18: OpenAI and Cursor use WorkOS, should we? Plus, why we are evolving our B2B sales strategy.

Hey. I'm Mitchell Davis, a Laravel developer.

Hey. I'm Gavin Tye, cofounder of Six Sides and head of sales and marketing.

We are building sixsides.co. It's an events platform that helps you build a stronger community through events, and this is our b to b SaaS journey. How you going, mate?

Good, mate. So what for those who might be listening for the first time, our user base or listener base is growing. What's our mission here? Why are we doing this, mate?

We wanna help people connect, more strongly. No.

No. No. The podcast.

We're doing this for I guess there's a few reasons behind it. One, it's for us to have, like, a bit of a history there, something that we can look back on. This is an artifact that we can look back on hopefully in a few years time when this thing is incredibly successful and we could say, that's right. Remember when we were going through this? So we were talking to that customer and now, you know, we run 500 events for them per year or whatever.

Look. I think it's really important for us because we don't work in the same, city. We work remotely from each other. It's, yeah, having this hour to connect and, you know, go, oh, look at what we've done in such a in a period of time. And I have worked with a number of founders, and I've learned that people have short memories.

It's It is fun. Yep. Yeah. Really enjoy getting on and knowing that, okay. Like, we record these on Fridays. We release them on Tuesdays. It's perfect. It's great at the end of the week. Can catch up on what we got done and talk that all through, and we don't really plan too much for the week ahead on these calls. We also have a a standing call on Monday mornings.

Cool. Yeah. Mate, so I wanna brag a little bit about our, you know, SEO titles. We've had a Okay. Almost doubled our listener growth, this month.

It is true.

Yep. Tuesday, which is when we release, is actually on the first of next month. So we have a decision to make. Do we push a release on the Monday and try to go for double growth, or do we leave it to Tuesday? Do we fudge the numbers?

No. We leave it to Tuesday. No. I won't let you. We have a standing Tuesday. This is our cadence, and it's just unlucky that it's in the next month.

So Whatever. But I'm just looking at the numbers. I think the SEO stuff is really interesting. Our biggest or our apart from our first episode no. Not even that.

A little hat?

Yeah. I

don't know. I don't know. Anyway, we'll see. But, yes, I I agree with you. Something is working, which is great. We're very happy to have any new listeners. And I guess call out to if you are listening, you have anything that you wanna tell us, let us know. So you can send us an email, journey@6sides.co, or you can reach out to us on LinkedIn or Blue Sky or Twitter or YouTube or GitHub, all of the above. Alright? So just reach out.

Just let us know you hear

us. Yeah. That's right. We just wanna know clearly, you are out there because our numbers are seriously growing, but Yep. It would be great to hear from more of you. So, anyway, all of that aside, yes, we've got lots of stuff to get into today. This has been a huge week. So you've had quite a bit going on with sales, and we'll get into that. I've also had a lot going on with the technology side of things. So why don't we stick to our usual format of doing technical stuff at the end?

I did, Jeff.

That was yeah. Go go ahead. What what's going on?

So we have a challenge with the business. Right? We're trying to develop the platform that's not quite ready for the market, but we'll be in a few weeks time because we got our first event in August. But we had we don't have much to show someone because we're completely doing a rewrite. Yet we wanna talk to people who may be having events who were making decisions now for the end of the year or early next year.

So It's vaporware. It's on it.

Yeah. Well and so, really, you're selling a vision or a or aligning to someone's vision or someone's mission and then painting a picture on how you can actually paint that, how you achieve that. So today I had a call. It was actually only half an hour ago or an hour ago with this company that I've been following for a while. And I had a chance to observe their event recently, and I I found a real play.

Yeah.

And the really, that vision and that mission or that objective over a period of time has to be around growing a community or involving a community or strengthening their community and through and events must form part of it. Otherwise, it won't work. So it it actually went really well today, us having that time last week with each other just to talk things through. And I think I got up on the whiteboard and just did a rough sketch. I I put that a lot more detail into that today.

Yeah. Yeah. It was fascinating to watch. I because the call was so like, it was only this morning, and then you sent me the recording, and I was on another call right up until, like, half an hour ago. So I had to quickly watch this thing on, like, two and a half times speed to try and get the gist. So it was funny. Your voice sounded a lot higher on the on the recording. But

what do you mean, babe?

Yeah. Exactly. It was like that. So, yeah, it was it was very interesting. I think that was probably the best call that I've seen you on as far as just your general vibe and the connection that what you were saying was having with this prospect.

For anyone who's listening and who who's gotta do sales, to everyone has to do sales if you're a cofounder. It genuinely has to come from a place of really wanting to help. Like, I really wanna help them achieve their goals. Like, it is important how they support their community. And I'm and so but the the challenge comes from is some of these businesses around a long for a long period of time and how they think about helping is comes from many, many years of doing things in a very similar way, and they're entrenched in that thinking.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It certainly positions us then as stronger, like, subject matter experts as well if we can go to them and say, hey. This is maybe something you wanna consider that might benefit you. Like Yeah. Yeah. That's right. It's not just sales. It's it's helping them. Yep. You

know? So Because people can. Right? If if so if a business has an objective to, like, a community organization to raise an extra $2,000,000, it's not necessarily hard to do. But if you're willing to throw $3,000,000 at it or a million and a half dollars at it, right, you can do it.

Yeah. Yep. Well, it's fantastic. Yeah. We there's a on the sales side of things, there's a lot going on at the moment. So you had was it two? Yeah. Two people this week that stood you up. Yep. This is the the nasty side of of sales, I guess. These things happen.

It's not nasty. It just is what it is. Yeah. We're not important to people. Like, they got other things going on in their world, and Yeah. They don't know us. They don't know us anything. So Yeah. Yeah. It's just the price of buying eggs. Right? Yeah. That's it. But they've re rescheduled. I just checked into I've got one this afternoon. I he Oh, cool. Has supposed to have rescheduled this afternoon. He told me that. So he's a bit busy, and then I've got one on Monday. So

Oh, okay. So getting right back on it with these people. So that's awesome.

The one on Monday, that's fantastic. The one on Monday is a it's way it's as big as if not bigger than the one

Yeah. Okay.

So and this is same principles will apply.

Yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. So, yeah, that's something about you that impresses and has impressed me quite a bit is that, like, tenacity to just like, yep. Okay. Nope. That's alright. This meeting didn't go ahead. Let me reach out. Put it in for next week. You know? And that's the type of thing I hate doing, to be totally transparent. That's the reason I'm not the salesperson. Right? So, yeah, that's, that's your wheelhouse, and you do it really well.

just Well, the first one is the one this afternoon is the the gentleman. Yep. I have looked at I have reached out to quite a few people at the other organization, so I would imagine it's been probably pushed down.

Yeah. Okay.

But I will confirm that next week.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm I don't know how much we'll share on the show, but I'm very interested to hear. Yeah. How how are people hearing about us? You know? So Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Maybe share a podcast. I think so. Clearly, our numbers are almost doubled. So yeah. But

So, Brooke, if this if this is you and you are listening, I won't say where she's from, Leave us a review or send us a message to Journey and go. This is where our journey at Six Sides. Yep.

That's it. Yeah. That would be great, Brooke. So thank you. That's funny. What else? We've got we we have a call with our Denmark client tonight. It's quite a late one for us because, somehow we kept our work hours quite open. So it's a 6PM call on a Friday, but that's okay. We, this client is obviously very this customer is very important to us. So, but maybe we can hone in the the meeting hours on our SavvyCal.

Unfortunately, they they're starting the day. It's only 08:00 for them, so it is Is it? What it is. Yeah. Yeah. It's 08:00 first thing in the day, so it has to be that way for Denmark.

Right. Okay. I I hadn't checked the time zone conversion.

There's been a lot of we're at about the six month mark. Right? It's amazing what happens. I don't know if I've I've don't know if I've told you this specifically, but crazy things happen at six months. Like, all of a sudden, your phone starts.

Yeah. Okay. So we're we're we've hit our six month mark then.

Yep. Take away

take because it was around this time in between Christmas and New Year's that we were having some of those conversations. Mhmm. And, yeah, that's six months ago now. So

Yep. And and funny that they've come back, and so we're having a meeting. And it's just an update. I don't expect anything come from it. But six months has changed. So you do you people stop.

Like Yeah.

And they go, it's not working, but you just gotta keep going. There is funny things that happen. You wait till there's a real I don't know if it's psychological or it's a real thing. It's definitely real. But after you've known someone or you've been in contact with them for twelve months, you automatically slip into being a friend.

cool. It's working. Yeah. I'm I'm just really happy, and I'm we will get into it a little bit later in the episode, but I'm very pleased that the technology side of things is moving as well. Like, I feel like I'm keeping up, which has been something that I've kind of struggled with a bit in the past and I know, like, our priorities shift and have shifted and will continue to shift constantly where, okay, we've gotta work on something else in another business or no.

Right? But It's always gonna be it's not gonna be plain sailing. We're gonna have a busy yeah.

But it it's a good time. Like, things are going pretty well at the moment. So

I think if I I think we're like, where I think the problems come from is with we ever become misaligned. And I've seen this with other businesses where I don't have a where the founder or the salespeople don't have a clue what the technical people are aiming for or where they are. Yeah. Right? So they end up promising something, they end up promising something that is not achievable or it's not gonna be there for a period of time.

call because I saw. She's on

the phone.

Thank you.

But I also know where you're aiming for. So I'm like, oh, I can shoot for that because I know we'll get there in a couple months. The timing, not so much. It's only, like, a period of time. But so if I kinda know where we're going, I can shoot for that point in time knowing that we'll be there more or less. And, it's when

you them down and you won't overcommit me. Yeah.

Yeah. That's right. And it's you and I, we we're heading, hey. I'll meet you at that point in two months. Great. Well, I'll get some people there in two months or or twelve months or three months or whatever. I think it's where, like, even that, she said, I'm glad we didn't do that in a Yeah. Couple months ago.

I was

like, yeah. Kinda we are too.

So Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I think that worked out in our favor. That's what we were talking about it when you were down here and we hung out in person. Yeah. Man, I'm so glad because that would have been awful, the the amount of stress. Like, already, I'm putting in a lot of work. I'm putting in overtime at the moment.

Yeah.

Sticking around here till, like, seven, 07:30 some nights, like, to just try and get as much done to meet this deadline, and, yeah, I cannot imagine. And that's fine, to be clear. Totally fine. Yep. I cannot imagine what that would have been like if we had to have that deadline a couple of weeks ago or whenever. You know?

I think I was gonna go do another conference for my other side business in the November. I think I think I should go to this conference over in Perth. WA? Yeah. WA. Okay. Because I think it'd be a strong business development opportunity. Yeah. Because there'd be other associations that were there. And I have a theory that one event would turn into many other events.

This is how it happens, folks. Very exciting. Okay. Cool. Well, let's let's not commit you on this call, but let you and I can talk about that separately. But, I mean, it sounds great. So

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Maybe we'll circle back to that another time. But yeah.

Yeah. I'll I'll I'll go and do it because I've got other reasons to go there too, but, yeah, it'll be yeah. Cool. Awesome. So in summary, where possible, I think this will set another direction, like a new direction, the ideal route for big clients because this is a these would be big opportunities.

Mate, it's great. Alright. So that kinda covers the sales side of things. So why don't we start transitioning to technology? So when you and I got together, and I think I talked about this on our last recording As friends. Kind of,

What was that? As friends. As friends. Yeah.

You're an idiot. When we got together as friends and cofounders and we hung out in person specifically and came to the realization that there was some misalignment in terms of our like, people using our app, and you had in your mind that, oh, these are our users, and I had in my mind, these are the events attendees, and there's a difference there. Right? I was thinking, okay. You'll just log in using a ticket code.

down to security too. Right? You wanna know who's there, who's accessing stuff. Right? So I I I think I think it's a security measure also.

Right? Yeah. Absolutely. The security is a part of it. And this is going to help us kind of tie attendees between events. So you can imagine as well, like, someone coming back the next year, get going to the same event next year. Of course, it's gonna be a different ticket code or even for events that are not ticketed. Right? Like local meetups, things like that. You're not gonna have a ticket.

Yeah.

And if we get to a million users, act active users, mind you, we will have the money to then pay for the next tier, surely. Right? Or otherwise, something's gone wrong. Gavin hasn't been doing his job in sales. So

They've got some pretty big brands, Cursor. They've got

They do.

Indeed, Perplexity. Right? So they're they're not small fry.

No. They are legit. Yeah. And the developer experience is awesome. So I signed us up.

Sorry. I was gonna say, does that mean at the end, like, that you like, attendees can log in under, like, the Google, Apple, Microsoft, LinkedIn, whatever they want to actually we'll put a few up there, but whatever they want, they just we're trying to reduce the clicks, right, and make it as simple as possible for them to get in and start using Yes. Yep. While making sure that our client's event information and the event portal and event is secure, right, with no without anonymous users.

Right? And we get all of that baked in. Yep. So, yes, there there's literally buttons for all of those now. Once you click the, like, get started button in our app, you then see I think that we've got, like, five different providers, Google, Apple, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and GitHub as well for the developers. And then you can also do email and password Yep. Or email and magic code. So send them a code. And all that's just done. It was literally like a checkbox that I had to press, and that was it.

from, like, a week ago. Right? Like, last week, we were

this time of yep.

Saturday, we were talking about it.

Yeah. It hasn't even been a week. Right? So now it's great thinking about everyone that uses our app is a user and not just an attendee or a, you know, a whatever, but of some specific event, huge unlock now. So, yeah, I'm really pleased with it.

it is got the title of the podcast today. I just put that in the my my SEO optimized.

Yeah. Okay. Alright. Let's see where we land on it. Let's not say it right now on the recording, but see what the title is when the episode comes out. But I like it.

Alright. So, mate, we've got twenty minutes left. I've got a hard stop at 11:30. Yeah. What's what's next?

Slack connect. So following on from WorkOS, I thought this was really cool. It's the first company I've seen do this. When I signed up for WorkOS on Monday night, Two minutes later, I got an invite to a Slack channel that was just for us, and it was like WorkOS dash six sites or something like that on their on their hosted Slack. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. I think it might like, it's good. And then with all automation and stuff coming out now, like, I remember when we were at Redeye that we were having too many issues, so we wanted to shut that down. We didn't want that to happen.

Yeah. Yeah. So

I think it's like, not frustrating. It's just the way it's set up is that you guys tend your community can't tends to communicate through Telegram or I think it is, but I don't have visibility, then we're back to email, but there's two conversations going on. Yep.

So this is a way to get everyone on the same same page.

Right? Do it.

So yeah. So I think today, I'll set up a Slack, workspace for six sides because right now we're just using, my Atlas one. So I'll set up one for six sides and then, yeah, let's put this forward to them. The only downside that I can tell is it requires the, in this case, the event organizer to have their own paid Slack. This is only a feature between paid Slack accounts. So Okay. Potentially, they have that. Maybe they don't. It might like, we can evolve this later. Right?

this part out. They need to have a paid version to do it?

I think so. That's what I found out the other night, but I'll I'll take another look at it. But, yeah, this is meant for, like, enterprises being able to talk to each other securely Okay. Without having to, like, invite someone into your own Slack Yeah. Where they can potentially see all your, like, private stuff. This is just one channel that works between both workspaces. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Because if we're going for larger community based organizations, there comes a size in comes a switch over to some of those where they use Teams, and that becomes a pain then I dump Slack.

Potentially. Yeah. So, mean, maybe we could do something similar like this with with Teams or I mean, maybe this becomes a a Discord thing as well, which is like another free platform that does this type of thing. It's not normally used for business, but I am in like, Stripe, for example, has and Cloudflare, like, a bunch of big organizations have at least large developer communities on Yeah. Discord.

I agree. Yeah. I think operational people don't tend to go down the path of Discord. Right? Like, it's a it's more of a technical thing. So but I wonder if

culture in, like, gaming as well. So it's not it's not being built for this type of thing, but a lot of, big businesses, like I mentioned, have taken that on.

But Yep. I wonder if there's a platform that does this that can collate, like, bring like, if someone uses Teams and Slack and puts it together in a common layer so it doesn't matter.

Like Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Well, we can look at it a bit more, but I'll I'll just set this up anyway today and just say, hey. If you guys are using this and, you know, let's get you in there. But otherwise, we'll it doesn't matter. This is certainly not a super important thing for us. It's more just I mean, to get around this, we could just have a shared Telegram channel. Right? If they didn't have Slack, then, okay, no worries. We have a shared Telegram channel, and that would work fine.

But WhatsApp. Yeah. Yeah. Look. I I think it's a really good idea because it's we are not going to be sitting in their offices and and we want to be able to have a direct connection, and we want them to be able to talk to ideas and and stuff

like that. So it's absolutely support during the event. I'm thinking like, this is the best way. It's a real time chat. I can go in and instantly reply, like, specifically for this Denmark customer. Their event is gonna start at, like, 6PM, I think, our time or something like that. And it's like, woof. I would much rather have a Slack channel than them sending me an email or something like that. It's just so much quicker and like, yep. Okay.

we've decided to get some help like these on your side of the fence. Right? Because it's there's a lot to do. So what have you done on that side?

So I have turned to my mate, Chris.

Hi, Matt.

Shout out to to Ian.

Yep. Hi, Matt. Matt. Sorry.

So I have enlisted the help of Chris who works with me at Atlas as I mentioned earlier. And for he's gonna do, I think, six days of work on six sides. He's already finished two of those. So next week, there'll be four, and that's going to get us Chris oops. Sorry.

So you can get all that up and running in a day, like, very quickly?

Took about a day and a half, but yeah. Yeah. So and like I said, I've been working some pretty long hours, so I got in and I did a bunch of stuff even after Chris wrapped up. I spent probably another two hours on Wednesday afternoon in the office. But, yeah, he then I had to go I had to leave work early yesterday, and then he we track everything that we do in Linear.

on. The intention is here is we wanna just we need to hit our deadlines and but we wanna not only just meet them, we wanna really be set up and blow past them. Right? So, and it's it makes sense to bring in Chris for a couple days, a few days to to do this. And Yeah. It's

Exactly. It's going really well, and I think it's just it gives me a bit of a buffer there so that I don't necessarily have to spend every minute right up until this this deadline on the eighth. Yep. I'll still be working my butt off on it, but, yeah, I can I can relax just a little bit because I know he's he's working on this? So what I've gotta do to try and set him up for next week is to go through and figure out, okay, what exactly do I need him working on next?

Yeah. It's it brings up our, like, like, the possibilities of how to take this business forward, like, growth possibilities. Like, do we do we try to bootstrap it, which means do we just try to win clients and use that revenue accordingly, which with the upside of that is we we maintain ownership. The downside is it's a lot slower. Yeah.

As the expression coach. That's right. Yeah. There there is. I think for now, like, we are continuing on the path of bootstrapping this. I will not need Chris's help on this forever to be clear. Like, this is okay. He's helping us get towards this deadline, and then I'll I'll then be able to work on this at my own speed to to continue to evolve this. But who knows? We might be bringing in help in the future, development help specifically.

I think I think a key part of this is is that we can achieve product led growth. And then if we can help these bigger organizations with helping them achieve their strategic goals and they have big networks, and those networks, if we've achieved product led growth, will expand out into other ones. We we might be very well be able to sustain

Yeah.

Bootstrapping front like, structure, like, whatever it is, funding structure with high with high growth relatively high growth rate if we get it right. And I feel like I can see the pathway of that happening. Yeah.

Yeah. Ditto. I I've never taken funding on any of the projects that I've worked on. I would love for us not to. I mean, if we happen to get this grant from Advance Queensland, is that who the that's them? Yeah. So if we happen to get that, amazing. We talked about that couple episodes ago. Yep.

Funding and investment are two different things. Is that right? So Yes.

Exactly. Sorry. We talked about that on episode 13. I was just going back to Trellet. But yes. Definitely. So if we can avoid bringing anyone else in, fantastic.

Why? What what's your mindset around that? Why?

Well, I think it complicates things. It changes our like, you and I are busy with our other businesses as well. Right? And so if someone is going to invest in us any significant amount of money, they're probably expecting we're working on this full time. Right? They wanna get paid.

I think it's fair or or very much. Exactly.

You have to reduce

the distraction right down. Right? So

That's right. So that's already a huge change. You know, we have a lot of commitments and, relationships in place already with our other businesses. And so, yeah, I mean, who knows? Potentially, that is the future, but it's not what we're talking about right now. So Yeah. That's a big deal. Plus then it it changes a lot of things about our obligations, you know, all the reporting and everything that we'd have to do to investors. And Yep. Yeah.

You know, I I don't know too much about that side of it. Right? And I have seen people who take funding, and then they're not the business model hasn't flushed out, and then they're under so much stress. And then they're like, I don't ever wanna get in that position. Right? Because my family comes first, right, at the end of the day. And you haven't started one yet, and yours will come first in a couple of years' time. Yeah. And I always wanna maintain that, and I think it can be done. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

Business. Yeah. Well, those numbers don't quite work out, but, you know, they're almost part the same. But

Yeah. I'm with you.

We have so much to to think that we have so many options. The main thing that I wanna do is get our sales right first. And then we have so much more control and power on whatever we wanna do. Right?

Yeah. That's right. And I don't see there being any immediate need for Yeah. Any investment at the moment. Like, we are doing fine.

Right?

So and we're only, you know, a month away from that. I mean, we're, what, nine days or something like that away from having this first version that you can at least then start showing on calls. Yep. We'll just see. Right? I'm very happy, though, with the with the cadence. I'm very happy. This is going at the right pace for me.

I would love to have 10 clients at $20.20 grand a year, and that would be, ugh, like, the that gives us so many more options. Right? Like, gives us so much more Yep. And and growing. So that'll be

Hopefully, we'll get it there. Anyway, well, I don't have any time. What's that?

We will get there. It's just with the time when Yeah.

Yeah. That's right. We speaking of time, we are out of it, for this recording. So next week, when we are right before having this first version available, I'm gonna go into a bit more about Cloudflare because there's some really interesting stuff that we've done that I wasn't even able to get into on this recording. So we might get a double hit for our SEO titles.

Yep. We also we also have a topic that we're gonna explore, which is, like, the option of using offshore workers, right, which we don't know. So we do have a we do have to go back, and we've been introduced to someone who has followed us up in a in a period of time. I don't know if you've gone back to him.

I haven't. No. I've been so flat out with this stuff.

So So we do need to go back to him and maybe set up a time to have a call and see what the options are, and then we can maybe lay that out of of our options because clearly you have a great relationship with Chris. Right? Yeah. And you are at a level now where you don't have to lay everything out.

So Yeah.

But then is there a benefit of other things? So, maybe we look at that in the next couple of weeks, and we can report back our findings and all that kind of stuff. So

Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to at least have a call with them for, even for some other things that I'm doing in another business, not even Atlas and not Six Sides, but I have so much going on. And I think someone else offshore could probably help us with that really well. And then if there's any flow on effects that benefit Six Sides, amazing. So Yep. Sure. Yeah. And We will.

And if you wanna release on, Monday just to pump up those numbers, mate, go for it. Like, no. I'm not

I refuse out of out of principle. We release on Tuesdays. That's what we set. So Well,

that's okay. So give me the details. I'll do this week's one. Okay? Yeah.

I'll send you the login. No worries. Alright. If you're out there, leave us a review. You can find Gavin on LinkedIn at Gavin Ty.

No. No. You put me

on Keep coding.

Well, the one that I have is snap snap and necks, cash and checks, but that's not appropriate.

Oh, that's different. That's a whole other thing that we'll have to get into one time. But Yep. Anyway, we will catch you all next week, and thanks for listening.

Have a good weekend, mate.