Rob Walling

And you will want to educate yourself, know what you're getting into as we head into 2025. So thanks so much for joining me today to hear my nine startup predictions for 2025. Some of them are positive. Some of them are downright gloomy. But I did want to share these with you as I've been thinking about them. Thanks for joining me this week and every week.

This is Rob Walling signing off from episode 746.

This is Rob Walling signing off from episode 746.

Welcome back to another episode of Startups for the Rest of Us. I'm your host, Rob Walling. In this episode, I talk with Andy Kim. He's the co-founder, co-owner of a SaaS app called Trotto. That's at Trot.2. Andy acquired the majority of the business from the original developer that built it.

And Trotto is in an interesting position in the sense of once they acquire customers, their retention is extremely high. But most people who need the tool are either unaware they have a problem or they're not aware they have a problem. or problem aware, but they're not even solution or product or most aware.

And we talk about that dynamic in the show of how difficult that can be and how it can be a bit of a headwind to get over. But to Andy's credit, he's making progress and growing the business month to month and has figured out some interesting approaches for getting around that. The Entrepreneur's Guide to Selling Your Business Without Regret

Sherry and I have taken our combined many, many years of experience going through exits, counseling founders through exits, and it's not just focused on SaaS. It's all types of businesses, but obviously there's a light emphasis on SaaS because, of course, we do have more of a network in the space.

But if you'd consider backing the Kickstarter, you can head to exitstrategybook.com and click the back the Kickstarter button and we will be in touch the moment it goes live. Could really use your support. First 24 hours is a great signal to everyone that if there's a lot of backers, then we tend to get more. So exitstrategybook.com if you're interested in that.

Before we dive into our conversation, MicroConf mastermind matching happens three times a year, and it's happening right now. Applications close on December 4th, so just a week or two after this episode goes live. Masterminds have been critical to my development and frankly my longevity so

as an entrepreneur, and I've been a proponent of them for probably 12 or 13 years, you can go to startups, the rest of us.com and search for startup mastermind and find the first time that I ever mentioned it on the show.

And it's it's a long time ago, because I became a believer in meeting with like minded founders over time, a small group of founders who really followed my journey, almost like honorary co founders. So if you've been feeling alone or isolated or lost, or like you're

just not sure what to do next and you need some accountability and someone else to be in the trenches alongside you, head to microconf.com slash masterminds. You pay a one-time fee and we will match you up with other like-minded founders. And with that, let's dive into my conversation with Andy. Andy Kim, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. what the hell is a Go link?

Got it. So folks understand, you're a SaaS, you charge per seat, per user. And when I think of Bitly and what was the other one, TinyURL, I think of these big kind of freemium consumer cheap plays, right? But you're much more on the enterprise side. Isn't that right? Okay, so talk us through how that, it's like two sides of a different coin.

Got it. So as an example, then, if I wanted to implement GoLynx for TinySeed, I would install a browser plugin, right? And then I sign into my GoLynx account as a TinySeed employee. And there's, what is TinySeed team? Six or seven of us, right? So six or seven of us would all sign in. And then I can type in to my browser, let's say I'm in Chrome, tinyseed.com slash some internal...

short code, right? Like A&R's deck. And we know A&R's deck is the deck. That is not a great example, but some type of short code. And now that has to then point somewhere, right? Like it points to a Dropbox location or some URL, right? Because Trotto doesn't store the files themselves. It literally is just a hop.

Oh, cause the go, so it doesn't need to be a TLD. It's literally cause of the, cause the Chrome browser is correct. The Chrome plugin, I'm sorry, is, is going, ah, go slash Anar's, Anar's important resource. So is this a real problem? Who's paying for this, I guess? It's like, who uses this? Someone invented this and it's somehow popular. What's the story?

Got it. So then this is independent, like the concept of GoLynx has been built by hand inside Google and other Silicon Valley startups. And then Trotto is like a self-serve version of, not self-serve, that's not right there, but it's a SaaS version of the same thing that John kind of obfuscated out. That's such a trip.

So it sounds like, because I still to this day, I'm like, I don't know, I don't feel like I need this, right? Myself, like, I don't feel like I need this. But it's obvious, like you have clients like what, Figma? I mean, you have big enterprise. Any other notables? A couple of Fortune 500 companies, for sure. Yes. So it's for them to pay for it, and your pricing's on your website.

It's at $3 per user. Got it. I can just extrapolate to these are not small contracts. These are enterprise-sized contracts. So it's obviously for there to be enterprise contracts around this.

Is it something that if you haven't used it, it doesn't feel like a pain point, but when you use it and you get kind of addicted to it or get used to it perhaps, the next company you go to, you're like, I've got to have this.