How TypeStack CEO Silus Reddy grew to $53.6K revenue and 14 customers in 2023.

hey folks my guest today is Silas ready he's a Founder entrepreneur and engineer and he loves to make new things using mostly zeros and ones he loves creating software that impacts some parts of life and is now working on what's called typestack.ai a WordPress blog alternative for startups Silas ready to take us to the top all right so what gave you this idea were you a WordPress customer and got frustrated or what yes I I think you're Spartan right um I mean uh before type stack we were actually building a different product called window and as part of that we were focused heavily on content marketing specifically blogs and we were using Wordpress and super frustrated with the tool the bulky the bulkiness of it and the issues that comes with the legacyness of its tool right and then we felt hey why can't blogging be super simple um because things are super simple right now every tool has become like easy two minute setup most things taken care but uh we were struggling to find a great alternative which does this and then that's when we thought hey let's build this and that's how type stack has borne and how much are customers paying per month today for type stack uh we we have only single plan uh as a as opposed to more SAS companies we have a single plan it's it's at 19 per year if the 19 per month if they pay for a yearly subscription or 29 per month okay and how what percent of users pay annually versus monthly um it's mostly monthly at this point of time and we are hardly a few months old uh Nathan I mean we we are still in beta I mean if you see our website it stays beta so we're still in beta but we do have paying users and we do have some users uh but yes uh it's mostly monthly at this point of Time how many paying users today um we we are in double digits low double digits we have about 14 odds that's awesome yes okay very good so 29 bucks a month times 14 customers is about 400 a month in revenue is that right yes yes that's amazing okay tell me when did you write the first line of code for the company um I think this is July July of 2022 so about four three four months back and then how did you build a wait list so you could start you know getting your first customers uh so we it was mostly feedback based I mean uh I've been in startups for a while now I'm I have 12 years of experience mostly with startups either mine or working for someone else's and uh I've ran this idea with uh with quite a few of fellow entrepreneurs that I know and they said hey uh looks like an exciting tool and we started building even before we have a wait list so it was mostly a parallel process of building product and building a weekly so July we started coding the product and I think somewhere in August September time frame we started building wait list and you know we are where we have silence however how people people can't just they don't just find your website on accident how did you get your first five people on the waitlist um so it's mostly through network uh so we've we've believed that we want to build uh this product entirely through feedback so we've sent this link to all our friends uh and within our Network we bombarded them on LinkedIn whatsapps and emails we've sent I think close to maybe say 500 emails by the way uh and then we got about 20 25 odd responses back uh from within our first degree second degree connections and then that's how it started oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for evaluation this year now the 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to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview LinkedIn messages or did you do it manually uh no it was all manual uh We've we've got the emails it was mostly emails but we're not LinkedIn messages because uh off late I feel LinkedIn is so spammy I don't know if people even respond there anymore so we've collected emails from LinkedIn and then started dropping them email one by one it was not even what's the subject what's a subject line uh it was like hey uh do you want to grow your content I mean something like that I mean we've we've tweaked it for different guys but hey do you like to see your bro content do you like to see your content grow do you like to uh see your organic traffic grow something like that because that's what type stack does it's mostly for organic marketing and content marketing that makes a lot of sense okay so you're doing about 400 bucks a month in Revenue today or about five thousand dollars per year in terms of run rate did you launch this yourself are you still founder no we are three founders actually at this point of time like I said before type stack we were building a different product called it was called window uh and currently three of us are working on this and we have a fairly decent time as well in fact we are funded uh we've raised a small round of funding from venture capital and foreign we're talking about too many things here so window is that what you raised money for uh no we've raised money for uh type stack okay so for today and okay so you raised a million bucks in your pre-seed round for type stack most companies are selling 15 to 20 of their business in their pre-seed rounds is that about what you sold yes that's about true yes okay so you got something like a four or five million post money valuation or a four or five million cap if it's on a note yes how did you convince investors to give you a five million dollar cap on a pre-revenue company um I think it was mostly the team uh um I like I said we've we all three of us are uh second time entrepreneurs by the way uh this is my second startup even my co-founder has done a startup before both of them uh and this third second startup and uh I think we are well-rounded team you know I'm a non-techie I take care of marketing and other needs I have a techie founder who takes care of all the tech uh related tech-in product right so it's a well-rounded team uh and we feel it's a fairly large Market that we're going behind I think these are a few reasons why uh VCS were gracious enough to give us a check did you guys put the equity evenly uh yes almost I think very slight differences but yes almost thirty percent thirty percent thirty percent something like that yeah about two three percent here and there yes and so why why what is this Windows thing and is it shut down now or what happened to it no window is mostly on autopilot at this point of time so uh window was a software alternate to Nathan we were trying to build a software alternative for small businesses uh it's a mobile app through which anyone can create their own online store uh and it's currently on autopilot it makes about two thousand dollars per month at this point of time with with very little effort from our end uh and we are currently focused fully on type stack and if you see broadly uh like I said window is a software alternate and we are trying to build a WordPress alternate if you see the overall philosophy of the r we usually are trying to build Legacy tool Alternatives because Legacy tools are very hard to use uh especially for SAS Founders or you know solopreneurs or small uh startups out there so that's the overall philosophy that we want to catch on with our product um Nathan that makes sense um on your LinkedIn it says you're working on coming out umbrella what's umbrella uh so I mean umbrella is both window and types type together I mean umbrella is not a product itself we just gave it a name because we we have multi products and we may build more products down the line so that's the reason we gave the name umbrella just so that uh it it reflects that uh nature of the org that makes sense now when I go back to your history as a Founder you had my wash in 2014 um and you grew this did you bootstrap my wash or raise capital so we needed Capital we've raised about million and half even at that point of time uh and we were one of the largest or the largest laundry business in India at that point of time we were crossing close to million garments a day and we got acquired by an Amazon funded startup called house so how's your acquired us if it was funded by Amazon and and how much did you guys sell for uh I think we like two three x of our valuation it was it was not a great deal uh because uh I mean if you I don't know if you guys remember but 2015-16 was also kind of like a very slow phase for startups uh with Venture Capital drying up and many other reasons so uh we were kind of in a tight spot but we were lucky enough that we got someone to acquire us so you sold it for like five or six million bucks something like that yes yes and this was at the same time that house Joy raised 23 million bucks from Amazon right yes yes and then you chose to stick around a little bit and learn um how long did you stick around uh I was there with them for about 18 months and why join fuel fill after that why not go launch your own thing uh so launching my own thing was always in the back of my head after my wash uh right but um it was it was that I wanted so My Philosophy is always that I need a co-founder I don't want to start alone uh at any point of my time so I was constantly on the lookout for a co-founder um and at that point of time I was juggling uh and start helping other startups because working for other startups is where there is higher highest probability of you finding a co-founder honestly because you you meet like fine like-minded people who are also interested in startups and probably with the intent of doing their own so uh honestly that's that's one of the biggest reason why I never start alone I always look for a profound because starting alone is super super tough in my opinion I love it more flexibility and no no one have to make decisions with you get all the glory but you have all the responsibility yeah and and I mean usually entrepreneurs also do this right they have an idea they start and then look for a co-founder I actually never believe in that theory because it's your idea and someone is sold on it my philosophy usually is that I found a co-founder first and we idea together then that idea becomes both of yours right and then both of you are sold equally on that idea right so I I look at entrepreneurship slightly differently especially during its second time yeah yeah that's that's fine um but I mean have you you haven't had a big sort of cat I mean even the household deal I believe Saran said that that was a there was no cash involved in that deal right it was all stocks there was very very small caching World there is there is some cash in word it was not a fully stock bill but yes majorly stopped yeah so you're still hungry you haven't had a big cash exit yet you still want to go make a big splash right yes yes all right still husband yes all right fair enough on that note Silas let's wrap up here with the well actually let me ask you one other question What's the total team size today at type stack um we are about 25 but that includes a small team of window as well like I said uh our window team is about three four people who dedicatedly work on window and most others like 20 22 people work on type stack how many are engineers um three just three Engineers four Images there's only four Engineers on a 25 person team yeah four engineers I mean a senior a senior front end even a senior like back in person you're gonna pay 50 60 000 a year you just raised a million bucks uh no we are actually in Hyderabad by the way we are not in Bangalore okay but right or bad same thing though I mean I know they're going rates over there it's not that expensive no no they're fairly expensive by the way we don't we don't usually hype Mongols we build entirely on reactors and a reactors guy uh here goes anywhere about 100K by the way in Indian currency oh wow fairly very expensive uh resource and it's hard to find a good deal so we are fortunate that we have four great devs who are able to pull off whatever what's everyone is doing though 25 other 20 21 other people what are they doing so yes we have a fairly large design team uh we are a More Design focused company I would say than a Dev focused company we we take design very seriously we have five designers for a four Dev teams what on Earth do you have five five designers to put this page together I mean we are still working on many things uh Nathan but yes we have five designers two of them 25 of you think about this for everyone that's saying 25 percent of your team are designers that's well that seems wild to me I mean we are a design first company at least that's what we want to build method maybe we are not there yet uh we are happy to have a design first doesn't mean you hire more designers it means you hire one really good designer uh um perhaps but uh I mean we're if you see we are working on multiple products right I mean window is there then there is type stack we are not working on a single product uh and that's the kind of org we are also looking to build that's why we formed this umbrella you know honestly we feel um we are continuously exploring these multiple product uh approach which most companies take it as an end goal I mean if you see the end goal of any company it's multiple products and we want to start with multiple products I mean it's a slightly different size there's an order of operations that's important okay you know you know gearish very well because you sold the company in a fresh desk okay you know their money printing machine is freshdesk he tried very hard to launch a lot of other products and you know what like he told me when I interviewed him less than six percent of freshworks total user base uses more than two products they almost all use one product so like I just don't understand why would you want to like just throw 20 products on the market at the start no no we're not throwing throwing the products at the start foreign autopilot like I said and currently we're focused on type stack and within type stack we are actually looking to make it more content marketing Focus so we're we're building more tools I would say or features within type stack at this point of time and want to make it like a complete content marketing tool for example like contentful I'm not sure if you know about contentful but continually say CMS mostly focused for Enterprise as Enterprises and we want to build something like contentful for small startups um I'm not sure if I could come I mean communicate that across but that's that's it exactly the end goal of type stack I would say awesome all right on that now let's wrap up here with the famous five number one favorite book sorry favorite book favorite book okay Atomic habit Atomic habits James Clear number two is there a CEO you're following or studying um um honestly no but in India is fairly famous I like his ideologies yeah number three what's your favorite online tool for building type stack online sorry your voice is cool online tool online tool for it's just your favorite online tool um I would say product hunt I mean I like it a lot yeah number four how many hours I sleep to get every night float six and situation married single kids yes married with the kid okay and how old are you I am 33 last question something you wish you knew when you were 20 years old um I mean hard to put but startups are great I mean I wish I knew that much before I jumped into startup set 25 so probably jumping 20 was great guys there we have it he had a company sold the house Troy for about five six million bucks mostly stock then join some other startups learned a bunch was waiting to find a co-founder and then eventually launched more recently a tool called window now called type stack which is hoping to build a better easier to use version of Wordpress they just closed a priest around a million bucks at a four or five million valuation team of 25 they just got their first 14 customers which we love they're doing 500 bucks a month or 400 bucks a month on typestack.a as they look to scale Silas thanks for taking us to the top thanks thanks a lot nitin thanks a lot one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1pm 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 our poo CAC LTV you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch 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