,000 in revenue?

Michał Malewicz

13:25>> Well, that depends if you're just asking how many clients have I worked personally because I They're no hype4.

Nathan Latka

13:30>> Hype4.

13:30How many people Okay.

Michał Malewicz

13:31>> So for, yeah, for for the entire company, it was, I think seven or eight clients.

Nathan Latka

13:36Okay. Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Very cool. Listen, this is exciting stuff. I love that you're building community so fast. You've got the agency. I know you don't think about it, but I predict one day you're going to build a multi billion dollar SaaS company. You just don't know it yet.

Internal SaaS Products in Development

Michał Malewicz

13:49>> We're building a couple of SaaS products in the background, as I said. They're not really that big yet, but they are kind of based on our needs as designers and developers. So not, as you said, like a typical design tool, but something that will be helpful for both designers and developers and freelancers. Well, the hot space. Can't really say about anything about that right now because it's still in a very early alpha, but it's really cool.

14:14>> And yeah, it's gonna be an additional something that I want to promote. When we launch, it's kind of, it's gonna be really cool.

Nathan Latka

14:21The highest friction point in any SaaS company is usually the pass off between design over to development. Right? So if you're building a tool to make that it's more easy process, there's a big opportunity there. There's plenty like Avocode growing faster. I bet if there's investors listening right now, you're gonna get hit up a bunch of them begging going, Michał, please tell me what's the idea and how do we get involved? And you're gonna say, we're

14:40bootstrapped, we're cash flow positive and we're loving it.

Michał Malewicz

14:43>> Yeah. That's that's the whole thing. That's like we don't have to worry about meeting somebody else's deadlines or expectations. We're just doing our own stuff and trying to innovate as well. Like, you know, with the both the design trends and with the way that we're doing both the courses, the books themselves. So it's like it's a lot different than what's typically on the market. And I like it because that's kind of we have the freedom to

15:04>> do what we want.

Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

15:05Michał, let's wrap up with the famous five. Besides your own books, what's your favorite business book?

Michał Malewicz

15:09>> Business book. From, like, the recent memory, I would say Sell Like Crazy by Sabri Suby.

Nathan Latka

15:16Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Michał Malewicz

15:19>> Sorry?

Nathan Latka

15:20Is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Michał Malewicz

15:24>> Currently, from a couple of local companies like my friends that are CEOs at companies right here. I'm mostly following them because I can then ask them direct questions and And you need one of them? Well, my friend Daniel has a medical startup and I'm following his adventures in that area because they're growing pretty fast as well. What's name of his startup? Medidesk.

Nathan Latka

15:45Medidesk. Very good. Number four, what's your favorite online tool for building a business besides your own?

Michał Malewicz

15:50>> For building the business in in what way?

Nathan Latka

15:53Hype4. Name a tool that you guys use a ton of hype for that you really like besides InVision.

Michał Malewicz

15:59>> Well, that's actually tough because we tried Asana, we tried Notion, and they're not really that perfect for us. There's always either something missing or they're too slow or they're not really that well connected. So I would say the one tool that doesn't really, that does work every time is Slack.

16:17>> Slack.

Nathan Latka

16:18Number four, how many hours of sleep do do every morning?

Michał Malewicz

16:21>> Seven plus.

Nathan Latka

16:22And what's your situation?

16:23Married, single, kids?

Michał Malewicz

16:25>> Married without kids and living by the beach. So whenever it's sun out, I just take a break and go some surfing and whatever.

Nathan Latka

16:32What where? What beach? Where are you?

Michał Malewicz

16:34>> North Of Poland, Sopot. I lived in Warsaw, but then when the company grew a bit, I just bought a house close to the beach.

Nathan Latka

16:41I love that. And

16:41how old are you?

Michał Malewicz

16:44>> 38.5.

Nathan Latka

16:4538. Nice. Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20, Michał?

Michał Malewicz

16:49>> Probably to know what I know now.

Nathan Latka

16:52Guys, hype4, a combination of a massive community of designers and developers plus their own agency. Did $500,000 in revenue last year, hoping to break a million this year, but Michał has other revenue streams. He sold over a $170,000 of his ebook helping designers, developers, etcetera. He's launching more ebooks, more courses to keep growing his community. They've got some internal SaaS stuff working, but he's a little bit coy on it. We'll see what happens next. Michał, thanks

17:14for taking us to the top.

Michał Malewicz

17:15>> Perfect. Thank you.

Nathan Latka

17:18One 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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