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In the 25th episode of the VisualMakers Podcast, we talk to Geoff Roberts, founder and CEO of Outseta, an all-in-one platform that combines user management, CRM, email marketing and much more, almost effortlessly.
Geoff Roberts has over 12 years of experience in software-as-a-service start-ups. The product came about because he and his co-founder realized that many start-ups were facing the same problems they were. Like many other early-stage companies, they realized that they needed to implement payment processing, a CRM system, a helpdesk function and basic chat features. There are separate tools for each of these typical problems, but the costs add up, the complexity increases and the effort to maintain the systems grows. That's why they developed a solution that combines such functions and thus reduces complexity and costs for the entrepreneur. Outseta works in combination with almost any website builder. Most customers use it in combination with Webflow. The target audience of their all-in-one platform are traditional membership sites, SaaS companies and communities that want to monetize their members.
Geoff explains that Outseta did not start as a NoCode platform. The original target audience was individual developers who wanted to build a SaaS startup. In 2019, the NoCode scene took notice of Outseta and the company adapted its products to meet the needs of this community. Unlike the original target audience, who had the technical skills, Outseta now needs to ensure that their product can be used by people without those skills. For this reason, Geoff's top priority is to make the product as user-friendly and intuitive as possible.
One way to achieve this was to integrate with popular NoCode tools such as Circle, tribe.so and even Discord. More importantly, every staff member is in direct contact with the customer. Every employee answers support tickets - so the developers are also always in contact with the customers, which leads to very personal relationships.
A great example of their approach is their trial subscription. Instead of a short trial version with limited functionality, Outseta basically offers a free full version. This gives the user enough time to acquire first customers. While this leads to a longer sales cycle, it's in line with how young companies work. And how Geoff wants to work with his customers - namely by growing together.
The biggest challenge for Geoff and his team is to build 4-5 software companies at the same time with a small and independent team. All-in-one tools always have the disadvantage that they don't do anything brilliantly. They have delivered a core product and are now building more features on top of it - but not without putting the needs of the customers first. The development is based on what the customers need first. In the early days, that was authentication and payment. That was the most important reason for customers to choose Outseta. Currently, it's reporting and more customisation options for their mail service that a majority of users want. Integrated email marketing is already replacing tools like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit.
But their development philosophy is not the only thing that sets Outseta apart - although they have personally had good experiences with venture capital, they "bootstrap" their company. Geoff cites as reasons that they always want to have full control over the company. But partly because they want to remain a small team. Some of the team of 6 know each other from previous jobs and they all enjoy working in smaller teams. In contrast to their last company with 200 employees, they want to limit the number of employees to 20 - so that they are forced to automate everything and thus keep it lean and efficient.
In keeping with the spirit of the times, they work completely remotely - but years before the pandemic. Geoff sees this as an advantage, as they are forced to communicate much more clearly and not waste time in meetings. Apart from a weekly one-hour meeting, the rest of the work is asynchronous and independent.
You can find more information on Outseta's Twitter account. Geoff is also active in the Indie Hackers and Makerpad communities.
