Keeping Time with StageTimer | Multithreaded Income Episode 34 with Lukas Hermann

we jumped on. I took three years of German in high school and it's the only language I feel Somewhat comfortable speaking. Like I know enough of the mannerisms and how to pronounce certain words that it, I feel I'm not fluent, not fluent at all, but I'm pretty sure I could go to Germany, ask for a beer in the bathroom and be perfectly, perfectly happy.

So I had a dictionary and I was looking up words and if you mispronounce it, she made you repeat yourself a couple dozen times before you got it right.

Rathaus, right? And if you don't do it right, Germans can get a bit like confused and not wanting to know what you say.

And the article was titled, uh, how to a simple countdown timer website makes 10, 000 per month. I read this and I was just getting the excited feelings because this is what folks who listen to the podcast are really kind of striving for. They would love to have this product that's producing income and the glorious MRR, Monthly Reoccurring Revenue, for something that you've built. And I knew that This is the type of talk that I want to have on the podcast.

So I reached out to a mutual friend or acquaintance of ours, Justin Jackson, and he said, I can hook you up, Kevin. And he made all the connections. And so Lucas is here and he's chatting with us. Lucas, uh, before we jump in, just tell us a little bit about yourself and then we'll dive into stage timer.

They're sitting, you know, backstage or with, with the tech technical staff. And when they click a button. Somewhere at the stage, a countdown timer starts counting. It says, you know, what's up currently, they can send some messages. If you know, you want them to hold the microphone a bit closer to their mouth or, or they need to, you know, step a little bit more into the light, then they can kind of flash this on the screen. Uh, that's the kind of software that, that, that we are building.

And it was really attractive to me. So I was looking for ideas. I had this long list on my cell phone. Whenever I came across an idea, I just wrote it down. Oh, I could build this. I could build that right in. And one day I was at a friend's kind of, he has a studio set up and there's one person in one room standing in front of a green screen and talking into the camera.

And he's sitting in the other room, uh, doing the recording, switching, switching the video and, and, and, um, before the, the recording started, he would get up and I was there unrelated. He asked me something about service and networking and he would like jump up, run into this other room, click on a. On an old computer that he had sitting there with like a timer software, clicked start, ran back into his side room and everything else was remote controlled.

I thought, surely there must be a better solution, right? As a web developer, I thought this is such an easy problem to solve. Surely. Um, if I search, uh, in Google immediately, I will find something where I can remote control a timer through the, through my browser into the interface. And I didn't, I didn't find anything that can do that. I only found like old software that you, that you download and it looks like it's written in, in Windows 98. So I,

never dealt with customers. I have never integrated payment solutions. I've never even. Build my own user authentication flow, like all these, there's all these unknowns that I have, if I want to build my first product. Let me just pick the simplest idea on this list as a, as a training ground. So that's the one I picked. I thought like timer synchronized through the browser, you know, how, how hard can it be? That's where the idea come from. And, um, I coded it up, right.

And basically in a weekend, as one does, when you're employed, you do your, your own side projects in the weekend. I put it online. Um, on some kind of hosting, you know, free hosting, Netlify site. Um, and I shared it. I was like, okay, so, but now what do I do with it? Right. I went back to my, to my friend and he, but his computer was too old. So it literally didn't run on this computer because whatever, you know, Firefox, this and this version that doesn't run any modern, uh, uh, JavaScript.

So I was like, okay, give up on that. Like, where do I, where do I put this that the people know about it? So I go, I go on Reddit and I'm looking for subreddits and it's like, you go on Reddit and you find all these, it's crazy what communities exist, but, but if you need to find a specific subgroup, it's ridiculously hard to, I think, where, where do people live that need this kind of thing?

So I find this reading search engine almost, um, that somebody built on That gave me like a network of which subreddits are connected. And I find ones called, um, professional, not professional AV, uh, something broadcasting, forgot the name, commercial AV.

Can, you know, can you add this feature, that feature, this feature? Um, and that was really the moment when I thought, wait, there may be, there may be more than, than, than I thought at first.

Uh, and I think this was the kind of saving grace because what I found out is that if you make a tool that is not for the prime developer community, as To be very fair. Most people build tools for, for, for other developers. If you don't build tools for other developers, you, you find that they're really underserved, right? Like we, we, we are such developers. There's a solution for everything. There's two solutions, three solutions.

But then you go to, to, um, an area like, um, A audio visual, uh, live, uh, not live stream, more like live video production, right. Which is much more, uh, commercial. And suddenly they really appreciate any solution that you built for them.

I wanted to build something that's useful, um, with the thought, you know, eventually I'm going to get to that. So I'm going to, I'm, I'm building a user like user signup flow so people can kind of save their work. Um, I'm building different features and then I think, and maybe I have to clarify, I never thought this would make money. I never even lost like a. Uh, like, you know, like, yeah, people use it, but a timer, come on, who pays for a timer? Right. That's, what's my thought.

Every iPhone has a timer. Um, but I, I implement a payment method, not so much because I think people will pay money, but because I wanted to understand how it works. What are the options out there? How do you integrate it into your system? How does this look like? And then the next, I thought the next project, you know, and it's easier. So I do this, I think of like some pro features that I could, uh, include at the same time. So it would make sense.

You know, you don't want to, you don't want to have freemium and then put on website, Hey, here's a premium feature and you can pay for it. Um, and then the funny thing is, night I deployed this payment integration, which was eight months after, you know, that first free ugly version, posted on, on Twitter to my, what, 300 followers and I get a purchase right away. Like I could, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe my eyes. Like how, who would pay money for this?

And I reached out to the person like, yeah, he, he saw it on this original Reddit post has been using it ever since he lost kind of engaging with new software. And he, he kind of half. Purchase it because you found it useful and the other half because you wanted to encourage me building it.

So the, the classic early adopter, um, and I think this making your first dollar online, uh, with a product that, like somebody coming to your website and giving your money, it's such a, a, a motivational boost to keep going. It's incredible.

And I think there's this conception out there that the, a lot of these successful companies are the people who have tens of thousands of followers. They have these big bases that they promote to, and then the, the money comes in, but you didn't have that. You're probably where a lot of people are. You're kind of proving the point that you don't need this massive social following to launch a product and be successful with a product.

Um, and they, as I said before, they already have every, every problem, mostly solved, it's hard to get like a standout problem for them, but if you look in other industries in, in, in these people that are not on Twitter, that maybe only find their stuff on Google, if you, if you find a problem that they are looking for, it's, it's this, you know, this blue ocean, this. It may be a small group, but the group is big enough to support one developer easily.

And I asked him, if you look for a tool like mine, where do you, where do you even go? What do you do? And they told me,

Yeah, I am sometimes on Facebook. I'm sometimes on LinkedIn. I sometimes go to trade show, but really if I have a specific technical problem, I go on Google. Until I find a solution and that's all I needed to know.

The, how, you know, how, how do you, how do you get your, your page on whatever off of front end, but I'm, I'm actually writing articles like how do you use your, you know, a timer software together with your, um, with your hardware video mixer. And I do like step by step and explain what are the possibilities and how to use the

HTTP requests and how to use like browser embeds. And even though these articles get comparatively few hits, right, we have search volumes of maybe a hundred people per month these are so like technically specific how to guides. Almost all of these people that come to these website, to these pages have such a high intent. They really want to solve this particular problem. And often end up staying and, and purchasing.

If any, from the original version you've written to what it is today, based off the feedback from your customers,

And of course we had to separate the noise from the, from the signal. once we decide this is kind of our scope and we understand more and more, how do people actually use our software? How do they, uh, what kind of problems specifically do they use? That's when we started kind of to really focus on the right features. Implement it in the right way. And I think that made all the difference. Like coming back to the same customer we talked to, it was such a enlightened moment.

I asked him, uh, what kind of feature are you missing? What is like, what is bad about our software, right? What, what do I need to change? And they say, yeah, um, I actually asked that question to our director yesterday because he apparently also uses our software on a, on a regular basis. And he gave me this answer. He said. You know, I really have some requests, but I'm almost afraid of saying them because your software is so easy and intuitive. I don't want to change it.

And, um, of course they gave me some, some, some requests, but I found this so, so interesting because. The whole time that I've built a software, I thought, I don't want, I don't want to be another Excel. I don't want to be another like functional piece of software that has buttons everywhere. It's just to get the job done. I want, I want to get a job done, but in a way that is easy to pick up for the first customer, as easy as it is for the ones that uses it for two years already.

And by him saying this is kind of confirmed that men I've worked two years, three years, right? Uh,

on this tool. With this intent of making it easy to use. And here he is kind of confirming that to me. Without knowing that, that I wanted it all along. So it's just this moment. And I think if you really listen to your customers and if you have a good hand for building an, uh, a good product, um, you can come as an outsider and you can come without any community, uh, any like community following and, and get into a niche.

I mean, you, you mentioned it before the show started, like this, this developer, you know, you, you

sit in a, in a company, you kind of know in your heart of hearts that, that, that you are basically producing. Three times of value of what you actually paid, right? Kind of deep down, you know, um, and I was kind of disillusioned with that. And, and didn't, didn't like the kind of task rapid style that we had going at that time, um, and looked around for another job and like another chopper for came, but then they discontinued their product after three months.

And then my wife encouraged me and said, Hey, you know what? You do such a great job with this, with this project of yours. Why don't you try it full time? So we took a little bit of a leap of faith. Uh, at, I would say, I think it was 4, 000, uh, euros per month, which was not quite enough to sustain us to, to support our, our lifestyle. Um, but with a bit of savings and a bit of a grit and a bit of let's, let's spend some months in Asia and save some money. It worked out.

and it's just overall more difficult unless you have a spouse or a partner who is able to cover all those details. So it's really exciting to hear that your, your goal was much lower than what a lot of people's might be, but it's all doable and it sounds like when you were able to go full time on stage timer. Was that really just a hundred percent of your day? Just stage timer all the time.

Where can I have some kind of structure, even if it's not people that work directly with me? Just some, some, some support structure around, around working as a developer. And I was really fortunate because in this, um, industry of video, um, professionals,

I found a discord server. They invited me. I made, I made friends with the owner who also was building a tool at that time. And, and we, Uh, ended up having regular, um, Talks over discord, having regular zoom calls to, to exchange, you know, what we're doing. And nowadays he's even my co founder in another project that we are building together. So something like this, I would say it's really pivotal when you make the step.

Um, and what you don't realize is that at your job, you have these water cooler moments, right? You get up from your chair, you go talk to your colleagues, even in, in you have to meetings, you know, even in Slack, you can kind of get this. Um, the lazy moments you talk, you work by yourself, you don't have that you're like full, full concentration all the time, everything. Um, and either you, you learn very quickly. Okay. I have to specifically take breaks.

You know, your mind cannot do much more than six hours of concentration. It's just not in it. And if you do that three, four, four days in a row, you need a break. a longer break. And if you do too much on a day, you just need to have a break. But what do we do? We are developers. We, we code on our free time, you know, it's, it's terrible. So you have to learn how to, to balance that out. Um, funnily enough, what I do nowadays is I play with Lego. I, I, I,

I buy myself a Lego set. Um, and I, and I constructed and, you know, constructed over three evenings and I, I've, it's awesome. And then I found this, this website called re brickable and then they give you alternative instructions for the same parts that come in a Lego set. So you can just re disassemble it and then build your next thing.

Um, so I really need help there. And then you, you are the founder, right? I'm the founder. There's just other things that steal your time. There's, you know, incoming, let's, let's make a partnership here. Let's do this, answer emails, you know, talk to your customers, understand where the product needs to go in, in one year. Yeah. Anyway, you get the point.

backend and then a

Um, we had a gigantic vision of like computer edit, uh, translation services. Um, however, the, relationship between us founders turned sour and I think there was also like a significant lack of understanding how to actually get a product to the market. Both of this combined, I would say let's, let's do some very bitter experiences. Turned out that, you know, one of the co founders was kind of kicked out. Um, I don't want to say that I'm completely guiltless there.

And then, and then the other one kind of left for the U S and I was kind of left footing the bill for the entire thing and had to figure it out. And it was not a nice experience. It taught me a lot of what it means, how to trust people and in what capacity and, um, How to be careful, uh, with the team you choose, with the partners you choose. Um, so it, it is, it was a very painful failure actually.

Um, also very costly, however, you know, as every failure goes, you look back and you say, okay, what, what went wrong? What did I do wrong? And you learn from it. And very practical example. One thing that I decided to do with my. startup project, um, I literally just rejected almost all processes. I said, let me do everything like. As, as messy as possible, as long as possible, because the more structure I introduced in the beginning, the more I will just be slow and slow and slow.

So if I can just do the bare minimum, the thing that just to get it done and force myself, because I'm like a German engineer, right? We want to do everything perfect. So I forced myself like, no, I have to get it done. And then later make it better when I have the time and the resources. Um, it helped me immensely to get this off the ground and helped me, uh, that didn't always work perfectly, but more often than not, it really helped me to get, move things forward. Yeah.

So I thought I need, I need some kind of second source of income. Um, also I have no clue how big is the total addressable market off stage timer, right? It could be that we, that we, um, kind of plateau at around a million dollars in revenue per year. And it could be that we go all the way to 10 or even higher. We don't quite know. And it's very hard to, to tell. To estimate because there's no comparable product. Um, so one thing, right?

And then I always in the back of my mind, I had this kind of master plan, right? I, I do my first, my first product is going to help me just to have enough to, to sustain my lifestyle. And then from that money that comes in as, you know, quote unquote, passive income, passive enough that, that I can kind of choose my own time. I can build the next product that will hopefully get me to a, to a You know, like the 10 million evaluation.

And then with that, maybe I can do something bigger, something that, that needs a serious amount of money and investment to do, um, you know, this dream of, of really developing nice and cool products. Um, I'm at a first step still, right. I'm still working on StageTimer now more than ever, um, because it has grown much more than I ever expected.

And then it's easy for you to build because you probably have only like five or six unknowns instead of 20 that will help you. And I think that the first product will teach you so much, like just trying to market your first product as a developer will teach you so much about, about market, about products, about startups, that it's much easier to make a better educated guess for your second one.

And, uh, In order to get your product across to him, you have to, you have to think outside the box, you have to be creative about it. So not saying that's impossible. It's just hard to do.

Um, instead if we, if we would just go, you know, open our eyes in the startup that we are in, in the, in the freelancing shop that we are, it's like, Hey, what does this person that is not a developer, why do they spend five hours on this one task? Why the heck can I not make it easier and then make it, making it easier and then find out that there's like B2B customers that are happy. They're literally happy to find your tool and use it. And then you think of your tool.

This is not, you know, if I would show this to another developer, this is, they would criticize it and then, or to a designer. And then you show it to this person and they are like, this is so much easier than any Anything else I've ever used, and I'm so thankful. Like this kind of customer, they're out there and they're everywhere. You just have to find their problems and solve them for them.