SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Indie Riches: He Makes More Now Than The $100k Job That Laid Him Off in 2019
01 Jul 2021
Chapter 1: What led Cam Sloan to start freelancing after being laid off?
I have a few early access customers. And so yeah, pretty much pre-revenue as I'm just trying to build out a product that's going to work for the current customers before I really open up the floodgates there.
You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka, where I sit down and interview the top SaaS founders, like Eric Wan from Zoom. If you'd like to subscribe, go to getlatka.com.
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He's a Canadian entrepreneur who works for a full-stack developer until he was laid off in 2019. Instead of finding a new job, he said, you know what? I'm going to 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 for SaaS 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, still an early stage product. And so in terms of product differentiation, 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 upmarket that they're really inaccessible to the majority of people who are trying to get their startups up and running.
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Chapter 2: How does Hopscotch.club differentiate itself from existing onboarding tools?
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. I really like the strategy of launching quietly or doing all this in the background and onboarding customers manually to start with because then I can have this data and this information to know how I should go about it when I put it up. And I'm not just going to be trying to guess from metrics.
I can know from experience of talking to these people that hopefully I'm coming out with something that makes sense from the get-go.
Cam, you're bootstrapping, right? You haven't raised.
Yeah, that's right.
And and how did you get these first grade customers? Where'd you find them?
Honestly, most of the work that I've been doing, I share publicly on Twitter. And so Twitter has been really helpful. Even though most of the people who follow me are not great customer fit, they will often refer other people who are asking about it. And they'll mention the product. So that's been pretty cool. And then also just getting some natural signups through Google.
Even though I haven't put a ton of work into that, it's starting to rank albeit low, but starting to rank for some of the keywords like interactive product tours and product tours.
That's important. SEO is important. So taking me back to that moment, now that we understand what you're working on, take me back to that moment in 2019 when you were laid off. What was going through your head when it happened?
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Chapter 3: What challenges does Cam face as a pre-revenue startup?
And so I have over here some keyboards. I mostly run them through keyboards. And I used to do a lot of electronic music production, kind of ambient, chill out music production. And nowadays, they mostly sit up looking pretty. But I do try and play with them every so often.
Well, you seem like a very chill guy on the verge of creating a very interesting SaaS product. So we're rooting for you. 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. Yeah, really enjoying it.
Number two, is there a founder you're following or studying right now?
Another Derek, actually. Derek Reimer, who's building SavvyCal, is doing this whole solo from trying to do it all himself. Product design, marketing, at least in the beginning. And it's really inspirational to me. That's how I'm trying to do everything as well.
Number 3. What's your favorite online tool for building Hopscotch?
I gotta say it's probably Figma.
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Chapter 4: How does Cam plan to price his software product?
It just is so nice, so easy to design in.
Number 4. How many hours of sleep do you get every night?
It varies. Four, six, eight. It depends how stressed I am.
And what's your situation? Married, single, kiddos?
Single, just like with my partner here, but no kids. Yeah, not married. And yeah, no plans yet. I'm 33 now. 33.
Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?
I wish that I knew that you don't have to go do college education, the standard path. I was really trying to do all that by the books and fighting against my creative self, my urge to do self-learning online and this type of stuff. I wish I could follow my own journey and try to make it the best way that you can live your life and enjoy it.
Guys, there I have it. Cam Sloan. He was laid off in 2019 from a job where he was making over six figures, over $100,000. He had saved up $40K by keeping his expenses low. So he said, you know what? I'm going to 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 at pace, caught between $20 and $100 per month. He believes there's a better way to do product onboarding. That's what he's building at Hopscotch.club. Check it out. Cam, thanks for taking us to the top.
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