Andy Karuza (NachoNacho): Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to another NachoTuesday, and today I have pair here with Codeable. And without further ado, we'd love if you could introduce your guys' company. I got a little bit of a backstory, but would love if you could tell us more about your journey over there at Codeable and how you got to where you're at today. Per Esbensen (Codeable): Yeah, hi Andy, and thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to this. So before I start, we are the biggest WordPress only online outsourcing marketplace on the web today and WordPress is open source. When we started 12, 13 years ago, it was like 70% of all websites was a WordPress website, and today it's like 43% of all website is a WordPress site. So we've been logging growing together with WordPress, but Quotable is today the leading community driven platform for connecting top tier with the WordPress available us with clients looking to be successful with the WordPress and WooCommerce websites. And we have currently 750 plus senior WordPress developers working through our platform from more than 50 different countries, helping our customers with everything WordPress, from minor, minor tasks to very advanced custom build solutions. So we actually do everything WordPress. Getting to work on quotable as a developer is pretty hard since we are turning down 97% of everybody applying, which means the skills and expertise. Our workforce are incredible high. So it is only 3% that get through the needle eye. There are no risk for our clients since we have a money back guarantee. On top of that, we only take projects we know we can solve since we are matchmaking clients requirements with the experts having the needle skills and availability. And our clients are rating our experts from one to five stars and 12 years later and more than 300,000 projects done. The average rate is 4.96, seven out of five something amazing. And on top of that we have, WordPress is a very community driven and that's why the reason why WordPress is so big and we have also created a very healthy working environment where our experts are helping each other and we share skills and expertise and the community is fantastic and I'm incredible proud of that. Andy Karuza (NachoNacho): Wow. What inspired you to start this company? It sounds like you guys have an eye for quality being number one. Obviously you saw there's a gap in the market with the number of WordPress developers out there, but there's a difference between hiring somebody and actually hiring somebody that's going to get the job done, right? Per Esbensen (Codeable): Great question. So we couldn't have done this without riding on the backs of some big, big elephants 12, 13 years ago. Online outsourcing were very big. Back in the days you have Upwork people per hour render dev Elans, big big online outsourcing platform where you can hire. So-called experts for everything from accountant to marketing to web development, but there were no quality assurance. So everybody could actually work on those platforms and they were bidding experts or developers were bidding. So the price could just go down, down, down and quality comms at a price. And if the price is so low, it is not probably the sharpest knives that they are in the drawer, which means it was very difficult to get good work done. And I actually met my co-founder on Elans, one of those big, big online outsourcing platforms. I was working in Denmark and running an agency and we had a problem with one of our clients and our own internal developers. We couldn't fix it and the client was about to throw in the towel and I didn't know what to do. So I went to Elans and I got help from a person from Slovenia and he happened to fix the bug that we couldn't fix ourself. And six months later, Tomas and I, we became very good friends and said, Hey, let's start something different from Elans. So that's how it all started. Andy Karuza (NachoNacho): That's great. Yeah, because a lot of people might be afraid of outsourcing because of potentially a bad experience. We've all worked with great people in some regards and other instances when you're just starting off a relationship with somebody, especially freelance, there might not be a lot of history there. You don't know how they're actually going to work until you start actually doing a project with them. So you guys kind of cut through all that noise and just have highly vetted talent that you guys allow on your platform so they don't have to do all the guesswork. They know that that talent's already vetted extremely heavily by you guys. Per Esbensen (Codeable): And then on top of that, so once we are testing and developers to get a board and we actually live test, coding, test the code, so we make sure that the code is actually done by themselves. And it's not me that test the code is we have 47 of our experts being part of the code vetting team and our experts, they know the standard, so they're only allowing great coding skills, enabling them to get through. And once they are getting accepted to codeable, a three months onboarding process starts where we don't question their coding skills, but we help them to get better at engaging with clients soft skills. And we have a pricing policy on quotable. We have a certain way on how we scope out projects. And it's all about, I believe the best code you can code is the code. You don't have to code meaning the more the better the diligence you have done with the scope at hand, less risks. And then on top of that, we only take on projects that we know we can solve, meaning that we are matchmaking the client's requirements with the experts having the needed skills and availability. And then we not have one expert, but up to five experts engaging with a client because we believe more brains works better than one. So it's 2, 3, 4 people on AITs per project and they are allowed to, they're only allowed to chat with the client about the scope at hand and getting the scope 100% defined. Once it's defined, it's also easier to make estimates and then our experts are making the individual estimate and the client see an average price based on the different estimates so that we do in order to have fair pricing. So that's how that's interesting. The client pays upfront into an escrow and once the client is satisfied, you need to push a big green button, I'm happy. And first then the money get released. So we don't make any money nor the experts before the client is actually happy. Andy Karuza (NachoNacho): Very cool. Yeah. So you guys apply a lot of quality control standards I guess that don't exist in a lot of the freelancing industry today. What other problems did you see in the freelancing industry that you guys wanted to address when you launched Codeable? Per Esbensen (Codeable): We probably looking back and preparing for this webinar today, I was looking back on how we started and you also have some questions about some, what are the good tricks of the trade? And I think it's very much timing and looking back, we were very lucky that we could actually start, we couldn't do it, we couldn't do what we did back then today because it's more modern now that you have platforms or outsourcing with very high quality people. Back in the days it was just a numbers game. And then also we've been lucky that we've been growing with WordPress. So we started very early and now WordPress is humongous big Andy Karuza (NachoNacho): And WordPress, although it's only 43% of total websites, it's still a ton. And the pie has gone a lot larger for the number of websites out there Per Esbensen (Codeable): For sure. And WordPress, it's about democratizing the web. WordPress is out there for 127 different languages. Imagine that it's open source, it's free, and there are so many data available that has contributed to make WordPress what it's today and continue contributing to it is absolutely amazing. And then a lot of WordPress clients are using WordPress. It could be small businesses, there could be agencies, they make a living out of WordPress, and then we want to become the trustworthy bicycle repairman. So if you need small stuff done or more advanced site created or custom built, then come to quotable and we can help you. And business owners, they shouldn't think about development, they should think about the business and focus only on the business. And finding trustworthy developers is a rare breed and we are kind of become a hub of talent. Andy Karuza (NachoNacho): That's great. Yeah, a lot of times the most important thing as a business owner and a leader is to put the right people in place, hire smart people to do the job or work with a platform. What you guys have. I guess what are some of the other positives, I guess, for hiring a freelancer that companies should consider? Per Esbensen (Codeable): Yeah, I mean I believe the better brief you are preparing the smoother ride, and it is also about being realistic. I want to build a new Facebook and my budget is $100 and my deadline is tomorrow. That is not super sexy for a developer, but as I said, the best code you code is the code. You don't have to code. So we're also helping our clients, if they're not a hundred percent percent clear on what they need, we help them to kind of describe what they need. And if we can't do that, then we have a one hour consultation for only $69 where they talk about an expert and the expert is helping the client to get the scope defined. And then once it's defined, it's easier for the experts or the experts to estimate it. So brief and references, I like this from this side, I like this from this side. And the better scope, the more smooth and also more realistic pricing and most importantly deadline because there's a tendency that people don't know what it requires and you need to make sure that you're also in time if there's a deadline. So we're also helping our clients with that based on milestones and so forth.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

Very good. And then you guys probably focus a lot on helping your clients focus in on the minimal viable product, right? The MVP. So they might have this big vision of Facebook someday, but it might start with, let's start with the profile and allowing profiles to connect with each other.

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

Well, it really depends on the client. If most of our clients are businesses that is running and they need help optimizing or customizing the website, we also have clients that going to build from scratch. All agencies outsourcing to us and MVP thing is something that is super important when you are an upstart. We also started with an MVP back in the day. So the first year I was working double work, I was working in the agency and then I was to match my partner, I paid him with my own savings to work on an MVP while we were doing an analyzing of the market, figuring out is there a market fit for a player like quotable? And I started quotable when was 44 years old. So I'm not the typical UpStarter, I was not super green. I'm happy that I started when I was 44. I've been doing business before. It was also very exhausting when you have three kids and a wife and a Volvo and a villa.

Exactly. So while we also was analyzing the market, found out there's a market fit, we built NVP, we reached out to different interesting potential partners and also we were very active in the upstart stage in Denmark and in Slovenia where my partner was from. So once we actually had an MVP, there were quite a few investors knowing about our mission and vision. So it's all about getting everything planned and once you have everything planned, it's very much easier. And I also believe that diversity of people on the team, so too much, unfortunately we split a couple years ago, that's another story. It's like a marriage.

He is the one that is building everything. He's the creative, he's the developer. I don't code, I'm the businessman. And one-on-one is not two when you have so different skills. So he did what he did and I did what I did and together we became a whole lot more. So I think it's super important that you don't sit behind the screen and build. You need to get out of the office, you need to tell potential partners, potential investors, your idea, your vision, and then you get started. Then you have network of people, you can show results. And that's also how we started finding the right partner that could actually refer clients to us.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

And you're very right though it is like a marriage and it's good to have different perspectives in the mix. The best teams are usually co-founders and team members that are very different, think differently than each other because they're able to bring different skill sets to the table, a different perspective and view and understanding of how to solve the problem better. Myself for instance, I've worked a lot with engineers, but I'm more of like a marketing focus. I'm thinking customer experience, focus, that sort of thing. Engineers are thinking in terms of architecture, tech, debt, all these other things. So if you have the right engineering mind as well paired with the right business people, you can really make magic happen. A lot of times what you might find sometimes is too much of the group thing happens with the same type of people hanging out together, two business people launching a company saying this is the way it should be. And the engineers say it's not possible

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

And they don't have a product and the engineers build the product, but they can't sell sand in Sahara.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, totally true. Yeah, that's it. But yeah, together it's dangerous in a

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

Way. And it's also super important that looking back Tomas was a very different kind of person that I'm not normally working with. When I was in the agency business, it was like alpha males, you were actually hiding what you're not good at. But Tomas taught me about the web development world, how developers are thinking, and I've been working with developers very closely the last 12 years and I'm full of awe of developers. I hope one day developers will take over the world. I'm quite sure it'll be a better world because they're very good at sharing everybody that they fall in love with computers, they like the coding. 

And then once they ask people on the web how to do A, B and C, and once they know they give back where businessmen, they're crew, it is only money and they don't help one another. So to much learn taught me that it's all about sharing and that we have was one of the key aspect of building quotable was to create not only a two-sided marketplace where we have clients and developers working on our platform.

It was also creating a healthy working environment academy where we can share and help one another because we have 750 plus experts. Imagine all the skillset sets combined what we're able to do. So we got skillsets every Friday where experts are educating other experts about what they're good at and we are helping each other out 24 7. It's not about you getting the work or me getting the work, it's about getting a scope properly defined. And if Andy is you have nailed it, then you should go with the client because we have a fair balance between numbers of experts and available projects, so it's better to help one another. And then we have a slack where everybody's on, if you could at marketing, Andy, can you help me with this? Of course you'll give back and then I can help you. And all of a sudden you have access to a whole lot more. And that means also better quality and better results and more happy clients. So the community is by far the what I'm most happy of what we have achieved.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

Yeah, that's a great point. Any community really thrives on that. The give first mentality and without it, if everybody's just there to take, it doesn't work for anybody in that regard. And that's one thing I do respect about the developer community. A lot of 'em do collaborate with each other. Look at Stack Overflow for instance. People are always helping each other solve problems. They have this innate ability to want to solve problems. But I have seen a lot of business people that do have this give first approach and those tend to be the ones that are more successful. 

But to your point, there is a lot more higher percentage of business people that are just out to get what's in their best interests. And those people usually are going for the short term results. But the ones I'm seeing, and especially there's been a shift over the last five to 10 years, I would say. I think more people are waking up to the idea of the give first mentality. And I do see a lot more of those business people becoming more successful because they're able to build a community, they're able to get a following and actually because people know they're actually looking out for their best interests. And so people want to be a part of that if you're building a company.

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

Absolutely. And that should not only be a mentality in the company, but kind of the mindset of everyone. We are point where we should all help one another. It is a difficult world out there. So it's super important that you keep to your core values and the DNA and make sure that people are thriving. So we are helping out as good as we can. Also, if people have personal cries problems, we help out. We always trust and believe in our experts and we all make mistakes. And if you embrace mistakes as we did when we built Codeable, but also when you communicate with your developers or your staff, did you learn something from this mistake? And when two adults can say, Hey, I made a mistake, but I learned from it, then you trust me even more before I did the mistake. And we did so many mistakes building quotable, and actually it shaped out a bit differently than we thought, but that's how the world goes.

But we were very good at embracing mistakes, doing retrospective, why did we make mistakes? What did we learn more importantly, what did we learn? And building an MVP is super interesting because it doesn't have to be so fancy, it doesn't have to have too many features. It's all about deploying and figuring out and then test and ask and talk with customers. What do they like, what they don't like? Because you can easily become true product minded that you can't before you have everything, but then maybe you are drowning in the only thing you're good at, right? It's actually just matchmaking skills. It doesn't have to be that super complicated.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

And that's why it's good to start small. That's why the MVP approach, it's kind of a buzzword, but it is actually meaningful, right? Because you focus on solving the problem as simply as possible, helping the customer, and then you can layer on and add more features and do all that great stuff after. A lot of times it's hard if you overbuild and overcomplicate it and then you bring it to market, assuming what the customer wants, but you haven't done a good enough job really getting the customer feedback, really aligning the product to best solve their needs, the people paying you at the end of the day. And if they're not excited to hand you money to fix that problem, then you haven't done a good enough job with your business model.

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

And since we were always we're working with developers, we also, when we did our first version, we got help from the early adapters being completely transparent about this is the ux, this is what we're going to see, this is the product roadmap. And people have great input and ideas and then we shaped it. But one of the best lessons I learned myself is making sure that you also make a profit fairly fast. So quality comes at a price and it's no shame building a company that is profitable because if it's not profitable, then we can't evolve and do all the good things that we need to do. So have that in mind when you launch a product. In our case, we make our money based on the fees our clients, where our customers are paying. And we had the fee structure low in the beginning, but after a year I raised the percentage. I remember I couldn't sleep the entire weekend. And when I did, I only think we had one client complaining. And as my accountant said, well, we should have done that a whole lot earlier. And there are always some that are complaining, but that's how it is. It's more important that you build that. You don't have to have X thousand of users before you have a breakeven because that is too difficult in my opinion.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

Yeah, it's better to figure out, work out the kinks with a smaller audience, listen to if you really understand your customer and who you're actually trying to help, listen to those people. And if a lot of 'em are saying There's a problem, we're giving you the same feedback, it's probably good to implement it. But to your point as well, don't be chasing every piece of feedback. Some customers might have some erroneous feature that just they want, but not everybody else does. But by listening to your customers and collaborating with them, especially at the early stage, you can really start to formulate how you can best design your product and service to really benefit these people. And they'll willingly give you the feedback in many cases too. And if you hear the same thing over and over again, that's the time to listen.

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

Yeah. And interesting, when we started the big data wasn't wasn't something we were thinking about. We got data informed five years ago back in the days we were building based on my gut feeling, what do I think we need? And just talking with clients now, we have a lot of data where we can actually, so taking the next decision should in theory be easier, not just asking customers or users, but also having data and then your gut feeling. So it's one third of each, so therefore it should be a whole lot easier. But also there's so much data out there, you can also drown in data. So there's a fine line and what to do.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

You have to be very strategic about it too. So knowing what data you want to collect, what you're actually going to do with it, then be able to read through the data and find anything that's valuable. You don't want to necessarily just collect data for the sake of collecting data. It could

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

Just really absolutely results as I see it. And I've been trying to tell that to other startups in my country when people are asking me. So for me, it's not rocket science. It's simply very, very easy and don't make it too advanced. It is about having a great product, a great product where you put in good old values. Like a word is a word. A deadline is a deadline. I'm on it and I mean I'm on it. I'll go through fire and water for you and that kind of product where you are so super proud of building something that works and then delivering result day out day in will also have an impact that people are talking nicely about you. We have today, we are highly recommended within the WordPress bubble. We're getting a lot of our clients referred from the WordPress companies out there, but we also had 50% before covid, I believe it was 35% of all our clients came from word of mouth.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

Wow, that's a huge number.

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

And then obviously you come to a certain point where you need to do more marketing, but in the beginning it was just word of mouth and clients referred from. And that's again basically because you have a product that works. So it's not that complicated. I know it sounds a bit stupid, but having a good product, whether it's online or offline, that's what makes a difference.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

Usually it's the simplest things in life that most people forget and overlook. It's so simple. I'm going to try to overcomplicate this thing actually. And people think that especially with startups building products, let's just throw more money at it or advertise more. But to your point, it all comes back down to the product and making sure it's great. And if the product sells itself, then you're going to get natural word of mouth. And when you do actually go through those marketing efforts, the product will sell itself.

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

And then you have a base that you can work on and case studies, and then you can also find out with marketing direction you should use because that has become very complicated. So it's kind of interesting. And that's also one of the things that looking back, a lot of startups have been throwing a lot of money into paid advertising and it's getting absolutely amazingly difficult to gain from that. So going back to, you also had a question about books. So do you have

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

Any recommendations further?

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

Yeah, I never really did any. When I started my business, I went on Amazon and I bought a whole lot of different upstart books because what do I know? I'm just a humble guy from Denmark trying to build an online outsourcing platform with my buddy that I met on from different country. The first year I didn't know he had legs because we were Skyping.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

I worked with an engineer in Germany, I launched a company with him, actually an IOT company. And I never met the guy until after the company. Isn't

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

It fantastic? Isn't it fantastic that it actually doable? And when I talk about that people, it can't be true. And we have created an eight figure million dollar company with no office. Everything is in the cloud, very proud of having more than, is it 50 or 60 different countries where our experts are from. It doesn't really matter where you're from, as long as you can code. So anyway, back to the book. The only book I remember that was it's called, let me take my notes

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

And we could post it on the LinkedIn page after too. Yeah,

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

It's The Lean Startup by Eric Rice. Oh,

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

That one's classic.

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

Yeah, I only came to page two because

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

Did he get download that app on

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

Page two? It said get out of the office.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

Oh wow.

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

I love that.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

And here you are and me too.

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

Yeah, because you need to reach out as you do. You need to find audience for your podcast. We need to find clients for our platform, we need to talk with a whole lot of different people and they are out there. So sitting behind the screen doesn't really move, but you need to have people that does the MVP and the product and engineering and all that.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

Yeah, and I think one of the points too is that do things that don't scale and meaning for that is to talk to your customers, really spend time fine tuning the business model and actually understanding what your customers want before you go throw a bunch of money at advertising.

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

Yeah, for sure. The first up to Corona, we haven't done a lot marketing now. It's something that we need to do because scaling and keep on growing needs more and more. And we are one of the, we are very well kept secret, so we need to tell more people about what we do because we can definitely help you getting Exactly.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

Awesome. And what's next for Cobo? What are you guys excited about that you're working on over there?

Per Esbensen (Codeable):

Well, I mean, so we are a bootstrapping company. Always been. We had an early investor that we bought out and we've been creating everything ourselves and been growing nicely year on year for many years. And now I want to make a small date in the universe. I believe there's a need for a place, codeable, I believe website is here to stay. And people need help with the WordPress or websites in general to make money. And I envision that credible will be the hub of talent where we have a healthy working environment with a whole lot of experts educating one another, working together more. Because in the freelancing world, there's a tendency that experts are working in silo in their respective silos with that irrespective clients. But if you're good at marketing and I'm good at SEO, you should talk with Andy and you should talk with Pierre because now build your website.

You need SEO, I can refer one of my best colleagues on codeable. He's very good at this and this and that. And then we kind of become a fulfillment center of everything, WordPress, and there's so much more we can do on educating and helping our developers. And there are so many amazing interesting companies out there that should spend less time on development and having bad experiences with mediocre developers, deadlines not being or hold budgets, going in the wrong direction, getting frustrated. And that takes a lot of energy and a lot of defocus where they should focus on the business and then outsource the work that they don't want to do or can't do to a reliable person. So that's next step. We're going to tell the world a bit more who we are.

Andy Karuza (NachoNacho):

I like it. Yeah, so time is money as they say. So rather than learn the hard way, they should come to a web platform like you guys to be able to find the developers. They could bring their vision to production from highly vetted developers instead of learning the hard way. Fortunately and Pair, we're very excited to be working with you guys and hopefully to be a great part of your guys' growth story as well. We do really appreciate the partnership that we have with codeable. Look forward to growing both of our companies together and highly recommend your product. You guys have been great to work with. Definitely sign up, good leadership over there.