Transcript
Craig Shoemaker
Well, hello and welcome to the Leverage 3 podcast. I’m Craig Shoemaker. It’s today’s guest is Luca Restano. Luca is a busy man. He’s actively bootstrapping not one, but two startups, all while maintaining his nine to five job, at least for now. Luca, welcome to the show.
Luca Restagno
Hi, everyone. Hi Greg. Thanks for inviting me and it’s a pleasure to be. Here. Yeah. Thanks.
Craig Shoemaker
For for joining me and UM. Well, we we contacted on on Twitter and started talking in the DMS a little bit about, you know, your journey. And and I noticed that you have like a couple different products that you’re working on and then you tell me what you’re doing all this while you’re maintaining your nine to five job. And I was just curious like maybe start off by telling us set the stage a little bit like what, what do you do for a living? At the.
Luca Restagno
So I have a full time job. Is working as a software engineer in a in a tech company. This is what I’ve been doing for a long time. So for more than 10 years now, so. On the side of this I I created 22 products actually and I working on them and growing them on the side of my nine to five job.
Craig Shoemaker
Awesome. And and I think. These projects are even at the. Point to where you’re earning revenue from them, right?
Luca Restagno
Yeah, that that’s correct. So revenues are growing very slowly and steadily, but. Recently and so I’m quite happy about that. Yeah. So they’re generating around 2K EUR per month at the moment. So very happy about that.
Craig Shoemaker
Would be too. That sounds awesome. So I want to. I would dive in like, take a step back for a second and. Motivations and why people do things is is a topic that comes up quite often on this show. And you know you’re in the tech industry. I’m in the tech industry. It pays well, you know it. It can be pretty fulfilling if you have a good manager. At least, and I’m just. I’m curious. Like what sort of created this need for you want to go in and build something on your own?
Luca Restagno
Yeah, there are definitely a couple of reasons why I want to shift and move from employment basically to entrepreneurship. The main reason is that by working in a company we are playing the so-called career game, right? So we try to do our best to be well evaluated, to contribute as much as possible in the company we are working for and and there are different paths we can follow. Mine is I started as a as a developer, as a software engineer. And at a certain point, I’ve reached a level in which I was good. I had a good seniority. I had a lot of different soft skills like geometry doggies and managing people. Not as a manager, but in a similar role and so on and good technical skills. So for me now as if I want to continue, perceive them, them career game is to try to level up and change role basically. So go to the management side of the job. Which is a completely different job. I tried recently to make this to step up basis. Actually, that didn’t happen. So this is a bit frustrating because it’s something that I cannot control actively, so I can try to apply in different companies.
Speaker
Right.
Luca Restagno
I can try to grow in my current company. That didn’t happen. And this is one topic. The other topic which is even more important for me. Is that there are different ways to grow our earnings basically. At different speed. So employment means that if you are lucky and we get the right opportunities. We get to a very good salary at the end of our career and we’ll get a very good pension depending on the country we’re living in. Right. So for instance, in my country, I live in Italy at the moment. The pension system is not very robust to be honest. So I’m very scared about that. So about the future. So a way for me to be able to be more comfortable in the future, in the all the rages. Is to of course earn more money. And a career game, in my opinion, doesn’t provide that opportunities or very low possibilities while entrepreneurship. It’s very risky, but there are higher probabilities in my opinion to get there.
Craig Shoemaker
OK. There’s so much to to what you just said, and now I want to kind of unpack a couple of different things now. The step from a software developer or software engineer into management is a complete categorical shift. And the discipline, the mindset, the skills that you need, right. And you’ve identified that saying like, that’s not for me. I would say on the same turn that the shift from a developer to an entrepreneur is a complete categorical shift as well, right? And and so I I get like you’re seeing a bigger future upside for you is why you’re wanting to do that like that makes total sense? But I’m curious what sort of growing pains have you gone through? What are the the difficulties that you find in order to say, OK, well, you know, I’m a I’m a. Coder, you know a developer and now I’m a business owner. What’s that journey been like?
Luca Restagno
Yes, it’s a completely different mindset and I’m learning every day how to shift my mindset from being a coder, as you said. To a business owner, it’s completely different, but it’s also very exciting and challenging because you’ll learn a lot and you need. You need to do a lot of different things so you’re not vertically focused on coding and that’s it. So some of the frustrations in working in a company is that you’re very vertical. So there are other departments. And usually when you try to challenge them. You get that kind of pushback, right? OK, right. You you know what I mean? While working as a business owner, and especially as a solo founder, it means that you need to work on marketing, which is a completely. Uncertain and unclear topic for me, marketing and content and copy, copywriting and design and building the product, of course so code. As well. And building an audience as well. So there are so many different things that you need to learn and and put in place and be good at good enough, at least good enough at that. It’s a continuous learning a journey, and I mean it’s very exciting. So if.
Craig Shoemaker
We were to pick. You listed a number of different disciplines. I’m curious for for you as an individual, which one did you find the easiest to pick up and which one do you feel like it’s a struggle to sort of get a grasp on?
Luca Restagno
Yeah, definitely. Marketing is is their best for every solo founder with coding background because you basically you don’t know what you need to do. I mean marketing. So generic you need to show to put your products in front of as much. People as possible not as much, but especially the exact target for your products. Which is difficult to figure out.
Craig Shoemaker
Right.
Luca Restagno
So these are the main challenges for sure.
Craig Shoemaker
So how have you gone about trying to learn?
Luca Restagno
That’s a good question. My approach always in life is to trial and errors, so I make a lot of different experiments. I’m not that kind of analytical person that studies a lot of different things, creates a plan, and then executes. And more distinctive, I would say. But it’s the same if I play guitar, it’s the same. So it’s. I’m I’m. I have this attitude.
Craig Shoemaker
I do as well.
Luca Restagno
We have to talk about that, yeah.
Craig Shoemaker
So all right, so this is really interesting now for people who are not a part of the software development community. I just want to stop and explain something for a moment. So when you build software, one of the ways that you can go about it is you can create this big plan. And you can try and write out every single detail and then you give it to developers and they go and try and create a piece of software based off of that plan and we call it waterfall and it has its ups and its downs but generally as a as an industry people have decided that this isn’t the best way to go because. The markets people, everything seems to change. There’s this other way of going about things that’s called more agile approach and that’s where you sort of take things as they come and try to adapt and adjust as necessary. That’s a really loose sort of definition for for what agile is, but I find it interesting. To see that your approach to dealing with and learning some of these other disciplines kind of mimics what I’m supposing is probably your philosophy in software development.
Luca Restagno
Yeah, that that’s very true. That’s very true. So Agile methodology is something that I bring bringing with me during this entrepreneur entrepreneurial journey. But even more extreme because while working in a company with agile methodologies, you know you need to deal with uncertainties, changing priorities and so. Right. And so you try to make the smallest possible the product increment and to release it as soon as possible to gather feedback. So this is the main the main goal of the job agile methodologies. I apply exactly the same on my products, but even on when I mean on an extreme level. Is that for instance my latest product. I even avoid building it. I built a landing page. A pre sale landing page with a lifetime deal.
Craig Shoemaker
OK.
Luca Restagno
And that’s it.
Craig Shoemaker
That’s it.
Luca Restagno
And that that was the validation actually, yeah.
Craig Shoemaker
OK. I don’t want him to talk about about peace pre sales and selling before you build a lot. And because that there’s a. Part of me. Who feels like, you know, I need to make sure I’m creating the most value possible before I ask anyone for their money or anything like that. But it’s the prevailing wisdom, at least at this point, to, you know, to sell before. We build, and. So let’s talk about this process a little bit. So what did your landing page look like? What was the offer that you had? And so you said that that kind of the carrot that people got was they have lifetime access to your product? But you know. What was your positioning in order to to get people to to want to sign up? Before it was.
Luca Restagno
So I was very clear about the features that would be included in the final version of the product. And you’re right. I mean, when you do a pre sale like this, you need to be very clear about the expectations and respect. Then the users that purchase your lifetime deal. So I include a lifetime deal. That was you, you, you will simply get access forever. To the product. And for me, it was a way to to validate the idea actually, right? Because I was not sure if people would have been willing to pay for such a product. And so for me, the fact that they were paying was the strongest validation possible.
Speaker
OK.
Craig Shoemaker
I think the thing that occurs to me though. It’s like you, you have this job, right? I imagine you. You you probably have a a loving family as well. How much time went between selling doing the pre sale and delivering and did you set a time expectation for people?
Luca Restagno
Yes, absolutely. So I delivered the product. Two months and a half later, 2-3 months later, so it was absolutely reasonable, I guess, and you’re right. You need to manage the expectations of the users and respect them. So during these two months I was providing updates to them just to reassure them that things were going on. They could trust me and and then the building process and so on and that. That happens so.
Craig Shoemaker
And so when you started your pre sale, did you have a proof of concept built or was this really like I just want to know if this works before I spend any time on it. And so you built. The landing page and went from there. Yes, I definitely had a proof.
Luca Restagno
Of concept. So I knew already that that I could have built that product actually. So yeah, I think that this is mandatory because you you need to be as serious about what you’re doing, OK? And yes, I had this POC and actually the idea and the features of the product evolved a lot. Before the presale, and especially after the presale, when I started getting feedback from the users.
Craig Shoemaker
And how did you get feedback? What were you showing them in order for them to have to be? Able to evaluate.
Luca Restagno
Oh well, most of the feedback we were coming after I released the first version of the beta version and I gave them access and I created a public port in which they could add feature requests and vote on the feature request of other people or create bug reports and so on.
Craig Shoemaker
Oh, OK.
Luca Restagno
OK, so. Yeah, I created a small community of early adopters. Basically gotcha, OK.
Craig Shoemaker
We’re kind of dancing around the subject a little bit, but I’d I’d like to like, you know, explain to us what this product was and what the features are and like, kind of what it does.
Luca Restagno
Yeah. So this is my most recent product. It’s called inboxes, Inbox plus S&S. This is basically a Twitter DM, CRM Lite, CRM and productivity inbox. That is specifically designed now for people that has kind of sales pipeline in place. So they basically use conversations on Twitter to UM to make deals. So so there are services or yeah to onboard on currencies or coaching on cohorts and so on.
Craig Shoemaker
OK.
Luca Restagno
Nice, nice and. And so your proof of concepts.
Craig Shoemaker
It what was it working code? Was it like screenshots that you showed people like how I’m trying to get an idea like how in depth you went on this as you went. To market in the beginning.
Luca Restagno
So initially my area was was quite different. So I wanted to build a product that would include different platforms, private messaging. So I was thinking about Twitter, yams and Instagram, DMS and Messenger, Facebook, and eventually also Reddit and blah blah blah.
Speaker
OK.
Luca Restagno
I did this. You’ll see. And I discovered that there were huge technical challenges. Basically, most of these platforms doesn’t have APIs, so if you want to do that, you really.
Craig Shoemaker
OK.
Luca Restagno
Need to trick that safe.
Craig Shoemaker
And and an API for those who might be wondering is is basically your ability to work with the code of like a server or some service in order to integrate that into your own software.
Luca Restagno
Yes, exactly. So I shift the idea and I focus on Twitter jams only, so the tutorials experience on the website of Twitter. But even on the on the mobile apps, it’s not that great. It’s missing a lot of features and functionalities and I was struggling because I have a lot of conversations. Going through on my Twitter DMS and I really struggled to. To find them to find unread messages to reply. Back and so on. So my first idea was to improve this and solve this problem. So this was the value proposition of the presale page. The pre launch page. So it came up with different features like quick replies, filter and show only your unread conversations and have additional information and tagging system. Is very very heading, so you can tag your conversations and find them later, filter them lag. Add notes and so on. And recently I introduced the follow up reminders. So if you need to remind yourself to talk to that person in a week or so, you can do that and the software will remind you on the. Exact date.
Craig Shoemaker
Wow, that’s really cool that that’s. You you know, you describe these features and you’re like, oh, yeah, I would want that or that seemed like a basic piece of functionality. But yet at the same time. Four DM’s I never really thought about doing some of this stuff, so that’s that’s really cool that to have those features available. So you’re building this out and you’re starting to get feedback. What what was like a a big turn or big change that you made based off of? The feedback that you got.
Luca Restagno
Yeah, so initially I was thinking about 2:30’s client just improved. What I discovered is that there is a huge group of people that are, as I said before, are interested. And installing using Twitter jams and using Twitter in general. So I started to focus more on these type of users and continuously dealing with them to understand what are their needs, what they would need and so on. Yeah, this is the big shift in the way I propose now the product also on the landing page, the copy is is quite different now.
Speaker
OK.
Craig Shoemaker
And so long term, so you you have you have another startup as well. It’s I remember asking the damn. So they didn’t know how to pronounce it, so help me.
Luca Restagno
Out here, I pronounce it is completely a fantasy name, so it doesn’t have a meaning.
Craig Shoemaker
OK.
Luca Restagno
Yeah, it’s still related to Twitter DMS that is more on the outreach discover leads and outreach using Twitter DMS.
Craig Shoemaker
OK.
Luca Restagno
While inboxes is more on nurturing. The conversations and future plans for inboxes is to include other platforms because they think that it’s very valuable to apply the same approach to other platforms like Instagram and Messenger that thankfully have very good APIs that they can use and consume. So that’s the plan.
Craig Shoemaker
OK. So yeah, that’s kind of where I wanted to go next was you know what? What holds, you know, what’s the future hold for you and and kind of how you’re going to get there. So in knowing that your bills are mostly paid through your full time job. What do you see as your ability to kind of grow these to, you know, hopefully get the point where it eclipses that for you?
Luca Restagno
So I I will continue with my strategy, which is basically to be very active on Twitter. I’d really like to engage and talk to people on, on Twitter and I try to grow my my audience. So this is something I will continue to do. So at the moment, Twitter is the main source of traffic for my products. The two products are Twitter related, so there’s a perfect synergy. I will continue with this. What I want to try now a bit different is that I think that my current situation there is definitely an advantage, which is all the revenues they generate using my side projects. Let’s say it’s something I can reinvest because it is extra money. Making right, so I’m looking for opportunities to, you know, sponsor our newsletter sponsor our podcast. Whatever ways to try to track, attract more traffic and hopefully to grow more quickly, the two products and yeah sooner or later don’t tell my employer. But I would like to switch to full time in the hiking.
Craig Shoemaker
Of course. Well, hopefully they will subscribe to this this podcast because I won’t tell them. So if you were to go back in time. And start these all up. You know all over again. Are there any pitfalls you would avoid or any mistakes that you would? I would not want to repeat.
Luca Restagno
Absolutely yes. So I didn’t mention it, but I started this journey around 2019 and actually built a product with one of my former colleagues, former colleagues. For two years on the site. OK, so the big mistake was building for two years, of course. So we built a product that was, it was amazing. It was great, but we didn’t validate it as much as we could have done. And the second thing, we didn’t have an audience. No distribution channels. So when we launched on Product Hunt, we got 70 upvotes, which was super great for us. But I mean, even not in the in the top five, right? So we didn’t get the badge. We were lucky we sold that product that product. So we we sold it in. In 2021, actually and has started a new journey, this time different. So I wanted to focus on the audience audience first. And then build products very small highboy was an MVP when I launched it with just one feature. And then as you notice, my approach changed so the second or say the third product inboxes was pre launched. So I’m improving. I guess.
Craig Shoemaker
Yeah, you’re you’re definitely running a long way. That’s awesome. Now this is just awesome. I it’s it’s so cool to to hear your journey about how you’ve. You know, put put more than one product out there had really good success from it and learned a lot of things along the way. And one of the things I like to do near the end of the show is to give you a chance to give like, 3 sort of tactical tips that you could share with people based off of your experience. So what are your three things that you want people to do?
Luca Restagno
OK, that’s definitely three things absolutely to avoid. I know it’s difficult for people with coding background, but the first tip is avoid to build on the side for two. You need to get feedback, so release a very small MVP of your idea and the second tip is you need to get feedback from the users from the market as soon as possible and based on that iterate and evolve your product. Yeah, the third tip is to focus on. Distribution channels as early in the process as possible. So if you know ready, which is the area and which your products will be around. So like, I don’t know, a course around or a product around e-mail marketing or content creation and so on. Build an audience around these topics. Instead, if you don’t have a clear idea, just start building an audience. So select one of these social platforms that you love to use and observe what the others are doing in terms of grounding an audience, publishing content, and so on, and try to do the same. Me consistently because it’s a it’s a long term game, but distribution channels it’s nowadays it’s a huge asset that you have once you have a newsletter with a lot of subscribers, a podcast with a lot of subscribers or a social profile with a lot of followers.
Craig Shoemaker
Hey, thanks so much for being a part of the show. Let’s continue this conversation. Feel free to connect with me on Twitter, where I’m at. Craig Shoemaker. So go out and have an amazing day. I hope you get a chance to find someone to love, find someone to. Forgive and find. Someone to encourage because we are most certainly not in this alone. And we’ll see you again here soon. On the leverage through podcast.