We've got a special guest on the pod today! Louis from Sparkloop joins to share how they evolved from referrals to recommendations and sold to Kit! 🚀 Meanwhile Andrew gets Louis's take on MetaMonster's positioning struggles and they debate how and why the SaaS landscape is changing. Plus: the most detailed rom-com ranking you've ever heard, featuring hidden gems and heated debates about classics.Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Louis's Twitter: @louisnicholls_Sparkloop (newsletter recommendations platform): https://sparkloop.app/Grow your newsletter: https://www.growmynewsletter.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00:01.03AndrewHey, what's up, man?00:00:02.44LouisHey man, how's it going? It's been a while.00:00:04.43AndrewIt has. Astute listeners might notice that you are not Sean Sun, founder of Miscreants. Do you want to introduce yourself real quick?00:00:13.90LouisYeah, my name Louis. I am the co-founder of Sparkloop. I'm a huge rom-com enthusiast, which I think we're going to get to later. and00:00:23.11AndrewHell yeah.00:00:24.25LouisI guess I'm a probably more of like a reformed indie hacker. People might know me from that, but more likely nowadays, if you're a newsletter nerd in the newsletter space, you probably have come across Sparkloop or maybe seen me online or something like that.00:00:41.21AndrewReformed. Does that mean you don't identify as an indie hacker anymore?00:00:44.76LouisOh, no, no, I do. I just don't hang out in the as much in like the IndieHack bootstrap founder space anymore. my My Twitter and LinkedIn have been taken over by self-interested business interests of talking about newsletters, which is a lot more lucrative.00:00:51.89AndrewYeah.00:00:59.73LouisYeah.00:00:59.94AndrewYeah. So, okay. How long ago now did you sell Sparkloop? How long has it been?00:01:06.67LouisWe sold just over two years ago. We were bought by then ConvertKit, now Kit, which I think we...00:01:10.16AndrewOkay.00:01:14.78LouisDid we talk about this shortly before or shortly? Maybe we met shortly after, actually, I think.00:01:19.18AndrewI think both.00:01:20.17AndrewI think we, you and i met in New York. I was working for Grey Noise at the time. And you told me, i don't remember if you actually told me it was ConvertKit. I think you told me you were like considering an acquisition and that there was some stuff in the works.00:01:31.86LouisHmm.00:01:33.80AndrewAnd then I think we hung out again, last year sometime after you'd sold to ConvertKit, when I was like starting to, oh yeah, because like last December, you and i were actually talking about like maybe collabing on some stuff.00:01:48.50LouisYeah.00:01:49.80LouisYeah, yeah,00:01:50.82AndrewI quoted you some ridiculously high number to do something. I don't even remember what exactly. like I think some of the like personal brand stuff that you've started doing, was going to help with some of that maybe.00:02:01.79Louisyeah. Mm-hmm.00:02:03.39AndrewAnd then then, yeah, I think I probably talked to you to just like ask you for some startup advice at some point, which I'm now doing again under the guise of having you on as a podcast guest.00:02:15.33LouisIt's the the best way to do it. i yeah I remember we were, i think the last time we properly talked was actually not about about this startup at all. It was about the in-email charts thing, I think, was the last time we had like a proper long conversation.00:02:33.24AndrewYeah, good memory. I'm impressed that you remember what it even was. Yeah, that was ChartJuice. was I think at the time it was probably ChartKit.00:02:42.64LouisMm-hmm.00:02:43.87AndrewAnd then had a co-founder, he left, and he owned the domain, so I bought chartjuice.com. And then...00:02:54.82AndrewBuilt it, probably shouldn't have ever built it. Like, I don't think it was like ever really a great market. But I did the classic indie hacker thing where I was like, I kind of just want to build something and I wanted to learn to code again.00:03:08.23AndrewAnd Chart Juice felt very like not intimidating. It felt easy to build. And so I spent a few months building it, launched it to Crickets and then was like, all right, I need to actually build something that I think people will buy now And so, yeah.00:03:22.97LouisAlways a oh it a good idea. I wish you had, with a name like Chart Juice, it wasn't called Chart Juice at the time, but a name like Chart Juice, that deserves to be a podcast growth agency.00:03:30.27AndrewYeah.00:03:35.87LouisThere should be a podcast growth agency called Chart Juice out there.00:03:39.11AndrewHonestly, that is so true. Someone has like a, someone has a oh, it's, it's a productized service that will submit your startup to a bunch of directories.00:03:54.29AndrewAnd it's called like submit juice or something like that.00:03:54.53Louissee00:03:57.23LouisI don't like that one so much.00:03:58.44Andrewno, no.00:03:58.79LouisThat's... No. Gotta be careful with juice.00:04:01.82AndrewYeah, you do got to be careful with juice. Yeah, honestly, Podcast Curse Agency makes a ton of sense. I love that. I still like... I still have the the site up. like I have like sort of pipe dreams of you know spinning it out into a little like ah ah a little like plug-in for Webflow or you know ah maybe a kit app or something someday.00:04:28.10AndrewBut yeah, keep I have like ah ah recurring have like a use Todoist. And so there is a to-do in Todoist to...00:04:38.11Andrewto like revamp chart juice and I just keep punting it out like two months every time it comes up because I'm like this is not the best use of my time right now00:04:47.20LouisYeah, I know that feeling. I know that00:04:49.12AndrewYeah. So what what has happened in the last like year? what's What's life like at Spark Loop? and Last we talked, you were pretty happy with the acquisition. like Things were going pretty well. And you all were really running independently, for the most part, under Kit.00:05:06.00AndrewI imagine helping them build their kind of internal network and powering that, I would imagine. but then like really just sort of focus, you still running the business as the business is what I remember.00:05:21.42LouisYeah, spot on. It's been a very unusual acquisition, I would say, in that we have kept running separately from Kit for the most part. We do work with them very closely behind the scenes on overlapping tech that we have.00:05:33.29AndrewYeah.00:05:33.63Louislike We power their paid recommendations network. They're much bigger company than we are, of course.00:05:38.38AndrewMm-hmm.00:05:38.68LouisBut we actually have we function as a sepa...

Ver todos los episodios