How Discovry Reached 15 Customers and $3.6K Revenue in Under Three Weeks (Interview with CEO Luke Kellett)

Introduction and What Discovry Does

Nathan Latka

00:00Guys, he just came out of school. They launched discovery.co.uk. They help you manage your social media. Think of it almost like a mix of buffer plus Jasper AI put together. They got their first 15 customers over the past three weeks doing $300 per month in revenue, hoping to scale that over time, bootstrap today with his two cofounders cranking full time on this thing. We'll see it up on this next. Hey, folks. My guest today is Luke

00:22Kellett. He is building a company called discovry with no e. The company has making marketing simple. He's a recent Exeter University law graduate, launched this solution from his experience working in and growing a marketing agency. With with his previous pivots, him and his team have explored blockchain databases, data protection workflow, and to finally land in this direction. Alright. Luke, are you ready to take us to the top? Yeah. What does making marketing simple mean?

Making Marketing Simple for Small Businesses

Luke Kellett

00:48>> So for us, it's about allowing any small business manage their marketing more effectively through the means of creating content, harboring in their small teams and distributing it with ease. And to elaborate on that, we found that it's hard for businesses to juggle all of the other tasks they have, particularly in small business startups, but also maintain a consistent schedule. So we come in and provide the infrastructure to allow that, basically.

Buffer Plus Jasper AI: The Product Explained

Nathan Latka

01:18I mean, okay, so is this like Hootsuite buffer but using AI?

Luke Kellett

01:22>> Yeah. So basically, buffer buffer scheduling combined with Jasper AI sort of content creation, but more specifically based on your business and your context. And so that collaboration workflow, which allow you to assign tasks to people in your team and review and make iterations from there.

Nathan Latka

01:42Okay. And how do you know people want this? Do you have customers today?

15 Customers in Under Three Weeks

Luke Kellett

01:45>> Yeah. So we launched less than three weeks ago. We have about 15 customers at the moment, paying customers at various both plans, and it's going quite well so far. We've really been obsessed with their feedback to make iterations and improvements, and we've been really hard at work and making sure we can really find what they want really out of this.

Nathan Latka

02:06Yeah. When did you write the first line of code for the tool?

Building on Bubble: No-Code MVP

Luke Kellett

02:08>> Well, it's three of us, to give you context. We are non technical founders, so we've used bubble.io, so like a no code, low code solution to help build this as the MVP.

02:23>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

02:24Okay. Okay. So so again, when did you start using Bubble to build it?

Luke Kellett

02:28>> Oh, we it took us about six months, which we started learning for the the data protection solution to really understand how to build effective workflows in this and to optimize it really for product today.

Nathan Latka

02:41Mhmm. Okay. So no code tool. You're using Bubble. You guys, I assume, all just come out of school. How did you pay your bills for six months while you're pre revenue building on Bubble?

Grant Funding and Microsoft for Startups

Luke Kellett

02:50>> Well, we're part of Microsoft start up, sorry, which is very, very useful. But beyond that, we've had some grant funding. So we're based in The UK, Bristol, and Exeter, and we've been very fortunate to raise a few thousand pounds through that, which we've used to funnel into this and build it.

Nathan Latka

03:06Did Microsoft give you any money?

Luke Kellett

03:08>> No. So, basically, the way that works is it has a lot of discounts for Bubble, so you have lot of credits for when you actually launch product. You can maintain really good runway, basically, with them, and they've offered us platforms like CRMs and things like that to help us.

Nathan Latka

03:21Mhmm. What are these customers paying per month on average?

Pricing Tiers and Early Revenue

Luke Kellett

03:24>> So at the moment, we have two pricing points. We have £15 per month and £45 per month for either lower ticket. We're trying to build traction at the moment and really get to the small teams. But we aim to I'll talk to you about that in a minute, so direct this to higher ticket in the future.

Nathan Latka

03:43So is it fair to say maybe the average customer pays $20 a month, you're doing about 300 a month right now in revenue?

Luke Kellett

03:48>> Yeah. Yeah. That's fair to say.

Nathan Latka

03:50Something around that. Well, that's great. So walk me through how you did that. Some people take way longer to get their first paying customers. What did you do over the past three weeks to make that happen?

How They Got Their First Customers

Luke Kellett

03:57>> So basically, sort of our low hanging fruit, right? So we're quite fortunate to be an incubator. We have people around us. We've got our own network, and we've spoken to all of other of startups around us and got them on board. And beyond that, we've hopped straight into cold outreach. So building sort of email workflows, LinkedIn's been very, very useful.

Nathan Latka

04:19How so? What did you do on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Cold Outreach

Luke Kellett

04:21>> So on LinkedIn, through Microsoft for Startups, as an example, which I'd recommend any startup to apply for, you can get Sales Navigator for free, and you can get the business accounts also on a discount. So we use that to sort of break down,

04:36>> you know, the right ICP for us, which we're still trying to navigate through now, to find the right people to communicate with, sort of send out a message saying, hey, this is what we do, are you looking for a chat? And we're always trying to use that first touch point to get to a conversation in a meeting like this, me and you're having now, sort of giving that demo to sort of high touching our conversions at

04:57>> this stage.

Nathan Latka

04:58Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS 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 it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect

05:22your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna

05:46get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation. Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here, Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is

06:08not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founders share with us on the show. So traction, 1,200,000 seed round, 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired, the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're

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06:55if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. If Or you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into

07:22the interview. Okay. And how many demos would you say you've done over the past three weeks?

Demo Volume and Conversion Strategy

Luke Kellett

07:26>> Well, I think with me and Morgan, we've done, I think, 15 demos combined so far. 15.

Equity Split Among Three Co-Founders

Nathan Latka

07:34You mentioned Morgan. It sounds like you have three co founders. How'd you have the hard how 'd you have a hard conversation at the start to split equity?

Luke Kellett

07:41>> Oh, well, we have a good network around us. And look, I'll be honest, we've, in the past, been very iffy about this. We've been like, okay, who gets what? Right? Particularly when me and Morgan started and Will come on board. But the way we see it, every co founder at the very beginning should have equal share. That's very much scalable for later rounds as you bring in investors and, you know, there's no way to evaluate your

08:07>> your your value in the business at the same level at the beginning in our opinion.

Nathan Latka

08:12I don't know if I believe you. I think equal is the lazy answer when it's hard for people to have tough conversation about who's gonna add the most value. So they just say, let's do equal.

Luke Kellett

08:21>> Well, we we've informed what what what are your thoughts on this? We've been informed about for VCs and things like that. If you don't have a fully dedicated team as onboard that is really brushed away after a few rounds, does that look good? Does that look enticing?

Nathan Latka

08:38Well, what are you building to look good to VCs? Is that your objective?

Luke Kellett

08:43>> Not necessarily, but I I think it's something to bear in mind. But so so you think that actually you shouldn't do that, though? That's what you're implying.

Nathan Latka

08:51Well, let's just ignore your situation for a second. If you're a VC looking at a company and there's a solo founder, as a VC, what do probably think?

Luke Kellett

08:59>> Well, personally for me, I think the guy is crazy to do on his own, but there's a lot of equity obviously free there that you could if as an investor, you you could grab and you get your ROI back on, to be honest.

Nathan Latka

09:12Let me ask you this. In terms of how you have your databases set up or just any business process, is it usually a good or bad thing to have redundancy? One thing goes down, you have a backup.

Luke Kellett

09:22>> Yeah. Of course.

Nathan Latka

09:24You want redundancy. Right? Yeah. So if a VC is putting in $10,000,000 into a company, true or false, do they want co founder redundancy or not?

Luke Kellett

09:35>> Well, I'll say no. You you won't want be co founders. You want me to have to you invest into the team that you're at our stage now, would you say you invest into us as people along for the idea as well?

Nathan Latka

09:47Look. If your VC is writing a $10,000,000 check into a company Okay. And there's one founder. And there's so there's no redundant. If that founder, something happens to that founder, what happens to your money?

Luke Kellett

09:57>> You get it back.

10:00>> Well, I'm sorry. Don't know what you mean. Sorry. Maybe I'll

Nathan Latka

10:02If that founder dies, you're fucked.

10:04>> Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

10:04There's no backup plan.

Luke Kellett

10:06>> Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Sorry.

Nathan Latka

10:07Like, every VC is going to say, we only invest in cofounding teams. What because from their perspective, that is the biggest risk at a start up, right, is who's leading it. They want redundancy there. Right? But that is not like, depending on what you're trying to build, that's not always necessarily the best case for the founder. Right? That that that's what I'm trying to push you on.

Luke Kellett

10:27>> Oh, sorry. Yeah. Okay. I hope that's what you're saying. Yeah. I completely well, see your perspective. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:32Completely. Oh, you guys are all equal. You just said we can't we don't wanna have this conversation now. We're all equal. Whatever.

Luke Kellett

10:36>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:37If I if I had them both on and I asked them, would they all, like, secretly say, man, I wish I should I should ask for more?

Luke Kellett

10:44>> No. Because we're we're we're a team. We're a team, and we're we're unified. Right? And we have the same belief and vision and trusting each other. And that's that's a big part of a start, I think.

Nathan Latka

10:55It's really well. Well, Morgan's Morgan's coming on next week, so I'll ask him. Okay?

Luke Kellett

10:59>> Do it. Do it. Go for it.

Nathan Latka

11:02Go on. Alright. Three co founders. How are you guys gonna I mean, what prevents someone like a Buffer or a Hootsuite or a Jasper just from coming in and basically copying this, shutting you down before you really start?

Luke Kellett

11:17>> Good. Good question. Look. I'll I'll be honest. It's more the direction we wanna take this, which I'd to explore with you if you have have time. But to quickly answer our current stage, look, we haven't got the biggest USPs on the planet, but we act fast. And I think the value we're offering besides them is enormous at this stage. But going back to the vision, it's the fact that we've got to build a really, really intuitive

Competitive Moat Against Buffer and Jasper

Luke Kellett

11:42>> system that allows you, let's say you're a marketing agency, right? And let's say you have three clients, we want to build this in a way that you can manage your campaigns for each client effectively, build personas, right, so it captures their voice, their brand, but also their customer base, right? So it's a direction we want to take this, I think, when I set this aside, as more of a specialist marketing tool.

Nathan Latka

12:06Do you understand this problem better than Buffer or Jasper or anybody else?

Luke Kellett

12:10>> You know, that's a very good, yeah, very good question. Again, I think it's a few things. I think it's timing. I think right now with OpenAI as an example, it's giving you a massive infrastructure of using AI.

Nathan Latka

12:20Yeah. But but everyone has access to that. What what makes Luke Kellett specifically have an unfair advantage in terms of understanding this problem better than anybody else?

Luke Kellett

12:28>> Well, as I think you raised a beginning conversation, we have experience in marketing. We've been able to identify, I suppose, the pain points from the perspective of us marketers.

12:41>> I mean, as individuals, I like to think that we act bloody fast, we move, and we identify problems quickly, and ask our customers, if there's an issue with the problem, we do it, right? So I think it's internal belief in ourselves, and our recognition of the problems that we faced in the past.

Nathan Latka

12:57Very good. Now what's the full team's eye today? Just the three of you guys?

Full Team and Advisors

Luke Kellett

13:00>> It's three of us. We have two advisors, a technological strategist based in Bristol, and a CFO who helps with our finances at the moment.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Nathan Latka

13:10Very cool. On that note here, Luke, let's wrap up with the famous five.

13:14>> Number one, your favorite book?

Luke Kellett

13:17>> Leading the Startup.

Nathan Latka

13:18Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Luke Kellett

13:24>> Hard one. Really hard. I think for now, it'd be generic, but Mark Zuckerberg probably.

Nathan Latka

13:30Number three, what's your favorite online tool?

Luke Kellett

13:34>> Apart from discovry, I'd probably say, what the delay, thinking. Actually, I got a tool today. It's really, really good.

Nathan Latka

13:43Probably Bubble Bubble.

13:46Number four.

Luke Kellett

13:47>> Actually, bubble. Sorry. My bad. I build a product. Bubble.

Nathan Latka

13:49There you go.

13:50For how many hours of sleep do eat every night?

Luke Kellett

13:53>> At university, we're about four hours. I bumped up to at least six now. So

Nathan Latka

13:59That's good. And sit situation, Luke? Married? Single kids?

Luke Kellett

14:03>> We're just at university, so completely single. No kids.

Nathan Latka

14:07And how old are you?

Luke Kellett

14:08>> I'm 21.

Nathan Latka

14:1021. Last question.

14:11>> Something you wish you knew a year ago when you were 20.

Closing Advice: Embrace Failure

Luke Kellett

14:14>> Embrace failure because failure is a means of learning and improving.

Nathan Latka

14:18Guys, he just came out of school. They launched discovery.co.uk. They help you manage your social media. Think of it almost like a mix of buffer plus Jasper AI put together. They got their first 15 customers over the past three weeks doing 300 per month in revenue, hoping to scale that over time, bootstrapped today with his two cofounders cranking full time on this thing. We'll see it up on the next. Luke, thanks for taking us to the

14:39top.

Luke Kellett

14:40>> Thank you.

Nathan Latka

14:41One 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, 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 Central.

15:06Additionally, 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 SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big fundraise,

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15:50for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We

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16:15>> I'll

16:15be in the comments. See you.