[41] To Freemium or Not as a Bootstrapper? w/ Josh Haynam (Interact)

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Today on the show my conversation with Josh Hayman, co-founder of Interact, where they build Interactive Quiz Builder. This software helps building quizzes primarily for businesses to be used as a content marketing tool on Facebook or own’s landing pages. The quizzes help grow email lists and get leads into the sales funnel.

Josh and partners bootstrapped Interact, so he shares the story of starting from zero to growing up to over +35k users, coming up to 1M ARR. This is very impressive for a bootstrapped company, especially in a niche with highly funded competitors.

We discuss price points, freemium vs paid plans, and what experience Josh’s gained testing those models.

Enjoy!

Episode Notes

[3:58] What is Interactive Quiz Builder and what happened when they suspended their freemium offer.

[10:05] Josh’s teens experience in Central California: mowing and installing lawn, trading notebooks. How did they come up with the quiz idea.

• “Literally the only metric we’d ever get asked about was: how many subscribers they’ve got. We just spent so much time doing stuff that is unnecessary, when this quiz does that on its own, and it can basically replace an entire website.”
• “Because we were in the agencies world we new what problems businesses had, the biggest problem being needing more contacts.”

[19:08] Struggling getting the first while attending school. Testing marketing channels. Landing the first clients through content marketing.

• “I’ve got so good at writing that I did one of my last finals in 45 minutes.”

[30:06] Experiences raising prices. Leveraging the “Adidas-influencers” marketing method to grow 300%.

• “Good is the enemy of great.”

[41:24] How Josh managed to keep over the funded competition.

• “I love the competition. It forces you to be on your own toes all time.”

Links

• Josh Hayman on Twitter
• Josh Hayman’s company, Interact Quiz Builder
• Bootstrapped Web
• Shopify
• Leadpages
• ConvertKit