316: Marybeth Alexander — Knowledgebase Secrets
Download MP3Welcome to the Bootstrap Founder. Today, I'm talking to Marybeth Alexander. She is running KnowledgeOwl, a knowledge based business. And today, she will share OWL her knowledge with you. This episode is sponsored by acquire.com, more on that later.
Arvid:Now let's talk about customer service, customer success, building knowledge bases, internal, external, what AI has to do with this, and what a sustainable calm business can do for you. Here's Marybeth. Marybeth, you're the chief executive owl at Knowledge Owl, and I love this phrase. It's and you have a software business that helps your customers help their customers. Also love that.
Arvid:In the in the hacker world, in the hackers often have this love hate relationship with customer service, or at least they start out with it because it's one of those many things that that are quite overwhelming that a founder has to do yet one more thing, deal with customers. Maybe let's dive into this. What kind of tools do we have as founders, as solopreneurs, as people just starting out to make customer service a joyful and impactful part of our founder journey?
Marybeth:Well, I come from a support background, so I'm gonna be heavily biased in this because I love helping people and I love helping customers. And I but as a business owner, I think it's just good business to help your customers and give them great service. So the number one thing I I think I would say as like a tool is like to make it fun for yourself. And like, you know how you make it fun is like use a fun tool. Like, use a tool that's fun to use, like, as a founder.
Marybeth:And there are tons of different, like, help desk tools out there. Like, I'm a huge fan of Help Scout. Right? And I like, like, sort of the gamification of, like, getting through things, and they give you a little reward when you get to inbox 0. And it's just sort of a delightful product to use.
Marybeth:So not only, you know, is it like sort of an all in one solution, so you can do your customer support through there. You can set up your docs through there. You can do chat on your website through there. You can have these sort of all in one solutions, whether it's Help Scout or Intercom or Zendesk, And then you don't have to be juggling multiple tools. And if you find one you really like, not only is it gonna help you help your customers, but you're going to have another tool to say, like, oh, how did they do things?
Marybeth:Right? Like, how did they build this? So, like, one of my early phrases I would use when building knowledge out is, like, what would help scout you? Right? So I I got a lot of ideas and inspiration from my UX and my UI and, like, how to how do I deal with, like, GDPR or do things?
Marybeth:Those are there were 2 companies I used to look at a lot, and it was Help Scout and Mailchimp.
Arvid:Mhmm. Yeah. Wow. That makes sense. Well, those definitely are players that a lot of people get inspired by.
Arvid:Right? Like, even even Intercom, I think, like, just even their visuals inspired a whole generation of these little chat bubble things like the the direct chat communication tools. I I find this very interesting because 2 things. First off, it's it's fine to be inspired by existing tools. I think that's a message here that a lot of founders who have this kind of disruption approach to stuff may not be interested in hearing too much, but I I think it's it's important because that's that's something that is proven to work with people, for people.
Arvid:Right? There's a budget that people have to pay for stuff, and this tool gets part of that budget. That means there's something there. On the on the other side, what you just said was you you saw this big tool, like this big suite of many tools. Right?
Arvid:All the different things. There's a knowledge base in there. There's the chat thing. There's email marketing and whatnot. Like, there's lots of stuff in in in Help Scout.
Arvid:And yet you chose to stuck to one thing with Knowledge. That is also very interesting. You kept your scope creep under control. You kept your your targets very aligned on building a knowledge base. Can you tell me more about the intentionality of that choice?
Marybeth:Sure. So, way back in the day, before we were knowledge out, we were a tool called Help Gizmo, and it started as an internal startup. We were attached to a larger company called it was it's now called Alkemer, but it was called SurveyGizmo at the time, sort of like SurveyMonkey was SurveyMonkey on steroids. That was that's how we used to frame it. But Help Gizmo was like an internal lean startup within that company, and we envisioned it as a full service, like, help desk tool, just like Zendesk or just like, like Help Scout.
Marybeth:And, you know, we were gonna build it the way we wanted to build it. And that never got off the ground, but I was in charge of the support team. And my support team brought it back to life and then repurposed it for documentation. And then it sort of that sparked the ideas of, well, maybe we could bring this to market. And at that point in time, we were I think we were we were maybe using Zendesk and, like, the built in Zendesk thing, but we had hired a technical writer, and she was running into all these things.
Marybeth:And she said, I wanna use this for our customer facing knowledge base. So we're like, okay, so what if we just focus on this segment of the market? Right? Like just doing the knowledge based thing. Because at the end of that, when we started looking for tools to do this, there didn't seem to be a lot of other tools doing this exact thing, just doing this part.
Marybeth:A lot of knowledge based solutions were either, like, high end help authoring documentation for, like, technical technical writers, or they were, like, built into an existing help desk system. So we figured we could just focus on this aspect of it, make it play well with these other tools, but just focus on doing this one thing really well. And that that was sort of our scope. And we said, we're only gonna do this part of things, and we did. So worked out for us.
Arvid:Yeah. That's really cool. I think that that is a lot of constraints that they show in that moment. Right? Because it's like you said, like, these integrations with other tools, it's easy to then kinda take it and build something for yourself because that's just so much easier to maintain that an integration where you have to deal with a partner or something like that.
Arvid:It's nice to see you kinda staying in your lane, and I mean this in the best sense.
Marybeth:We did it for a long time. Yeah. But it it made it easier to say, like, when to say yes and when to say no. So, like, people often are like, oh, we should build forums. And we're like, not we're not a forum tool.
Marybeth:Right? That's not what we're doing. Or people would say like, can we just do like some light ticketing? Or like, nope. And it's interesting because you think I'm just gonna do this part of this, that little part of this thing.
Marybeth:And like, how easy is this? It's so specific. And then you realize this is actually really complicated. As the more you focus on something, the more you realize how complex it could actually be, even if you're just doing one piece of it.
Arvid:Yeah. How how do you deal with customer, like, feature requests that are in this kind of gray zone between It's kind of still knowledge based related, but it's kinda inching a little bit outside of what we wanna build. Like, do how do you consider these requests?
Marybeth:We track it. So, I mean, there's things that, like, over time, we said, okay. We're not we're not gonna do that. Like, we're never gonna do that. But we still track, like, how often because I think should never say never.
Marybeth:Right? You should leave your doors open. And you talk about this sometimes in your pocket. Like like, don't close doors. Right?
Marybeth:Like, leave the possibility open. You know, you might sell your business sometime even though you might not you think it's a forever business. You know, maybe don't create a forever free plan because it might not be wise for you to always have it be free. So, like, don't say nevers, but we track everything. So, you know, and at a certain tipping point, it might be, you know, we always said, like, we're not doing a chatbot.
Marybeth:Right? And now here we are in, like, 2024, like, maybe it makes sense for eventually for us to actually have a chatbot, even though for years, we're like, we're not doing that. That's like out of scope. So I think we track things and, like, I think there probably is an inflection point for certain features or functionality that we might say, like, okay. This makes sense to be in this core offering.
Marybeth:Because over And I think especially now, it's so hard to even envision, like, 2, 3, 5 years in the future what what a knowledge base is. Will you always need a knowledge base? Absolutely. But the knowledge base just might, in the future, be Flutter for an AI tool. Right?
Marybeth:You might just be using it to teach the knowledge base and not directly for the end users, whether they're, like, customers or employees.
Arvid:Yeah. That's that's an interesting point. I I feel very similarly about most things that are text related. Like, any kind of text interface, even the browser feels like there there is a change in input medium. Like, the add the the chat gpt question that you asked the the prompt, that is the new input where before it was like a search query on Google or a particular term like a keyword, a specific keyword, and either you found it in a launch base or you didn't.
Arvid:Now it's kind of a a more nebulous thing. And I guess that also explains why a chatbot would be interesting for you to actually figure out the the meaning of an of a request. Right?
Marybeth:Right. Because I mean, like, people are used to search, but now people aren't used to search. Like, I've replaced most of my searching, my Google searching with, like, Chat gpt. Like, I go to Chat gpt for the first. When I open a browser tab, I use my phone, that is my first thing I do.
Marybeth:And then if I need to, I'll go to Google. But now Google is not my first line of defense for finding information.
Arvid:Isn't that crazy? Like, is is that Right? That's wild. 20 years completely evaporated over this new technology? That's that's bizarre.
Arvid:Right? Do you see this in in customer expectations too? Like, both in your customers and their customers? Like, do they request this kind of interface, or do you just think they might?
Marybeth:I think we're at a very, like, polarizing time. So we do an annual customer survey every year, and, like, the big thing we asked about was, like, what do you think about AI? Do you want us to do it? Like, what do what do you want? And it's polarizing.
Marybeth:Like, there are people who are like, I don't wanna touch with a 10 foot pole. I think that's a lot. And then there's the people who are like, give it to me. Like, I want AI to help me create content. I want AI to help me with search.
Marybeth:Like, I wanna augment things. I wanna chatbot. I want, like, chat gpt for my knowledge base. So I think there's there's two sides of things. I think it's less I think there are people that are adult like like us, that are, like, just using AI all the time, but I think a lot of people still aren't, and they're not used to it and they're not comfortable.
Marybeth:So I I don't think we're we're quite there yet. Like, I think a lot people just they don't even have a knowledge base. Right? This is like a lot of businesses. They don't have a knowledge base for their product.
Marybeth:They don't have a knowledge base, you know, documentation for their staff members or people coming in. They they don't have documentation. So they're not even to that point yet. Right? They they just need like, having documentation would be great.
Marybeth:So I don't think we're quite there yet where it's, like, pushing, but business owners like us, founders are like, I want AI. Right? Like, that's what's pushing it, I think, more so than other things. Like, I think people are still willing to go to a knowledge base and search because most people wanna self serve. They don't wanna have to contact you, and they don't wanna have to figure things out through trial and error and waste their own time.
Arvid:I guess a chatbot is also a potential friction point for this. Right?
Marybeth:Well, a lot of people have had bad experience with them. So you see a chatbot, you're like, I don't wanna chat. Like, this is gonna be horrible.
Arvid:Human human. I wanna talk to a representative. 0. So you're like, yeah.
Marybeth:The fucking. Right? It is. It's similar. Right?
Marybeth:And every time I pull up an intercom and a site, I'm like, are they actually using Fin? And then you see and, like, nope. It's preprogrammed because they have, like, the chatbot that is just really, like, a big decision tree and you're like, nope.
Arvid:That's that's what I've used AI, and and I use the term loosely here for the first time as with Intercom back in the day, like, 2017, 2018 when they had this kind of fuzzy keyword matching and then would pull articles that you had prewritten and suggest them before they actually got to the representative, that helped us massively at FeedbackPanda back in the day. Like, we had thousands of customers that had the same question that would just pull up the article, we would quickly write so that we wouldn't have to answer it anymore, and and it was right there for them. So
Marybeth:Yeah. And I think that type we we would call that miss Moore, we call it ticket deflection. Right? So when you have a form, whether it's on your website, like, or in your product, and someone's trying to reach out to you, it doesn't hurt to just take like, ask them what their question is and then do a quick search and present them with a few information because you can not only give them a great experience or like, oh, that is exactly what I want. Right?
Marybeth:But you save yourself the time. So I'm a fan. And this is, I think, for anybody starting out is this concept of sort of just in time documentation. So whenever you do get a question from a customer and you haven't answered it before, rather than just answering that one customer and, like, sending them an email or sending them a chat, it's just write the quick article and then send them a link to the article. And then anybody else who has that can find that article now, or it can be searched and it's there.
Marybeth:And then you can slowly build up your knowledge base over time, and that, you know, will save you time and, like, make your customers happy. It's just a win win, but it takes some discipline.
Arvid:Yeah. Exactly. Right? It takes the disciplines to not just quickly answer and hope that that never happens again. Yeah.
Marybeth:And it hurts if you like helping people and you just like interacting with people. Like, it just you don't have the desire to, like, write it down. Like, I don't have that urge. And I think something that helps a lot of founders early on is they despise doing the customer support. They do not wanna get on the phone.
Marybeth:They do not wanna help people. So they're like, I'm making videos. I'm writing this down. Don't talk to me. And that actually is beneficial because it helps people, you know, build up that knowledge base.
Marybeth:And, like, incidentally, because they don't wanna do customer support, they're giving a better customer experience because they have documentation.
Arvid:I love that. You can leverage your own dislike of the activity to not have to do the activity as much in the future. I think that's
Marybeth:And it makes your customers happy. It's like
Arvid:it's strange. It's it's kind of an investment into your own company too. Right? If you wanna look at it if if you need to convince yourself that this is a good idea after what we've already just presented as a pretty solid idea, like, it the creation of a video, creation of a an article, or even just, you know, anything really that is something that you can link to an an artifact, really, that is value that is added to the company. Right?
Arvid:Both both for the interactions with customers. And in my experience too, this is super useful if you actually wanna sell the business later. Like, having this codified, that's kind of you you have this super all
Marybeth:every business book, everybody like Emeth. Yeah. You like to talk about this one is, like, write down everything. Just write it down. Document it.
Arvid:Yeah. That's the thing. Like, you have standard operating procedures. They're not just internal. They're also external.
Arvid:Like, this is how a customer stood should operate in a standard fashion. Right? It's really cool. And and this brings me to to a point that I really wanna ask you about because you you probably have data on how many people or when people start using knowledge bases for their products. And I'm thinking specifically about indie hackers, people who are just starting a business.
Arvid:When is a good time to start using such a product for your customer service communication? Keeping in mind that these people are still kind of trying to figure out their product and their market and their customers at the same time. So what would you suggest?
Marybeth:So I can say, like, for us and and we are more mature knowledge based solution. So when you're first starting out, like, you know, I'm I'm for new folks, I'm like, what are you using for your help desk tool? Why aren't you using the built in one? It'll make your life easier. So, like, I usually am a, like, a proponent of that when you're first starting out.
Marybeth:But especially when you don't know exactly what you're building, like, there is it's not always and this this is, like, an interesting thing to say as a documentation person. Like, it doesn't always make sense to write it down if it's going to change next week. So how much time are you gonna spend documenting all this if it's just gonna be different in a month or 2 months? So you have to, like, balance that. So for us, when we see, like, more mature people, like, we just did a bunch of ICP work like you did.
Marybeth:And, like, when we talk about our ideal customers and about 50% of our customer base are other software companies and others like SaaS companies, they're more mature. Right? They've been around, like, 5 years. Right? They're plus years.
Marybeth:Like, they've like, they're established, you know, SaaS companies, and they're like, okay. Their product is mature, and it's not changing as much. And, right, they just need to get everything written down so that people can understand their product. Because after 5 years in business, you're gonna have probably a pretty complicated product that is not necessarily easy to just pick up and learn how to use. So I I think that balance between, like, you don't need to document everything, but the things people are asking about, you absolutely want to have them documented because you don't wanna be answering the same questions over and over again.
Marybeth:So and I think it's a helpful tool for you to sell things because most people, they don't wanna contact you. They don't wanna spend a lot of time figuring it out. And I know everyone wants to build a tool that's just so intuitive. It doesn't need documentation, which doesn't exist, but we try. We try.
Marybeth:But having that little bit of documentation to, like, answer those questions, like, even if you start out with just, like, 10 things in your knowledge base and just start to add to them over time, it helps build trust with your customer. It's a sales tool also. So, like, if people go to a site, something that will if you have 2 products that are very similar and one's documented and one's not, think about this as, like, a developer too. If there's one API that, like, you'd have to, like, read the code to figure out how it works or one that's actually documented, you're gonna go with the one that's documented. So it's a sales tool.
Marybeth:So, like, I think thinking about it as not just a support cost and, like, something, like, you have to do that's sort of a burden, you can think of it not as also a way to deflect that customer support and give, like, your current customers a great experience, but it's also a way to sell new customers and help onboard people and, like, you know, get them into the tool in the first place.
Arvid:Can it be a marketing tool as well?
Marybeth:It's 1,000 percent a marketing tool, I think. Like so I I think a lot of people will go look at a knowledge base. They're, like, exploring a tool. You don't necessarily wanna do a demo. You don't wanna get, like, sign up for the you know, sign up yet and, like, get in the demo and then start getting, like, hard sells and all these emails.
Marybeth:You just wanna know if a tool is gonna do what you need it to do. And oftentimes, marketing websites aren't gonna go into the depth. So those customers that are really looking for a tool that does x, y, and z often end up in your public knowledge base. And then they're there and they can surf and see, like, can I do the things that I want to do? And, like, if they like your knowledge base, it looks good, it's a great customer experience for them, and it does the things, that might just mean, like, well, maybe I'm gonna try this tool.
Marybeth:And that might get people into your funnel to start with. We see a lot as we've been, like, sort of really paying attention now, like, trying to figure out who our ICP is and, like, how did they get theirs. A lot of our customers before they sign up for trials are in our knowledge base. They're looking for things. They're seeing that they can do what they wanna do.
Marybeth:And they're also, incidentally, exploring a product at the same time because it's our knowledge base. So they're getting a sense for what it could look like for them.
Arvid:That's cool. That's that's a nice, well, first of all, good for you to actually use your own product for, you know, these purposes. Not everybody does. You know? I I mean, I can understand it for, like, a status page if you if you build it
Marybeth:Can I tell you just a side note? I was trying to get some help because we were looking at OpenAI, and we just we we discovered we discovered their recaptcha. I don't know if or their captchas are ridiculous. So I was going to their support, and then I realized that they were using Fin, Intercom's Fin, like the AI tool, and not OpenAI for their support, which I was like, this is really interesting. So who's that?
Arvid:That's it it feels in many ways, I can see it as a way to kind of reduce the the risk of catastrophic failure. Right? Like, if your thing fails, then your help tool may wanna be something else. I think status pages is an example here. Like, you're not hosting your own status page status page on your status page business, because if it's down, then that will be down.
Arvid:I think AWS has this problem occasionally, right, that their status page is hosted on s 3 sometimes. And if that's down, then you can't really see what's going on. But that's, I I think it makes sense for certain services. I think for yours, it makes sense to actually use it as this tool. It's great.
Arvid:Thank you for explaining how this is a marketing tool. That makes absolute sense. I never thought about this before. I never thought about the is that the people might find it. No.
Arvid:I mean, I I know that people might
Marybeth:find it. If if it's public too, it's also indexed for like SEO wise. People are looking for a knowledge based tool that does this. And I had like the best customer support call the other day because their marketing team was not upset that their Like, people were getting to their documentation. I was like, isn't that a good thing?
Marybeth:Like, people were getting to their documentation. I'm like, isn't that a good thing? Isn't that good?
Arvid:Yeah. It's I I think it's it's a reframe that you need to do in yourself to see like this this is not like the manual that nobody wants to read that comes with every piece of electronics. This is a living document that helps people do the thing they need to do. Right? That's it's it's not it's it's easy for, like, I don't know, a dishwasher even though it's a complicated thing.
Arvid:Maybe, a vacuum to be easy. You press you press play, and it starts doing the vacuum stuff. Right? That's that's the function of a tool like this. But our software tools, the way they're integrated into more complicated workflows and they're internally structured, they are complicated things.
Arvid:You set this after a couple years. Honestly, for most India hackers, their project their product is probably complicated after a couple weeks because they're just building, building, building. Right? And at that point, we talked about this. It's probably a good idea to not comment everything immediately or not to document everything immediately if it's still changing.
Arvid:But at some point, you need to at least do barebone documentation for it. So it's nice to have that be really accessible in SEO. I was just thinking about this. Do do you need to write it then as you would write like an SEO optimized article? Or how how
Marybeth:do you a good idea to do that because the same things that will optimize something for, like, Google SEO are going to optimize it for your knowledge base generally. Right? Like, having keywords in your title and making sure it's in the URL and, like, using the words you like, I mean, it's it's it's the same concept. Right? You you want it to be optimized for search because that's what people are generally going to do.
Marybeth:They're going to search for something. So it's it's a good it's a good habit to get into. Now what's really interesting about software companies and that we just discovered this doing our ICP research, because, like, to me, it was just like, you know, okay. So, like, a lot of people want a private knowledge base. They do not want their competitors seeing their documentation.
Marybeth:They only want their paid customers to actually see how their product works and, like, get in behind the scenes. So, you know, for years years, I was like, make it public. It's SEO. It's marketing. Like, you want people to be accessible.
Marybeth:You want people are good at Google for it. And if it's private, Google's not gonna have your content index. But it is a huge concern for many software businesses. They're their IP. Right?
Marybeth:And, you know, being able to create a private knowledge base, like, that's a big reason people come to us. Right? It's because they can create that, like, locked down knowledge base that's only accessible through their product. They can segment who can see what. And I didn't realize it before, like, how important that was to folks, but I it makes
Arvid:sense. Yeah. I mean, in a world of copycats, having your full manual
Marybeth:indexing all your stuff?
Arvid:Honestly, I'm really and I think we should talk about AI a little bit more because I think it's everywhere. Right? It's not just a tool that people talk to to get their problem solved. But I I've seen like auto g p t and these kind of independent agents that can you effectively tell them build me a clone of this product. And then they scrape your website, they might scrape your full knowledge base, get all the screenshots of the UI and all of that stuff, and just comprehensively build a clone of the whole thing from all the data they can ingest all by themselves.
Arvid:There's no person involved. I I can see AI being a threat to public information. Right? Like, if no control over it, that's unfortunate because I think it has so much potential in this.
Marybeth:I hate Right. We actually we we were we were chatting earlier, and then we talked about, like, how you could just, like, write your comments. Like, here's the comments in my code, like and then you would give it to AI and, like, write the code. Here's what I wanna do. Let's write the code for that.
Marybeth:And I think there's this concept, and I I've heard it before in the technical writer community, but it's the idea of documentation driven development. So you write the documentation for how something should work, and then you give it to the developers and they build it. And now you can just write the documentation for how private knowledge base is gonna be a thing because copy paste.
Arvid:It's if if I finally I
Marybeth:I hadn't thought about this until right now. I'm like, oh, God. That's it's more important than ever. I think if you you're usually concerned about your competitors seeing what your features are and building, like, similar features. But now it's more like anybody could, like, see what you're doing and build it.
Arvid:They can quickly I mean, at least on a product level, I don't think any software is really safe. Right? Like, it's, to rebuild something or build something that is very similar to another thing becomes easier and easier with the advanced other the yeah. Just the the progress that AI has right now. It's it's the tools that come out every week.
Arvid:There's something that do does coding even better. Right? It just that's how it works. And it's hard to build a product that cannot be cloned because building a product just gets easier. So by definition, it's just easier.
Arvid:But but what what does not get easier to clone is the business. It's understanding your ICP. It's understanding the needs of your market. So, you know, like the as long as you keep this information safe, I think cloning the product, sure, you now have a competing product that has 0 customers. Right?
Arvid:That's fine. I think that's okay. But internally, I think using a a secured knowledge base is an important part. Maybe we should talk about this too because I initially, we we we had this little chat about, like, selling business and it being useful as well for that. Like, you have having your SOPs coded encoded into, like, a a knowledge base.
Arvid:Do you see like, among your customers, do you see that people who use this external knowledge base also use an internal knowledge base? Is that is that a common problem?
Marybeth:Big thing that you can do with knowledge, John. This is one of the things we discovered that people want to do, is they wanna have one place where they have both their customer facing documentation and their internal thing. So if an internal person's there, they're gonna they're gonna, like, look up some documentation, and they're gonna get information that only they can see as, like, a staff member, which you can do that in something like knowledge l because it's you know, we have the features and functionality to have these different levels of access and have, like, one source of truth versus having the internal knowledge base and the external knowledge base, which some people will still do with knowledge l. You can have multiple knowledge bases. So some people get really granular and even have them for different teams and departments.
Marybeth:But sort of the holy grail is just having the one place. And then depending on who you are, you get the right information at the right time for the right person. So it's, like, contextual.
Arvid:Yeah. I love this. Like, the it it feels like it's a it's one brain. Right? It's it's the brain that thinks and the brain that speaks.
Arvid:Like, the the the externalized part and the internal part. And they're connected, obviously, through the the the knowledge storage medium that we have. That that is that is an interesting approach. I wonder how synthesizing new knowledge will or just finding connection between things, how that will progress over the next couple of years with, like, AI looking into the the whole of the knowledge. And not not just the knowledge base itself with the articles.
Marybeth:Informal knowledge bases too. And this is where it gets complicated when we think about doing AI. It's like, yeah, we could add all this stuff in for AI search for your official knowledge base that you have hosted in knowledge l, and that might be your internal SOPs. That could be your customer facing, like, product documentation. But then you have informal knowledge bases, like your entire support conversations, your code, your company Slack.
Marybeth:Like, these all the website, these are all, like, different types of knowledge bases that, ideally, all of this content could be indexed and used and then, you know, to give you the right answer. But, you know, that's that's way bigger than the knowledge. It's like, that's, like, outside the scope of, like, what we have envisioned doing. So but that's what people are gonna wanna do. So, like, who's gonna be doing that?
Arvid:Right? Like, it's outside the scope now, and it it feels kind of, like, shifting and and kinda even scary, I guess, because you don't really know, like, is is this gonna leak secrets out there, or are there things that, you know, you you don't really understand? And then it's something you said that shouldn't be said, and it's on the record because it's part of a support email. You know? Like, all of this is that's quite quite complicated.
Arvid:How how's your approach to this? Like, how how much experimentation do you do with these kind of things before they actually become part of your feature set?
Marybeth:Tons. Like, we I think we are probably more cautious than any like, our customers are very conscious about security, and this is something over time. Because a lot of companies, you know, there's the people who use this for, you know, the product documentation, but there's this whole segment, including some of them that use this for their internal proprietary knowledge. And, like, they are very concerned about security, and they do not want things getting out. So the idea of, like, using third parties and, like, indexing content elsewhere is a scary prospect for a lot of folks.
Marybeth:And so, you know, we are, you know, taking a very measured approach and be like, okay. For people who want to do this, how do we integrate, like, with OpenAI and other AI tools so that people can do this? Are there tools out there that will provide these sort of indexing of multiple places and give you the sort of enterprise, like chat gpt style search for your organization? You know, that but, again, like, can we integrate with them in a way that we are a piece of the knowledge and we can feed that knowledge in there without being responsible for, you know, all of this information. Because I think that's the other thing.
Marybeth:We're we're in the business of building the knowledge based software to to create these knowledge based websites. Right? But, like, we're not, like, search experts. Like, we're not, like, you know, content retrieval experts. And there are tons of tools.
Marybeth:And this is where, like, a really interesting thing that's happened in the past with AI is if you wanna look at enterprise federated search across multiple things, you were paying tens of 1,000 of dollars a year for these high end tools. And, like, with AI now, like, this is just it's now become expected. So what happens to all those, like, big enterprise search tools? Yep. I don't know what's
Arvid:gonna happen. I hope they have long term contracts. I hope for them that they got their 20 year contract let down. You know?
Marybeth:Yeah. Otherwise, they're gonna be in trouble. Yeah. No idea what's going to happen.
Arvid:It's it's very It's a 2nd feature. Yeah. I I'm looking forward to seeing this develop, but building something with with PodScan right now that is also kind of in the AI space, but more as a little side snack, right? Not not that I offer AI, I just use it to offer the things that I do. It's it's nice to see these developments and to see, like, the the foundations of these big and incumbent enterprise businesses shake a little bit because I think that's where where innovation really can do a lot.
Arvid:And I I I believe that some of them need to be shaken up a little. Let's just say this. Right?
Marybeth:Totally. Yeah. And I think it's there's a lot of fear around AI. Like, what's it gonna do to our business and how it's gonna do that? Like, for us, like, the great thing about AI is it needs data.
Marybeth:Right? It needs a knowledge base. So, like, I think the knowledge base and, like, having things documented is going to be more important than ever in these, like, years to come. Because people people just you know, people come and they're like, yeah. I want I want AI.
Marybeth:I want AI search. I wanted to I wanted to write my documentation. I wanted to but I'm like, how is it gonna write your documentation if it doesn't know? So, like, if you need something to feed the AI, you need to train it. And, like, most people's knowledge bases do not have the depth to create anything close to, like, a good generative AI experience.
Marybeth:And I think that's what people that's the expectation because they're used to chat g p t, but the reality is is most people do not have enough information to train generative AI to give, you know, a decent experience to their end users. So we're still in that, like, chatbot experience where it's still a lot of, like, decision trees and if then then yeah. Praying that they're not totally hallucinating when they're telling your customers what to do.
Arvid:You're yeah. That's that I think that is a problem. Right? If if they are they're actually actively lying without knowing that that they're lying because they have no confidence.
Marybeth:They're just very confident about
Arvid:it too. Exactly. That's what it is. Like, I honestly like chat gpt from the start to me felt like the world's biggest gaslighting engine. Like, no.
Arvid:It it knew exactly how to make you feel like it's right, but it wasn't.
Marybeth:And you're like, you just changed something. Yeah. You just changed a variable name in this, like, code.
Arvid:That's wrong. That's alright. But that you you just said something really interesting, along the the path of this the conversation that we had about, integrating data or sending data somewhere. You were talking about people's need for security. I kinda wanna back back down or back backtrack to this a little.
Arvid:Because you, on your pricing page, which I find very interesting because you effectively have one plan, you have one feature set that you sell, and then you you kinda have upgrades to, like, a bigger SLA and a bigger compliance set and using your own search, like, for for, SS or SSL, all that kind of stuff, really interesting pricing model that you got there. You have a lot of, compliance stuff there, a lot of HIPAA stuff, and all of that. That feels very corporate. It is. I mean, this is the best sense.
Arvid:Like, when when did you start getting into compliance? Like, when did this matter to you as a business?
Marybeth:Very early. Uh-huh. Like, this is and this was the surprising thing. So the pricing model was as much for, like, like, our ease too. So, like, as, like, when we started, it was just 2 of us, you know, built in for many years, and we're still Pete and I, the co founders, we're still the own we're the only employees.
Marybeth:We're employee owners, and everybody else who works with us is a contract. We have about 10 people total. But very early on, we're like, do we wanna do the plan levels and, like, have feature getting? And we're like, that seems complicated. Let's just give it to everyone, and then we'll just price based on, like, how many knowledge bases and authors people have.
Marybeth:And we've been doing it, like, that way. We originally had packages, but, again, the packages were not features. They were just like how many authors and knowledge bases do we get. And then we're like, people wanted different numbers, and we're like, whatever. We'll just do everything a la carte.
Marybeth:Right? We started doing that, I think, and sometimes in 2016, 2017, and we've just been doing that ever since. But it was as much for us to make it easy for us. So we can just focus on, like, building the product for people and, like, you know you know, building functionality and doing this without having to worry about feature gating, which gets really complicated. And it seems like something that sales and marketing do, which is like, okay.
Marybeth:We don't care about that. We just wanna give people the tools that we build. And I fully realized as a founder that we are probably leaving a lot of money on the table by not having this and not charging a lot more for single sign on and charging a lot more for private knowledge bases. But it made it a lot easier for us to, like, build the business and, you know, for our customers, we think it's a great experience. So the only thing that we start charging extra for is when people are like, okay.
Marybeth:This is all great, but I need you to sign this custom contract, or we need you to indemnify us, which we wouldn't do for years because we didn't have IP insurance. Right? And all these things that, you know, we want a security review. So very early on, and I think this is the nature of the type of businesses who want a dedicated knowledge based solution. They're looking for it, and they're concerned about the privacy there.
Marybeth:So they are going to want to, like, look into the business and, like, audit them and do vendor security reviews and such things. So very early on, those businesses, like, started pushing us. And we used to just do it for free. Be like, you know, custom contracts and all this. And finally, like, there was that customer, and I think I've heard this from other founders too, that was like like, basically, like, we need you to charge us more money.
Marybeth:Like, we're not gonna be able to sell this internally unless we have, like, a higher level package. So that's how we first, like, became like, okay. Maybe we do need, like, an enterprise package. And, you know, realizing that they're you know, our functionality, our software product was attractive to seeing these larger organizations. But, like, in order to actually sell to them, we needed it to be more expensive.
Marybeth:Even though they'll get the exact same features in a lower level, but other things that they needed, custom terms are a big one, the vendor security things, you know, the HIPAA compliance and a BAA. Like, those things are now DPAs. Right? Like, people want custom DPAs, and that goes back and forth. You know, that is something people are willing to pay for, and, you know, we we had the choice.
Marybeth:We could just say, like, no. We're not gonna do those things and say no to those customers or we could, you know, say yes to those customers. But that was the question is, are we gonna charge for it or not? So we decided, like, to charge for it because people wanted to. And I think that came the customer service thing.
Marybeth:Like, these people wanted to use our product. Right? These peep these companies and these individuals were like, we really need this, but, like, we need you to do this thing. So in order to make that work, we created these other they were originally just plan levels. Right?
Marybeth:So but it wasn't really featured. So that's why we just recently sort of revamped the pricing page to really present it as one plan, and then those other services are add ons for the businesses that need them.
Arvid:That's a very very interesting approach. It it sounds like you're okay with doing this kind of work because it pays for itself. Right? It kinda has the feeling of there.
Marybeth:Right. It does. It does. It's it's it's like, it's a lot because, you know, we're founders. We're not lawyers.
Marybeth:Right? We're not used to doing this thing, but I guess you have to wear all these you you wear all these different hats as a founder. And one of the things you end up doing is compliance and, you know, contract reviews. And you figure out what you're able to live with and what helps you, like, what you can sleep with at night. So
Arvid:Yeah. Well, I I guess that's what it is. Right? You make a choice. And and I think that also impacts, like, where this business goes.
Arvid:Because you might just as well have stayed with all the small customers that, you know, don't need these kind of requirements and just go go broad. Try to serve as many of them as you can. But now you're getting into a level that maybe requires more handholding, but also has bigger, you know, bigger checks that are written. Right? Bigger, maybe more secure connections, like, over time as well.
Arvid:Is this intentional choice? Are you kinda moving upmarket very slowly? Is that where it
Marybeth:is? I think I think we've really recently tried to not move upmarket. We we've discussed even removing the enterprise from the website at some points. But I can tell you so, like, of our, like, legacy customers, like, our first, like, 150, 160 customers, like like, so like so we have, like, 450 customers. So, like, a 150 or a 180 of them are what we consider legacy.
Marybeth:Like, they signed out with with us before, like, 2017, and we've never raised our prices on them. Right? They pay us those 170, about the same amount as our, like, 20 enterprise customers. Right? So it this is sort of, like, the balance.
Marybeth:And we don't want to get to the point where those enterprise customers have so much weight that, like, we feel like we have to do what they tell us to do. Like, every feature request is, like, you know, is needs to be them. And we don't want to be in the position where if we lose one of those enterprise customers, it really hurts us in terms of cash flow. So what we'd really love to do is just grow that base of, like, our, you know, monthly what we call them, like, DIY customers. They, like, come to knowledge.
Marybeth:They look at us. They sign up. They never, like, let alone never even talk to us. They just use it because it's documented. They can use the tool.
Marybeth:They can use the API. They don't need to have a conversation. And, like, I think that's the dream is to have, like, enough money from those, like, monthly DIY customers that you're just covering your expenses, and then those enterprise plus servers are sort of, like, icing on the cake. And that we're doing it because they want to use knowledge gel. Right?
Marybeth:And, like, in order to use it, they need these extra things. We're not quite there yet. I would we're not there where that, you know, those smaller customers do cover expenses. Like, we do need those, like, 20 enterprise customers. They do, like, make a big impact.
Marybeth:But, yeah, I think it's a risk, and it's a risk I don't like. And I think we could make the decision as a business to just go after them, and we could probably make a ton of money, but it would it would substantially change our business model and, like, how we run our business and, like, who we cater towards. And, like, while we we give everyone great customer service, but, like, this idea that we're, like, only building it for the small group of people and, like, needing more customer success and needing more salespeople and doing all that, that's not the stuff that we like and enjoy. Like, we like helping the small, you know, software companies, like and the, you know, the individual, like, tech writer team of 1, like, help build their knowledge base and run their website. So, yeah, I think it's a never say never.
Marybeth:Like, we might end up going up market. But right now, we're intentionally trying to, like, focus down and, like, get more of those, like, DIY monthly customers.
Arvid:Really cool. Thank you for sharing your thought process on this. I I find a lot of stuff that I can relate to in here. Like, not wanting to just overdo it in one direction, generally a good idea, just, you know, like, covering your bases. And the fact that you don't want whales.
Arvid:You don't want whale customers because they all of a sudden We
Marybeth:call them so we're like, we're not calling them whales. We were trying to figure out what to call them because we like animals. Obviously, we're not agile. But we're like, they're not whales. Are they big fish?
Marybeth:Are they manatees? Like we've been trying to name this group of customers. We don't know yet. So if anyone has any ideas for what to call these customers that are not quite whales, but they're they're big.
Arvid:They could if if you wanna stay with, like, the bird theme, you need a really fluffy, fat bird that just, like, wobbles around. Like, cockapoos. Yeah. May maybe cockapoos. Right?
Arvid:Those things that they're just, like, you know, like, they're these parrot like things that don't even have any natural predators because they're just they grew up. So, yeah, ostriches maybe head in the sand. I don't know if that's the best analogy there, but it it is a yeah. I I know what I I I definitely understand that you don't wanna have so few customers that they can dictate terms of your business. That is super risky, particularly if you need them.
Arvid:Right? Like, all of a sudden, the the incentive structure changes significantly. That is really cool. I love the fact that you wanna stay with the the people that really need it, like the people that I mean, businesses definitely need it, but smaller businesses that are just moving, trying to grow, trying to find their own footing, they also need it, and that you're still there for them is wonderful. And the fact that stands out to me the most here is that you're a small team and you wanna stay small.
Arvid:That is very intentional. That's really cool. Is that, why is that? Like, what's the the motivation behind staying like this? Is it because you like what you're doing and that's all you want?
Arvid:That because that's perfectly fine too. Or is there another motivation there?
Marybeth:Yeah. It's interesting. Right? Like, would we like to grow? Yes.
Marybeth:We are trying we're trying to figure this out. This is, like, the first time we've tried to, like, really figure out when you're in the similar thing, sales and marketing. Like, we're trying to figure out how to, like, grow sustainably and intentionally, but within limits. Right? Like our goal, like, we just wanna do more good in the world.
Marybeth:Like and like money is a tool. Right? And money is like freedom to do more of the things you want. Right? So, you know, we're trying to figure out how to sort of, like, unlock that and, like, figure out growth in a way that still feels calm.
Marybeth:I think I you like, we, you know, we I know people there's there's people that use the word, like, lifestyle business as, you know, a criticism. Right? Derogatory. I think yeah. It's not.
Marybeth:And it's it's caused me pause over the years. It's like, is that what we are? Is that, like, what we're doing? And I think one of the reasons in sort of, like, the the why, like, the driving thing is to be able, like, to create the life you want for yourselves. And that's not just, like, for me, but it's, like, everybody who works with us.
Marybeth:It's like, how do we build a company that helps support the lives we want for ourselves, for our customers? And, you know, growing is part of, like, the vision of, like, you know, being able to do more of that and, like, create better lives for ourselves. But at some point, growing too much or growing too fast or, like, doing these things, like, changes sort of your why and, like, you leave that calm. Right? Because there's something else.
Marybeth:Right? That and that calm is a big part of, you know and, like, having it be fun. Because I think you can be growing fast and it can be fun, and I think it could be calm and it can be fun. But if it's not fun, like, why do it? And I don't think I would have a lot of fun if it was, like, a super high stress thing.
Marybeth:Right? And, like, I don't want I don't want a business keeping me up at night.
Arvid:That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the that's it's not the work life balance. It's like the work sleep balance, so to say.
Arvid:You know? Like, something that where you can compartmentalize it into this is business. This is great, and this is an important part of my life, but it's not my life. Right? It's not all there is.
Arvid:So I really appreciate you sharing this too. I think calmness as a term of how uneventful than a normal day is in the life of a business. So pretty good indicator for you know, where decisions should go. Does it keep the thing calm? Or does it make it more crazy?
Arvid:And I mean, this the just in the sense of, like, activity you don't wanna do or things that you don't wanna deal with. So it's nice to hear you share all of this, and I I definitely appreciate you just sticking with something that you like and not just chasing money. I think the fact that you first of, you have a discount, 25% discount for b corps, like, or for Yeah. Corps Nonprofit.
Marybeth:We call it the knowledge out or k o for good discount. So originally, it was nonprofits, but now it's nonprofits, b corps, and other businesses doing good, like purpose driven business.
Arvid:Yeah. Yeah. And I love this when I read purpose driven business. I was like, yes. Money is not a purpose.
Arvid:Money is a medium of exchange. That's what it is. Like, a profit driven business is not necessarily a purpose driven business and the other way around. Right? No.
Arvid:You do don't have to find purpose exclusively in profit. I mean, profit enables you to stronger impact your purpose if you want to, but it's not exclusively the same. That was that a choice from the beginning? Because that's really cool. I I don't really see this much in in software business.
Marybeth:To be honest. You don't see it a lot of times in software business. So like, I didn't know exactly what to call it early on, but I was always attracted by businesses who were doing things a little bit different. Right? Like that, you know, we know the idea of, like, an employee owned business.
Marybeth:Right? I've heard the idea like, a few times I'd heard stories of software companies that sell and then like split the funds amongst everyone that works there. I was like, wow. They didn't just take it for themselves. They actually gave it to everyone working there.
Marybeth:So I'd heard these, like, inklings of these different businesses, and I didn't really hear too much of it in the software world, but I be I became aware of B Corps. Right? Because it's very big in, like, the b to c community. Right? Employee owned businesses, b corps, and, like, this idea of of, you know, a triple bottom line business.
Marybeth:So instead of, like, profit being the bottom line, it's, you know, profit, you know, people, and planet. Right? So you're looking at all things and you're seeing how, like, you impact on, like, the greater world. And that was, like, an attractive thing to me. So when I started actually at at one point, like, we were just sort of floating around.
Marybeth:It was like a very much lifestyle business. I sat down and be like, okay, what do I want in the future? Like, what do I want this to be? Like, what is my exit plan? Because you don't live forever.
Marybeth:Your companies don't live forever. Like, how do you wanna get out? And, you know, the thing that just was obvious to me is, like, I wanna be an employee owned business. Like, I wanna be able to, like, sell the company, but I wanna sell it to the people that are, like, working in the company so that then they can profit off the company too. And that they they can use that to, like, build a good life for themselves.
Marybeth:So yeah. So I have this. This is my, like, big fat hairy goal is to figure out how to become an employee owned software company, which is not very common. But, yeah, I think I think for me, the whole why and the whole it's it's hard to say, like, exactly why, but I think it's the term I just recently learned was this idea of, like, people first. Right?
Marybeth:And businesses are just collections of people. It's like a thing we made up. Right? We created businesses. We created money.
Marybeth:We created our economy. And but we're it's all about people, and it's all about community and these relationships you build. So, like, the idea for me is really that being able to have, like, a business and own a business is like being able to create the life you want for yourself and other people and, like, being able to experiment with that and not necessarily have to do things because, like, other people do them and other businesses do them. As you can structure things and build things in a way that you like, that you find meaning in, that you find purpose in, that you find fun. And I think it's solidified in these past few years the type of business that we wanted to build.
Marybeth:I just knew I wanted it to be different, and it wasn't just about money. But, like, figuring out what that thing is, I think, has really sort of, like, come into focus more recently. I'm like, yeah. I wanna be a b corp, which we just became b corp in December. I wanna be employee owned.
Marybeth:Not quite there yet. Still need to figure that piece out. But, like, that is sort of, like, the driving thing. It's, like, how do we do this and then do more good in the world. Right?
Marybeth:And, like, keep building a business that you want to work at and work with.
Arvid:Yeah. That's really cool. I it's so nice to see the passion and what you talk about right now. It's so cool. Like, this is this is such a founder thing too.
Arvid:Like, you you can I can feel you? You just can't stop wanting this. It's really nice. And I I love this. I I love this, and I'm really looking forward to seeing this develop over time.
Arvid:Like, I know you're gonna grow slowly, sustainably, and calmly into something bigger that facilitates this. So I cannot wait to see where this journey goes. And for everybody who's listening to this and actually wants to also follow you on the journey, where would you like them to go? Where would you like them to check out you, the business and everything around it?
Marybeth:Yes. So I'm I'm I was off social media for, like, 10 years, but I recently got back on. So, like, I'm most active on LinkedIn. So you find me, Marybeth Alexander. I'm also trying to figure out Instagram.
Marybeth:It's a little weird for me, but, like, I'm the chief executive owl there. But, like, if you wanna be my friend and help me figure out Instagram, that would be awesome. But our website is just knowledge.com. We'd love to have you. We just redesigned our website for our ICP.
Marybeth:So, like, it's now, like, a marketing website. So, I'm really excited about our new website. So you can check us out there. I love I love chatting with folks, so feel free to reach out on any of these things. I'm just marybeth@knowledge all.com.
Arvid:That's awesome. Yeah. I I I I think, like, all of these places are worth a visit. Definitely your LinkedIn, like, just following you on your journey is super inspiring. Also, the website marketing website for any founder out there, I think it's a really good website.
Arvid:I love like, when I look at the the landing page, I just wanna tell it I just wanna tell you how great this landing page is. Right? Let me just do this for a second.
Marybeth:New one because we just released it, like, last week.
Arvid:Yeah. Yeah. The the new the new one that I that I refreshed earlier today to check.
Marybeth:Okay. Yep. What I Brand new.
Arvid:I love what I love about this is it doesn't lead with features. It doesn't lead with, like, technical implementation. It leads with the why, and it leads with the who this is for and who is using it. It's a lot of testimonials, a lot of this is this is why people want this. This is why people need this.
Arvid:I think you're you're selling the the, you know, the the proverbial better life after the product with this marketing page really well. I think it's a very inspiring website. I think your, again, your your pricing system is so simple. It's it's surprisingly awesome. Like, for something that is so simple, I think it's great.
Arvid:It's very inspiring. And And I think I just have to hope the product website it's really nice. I just wanna tell you that because I think it's really cool.
Marybeth:I'm excited. I mean, we can come back in a couple of months and tell you how the website performs.
Arvid:I'm I'm looking for I and, generally, we experiment. I'd love to catch back up because this feels like a journey that I wanna be really listening close in. Like, I think it's, it's gonna be really, really fun for you. I am really appreciative of you sharing this, all of your knowledge with me today in a in a in a knowledge owl capacity. So it's really, really great.
Arvid:Thank you so much for all these insights into customer service and into what company you're building and what company you want to be building. We do appreciate that. Thank you so much for being on the show today.
Marybeth:Thank you.
Arvid:And that's it for today. I will now briefly thank my sponsor acquire.com. Imagine this, you're a founder who's built a really solid SaaS product. You acquired all those customers, and everything is generating really consistent monthly recurring revenue. That's the dream of every SaaS founder.
Arvid:Right? Problem is you're not growing. For whatever reason, maybe it's lack of skill or lack of focus or applying lack of interest. You don't know. You just feel stuck in your business with your business.
Arvid:What should you do? Well, the story that I would like to hear is that you buckled down, you reignited the fire, and you started working on the business, not just in the business. And all those things you did, like audience building and marketing and sales and outreach, they really helped you to go down this road, 6 months down the road, making all that money. You tripled your revenue, and you have this hyper successful business. That is the dream.
Arvid:The reality unfortunately is not as simple as this. And the situation that you might find yourself in is looking different for every single founder who is facing this crossroad. This problem is common, but it looks different every time. But what doesn't look different every time is the story that here just ends up being one of inaction and stagnation. Because the business becomes less and less valuable over time and then eventually completely worthless if you don't do anything.
Arvid:So if you find yourself here, already at this point, or you think your story is likely headed down a similar road, I would consider a third option, and that is selling a business on inquire.com. Because you capitalizing on the value of your time today is a pretty smart move. It's certainly better than not doing anything, and acquire.com is free to list. They've helped hundreds of founders already. Just go check it out at try.
Arvid:Acquire.com/arbit, it's me, and see for yourself if this is the right option for you, your business at this time. You might just wanna wait a bit and see if it works out half a year from now or a year from now. Just check it out. It's always good to be in the know. Thank you for listening to the Bootstrap founder today.
Arvid:I really appreciate that. You can find me on Twitter at avitkahl, a r v e r k a h l, and you'll find my books and my Twitter course tattoo. If you wanna support me and this show, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, get the podcast in your podcast player of choice, whatever that might be. Do let me know. It would be interesting to see.
Arvid:And leave a rating and a review by going to ratethispodcast.com/founder. It really makes a big difference if you show up there because then this podcast shows up in other people's feeds, and that's I think where we all would like it to be, just helping other people learn and see and understand new things. Any of this will help the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening.
Arvid:Have a wonderful day and bye bye.
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