The Business of WordPress  ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: The Business of WordPress - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [wordpress-business, entrepreneurship, startup-advice] author: WordCamp Europe source: YouTube reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE date created: 2024-12-28 15:30 --- # 🏷️ Title: The Business of WordPress - Scaling Entrepreneurial Journeys ## 🧰 Action Inbox - [H1] Validate product ideas early with landing pages and user feedback — 15:45 #validation #startup - [H2] Develop thick skin for handling "no" responses during fundraising — 25:30 #fundraising #resilience - [H3] Find your unique angle in existing markets rather than waiting for perfect timing — 18:20 #positioning #action ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - [WordCamp Europe](https://europe.wordcamp.org/) - [Brainstorm Force](https://brainstormforce.com/) ## 📝 Summary - **What happened**: Panel discussion featuring three successful WordPress entrepreneurs sharing insights on scaling businesses from agencies to product companies - **Why it matters**: Provides practical advice for WordPress community members looking to build sustainable businesses and products - **Key stakeholders**: WordPress entrepreneurs, agency owners, product developers, female founders - **Risks and tradeoffs**: Transitioning from agency work requires longer paths to revenue, different skill sets, and significant grit - **Bottom line**: Success requires taking action early, validating ideas with real users, and maintaining optimistic perseverance through challenges ## 📖 Main Content The session brought together three WordPress business leaders: Sujay Pawar (CEO of Brainstorm Force, creators of Astra theme), Miriam Schwab (Head of WordPress Relations at Elementor, former founder of Strattic), and Leslie Sims (co-founder of Newsletter Glue). Each founder shared their journey from running digital agencies to creating successful WordPress products. Key themes emerged around the entrepreneurial journey: the importance of taking action over endless planning, the need for early validation through user feedback and payment, and the reality that product businesses require different skills than service businesses. The discussion also addressed specific challenges for female founders, including funding disparities and the need for stronger support networks. All three speakers emphasized that success comes from solving real problems for users, maintaining simplicity in products, and building strong company values that guide decision-making during growth phases. ## 🗒️ Notes #### ⏱️ [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=0) — Introduction to WordPress Business Panel - Key idea: Panel aims to inspire confidence in WordPress entrepreneurship - Evidence: "Goals are to think about scaling WordPress business and enable longevity in creative community" #### ⏱️ [02:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=135) — Sujay Pawar's Brainstorm Force Journey - Key idea: Started from bedroom as teenager with no experience or funds - Evidence: "Started 15 years ago as 16-17 year old trying to make side income on Elance, now power 5 million websites with 150+ distributed team" #### ⏱️ [04:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=270) — Miriam Schwab's WordPress Evolution - Key idea: WordPress enabled flexible work as mother of four, led to 19-year journey - Evidence: "Started after fourth kid was born, was one of first in Israel to offer WordPress as business solution when it was considered just for hobby blogs" #### ⏱️ [06:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=405) — Leslie Sims' Newsletter Glue Origin - Key idea: Agency burnout led to product focus, newsletter gap inspired plugin - Evidence: "Started feeling burnt out with clients, wanted Substack for WordPress, noticed no plugins allowed easy newsletter creation from WordPress posts" #### ⏱️ [08:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=480) — The Grit Required for Startup Success - Key idea: Bootstrapping requires learning everything from scratch with language barriers - Evidence: "Did not speak English well, had to learn hiring, business registration, marketing - every single thing along the way" #### ⏱️ [10:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=630) — Finding Your Favorite Job Philosophy - Key idea: Motivation comes from enjoying the work rather than just financial goals - Evidence: "Always considered journey as finding favorite job, each job liked more than previous, current job is best so far" #### ⏱️ [12:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=735) — Illogical Optimism and Belief in Value - Key idea: Founders need optimism combined with belief that world needs their solution - Evidence: "Combination of illogical optimism with belief industry needs what you're building, pay attention to positive feedback like 'where have you been all my life'" #### ⏱️ [14:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=885) — Core Values Driving Business Success - Key idea: Courage to take action, people-first policies, and simplicity principles - Evidence: "Courage to take action rather than endless learning, people first means building workplace where I would want to work, simplicity keeps things easy long-term" #### ⏱️ [17:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=1020) — Early Validation Strategies - Key idea: Test market interest before building through landing pages and user feedback - Evidence: "Created landing page for Strattic showing what it would do, generated nice list of interested people we could contact when actually had product" #### ⏱️ [19:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=1170) — Finding Your Market Angle - Key idea: Don't wait for perfect idea, find small angle in existing markets - Evidence: "Have product idea identifying market demand, find angle through which your product makes difference, can be small angle to find your niche" #### ⏱️ [21:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=1260) — The $100 Challenge - Key idea: Make first $100 in one month regardless of product to prove concept - Evidence: "Give yourself one month to make $100, doesn't matter what it is, biggest difference between someone who wants to be founder and someone who does it" #### ⏱️ [23:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=1395) — Female Founder Funding Challenges - Key idea: Only 2% of venture capital goes to female founders, situation worsened during COVID - Evidence: "Investors meet male founders, feel comfortable investing in male founders, creates loop where women at disadvantage" #### ⏱️ [25:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=1545) — Support Networks and Co-founder Benefits - Key idea: Having co-founders and support groups crucial for female founders - Evidence: "Startups with two co-founders have higher chance of raising funding, female founder with male co-founder has higher statistical chance" #### ⏱️ [27:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE?t=1650) — Handling Rejection in Fundraising - Key idea: Develop thick skin for "no" responses, it's a numbers game - Evidence: "Lots of nos before you get to yes, investors invest based on chemistry, area of interest, could even be because it's Tuesday" ## 📚 References - [Brainstorm Force Products](https://brainstormforce.com/) - [Astra Theme](https://wpastra.com/) - [Newsletter Glue](https://newsletterglue.com/) - [Strattic Static Publishing](https://www.strattic.com/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Successful WordPress entrepreneurs emphasize taking action over endless planning, as learning happens through doing rather than studying - Product businesses require different skills than agencies - particularly marketing, user validation, and longer-term revenue strategies - Company values like courage, people-first policies, and simplicity should guide decision-making throughout growth phases - Female founders face additional challenges in fundraising but can succeed through support networks, co-founder partnerships, and persistence ## 📰 Newsletter **WordPress Business Builders: From Agency to Product Success** Three WordPress leaders shared game-changing insights on scaling from service to product businesses at WordCamp Europe. The key takeaway? Stop planning and start doing. **Take Action Now**: Sujay Pawar built Brainstorm Force (Astra theme) from his bedroom as a teenager with no English skills or funding - now powering 5 million websites. His advice: "Courage to take action rather than endless learning." **Validate Early**: Before building Strattic, Miriam Schwab created a simple landing page describing the concept. The interest generated became her initial customer base when the product launched. **The $100 Test**: Newsletter Glue's Leslie Sims recommends giving yourself one month to make $100 with any product. "That's the biggest difference between someone who wants to be a founder and someone who actually does it." **Female Founder Reality**: Despite challenges (only 2% of VC funding goes to women), success comes through support networks, strategic co-founder partnerships, and developing thick skin for rejection. **Resources**: [Learn WordPress](https://learn.wordpress.org/), [Developer Docs](https://developer.wordpress.org/), [WP-CLI](https://wp-cli.org/) ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Developer advocacy: Create case studies of successful WordPress product businesses - Education: Develop workshop curriculum on transitioning from service to product business - Community management: Facilitate female founder support groups and mentorship programs #### WordPress - Community: Create entrepreneur track at WordCamps with practical business workshops - Training: Develop business skills curriculum complementing technical training - Marketing: Highlight diverse founder success stories across WordPress.org properties #### Community - Maintainers: Support plugin/theme developers transitioning to sustainable business models - Contributors: Create pathways from contributor to entrepreneur within ecosystem - Ecosystem: Foster cross-project collaboration on business development resources ## 🧪 Hypotheses - WordPress entrepreneurs who validate ideas through landing pages before building have higher success rates - Service-to-product transitions succeed more when founders develop marketing skills alongside technical abilities - Female founders in WordPress community face similar funding disparities as broader tech industry - Early monetization strategies correlate with long-term business sustainability in WordPress ecosystem ### 📊 Methodology - Survey WordPress product founders on validation techniques and success metrics - Analyze funding patterns and support networks among WordPress female entrepreneurs - Track conversion rates from agency to product business models in WordPress ecosystem ### ❓ Questions - How can the WordPress community better support female founders beyond awareness? - What specific validation techniques work best for WordPress products versus SaaS? - How do successful WordPress entrepreneurs balance simplicity with competitive features? ### 🔮 Future Research - Longitudinal study of WordPress entrepreneur success factors across different business models - Analysis of effective mentorship programs for transitioning agency owners - Investigation of community support systems that enable sustainable WordPress businesses ### 💡 Implications - **Practice**: WordPress agencies should develop validation processes before building products - **Policy**: Community programs need specific tracks supporting entrepreneurship and business skills - **Education**: Technical training should include business development and marketing components - **Funding**: WordPress ecosystem needs more targeted support for underrepresented founder groups ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment Reading level estimate: 12th Grade (Flesch-Kincaid) #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: Speaker slides and presentation format - Improve: Business model diagrams, funding flow charts, growth timeline visuals #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: Full video discussion with multiple speaker perspectives - Improve: Podcast version with extended Q&A segments #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: Clear definitions of business terms, personal story analogies - Improve: Glossary of entrepreneurship terms, comparison frameworks #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: Real-world business examples and case studies - Improve: Interactive business plan templates, validation checklists #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: Clear progression from problem to solution in business journeys - Improve: Decision trees for business model selection, metrics frameworks #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: Panel discussion format encouraging multiple perspectives - Improve: Follow-up community discussions, peer mentorship programs #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: Individual founder stories and personal reflection points - Improve: Self-assessment tools, private journaling prompts #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: Organic business growth analogies and ecosystem thinking - Improve: WordPress ecosystem mapping, sustainable business model frameworks ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: Video has structured presentation format - Improve: Provide detailed transcript with speaker identification and timestamps #### Keyboard navigation - Present: Standard YouTube player controls - Improve: Chapter navigation for different discussion topics #### Contrast and readability - Present: Clear video quality with readable slides - Improve: High-contrast transcript version available #### Media and captions - Present: Auto-generated captions available - Improve: Professional captions with speaker identification and technical term spelling ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: International speakers from Israel, India, and North America - Improve: Include entrepreneurs from additional global WordPress communities #### Inclusive language - Present: Business terminology explained in accessible terms - Improve: Avoid assuming prior business knowledge, define all entrepreneurship jargon #### Neurodiversity support - Present: Structured panel format with clear speaker transitions - Improve: Visual agenda and topic summaries for easier following #### Representation - Present: Equal speaking time for male and female founders - Improve: Include entrepreneurs from different backgrounds and business scales #### Psychological safety - Present: Honest discussion of challenges and failures - Improve: Explicit acknowledgment of different privilege levels affecting entrepreneurship ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - Deductive strength: Clear progression from specific business examples to general principles - Inductive strength: Multiple founder stories support broader entrepreneurship conclusions - Causal reasoning: Links between actions (validation, persistence) and outcomes (business success) - Analogical strength: Effective use of journey metaphors and growth comparisons #### Fallacies - Survivorship bias: Panel only includes successful founders, may not represent typical experience - Hasty generalization: Small sample size of three founders used to make broader industry claims #### Tone of voice - Overall tone: Encouraging and practical, balancing optimism with realistic challenge acknowledgment ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - Deny: No significant denial patterns observed - Attack: No attacks on accusers present - Reverse victim/offender: Discussion acknowledges systemic challenges facing female founders without reversing responsibility - Emotional cues and rhetoric: Appropriately supportive tone when discussing gender disparities in funding ## 🎯 Conclusion The WordPress business ecosystem thrives when entrepreneurs move from planning to action, validate early through real user feedback, and maintain optimistic persistence through inevitable challenges. Success requires developing business skills alongside technical abilities, with particular attention needed for supporting underrepresented founders through systemic barriers. The path from agency to product business demands patience for longer revenue cycles but offers greater scalability and impact potential within the WordPress community. ## 🧱 Refactor Appendix ### 📚 Literature Split Pad Purpose - Document Tags: [[startup]] [[resilience]] [[validation]] [[fundraising]] [[positioning]] - Summary: The Business of WordPress - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ReXrq9DE hello and welcome to the third keynote the business of Wordpress I'm James Hall director of partner account management in Amia for WP engine and I'm super excited to chare a Powerhouse panel which will bring together WordPress Community leaders from around the world for WordPress to continue to grow we need to continue to give people confidence to do more with WordPress itself to be inspired to keep moving along their respective Journeys building their businesses and there's probably no better way than to learn from those that have turned smart entrepreneurial ideas into thriving businesses and importantly what is their advice on how you can go about activating yours so the goals the key learnings the takeaways in which we want you to to leave with after this session is to think about how you can go about scaling your WordPress business to think about how you can enable yourself and your business to know what to look out for because the longevity in the creative Community is no mean fit so if you have questions along the way please do pop them into the chat and we'll answer them as we go um I'll shortly be introducing our speakers um you'll be interested to know that each of our speakers has actually founded their own digital agencies um and through through the various different um iterations of their Journeys through the WordPress economy and ecosystem they've spun off into actually productizing um these these products into into various different businesses as they go I'm going to introduce firstly suj po who is the CEO and co-founder of brainstorm Force um suj can you give us a little bit of an overview of what your business offers to the WordPress community and where did it all begin sure hey hey all uh thank you for having me uh it's pleasure to be here so my name is sujay I am CEO and co-founder of company called brainstorm Force we are better known for our products rather than name of our company uh some of our products are Astra theme Spectra Builder ultimate adance for various page Builders zip WP card fls and few others uh collectively through our products we power about 5 million websites uh we are a distributed company uh roughly 150 160 people uh working from different 21 odd countries so I started BR stor Force back in 2019 uh it's been now 15 years so I started out of my bedroom uh when yeah I mean I was just freelancing having fun trying to make some money uh side income so that's how it all started uh uh I was like 16 17 year old kid back then just trying to make some money make some side income uh I was trying to be on some projects on up work back then it was called Elance so that's how it started and slowly now it became into what we are today uh yeah we uh make WordPress products SAS products and trying to help people build their websites uh through our uh Solutions s that's Brett it thank you very much for that Insight H we'll come back with with clever questions uh secondly I'd like to introduce Miram Schwab who today is the the head of Wordpress relations at Elemental but Miriam tell us a little bit about your journey because it didn't it didn't start here right you've had a few businesses uh since you you joined into the WordPress uh ecosystem so give us a little run through of those and really what was your motivation to start out okay so um I actually started out uh with WordPress um it was like 17 years ago or something actually no I know exactly how long it was how long ago it was because I started right after I gave birth to my fourth kid and she's now 19 so it was 19 years ago um after she was born I decided that um having like a regular day job didn't work for me as a mother of four small children and I was looking for more flexibility and um I always you know was very interested in in technology in general so uh I started looking into to different ways to build websites came across WordPress really fell in love with it uh the open source nature of it the flexibility the extensibility and um I started to offer it as a service you know I offered more flexibility I could do it from home um and I was also one of the first people actually in Israel to offer WordPress as like a Business Solution at the time it was still considered just like for hobby blogs and that kind of thing and um slowly but surely um you know uh through my work through people recommending me and then eventually you know it expanded to a team became an agency and uh we worked with a lot of you know top tech companies and a lot of uh large nonprofits building them custom WordPress Solutions uh I did that for 13 years and really loved you know every almost every aspect of it not every aspect when you're running a business you have to do a lot of things you don't love but um I loved the creativity and that you're always learning and I love the community I started to fly and speak at uh the Regional word camps I spoke at the first word Camp Europe and um you know subsequently at others um and uh just it was it was just a really exciting journey and then um I always had ideas for like products but between being a mom and since then um I had three more kids so I have seven kids uh and running a business I realized that um you know there's only so much you can do so I better not try to also do a side project of a product but uh after my my seventh kid like she was a whopping three years old which is not very old I came up with the idea for stratic um and I was like okay the timing is good first of all I think the market really needs it to solve like a lot of the issues around where press secur security issues and uh performance and scaling um and also like personally I was in a like a place where I could actually focus on it so I ended up selling my agency also good timing thank God and started working on stratic and uh I we I approached it as a from a startup persp perspective so was a startup model uh you know with fundraising from VCS and all of that along with my co-founder Josh Lawrence and it was quite the journey uh very interesting and exciting learned a ton which was also great and um yeah and we were acquired by Elementor about a year and a half ago and since then I've been here so that's like more or less my journey brilliant Miriam thank you for that I feel like there's a keynote session there in itself in terms of how' you go about managing your life with seven children that's impr actually I'm speaking at word Camp Asia and the topic is How I build my workplace career while raising seven children I'm not kidding it's the first time I'm speaking about it so yeah so come he my talk yes well are we certainly listening to that that that sounds like it's gonna be thrilling so uh and and and our final speaker and panelist Leslie Sims who is the co-founder of newsletter glue um Leslie thank you for joining us also and could you give us a brief insight into what newsletter glue is as a plug-in um and uh also me help us understand what was the spark for you uh in terms of switching from running your digital agency to actually deciding to launch uh your your your plug-in business um yeah thanks happy to be here for for me I guess so I was running my digital agency and it was going pretty well but I started to feel burnt out just um having lots of clients and dealing with them um on a day-to-day basis and decided to try my hand at um software products instead and I knew that uh a WordPress plugin would be a lot easier than a SAS um just because I was already familiar with WordPress we made WordPress websites for our clients and so forth um and along that time I also wanted to start a newsletter um and substack was getting really popular and I had this idea to do like a substack for WordPress um and notice there wasn't any plugins that allowed me to easily do that and so that was the spark for the idea for new glue so that the original idea was just you know connect nail chimp to Wordpress and allow me to write post inside of Wordpress kind of like a Blog and send that out as newsletters um and that's basically kind of what it does it's an email builder for WordPress and now we connect to far more than mimp um I think we're at 13 or 14 email service providers now and I quickly realized also that um instead of offering newsletter glue to little bloggers like myself um our best target market is actually medium to large Publishers um who you know they might send multiple newsletters a day to their local news um newspaper or like you know their local community um and yeah that's kind of who we serve now that's brilliant thank you very much and as I say thank you all for being here um this is going to be a super session um I want to talk a little bit about um a special kind of grit and resilience that's required really in order to to get a startup going you know suj you're sitting there with um your product um being used on on three million websites um the 1500 new sites are using your products every single day today tell us about some of the grit that you needed in order to get to that place well um well certainly I mean uh I can uh start uh I mean talking about it uh so I started like about 15 years ago uh I at that time like uh I did not have any funds I completely bootstrapped this business through my own funds uh additionally there was a language barrier for me because I did not speak English well at that time and then uh yeah I did not have any marketing skills uh only thing that I had was a little bit of a desire to build something so I do not know how to hire people how to build a business how to register a business and actually I I did not even know like how to build a website all I knew that was like there are uh cmss like WordPress uh jumla and I could use those to build a website so that's how I started and that's where the challenge was right like I just knew almost nothing so I had to learn along the way and at the same time uh try to provide services to people so I started offering very small services to people such as like logo design and slowly people started asking hey can you build us a website as well so I had to like you know learn uh building a website and go like that slowly I started like you know when I uh started getting more and more clients I knew that I need more help so I had to learn how to hire people how to train them how to get work done with the people how to uh speak to the clients how to you know manage projects and soon enough when uh we realize like hey there are like you know we are building websites we are doing very well with it but there are WordPress products but they are not as good as we could make them so we had to learn how to build products so Building Products was very good but then we did not know how to Market those products because we could just build the products and no one would use them so we had to learn marketing uh so that was the challenge so along the way like I came from no experience at all of building the product so every step step of the way we have to learn every single thing so that was the biggest challenge for me so now at this time like we are like about 150 160 people so my role is making sure right people are at right place giving right responsibilties to right people so that's a challenge in it uh its own uh we have to I have to understand like who are the right people for the right job uh what are the requirements of the business how we can fulfill those requirements and when we have new ideas how we can get those ideas to the market as fast as possible so there are multiple different challenges at multiple different levels uh and it has been a fun R yeah absolutely and I think that's a really interesting point that you talk about there is as you go to more of a productized business it comes with more challenges more hurdles more things to think about um Leslie I saw that you wrote um uh or you had a presentation um last year and you talked about when you run an agency it was it was a quick way to get money you need a few clients but as you learn to productize you need multiple clients in order to do so um the the path to money takes a little bit longer and so you do need that grit there right and and and you have to learn tools and uh skills like marketing and how to productize your business uh tell us a little bit more about that Journey for you um from the agency to running a product well I guess the skills in which you've had to adopt along the way and and how do you keep yourself motivated to say like hey I can do this um I think the the motivation is actually just from enjoying myself so um I I I guess it's a little bit unorthodox but I've kind of always considered my journey as one of finding my favorite job and so um over time I've done a lot of different things and tried a lot of different things um in a quest to find um jobs that I like and so as a result I've like liked each job more and more um and my current job is the one that I like the best so far uh so hope you I'll I'll you know keep doing this for a long time um yeah so I guess that's that's the motivation and in terms of gr you know it's it comes from a similar place if you're enjoying yourself then the challenges are interesting the novel they they're definitely still challenges and it's um painful and you know dreary I think that's something that no one really talks about all that much like it's not always you know your your site is getting dsed and you're freaking out and there's 10 alarm bells ringing like a lot of the time it's just kind of jewelry chipping away it's boring um you're doing stuff that you don't really like you're doing admin work accounting writing a blog post editing a blog post things like that um and I think for me like that's really the the kind of struggle or where the grit comes in like just committing to to keep chipping away um and that's also kind of like a saying or a phrase that I tell myself a lot like um even when it feels like there aren't Giant Steps being made as long as I keep tripping away um things you know things will go well and things will keep on moving and that's like really all I'm after yeah got to keep going right I could I could certainly understand that um Miriam how what your take on on Gris um I think that as a Founder uh you it's not that you need to but I think it's probably um you would find similar characteristics among a lot of Founders which is a combination of uh somewhat illogical optimism which isn't always connected to reality but you are sure that uh you know things are going to work out uh fine even though it's a roller coaster so there's a lot of uh being dsed not a lot like you're you're right lesie it's not all the time but but it's always possible and often it does happen those kinds of disasters or crises um but you just have this ological optimism that it's going to work out and then combined with a belief that the world or the industry needs what you're building that you are fing filling a like a a hole in the industry that no one else is currently filling at least not in the way that you are and that you're bringing value to users to your clients your customers and um and that that it really is necessary and it really brings value and one of the ways to keep on believing that is to pay close attention to the positive feedback that you get it doesn't mean you ignore the negative feedback that you get that's super important I always saw that as um just constructive criticism which can help us do better so definitely listen strongly to that um but also pay attention and don't ignore when people are telling you that what you're building is like amazing for them and it's solving all their problems like with stratic people would be like oh my goodness where have you been all my life like those kinds of things then that like that's very motivating to to keep going so it's a combination of a ridiculous optimism with belief that the the world needs what you're building and that and that you're bringing value right like it like some some Founders are motivated by the potential Financial benefit of it I I don't know how long that can that can motivate someone but seeing that you're like really helping people do something better um and bringing value to their lives to their work helping them do things better um that's super motivating and then combine that with perseverance which is like okay so we're at the part of the roller coaster ride where we're like heading downhill and it's terrifying but we keep going and and kind of like what lesie said like you keep chipping away sometimes you take big steps but a lot the time you're taking small steps as long as you're like chipping away and like getting back to that uphill and like and you see that that's what's happening then um you just you just keep going like you just you just keep doing it so it's I think it's optimism um you know belief it's needed and perseverance yeah yeah fantastic suj I don't know about you but um I found like a lot of the points there that Leslie and uh Miriam had actually resonated with the core values on your website um at at brainstorm Force so you talk about courage um never settle people first have fun right you got to make sure that you enjoy the journey um keeping things simple and uh and empathy so to to tell me about about those values and how they've really helped you along the way I mean the values are really who we are so when we decided to write those values we I mean thought about like what made us who we are and uh we reflected on our Journey so courage first of all so courage to do things right like uh a lot of people in my opinion think a lot than uh taking action so in our case like I said we did not have any experience like I myself did not have any experience but I had the courage to take the step and just do things right so that's one of the thing that I always tell people like hey you should have a courage to take a step and make things happen take action so even sometimes like you know uh some people uh would uh uh try to learn as much as possible before taking any action so that's the first step uh about like you know just take action like of course you it it doesn't mean that you shouldn't study or you shouldn't learn but of course like doing is better than like you know uh keep learning keep studying so that's the first part about the courage it's very very important uh secondly like people first so like Leslie said which resonated me uh with me a lot was like uh finding like the job that you want to do so that's how like we build our company as well I all the time like while building the policies or trying to build the workplace we always think like hey is this something that where I would like to work and that's how we try to build our like business create policies or create things for people Simplicity is very important uh in everything like simple is always better uh simple always keeps things uh easy in the long run so sometimes it's very like uh attempting to build like very complex things like add more features but you always think like whether uh that feature is really needed or not not needed how we can make things simple rather than making complicated even though that additional feature can probably like uh make give us a competitive Advantage but in the long run that probably can cause more complexities and problems for users so Simplicity is very important as well so yeah these are the like top three values that we always uh keep in mind when building our business building our products absolutely Leslie what would you say to that in terms of those top three things and simplicity being sort of one that sort of stood out for me yeah I mean it's um like suj like you know everyone knows asra theme right so it's really cool to kind of hear from someone who has built such you know one of the one of if not the most popular theme in in WordPress and kind of like here your fundament or your approach to building and like how you value simplicity so you know I would love to hear like a whole talk on you just explaining how you build use the concept of Simplicity to build or even not build teaches into your themes and plugins I like how Leslie um you've taken an approach to obviously if you're trying to get involved in the community uh sometimes it helps to have a bit of a brand um and and really sort of get a name out there for yourself um tell us a little bit about Leslie pizza and the sort of where that's come from uh in ter terms of a name of convention and that's and how what was what you said in the blog post was quite a you know a you know a little sort of silly idea which you know and often they become some of the the things that actually can really help drive your business forward and and how has that really helped you in that sense in terms of having a brand identity um I would to say it's helped me but it's just kind of a fun thing that people remember I think a lot of people don't really even know my actual last name or surname they just kind of think of me as the pizza that's kind ofun pizza right it's just part of associations who does pizza it's a you know it's just positive associations so yeah exactly yeah there there's so many um Top Line domains tlds that people really should you know like there's like Miram coffee I'm sure is available um you know suj do Whale or something like all these um tlds which are available and they're really fun um so I have to often stop myself from buying more Miram if you had to give one piece of advice um to to to new starters what would what would that be um okay uh I guess um validate your idea uh early on to some extent and that doesn't mean like selling tons of it or I don't know what but like um it kind of goes back to what I was saying in the beginning about people giving you positive feedback of what you're doing so but it it's like a little bit more specific um like for example when I when I wanted to start exploring whether stratic stratic is a static publishing platform for WordPress so it generates an exact replica of this original WordPress site but there's no underlying server and that solves security performance scaling issues um it's like the most resilient type of website practically that you can have um so when I wanted to see if this is something that would resonate with people I uh I just created a landing page and I was like we're going to build stratic and this is what it's going to do and if you want to like get Early Access or learn more fill in this form and then now that's that's not a high level of commitment right like it's it's just showing interest but um it generated like a nice amount of people in the list that we could then go back to when we actually had something and also it was an indication of interest that you know it say it meant something to people um that's just like one example that was like super early on um and then the next level of validation is actually getting people to pay you for it and again it doesn't have to be like on a big scale but that that's one of the highest levels of commitment when someone actually opens their wallet and gives you their money for your thing so you want to start doing that early on as well like to some extent um and you also want I I think you want to get people using your your product also pretty early on even if it kind of sucks um because that helps you get like real user feedback and and starts that customer feedback loop which I think is critical for building a good product where you're constantly like getting real feedback from your customers and then like iterating your product based on that to a certain extent right you need to know when to say no or like this is only for them or whatever you know always filtering but um having people actually using it teaches you a lot it teaches you a lot like if you're building a SAS product like uh stratic um it teaches you a lot in terms of even just like the architecture of your product uh what challenges it's going to face What walls you're going to hit in terms of let's say scaling right so our static version of the site scale basically infinitely but we have a whole other side of our product which is based in you know it's Cloud servers and um where are we going to hit kind of you know issues with the cloud or limits or like need to to extend things um and if you do that early on then you can get things in place properly for when like you really start to scale so um even though it's scary don't wait too long uh to get people like in the door using your thing and in the beginning in my opinion you get people in the door not to make money even though they're paying you right so like don't think about like also pricing oh my gosh pricing is hard to figure out it's like a science and it's like an ongoing learning experience but um the point is to show that people will actually pay you and the point is not necessarily to like actually be like being like Oh what's our cogs you know um on this and are they paying no it's payment and usage so that you can improve the product learn about pricing and fix all of that going forward it's it's always an intergrative process and the earlier you start it the better it can be you know and the more mature it can be uh ideally faster so I guess well that wasn't one piece of advice but basically get going earlier with people in the loop lots of goodness there to take away um suj when you when you think about mentoring that you've been doing to to to new new new budding entrepreneurs uh what tips do you offer well uh firstly which I already said like just take action I know a lot of people who want to start businesses they have good ideas and they I mean are waiting for the right time or waiting for the right idea so I the one of the advis that I always like to give just take action and just do it right the secondly I would say um find the angle for your idea so an example would be like you have a product idea uh try to like uh have a product which is uh identifying the market demand meaning there could be already some products and you have to find some sort of angle through which your product can make a little bit of a difference it can be small small angle through which you can like you know uh find your Niche that's all basically I'm trying to say and thirdly uh have the monetization strategy in the place early on so that way a lot of times in the WordPress Community like WordPress Community is filled of like Builders developers designers uh so you know I mean we we are very good at building the products but where things don't go well is we don't have the modation strategy in place a lot of times so that the third tip I would say like uh Builders need to have in place like the monation strategy how they can how they are going to monetize the product actually how they are going to make the users open the wallet uh and buy the product so yeah Leslie knowing what you know now about your journey about launching um newsletter glue Place yourself back at the start of that Journey what recommendations would you give to yourself um so I'm going to steal from Miriam and sunj um and just you know I I think take action is the number one tip like when I talk to friends who want to start businesses um like I I I have I have one friend in particular who I think I spoke with him for over two years and he's been like like you know wanting to start wanting to do this and he's he like come to me with this idea come to me with that idea and I told him you know event like give yourself one month to make a $100 it doesn't matter what it is how you do it but just one month $100 um figure something out and bring it to the market um and he didn't do it and you know that that to me is kind of the biggest difference between someone who who wants to wants to be a Founder an entrepreneur business person and someone who actually does it you know like like I told my friend it really doesn't matter what it is you sell it could be cups it could be software it could be you know phone cases right that you have to make your first $100 before you like that's you know step number one um so I think that's kind of the thing that I would tell anyone who wants to start um you know just take build something and take it to the market and get someone to pay for it absolutely now in the month of March we've uh We've celebrated International women's day and in Miriam if I'm right in saying a couple years ago you you actually wrote a a blog post um around around the day and you called out a stat in particular really jumped out to me that only uh 2% of um venture capital in the US in 2021 was actually secured by female entrepreneurs but you said the future was bright there was there was lots of potential um and and and to that point another three years on what advice are you offering to young female entrepreneurs so I I think I wrote that post before covid and unfortunately I think that the situation for female Founders got worse uh from that perspective over covid so my optimism might not have played out the way I would have wanted to see it play out um and so we still see you know that the vast major like the majority of Founders are particularly in venture-backed or startup based uh companies they men um I think that from the start women are uh at a disadvantage from the standpoint from the perspective of raising funding raising funding is um you know kind of the lifeblood of of any startup and the investor it's like a a fe a loop that just keeps feeding itself which is that the investors meet a lot of male Founders feel comfortable investing in male Founders and you know especially when it's an early stage startup what you're essentially investing in is the team or the people and if someone walks in the door who doesn't quite fit the mold or the template that you're used to then it's going to be much harder for you to uh decide to take take the risk which is it's already a high risk to invest in that founder who's not like your typical founder that and I think all of this is subconscious but um because of that kind of loop women are at a disadvantage so Studies have shown that if a a female founder so first of all startups with two co-founders have a higher chance of raising funding in general men or women so have a co-founder ALS by the way I could never I you know I talked about like perseverance and optimism but like having a very supportive uh co-founder who's with there with you on this journey um like mine and stratic uh my co-founder Josh Lawrence it it gives you you can both kind of hold each other up even through the hard times and keep going um also like we complimented each other in many ways um so you know I brought my strength he brought his strengths and that really helped and I think uh that's one of the reasons why uh investors prefer to see uh companies led by Co by two people uh because you you bring two perspectives you have two people kind of pulling the ship along as opposed to one if you're a female founder then uh you have a higher chance of raising funding if you have a male co-founder that's just the statistics so you know don't pick your co-founder because of their gender like um Josh and I worked amazingly together and uh you know we were a great match from that but uh you know it happens to be that that also helps uh helps you raise funding um which is not all why I was working with Josh but I'm just saying that's that's statistics um aside aside from that um just for all startup Founders like you you have to kind of develop a very thick skin for being able to handle no uh when you're raising funding it's a it's a numbers game in many ways where you have to just keep meeting with investors and meeting and meeting and meeting which also helps you by the way improve your pitch and improve how you're presenting your company and all this kind of stuff but it's just going to be lots of NOS before you get to yes and that can be really hard and sometimes even devastating because you know it's it's just hard to hear like no or or you know essentially it sounds like you're they're saying your idea is bad which isn't true by the way often uh investors invest or don't invest based on chemistry or just you know uh area of interest and it could even be because it's like a Tuesday and what I I'm like being extreme when I say that but it could be because they woke up that morning and read an article about static technologies that Inspire them and you happen to walk in the door like that's that's what it's like so um but you need like a very thick skin and that's for all founders um try to find a support group so I was in um a number of like online communities and also inperson communities for female Founders um which was really helpful because you know we all tend up ended up going through many of the same things and we can kind of hold each other up give each other advice um refer each other to investors who were more uh open to investing in female Founders and things like that um so it's it's hard you have to prove yourself more like you have to be better all I think that's probably how it is for women like in almost whatever we're doing like professionally um you you have to be like better more excellent than the men that are like in your peers um in order to be taken seriously and uh and that's hard it's a it's an uphill battle but but if you like believe in it and you're motivated and you know this is the thing that you think you should need to do then just keep powering away one thing at a time one person at a time get people on your kind of in your Camp you know supporting you our round actually came together um we our seed round was about $6 million and it was thanks to a woman friend of mine who uh she saw me trying to raise fing and she really believed in me and she like connected me with um Eric Reese the author of the startup the like that's like the startup Bible and he was like he was excited he invested and then it kind of that was like part of what led it all to come together so it was thanks to like a woman supporting me but um yeah it's it's hard just believe in yourselves have people around you who believe in you and just keep going and you can do it you can do it but it's lot work well Leslie suj Mar it's been nothing short of a pleasure thank you for your insights thank you thanks for having us thanks 31 thanks, The Business of WordPress, YouTube, 01ka7g77c3y1dzbkfy2xt1za49.