$8M ARR bootstrapped | Sandra Đajic, Senior Marketing & Growth Lead @ Chatbase

00:00:00: Chatbase is a bootstrap platform for building and deploying AI support agents, strongly built in public, currently at seven million ARR.

00:00:09: And that's already pretty interesting, but what made it even more interesting is that ChatGPT is already their second biggest user acquisition channel.

00:00:19: So my goal today is to find out how they pulled this off.

00:00:24: That's why I'm excited to have Sandra Djajic on the show today.

00:00:27: Sandra is Senior Marketing and Growth Lead at Chatbase and her mission is to scale Chatbase beyond a million in MR, so ten million plus in AR.

00:00:38: She's very vocal on LinkedIn about the startup hustle, marketing, and of course, all things AI.

00:00:45: So welcome to the podcast, Sandra.

00:00:47: Thank you so much.

00:00:48: This was a very nice intro.

00:00:50: I would put it in like top five probably.

00:00:54: Nice.

00:00:55: Glad to hear.

00:00:56: Let's start a little bit personal with your journey.

00:00:59: How did you end up at Chatbase?

00:01:03: It's a funny story as always in life.

00:01:06: Yasser started Chatbase somewhere in the same time.

00:01:10: I started working for another startup.

00:01:13: We both in the same time were implementing AI into our products.

00:01:18: I was quite aware who Yasser was at that time and what Chatbase is.

00:01:23: time last year, maybe a year ago, something like that, I actually invited Yaster to my own podcast because I have my own podcast next to that.

00:01:33: And then he was more than willing to come and then we had a lovely conversation and he shared a bunch of stuff and how he's growing chat days and direction where chat days is going.

00:01:42: And I love the idea.

00:01:44: I love the team and somehow just We found ourselves having this conversation of me jumping in chat base and growing it with the team.

00:01:54: So yeah.

00:01:55: Awesome.

00:01:55: Let's do a little cross promo then.

00:01:58: What's the name of your podcast and what are you talking about there?

00:02:02: It's called Morning Maker Show.

00:02:04: We started around... two maybe two and a half year ago.

00:02:08: We are pretty much talking about founders, SaaS companies, AI, amazing people building in public, amazing companies that are being formed with actually this movement of building in public.

00:02:22: And now at the moment, we are also talking about no code tools, AI building, having people like me actually building products or not someone who is technically aware of a bunch of different things, but someone with the ideas and ability or at least wish to build something.

00:02:41: So yeah.

00:02:42: Let's go into the building in public thing real quick because I see both sides.

00:02:50: So I see people that are very cautious about it and like really fear their ideas and strategies get stolen.

00:02:57: And then I see people like you um or yes are also from chat base and you are sharing pretty much everything.

00:03:04: so a lot.

00:03:07: what is like your reasoning behind sharing so much like don't you fear someone stealing your secret sauce.

00:03:16: I think build in public movement started with people that had nine to five jobs and they were doing something on the side after work.

00:03:26: And that's when I actually joined that community.

00:03:30: In the past year or more, we see that switch where more and more people are actually deciding to build their products in public.

00:03:38: And these people could be VC funded startups or bootstraps companies or chat bases.

00:03:46: And I think It's much better like that because you have ability to share the product, but immediately get the feedback from the user you are actually targeting.

00:03:56: To answer your question, if I'm afraid of sharing a bunch of stuff, to be honest, I'm not.

00:04:02: It's very, very hard to replicate.

00:04:05: First of all, like humans who we are on socials and what we bring to the table and how we form the community and the way of our communication to the audience and our users.

00:04:18: That's extremely hard.

00:04:21: I can tell that that type of the strategy would be called building a community or marketing in the community and etc.

00:04:30: When I say that, you get nothing.

00:04:34: But it means actually you doing the job.

00:04:38: What I'm trying to say, I'm not scared of anyone replicating what we are doing or how we are approaching marketing.

00:04:46: I think Chagipiti probably can write you a better marketing strategy than I can.

00:04:51: It's just this part of doing the job is what it matters.

00:04:56: I highly recommend everyone that are building startups or building products to share and building public.

00:05:02: I think Jaster's story is very important and motivated pretty much because this is how he started.

00:05:09: on X. at that time when he was building chat based he had like sixteen followers and he said that most of them were just like friends and then he shared one tweet and it went viral and it and it's growing now in like this big big company.

00:05:25: so and next to this viral moment you get if you get it.

00:05:32: The most important part is that you are forming a community around yourself.

00:05:36: that is like tracking your journey and supporting you.

00:05:40: And in the same time, you are teaching them about your product, which means that even if they don't need the product, they might suggest your product to someone that needs it.

00:05:50: So it's a really nice moment and I highly, highly recommend like involving yourself.

00:05:58: into it if you are planning to build products.

00:06:01: And is there anything you would recommend founders not to share?

00:06:05: So like revenue numbers, profit numbers, any exception from what is suitable to sharing with the building and public movement?

00:06:17: I mean, if the numbers are real and honest and you've made a huge milestones, there's nothing stopping you to share that success.

00:06:25: And I think if you are surrounded with right community, it will be welcomed greatly.

00:06:30: So, you know, there are probably things you might consider not to share.

00:06:38: But if it's coming from like teaching moment to others or sharing your small victories or even big victories, I don't see the problem in that.

00:06:47: Next to that, I've spoken with a friend who is leading a marketing agency and she got a big client that are building things in stealth or how it's called.

00:06:58: So it's a totally different and opposite way.

00:07:02: And she as a marketer has a problem on how to approach now this product and how to bring it to the market because the founders are so secretive about it and scared.

00:07:13: But at some point, they will have to go to the market.

00:07:16: And you don't want to spend months and months on building the product.

00:07:22: and don't have an audience or customers to sell them.

00:07:28: That's my approach when I'm talking with founders.

00:07:32: The best part is that if you are building in public and you don't want to share your product or idea, there is a still way to build your own personality in there.

00:07:45: Once you are ready, you have some first step already done, if that makes sense.

00:07:51: Yeah, I also once had a request from a client that said, so we need your help in marketing, but we want to like, not show anything on the website or something.

00:08:06: And then I said, Hey guys, marketing, I think is not the right thing for you.

00:08:10: You will probably do like an outbound sales motion.

00:08:13: But I couldn't wrap my head around it.

00:08:17: You're not only vocal around the whole.

00:08:19: built in public thing on LinkedIn, you're sometimes even a little bit controversial and like challenging some people.

00:08:29: One post, for example, of you started with.

00:08:31: most marketers are frauds.

00:08:35: I don't know if you if you chose this hook to instill a positive discussion, but What I'm interested in is what are you seeing or what is like your reasoning behind these posts?

00:08:49: So what fuels these posts?

00:08:55: Why I wrote that post?

00:08:58: It's probably, you know, I kind of, I wanted to say that because it is true, especially now in this era where everyone is promising too much.

00:09:09: It's very hard to get to that.

00:09:14: exact thing you need.

00:09:16: What I'm trying to say is that we are building workflows and we are building automations and implementing AI in our own work.

00:09:25: And I'm doing that as well.

00:09:27: But if we are not showing exactly how we are doing all the end results, it might come across as fake.

00:09:36: And that goes also when we are talking about marketers, that goes also into the product.

00:09:41: So if you are over promising, you will probably get a bunch of people on your website, but the churn is going to happen at some point.

00:09:53: Being a marketer today, when we have a millions of product and millions of possibility to build a product, you really need to be real with your audience, with your customers, what you are doing and how you are building the product for them, but also how they can use the product.

00:10:11: That's maybe why I wrote.

00:10:16: Yeah, make sense.

00:10:18: Let's look at the the chat base journey a little bit more.

00:10:22: so You are obviously very transparent about the current state of the company.

00:10:30: so seven million AR at least from your LinkedIn profile When what was the number or what was like the the stage when you joined?

00:10:42: So I've joined In December, I'm not sure at what point, I think maybe it was five million or something.

00:10:51: I have to check that.

00:10:54: But we growth at the beginning of the year, I think it was like, twenty five percent growth very fast.

00:11:01: But multiple different things happen at that point.

00:11:04: So we went from being AI chatbot to full.

00:11:09: AI agent and then we switched our communication as well and then the landing page.

00:11:16: Then it goes through every single marketing channel we use at Chatbase.

00:11:22: Multiple different things happen in the same time.

00:11:24: The growth was very fast, I would say.

00:11:29: We are continuing with that because I think the reason for that is the team or Chatbase team, is very tech focused.

00:11:41: So there's only two people in marketing and we are very like feature-based, product-based, follow customers, what they are saying, building that.

00:11:55: And then there's marketing that is just trying to keep up with everything.

00:11:59: So

00:12:01: would you say that this product focus or product centricity brought you to the scale you're at today?

00:12:11: For sure.

00:12:12: I think why Chatbase or at least what I've heard from our enterprise companies is that Chatbase is easy to implement.

00:12:27: And that's like one of the things that I love to hear because we have competitors that have been on the market for the past ten years.

00:12:35: and the concept itself is not new, but the tech is.

00:12:40: That means that Chatbase is being able to implement this technology that we have currently today into this market or traditional market that has been around for ages, but it's over complicated and very hard.

00:12:54: When I hear that our customers are saying, oh, this was very fast to implement and we didn't have any trouble, that gives me a good hint that we are actually building a product for even traditional businesses that are not used to this today technology.

00:13:10: So yeah, being product focused, I think that's the most important thing in chat base.

00:13:18: And now you obviously have very ambitious goals and you want to like more or less double MR or AR, so both same.

00:13:31: What will get you there?

00:13:32: What will be the growth drivers for the next stage?

00:13:38: When it comes to marketing, we are doing very traditional stuff.

00:13:41: Everyone in SAS world is doing so.

00:13:43: That means paid ads done, SEO, very nice.

00:13:49: But what we are also implementing or we spoke at least when we were preparing for this interview is also like expanding or growing in the AI search.

00:13:57: And then there is, of course, employer branding, which I think is super, super important.

00:14:01: We already do that in chat base.

00:14:03: We need to scale that even more.

00:14:05: We see that employer branding going in younger AI SaaS companies like Lovable and Versal and etc.

00:14:15: So that's like, I think that's also one of the approaches.

00:14:19: And then of course you have like Things that we call like marketing strategies fast track you know putting build a putting billboards working with influencers.

00:14:29: Forming ambassadors so people that are actually digging into the product using product every day and then talking it talking about it very naturally and so yeah.

00:14:39: Yeah then let's tap into the search thing real quick because as I said in the intro it's already your second.

00:14:47: biggest user acquisition channel, which is quite astonishing.

00:14:53: From your perspective, what do you think has caused this?

00:14:57: Like, what did you get right?

00:14:59: So this has worked out as it as it's currently working out.

00:15:04: I think for Chad, so usually people expect some very glamorous answer and it's not.

00:15:15: It might be even a little bit boring.

00:15:17: It's just doing a proper SEO, backlinks, the main ratings, blah, blah, blah, all those stuff that SEO includes.

00:15:26: And then working, I mentioned influencers, but working with written content influencers as well.

00:15:33: Also the way, the same way you are approaching Google search.

00:15:39: you need to approach AI search as well.

00:15:41: So you are typing keywords, you're seeing what's coming out.

00:15:44: If you're not mentioned there, reaching out to those people to mention chat base and etc.

00:15:49: So whatever you're doing in SEO and how you're preparing SEO, the same kind of mentality goes into preparing AI search.

00:15:57: And then once you have those technicalities, right, caring about the content, I think is what's working the best, which means like our documentation, our docs needs to be updated, our changelog needs to be updated, our blog is not only SEO related, but it's also more like product based, what's changing and use cases.

00:16:25: So you have this whole concept around your product and then it works.

00:16:30: There's no, I would say like, there's no, I think there is no magic trick.

00:16:36: but it's actual work you put in your SEO that might work in AI search.

00:16:43: Unfortunately, no get rich quick scheme, but

00:16:47: just

00:16:48: hard work again.

00:16:51: I could imagine some people wondering because you said caring about your documentation, caring about the change lock, they might wonder, hey, but.

00:17:00: How is the change log and the documentation connected to SEO or to AI search?

00:17:06: This is something that is completely unrelated, isn't it?

00:17:09: So what would you say to those?

00:17:11: Whenever you have to understand how the content works, the content itself doesn't only stay on the website.

00:17:19: And when it doesn't only stay on the website, it has a certain authority that it brings.

00:17:24: So ChangeLog is shared on LinkedIn, it's shared on X, it's shared on our newsletter.

00:17:30: So there is this whole concept around the content that is spread.

00:17:35: When it comes to like, especially documentation, documentation is really, really important.

00:17:41: And then when it comes to the blogs, We are doing the same thing.

00:17:45: It's like, it's not staying on the website, but it's also shared on Reddit, wherever the discussion is made about chat-based, that these blogs can have certain influence as well.

00:17:56: So, and then the content, when we are talking about the content change blog, documentation, blah, blah, there is also written content that is happening on Reddit.

00:18:04: There is also written content that is happening on LinkedIn.

00:18:07: So, when we are talking about AI search, the AI Search concept, it's not only showing your website or the websites in general, but it's also pulling the data from the different sources.

00:18:20: You need to be present there, but what is really important is to know your story.

00:18:28: What your product is about, and to be able to repeat that in understandable ways.

00:18:35: Chad Bay is building AI agents for customer support is very clear.

00:18:40: And we cannot be mixed with any AI agent because building an AI agent can be for coding and websites and many different stuff.

00:18:51: So you need to be very clear in order to pop out somewhere.

00:18:57: The same way you are approaching your SEO, it's pretty much translating into AI search.

00:19:05: Can you explain... why it's so important to have this consistency in the naming.

00:19:12: So why does it matter that I always say the same thing like chat base helps companies build AI agents for customer support and why can't I say sometimes chat base is an AI platform that helps Shopify shops.

00:19:33: You can.

00:19:34: So the brilliant thing about AI is it can recognize, it's not the search by the keywords, but it also can recognize what you're trying to say.

00:19:41: So the concept around your product needs to be in the niche.

00:19:46: that maybe that would be a correct way.

00:19:48: So Shopify, customer support, helping companies and etc.

00:19:53: It is or building an AI agent.

00:19:55: It's the same story.

00:19:56: It's just written differently, but you have the niche and the direction.

00:20:00: that you are approaching your presence online.

00:20:05: Makes sense.

00:20:07: Let's take a closer look at the, I would say, intersection of product and marketing because we already talked a little bit about the product and the product's centricity at Chatbase and we talked a little bit about marketing.

00:20:20: So you guys have also a free plan at Chatbase.

00:20:24: that probably at this point we can already recommend people.

00:20:27: if you want to learn more about Chatbase.

00:20:30: Go to the description and check it out.

00:20:34: There's a lot of talk about free plan.

00:20:37: You shouldn't do a free plan.

00:20:39: You should only do free trial.

00:20:41: You shouldn't even do free trial because you're not attracting high value users.

00:20:46: What is the why you have behind having a free plan?

00:20:54: Yeah, there is a lot of discussion about like free plan and especially in building public community when you have a solo founder and In the age where you are using AI it doesn't make a lot of sense because you are spending credit You are spending money and etc.

00:21:10: for the company that for or at least for the companies like chat base That are SaaS companies.

00:21:17: You need to have an entering point like in chat base.

00:21:20: We have four different plans and our free plan and our hobby plan are the plans that are both entering point.

00:21:29: when I'm looking at the data.

00:21:34: My kind of like thinking why we have free plan is because with the right limitation a user can experience the product in a right way without us losing money.

00:21:48: So that means that If you take a look at the Chad Bay's pricing, you will see that we have free plan next to hobby plan.

00:21:57: But then we have standard plan or pro plan next to enterprise plan.

00:22:01: Pro plan is pretty much an entering point also for enterprise plan, even though it's paid plan.

00:22:08: But there are right limitations that enterprise companies can also experience and upgrade.

00:22:14: And the same kind of logic goes into free.

00:22:18: and a hobby plan and kind of like, if you take a look at this whole funnel of pricing and upgrading, would I suggest everyone to have free plan?

00:22:30: Well, I would probably be careful with saying that because if you are a solo founder or you have a really small team or you are not VC back, but you have a good traction, easy to understand product, no need to have multiple people.

00:22:46: coming together and working on the product, maybe it will make sense because you don't want to burn money, essentially, that you don't still have.

00:22:55: But for us at this stage, especially if you are scaling, having that free entering point that users can grow with, with the right limitation, makes sense for me.

00:23:08: At least for now, yeah, that's kind of like, there is a lot of like, usage limits and there are multiple different things.

00:23:14: we have to take a look at the when it's when when you're forming pricing which is very hard.

00:23:19: But yeah.

00:23:21: Obvious follow up question what are the right limitations?

00:23:24: so if I have like a tool maybe not even similar to chat base but and I have a free plan or I want to have a free plan how do I know where I draw the line between this is still free and for this you have to pay.

00:23:41: There are probably people much, much better to dig into pricing of SaaS products than me, but I do love digging into analytics and understanding why people are churning.

00:23:55: If you take a look at the funnel, it's much easier for me to determine.

00:23:59: What that means?

00:24:02: Let's say I'm looking at the churn users.

00:24:08: Let's say if we are looking at the free users, And they're kind of like usage.

00:24:16: You can clearly see if they're going to continue or probably leave child base and not upgrade.

00:24:23: That means you have to give them a little something that they can experience.

00:24:27: In our case, it's like an AI agent, an action that they can do with that AI agent, an integration that they can do.

00:24:37: Or even how many websites or... PDF files they can process in order to teach that AI agent.

00:24:47: So you can't give them too much, but you can't give people too little for them to not experience the product.

00:24:53: So I don't have the answer to your question.

00:24:56: It really, really depends on the product.

00:24:59: And forming a pricing, I think, is one of the hardest thing.

00:25:03: Just looking at the previous startups I've been, that step, it's always like changing and experimenting as well as you grow.

00:25:13: So yes, that's kind of like my logic behind it.

00:25:18: But my advice would be to have a right tools at least that you can measure and see the customers kind of like journey and where they are turning and how even if you are looking at the free plan.

00:25:34: So.

00:25:36: Makes sense.

00:25:37: But do you think the free plan has helped you, for example, to get to this point where you have so much user acquisition, for example, from the AI search?

00:25:47: I think so.

00:25:48: I think so.

00:25:52: And especially if you take a look at our market, we have a lot of competitors.

00:25:56: As I mentioned, there's a bunch of companies that have been on the market for ages.

00:26:01: And if you have a good enough product, that that is easy to use and see the wall like that wall moment or fast then Absolutely, and I think the the the free pricing was very big for chat base.

00:26:17: I mean, it's a software as a service.

00:26:20: So it's it's kind of like.

00:26:21: the logic goes there as well.

00:26:27: Chet base is getting or AI search is number one user acquisition channel for chat base.

00:26:35: There are also other companies that are already getting a lot of users from it, like Webflow or surfers or also well-known SaaS companies.

00:26:47: Where do you see this going?

00:26:49: Can you imagine that AI search will become your primary acquisition channel?

00:26:54: Do you see even more growth potential there or do you think it will stay at the current level?

00:27:00: Again, AI search is only where it is because of all the other stuff that we are doing.

00:27:11: That means organic reach, socials, and then paydads, and then SEO.

00:27:19: There is a whole army behind this AI search.

00:27:24: If these things that are behind AI search go down, the AI search will do the same pretty much.

00:27:32: It's very equal.

00:27:34: It might take the other channels.

00:27:38: I don't know, we'll see.

00:27:40: But I can say that at least we know which channels are working and influencing the AI search.

00:27:48: My focus is not on AI search, it's everything behind the AI search that are happening because of that.

00:27:57: All the other channels that are doing, I would say you need to Again, look at the data analytics you have, see what is working, and then that will influence the AI search.

00:28:12: It's hard to determine and say in which direction we'll go.

00:28:14: We only know the channels that are working and influencing this chapter.

00:28:20: Then let's move on maybe from AI as a channel to something that I know you're also really passionate about, which is AI as a tool for us marketers.

00:28:32: give us a quick view behind the scenes, what are your favorite AI use cases as a marketing lead?

00:28:43: Oh, my God, we have like.

00:28:45: marketing is such a wide space.

00:28:47: We have so many things happening all the time.

00:28:50: And I think we finally, you know, before you had to like, either talk with the tech team, and then be like, Oh, I need this and I need that.

00:28:57: Where today it's very easy to understand the pain points and understand your workflow and then be like, okay, I need to fix this part.

00:29:06: A few months ago, we were also, as I mentioned, running paid ads and I was like, okay, every week I do the same thing and it takes so much time.

00:29:15: Look at the competitors, look at their copies, look at their images and then you take a look at all of that and then you take a look from Facebook and LinkedIn and Google search and et cetera.

00:29:25: So I was like, okay, can I just pull this data information?

00:29:28: Do they have public libraries and which of these?

00:29:31: which of these channels have public libraries and I can just pull the data information in one space and then let AI do the magic and then just compare that to chat-based copy and that's it.

00:29:42: So I did that and I did that with lovable.

00:29:46: I love to use lovable.

00:29:48: Maybe even V zero from Verso is very good product to use.

00:29:56: And then you have SuperBase to connect all of these stuff, but it's very interesting.

00:30:01: It's very interesting these days.

00:30:03: So one use case is like scraping data and then...

00:30:07: scraping data, then of course like putting content together.

00:30:15: I mean just like I have all the content I'm sharing pretty much on LinkedIn and then based on that I'm putting more and more content.

00:30:27: Content is a big thing I think for me at least.

00:30:33: paid ads SEO as well.

00:30:38: We built a tool.

00:30:40: This was with vzero.

00:30:41: We built a tool that also pulls the blog articles based on keywords and summarize them as well.

00:30:50: that was interesting.

00:30:51: So there is a bunch of stuff that you can as a marketer do these days.

00:30:56: The only problem marketers have is that we still don't know how to push it to public.

00:31:01: So everything kind of stays behind the closed doors.

00:31:05: Okay, we are trying to at least contribute to bringing it more to public.

00:31:10: But I'm curious, have you been excited about AI just from the get go?

00:31:16: So when Churchivity launched because I heard even from some people that are very deep into AI and very passionate now that at first they were a little bit skeptical and also a little bit worried, will it take my job, etc.

00:31:32: And I try to understand the mindset better of people that are like now building and pushing things forward.

00:31:40: So have you been excited from the get go or were you also a little bit worried?

00:31:45: I think the moment chat EPT puts their pricing out, I've been paying for it.

00:31:50: So it's been like, I gave them a bunch of money.

00:31:53: It's been like what two and a half year now.

00:31:57: So no, the worries, I was never worried about losing job to AI or something like that.

00:32:04: I think AI is a great companion.

00:32:08: for every person.

00:32:10: For me, it has like a big role in my workflows.

00:32:14: But that creative level, human level, that type of the communication, this what we are doing right now, AI will never replace.

00:32:23: I mean, never, at least in the next five years, I hope we are safe.

00:32:27: But the human touch, it's still a human touch, especially in marketing, like some lines, only a customer that really feels the pain and a marketer that is scanning that can understand.

00:32:41: But I would probably be more scared for people that are not using AI and they don't have a use case for it or didn't find the use case for it.

00:32:52: So from the beginning, I was on top of it even like checking the grammar and you kind of grow from checking the grammar, but that were my first steps.

00:33:03: Yeah, now we've reached the point where not all the problems but smaller problems like annoying things in your workflow can be fixed with AI and that's a huge step.

00:33:15: and that only happened like what, seven or eight months ago, when we take a look at Lovable, it launched in November and then V-Zero.

00:33:26: I'm mentioning these products because they are widely kind of known for exactly what they are doing, building stuff for people that are not technical or giving ability to others to build.

00:33:41: So yeah, I don't think no one is, no one still will be replaced even from like AI space or marketers, but it's just interesting to adopt this technology.

00:33:58: And if you could wish for one thing that AI Cannot do yet, but that would be really helpful for you.

00:34:08: What would it be?

00:34:10: Oh my god, what a big question.

00:34:12: Let me think I think there is still.

00:34:21: We are we have like You know our slacks and then there's Gmail and then there's email and then there's Instagram and then there are like Weird apps you have on your phone.

00:34:31: not not not everything is connected that most of the things are still not connected.

00:34:37: So it would be nice to have this ability to implement the AI through all of that.

00:34:42: So you can see in which level I am.

00:34:44: I'm ready to give it all.

00:34:45: So maybe that's something that I'm missing at the moment.

00:34:50: But probably we are getting into that direction.

00:34:54: I can see with that with chat base, even like we have a bunch of different integrations, but We are a business that is serving other businesses.

00:35:02: So our integrations are based on that businesses.

00:35:05: So we are implementing AI into their own environments.

00:35:09: And that's something that would be interesting for me to have it personally on the devices, the time using at least.

00:35:19: So basically a more neat and more seamless version of the whole MCP.

00:35:26: integration behind the scenes idea where you can ask your phone.

00:35:30: hey, do i have time on the weekend to go to this party and if yes can you please.

00:35:39: Reply on whatsapp in this group.

00:35:42: yes

00:35:42: i

00:35:43: will agree.

00:35:45: ecosystem of like i doing multiple different things or understanding at least.

00:35:50: Yeah yeah it's.

00:35:52: it's.

00:35:52: it's surprising right because i feel like this.

00:35:56: would be what you would expect from Apple.

00:35:59: They would have it integrated in the iPhone, but then we are still at the stage where Siri is still Siri and not really like...

00:36:08: Yeah, Siri is still keeping up with my calendar, not calendar, sorry, alarm.

00:36:13: So Siri put alarm for this or that, that's about it.

00:36:16: And even when you say to Siri to search something, it only gives you results from Safari, so it doesn't even read or mention or do anything with it.

00:36:24: So yeah, you're absolutely right.

00:36:26: Maybe that's the job on them to actually build this ecosystem because they already have it.

00:36:31: I'm not sure like why.

00:36:33: And I didn't dig deeper into what's stopping them to actually improving their AI.

00:36:38: Yeah,

00:36:39: let's see if we will see a new smartphone company.

00:36:44: Yeah, popping up like with the iPhone, which is like, it's funny because it's the iPhone and there's the iPhone.

00:36:50: So yeah, we'll see.

00:36:52: But Coming back to chat base, what do you think like how big can chat base become?

00:36:58: So will this be something where you are just scratching the first surface now because a lot of businesses don't even know yet what's possible in the customer support space and this can be a hundred million AR company.

00:37:13: Can you share something about your vision for that?

00:37:16: I can tell you that Yasser is definitely, he really wants to build a legacy company.

00:37:23: So we are aiming really high and we are working really hard for that.

00:37:30: I think there is possibility of reaching those levels and you have to understand that he built a company that is quite big already.

00:37:43: being bootstrapped, which is not easy.

00:37:46: And I feel like he will be all capable to build a legacy company from Chad Base.

00:37:54: So I'm here for the journey.

00:37:56: I'm here to support.

00:37:59: I'm also here for the journey.

00:38:01: And very interesting to see where this goes.

00:38:04: I always like to make this podcast very actionable for people so that they ideally can take something with them and start implementing immediately.

00:38:15: And like with the whole built-in public idea, I'd like to do a quick thought experiment with you.

00:38:23: So imagine you were advising another B to B SaaS company, probably not in the AI agent customer support space, and they are doing let's say around five million ARR maybe also bootstrapped so similar setting a little bit smaller than chat base and they're still figuring out the marketing strategy and they still don't really know where to double down.

00:38:49: What would be your top three or top two or three actionable pieces of advice for them.

00:38:58: Three channels you need, those are like paid, if you are on that level, you can already have like paid ads, SEO working properly.

00:39:06: And the third channel is the experimental channel and it's very social media based.

00:39:10: So we are talking about LinkedIn and NX.

00:39:12: You need to find two or three people in your own company that are willing to grow there and become like niche and experts and bring the company with them.

00:39:23: So those are like three things that you can do right now pretty much.

00:39:28: Very simple as well.

00:39:30: If you don't have a knowledge about paid ads, you probably have enough money to work with an agency that will do the job for you.

00:39:40: The same goes with SEO.

00:39:42: If you don't have a right setup, you will probably lose more money if you try to do it yourself.

00:39:47: So investing money in that is great.

00:39:49: And then choosing the right people to kind of be like ambassadors, influencers and employees in your company and grow with the company.

00:40:03: And all of these things, as I mentioned, will influence this growth of AI search.

00:40:07: Like AI search, you cannot concentrate and be like, you know, it's the first thing going to do.

00:40:12: list.

00:40:12: Like I'm going to become the AI search will be the first channel for our company, it's not going to happen because there are so many layers to that that you need to work on in order to get there.

00:40:25: And based on the idea of ambassadors or partners, how do you feel about affiliate programs?

00:40:31: Like it's something that companies have done since forever.

00:40:36: But is it still something that is relevant as of today?

00:40:40: We haven't done like.

00:40:41: we don't have like I think active affiliate program.

00:40:44: I think they had it before, not right now.

00:40:48: We are more leaning to ambassadors, the people that are using and talking about the product and being like our own marketers in the space.

00:40:58: So I would rather lean to people or build a community of ambassadors than affiliate programs and etc.

00:41:08: makes a lot of sense.

00:41:09: I also know a German B to B SaaS company that is bootstrapped.

00:41:14: They are in the whole funnel building, landing page building space.

00:41:19: And they also recently launched a ambassador program basically with the same reasoning you have.

00:41:25: So I feel this makes a lot of sense.

00:41:28: to just get the word out and get it spread across a big variety of channels, which will obviously be beneficial for AI search.

00:41:38: Cool.

00:41:39: Already a lot of great insights.

00:41:42: Just

00:41:42: to add to that, sorry to interrupt you, but influencer marketing, like.

00:41:46: maybe people will mix ambassadors and influencers, but influencer marketing is also very much changing.

00:41:54: You know, you can work with influencers that are really big and they have like millions followers, but those millions followers were forming the spam of like five to, you know, more years.

00:42:05: And how relevant are they today?

00:42:08: for this technology is very hard to say.

00:42:10: So that That's why ambassadors are much better approach as well compared to the influencers.

00:42:17: If you are, this is just advice, now I'm just like spiraling down, but if you are working with influencers, I would rather like My advice would be to go with smaller new influencers that are like just popping out and they are also could become ambassadors at some point, but giving them ability to talk about your product and also grow.

00:42:39: It kind of builds better partnerships as well with them.

00:42:41: So that's just putting on the side.

00:42:44: Okay, then let's go one level deeper again, because I feel it's really interesting.

00:42:50: If people think, yes, ambassador influencer makes total sense.

00:42:55: How do you compensate them properly?

00:42:57: Do you pay them proposed?

00:42:58: Do you compensate them with a like merge like free free usage of the

00:43:04: do all paid ambassador.

00:43:06: like our ambassadors are all paid.

00:43:08: So we have like very clear pricing.

00:43:10: I think you can find it everywhere on chat base, but very clear pricing.

00:43:15: And when we published the arab ambassador program, it went very viral.

00:43:18: I think I end.

00:43:20: the reason was the pricing and many people actually said that they didn't expect.

00:43:25: Because they are so used to ambassadors being paid in discounts.

00:43:29: So here's the product, here's the discount, here's the merch, or because it's not an influencer program, it's an ambassador, so it's very mixed.

00:43:36: I think in today's age, everything needs to be paid fairly.

00:43:41: And you can build really good ambassador programs and still have a good value from what the ambassador brings in.

00:43:48: And the best part, you can choose these people.

00:43:50: So I think for our ambassador program, there was like four thousand people that applied.

00:43:55: It was a lot.

00:43:57: And you can choose the right people and kind of work with them and build partnerships with them.

00:44:01: It doesn't have to be one hundred of them.

00:44:04: It can be three or five that are really good.

00:44:09: Wow.

00:44:09: Crazy, four thousand applications, and then you boiled it down to three, four

00:44:15: people.

00:44:15: Yeah, it took like two weeks to figure out how to, yeah.

00:44:22: Crazy.

00:44:23: Sandra was already very, very insightful.

00:44:26: I always like to wrap up the interviews with a surprise question that I also don't spoiler.

00:44:34: Yeah, no worries, because the question has always brought up cool unexpected ideas.

00:44:40: So I also like to ask it to you, which is what haven't we talked about that we should have talked about?

00:44:50: So what did we miss?

00:44:59: No idea.

00:45:07: I think we talked about a lot.

00:45:10: About founders and but we didn't talk about people actually working for these founders.

00:45:17: And that, you know, so if you are working in a company bootstrap company, VC back company enterprise company.

00:45:26: Get yourself into this AI.

00:45:29: madness, educate yourself about it, find ways to implement it in your own workflows.

00:45:35: You will be a very valuable key player in your company, I can promise you that.

00:45:41: Don't be afraid of, you know, if someone from customer support or sales or marketing or tech is listening to this, you know, it doesn't matter anymore in which department you are, you will probably find a use case that you can bring to your team and kind of like improve their work as well as yours.

00:46:06: Awesome.

00:46:06: I know why I ask these questions.

00:46:08: There's always something interesting that's coming.

00:46:12: Thanks so much.

00:46:13: I really enjoyed the conversation.

00:46:15: If people watching or listening feel the same and they want to follow you and they want to follow the chat-based journey along, what's the best place to follow?

00:46:30: I'm super active on X. I tend to write and talk a bunch and share too much, probably.

00:46:37: Same goes to LinkedIn, but you can also go to Chad Base website.

00:46:43: If you are planning of implementing AI, especially in customer support, I highly, highly recommend checking Chad Base.

00:46:51: If you have any questions, you can always reach out to me.

00:46:55: We will obviously put all the links in the description.

00:46:58: and I mean since chatbase has a free plan at least when we record this things might change but

00:47:04: I don't think it will change.

00:47:05: we will keep that free plan.

00:47:07: it's a good plan

00:47:08: cool that's a good that's good to hear.

00:47:10: so there's also no risk people to just check it out and yeah to experience some some AI magic for customer support.

00:47:22: Sandra, thank you so much for taking the time.

00:47:24: I really appreciate the conversation.

00:47:26: I think there was a lot in it for people to take away.

00:47:31: I wish you all the best personally and also for chat base.

00:47:35: Thank you.

00:47:36: Catch up soon.

00:47:37: Thank you so much.

00:47:38: Thank you so much for having me.

00:47:40: It was a lovely, lovely conversation.

00:47:42: I hope you didn't miss something.

00:47:45: If you did, maybe we can kind of at least write a blog or article or something like that.

00:47:50: Yeah, you can always talk about more things.

00:47:52: So yeah, you have to keep it digestible.

00:47:56: Cool.

00:47:57: So then all the best to you and see you.

00:47:59: Thank you.