Join Nate Matherson as he sits down with Daryna Kulya for the sixty-sixth episode of the Optimize podcast. Daryna is the co-founder of OpenPhone, a business phone system designed for startups and small businesses.
In our episode today, Nate and Daryna explore OpenPhone's unique go-to-market strategy, including the scrappy tactics used to acquire their first 1,000 customers and how they scaled their content marketing and SEO channels. Daryna also shares insights on the importance of building trust with early customers through exceptional support and the role of press and partnerships in scaling OpenPhone. Listen to hear why she emphasizes the value of word-of-mouth marketing and her thoughts on accelerating it.
In this week’s deep dive, listen to Daryna share everything you need to know about OpenPhone's journey from a free beta to a paid product and the lessons learned along the way. Daryna gets tactical, sharing her experiences in Facebook groups, subreddits, and leveraging content to drive growth. Rounding out the episode, Daryna and Nate cover topics like investing in brand-building, the challenges of creating engaging video content, and the future growth strategies for OpenPhone.Closing the episode is our popular lightning round of questions!
And it sounds like in the very beginning you had to get pretty scrappy and in some ways brute force go to market in those very early days of building open phone. Uh, can you tell us a little bit about the early days of, you know, how you acquired customers, how you thought about go to market and how you acquired those first 1000 customers?
Got our first customers and you know, I think there's a little bit of a distinction in terms of how we got our first, you know, 100 customers versus 100 to 2000. But in terms of like the first 100 customers, I could probably name each one of them. Because I probably still remember most, um, it was very much unscalable, one to one, possibly more sales than marketing.
Um, but the, but something that we did really was because we did not have any money. Um, so all the things we could do were like the free, free ways to get customers. Right. So I joined. Over 60 Facebook groups and basically, um, I, I thought, hey, we have a great product for all kinds of businesses, all kinds of.
You know, entrepreneurs and I thought, let me just join a ton of Facebook groups and see if maybe in some this would be more relevant versus others. So I did that. I also posted on a bunch of subreddits and now looking back and obviously again, not not very scalable.
Hi, and welcome to the optimized podcast. My name is Nate Matherson, and I am your host on this weekly podcast. We sit down with some of the smartest minds in content, marketing, SEO, and go to market. Our goal is to give you perspective and insights on what's moving the needle. Today. I'm thrilled to sit down with Daryna Kulia.
Daryna is the co founder of OpenPhone, the world's best. Best business phone on today's episode. We will chat about open phones, go to market strategy, including the tactics they use to get their first 1000 customers, their wonderful content marketing and SEO channel, and the strategies they are excited about today.
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Optimize podcast. It's brought to you by Positional. If you don't know by now, my name is Nate, and I'm one of the co founders of Positional, and we've built what I think is a pretty awesome tool set for content marketing and SEO teams. We've got tools for keyword research, internal linking, content optimization, and even a couple of tools for analytics.
We'd love for you to check it out at Positional. com. Thank you so much for coming on this week's episode of the Optimize podcast.
Oh, thank you, Nate. So great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Yeah. And for our listeners, could you tell us a little bit about open phone and, and what you do at your company?
For sure. We are a business phone system for startups in small businesses. Um, you know, in a very simple way, we give you and your team business phone numbers to talk and text with your customers, but it goes far beyond. You know, what you expect from a phone. It's far beyond, you know, calling and texting.
We actually allow folks to really collaborate with their team as they talk to customers and automate a bunch of stuff. So, um, I would say, you know, we're really redefining what a phone is in, in this day and age.
It's a very interesting. Market and business. And I, I'm wondering like when you were a kid, did you know that you wanted to get into business fund systems or what made you want to start this company?
Yeah, well, I'll tell you the first question you asked me, if I, if when I was a kid, did I know I wanted to do this? No, I didn't, but I have to say a couple of fun facts. So first of all, my dad, uh, you know, he's retired now, but he's been, you know, all his life has been an entrepreneur and. The, the story that I share, which is like my childhood is always, uh, having my dad freak out about the chance of not responding to a, to a phone call.
So his ringtone was always like super, super loud. Uh, because if you don't respond, you know, it could be a potential client and. You know, essentially every client is very important. So I did not know that I would get into this, but I have to tell you, I always like associated my dad's phone with ringing with like, okay, there are clients, like we will have money.
You know, that's kind of how I grew up. Um, but I didn't know this would be kind of my career. So here we are.
Phone calls on this podcast. We like to joke that like traffic doesn't equal dollars, but I think phone calls probably equal dollars for a lot of people in certain industry.
A hundred percent. If your business service based business look really any kind, and if your phone is ringing, that's a good thing.
Like I actually. You know, it's, it's a good thing. People can complain and say, oh my God, I'm so busy, but you're very fortunate.
So one, and we're going to get so off topic to start this episode, but I I'm curious. So one of my friends, he's like a plumber, he's like now, you know, the head plumber, his dad started the plumbing company and I was hanging out with him recently and he had like his work phone and it was like his.
Turn to be on call to like pick up any of the phone conversations that were coming in. Like, could he be like a good open phone customer? Do you work with like a lot of SMBs?
A hundred percent. In fact, he would be our ideal customer. You should totally tell him about OpenPhone. I mean, we serve a lot of service based businesses.
We have a very, and I think it's interesting kind of as it relates to, you know, content and SEL, but we have a very diverse customer base. Service based businesses are some of our probably most ideal customers because Phone is such a critical channel for them. So, so yes, your friend should be a customer and we have, uh, we have plenty of folks doing all kinds of businesses that are, you know, home services, for example, is a big category for us.
Yeah. Foster, if you're listening, uh, I'll connect you to the open phone team.
We'll give you a special, a special discounted.
So, yeah, and you know, I was doing a little prep work before, uh, today's episode. Um, and I'd read one of your blog posts that you wrote about your journey to your first 1000 customers.
Uh, it was such a great read and we'll include a link to it in the show notes for all our listeners. Um, and it sounds like in the very beginning you had to get pretty scrappy and in some ways brute force go to market in those very early days of building open phone. Uh, can you tell us a little bit about the early days of, you know, how you acquired customers, how you thought about go to market and how you acquired those first 1000 customers?
Totally. I look, um, starting the company, uh, you know, I did not really have Much experience in terms of marketing and getting customers. I think that, um, it was very much this journey of exploration and trying things out. Um, we got our first customers. And, you know, I think there's a little bit of a distinction in terms of how we got our first, you know, 100 customers versus, you know, 100 to a thousand, but in terms of like the first hundred customers, I could probably name each one of them because I probably still remember most, um, it was very much unscalable one to one.
Possibly more sales than marketing. Um, but, but something that we did really was because we did not have any money. Um, so all the things we could do were like the free, free ways to get customers. Right. So I joined, um, over 60 Facebook groups. And basically, um, I, I thought, Hey, we have a great product for all kinds of businesses, all kinds of, You know, entrepreneurs, and I thought, let me just join a ton of Facebook groups and see if maybe in some this would be more relevant versus others.
So I did that. I also posted on a bunch of subreddits and now looking back, obviously, again, not not very scalable. I got banned actually from some places, which is very fair. My Facebook account is still like, it's, it's actually kind of forever. You know, I'm in, in a lot of groups, let's just say that, but, but those things were very helpful in just helping us understand what kind of business kinds of businesses actually, um, need our product the most, and also, We just learned a lot about how to talk about the product and position it.
So, um, sure it was brute force. It wasn't scalable, but I think honestly it's the only way.
So for those first 100, it sounds like you were pretty active in Facebook communities or groups and also on Reddit. And you mentioned getting banned. I was going to ask, you have to be like very artful, like in terms of how you Talk about your product.
Cause like, you don't want to be seen very clearly as like a spammer. So I, was it like a, was it a balancing act? Was it a, was it a balancing act in terms of like adding value and then some level of promotion as well?
Yes. Oh my God. Well, hey, I'm just being very honest. I don't think my first the first things I did, I didn't really know.
So I'm pretty sure if I look at my first posts, that they are, I would say spammy ish. And hey, I learned though, so that's the most important thing. But, but really what it ended up being is that, you know, My strategy and the tactics really evolved, uh, the more successful kind of posts or attempts were really less about kind of our product and more about the problem.
So I think initially, when I joined a bunch of groups, it was kind of like, Hey, here's what we're working on. Like, do you want to sign up for our free beta? Here's the link. And of course that's like spammy, not, not great. But later it kind of evolved to be more like, Hey, like we have a, we're solving a problem for business owners.
And again, at the time our product was very much tailored to the, to the individual, you know, one person business owner. And the, the problem we were, like the very core problem was, uh, the fact that folks, uh, use their personal phone numbers, did not have any work life balance, couldn't tell when calls were coming in for business or personal.
And I just started asking people if this was a problem they had. And. Getting input on different ways they were solving it. Um, so when I kind of evolved from, Hey, here's a product. Do you want to sign up to, Hey, is anyone here dealing with this problem? Like, what are the ways you've solved it? Is it a big deal?
Is it not a big deal? What are the services you've tried? When I started leading from curiosity and asking questions. That just ended up being a whole new, whole new game. So, um, so that's really the way to do it. And you can learn, uh, et cetera. And I would also maybe add that at some point my CTA Was actually not, Hey, do you want to sign up for the beta?
Daryna Kulya It was like, Hey, if you have strong opinions on this topic, can I talk to you for like 10, 15 minutes? So I ended up having a lot of calls and conversations with people who are basically our target customer. And I didn't ask them for anything. I didn't say, Hey, Please sign up for the product. I just said, Hey, talk to me about why this is a big problem.
And some of those people naturally said, Hey, if you're building a solution, just let me know, like, keep me posted. So suddenly I had people who I could email and say, Hey, by the way, we have beta available, we have, or like, Hey, we are out of beta. We actually have a product now. Do you want to check it out?
So building relationships ended up being so key.
Nate Matherson
Yeah. And you mentioned the free beta. Uh, I'm curious, what made you choose the free beta approach first? Um, I have to ask because we ourselves, we, we had a private beta, um, that was paid, but you couldn't sign up for it on our website. You had to like talk to me.
So, but I, I think you did it almost, And the opposite, you had like a free product that someone could sign up for on the website. Is that right? And what made you go with that approach?
Absolutely. That's right. Uh, what made us go with that approach? Well, so first of all, I think that, um, that that's a very good question because I'm also part of me is like trying to remember sort of the state of mind we were in when we were starting.
And frankly, I think it was, it was really the idea that the reason for it was Wanting to get a lot of data. So, uh, because our product, it's still is, uh, you know, a fairly low amount you pay per user. We're not an enterprise solution. Uh, we are very high volume, high velocity type of, you know, a business model.
So we really just wanted to have more, um, like, honestly, we wanted to learn more from more people. And that was kind of the idea of like, Hey. If you're someone who needs a solution, and we just felt in the earlier days, we were just starting to build a product, frankly, as founders, we didn't really feel comfortable charging.
Now I'll tell you why it's a mistake. But I think I'll just be lying if I don't say that that was a part of it too. As founders, we kind of just felt like the product wasn't ready for us to feel comfortable. Very good about, you know, charging. But at some point, which we got advice from a YC partner on this, by the way, we did YC office hours prior to getting into yc, there was an opportunity to do office hours and we talked to a YC partner, Yuri, actually.
So he gets all the, all the credit here. Um, we, we inter we, it wasn't like a formal interview, it was more of just like meet and greet and we talked about what we're building and he asked why we're not charging yet. And we, me and my co founder, we looked at each other. We were like, yeah, we probably should be charging.
So, um, after a couple of months in this free beta, we just decided like, Hey, the product is good enough. Now it's time to, it's time to charge. And. That was what we learned the most. Uh, but you know, hindsight is 2020. So.
Well, now I have to ask, what did you learn when you started, uh, charging folks to use the product?
That vast majority of people who are using it for free. We're not our ideal customers, like so, so many people. I mean, a lot for a lot of people. So, so again, it's kind of like in hindsight. you know, maybe what you did was the right thing to do, right? Because you, you could immediately get that feedback because your beta wasn't open and you were kind of, you know, people who were in your beta were like really committed to being there.
Uh, again, we chose a different approach, but you know, the moment we basically, the product became not a free product. There was a very immediate kind of, I don't want to say shift, but first of all, the level of feedback we were getting was actually better. There was less feedback. Maybe there are less people, but people who are paying you, they're very, very passionate about the feedback they have.
So that was very high signal. And also, you know, we could maybe just have a better sense of what are the features that people are actually kind of like paying for versus. Oh, it would be nice if you had this thing. So high signal of feedback was happening. Um, and it was kind of like night and day because I now wish, you know, again, we could have done things differently.
Uh, but, but I do want to maybe mention one thing that is a very actionable, maybe if anyone who is watching or listening can relate to this. The one mistake we made is the moment we started charging for the product. You know, we had a bunch of people on free beta. Some of them converted, some of them didn't.
We gave people, by the way, plenty of time. We didn't want to like switch everyone right away.
Turn off their numbers.
Yeah. Well, those people who became paying customers, we, there were, there were enough of those people. We actually should have done a very deep survey or something to really understand what those people had in common.
But also people who did not become paying customers, we should have actually surveyed those people to understand why not, and we should have gotten more data. I think that's like something I would have done differently, but we were a little bit overwhelmed to be honest, because around that time we got accepted to YC, there were all these things we had to do.
So we were just like, I was doing customer support. It was, it was a very hectic time. Um, but I think that one mistake I see and like we made the same mistake feel like, uh, we just could have gotten useful data right away and made probably better decisions faster.
And that makes sense. I, I, I feel like I agree with you that there would be a lot more noise in terms of like feedback.
Um, and it might be harder to get through versus just collecting feedback from folks who are willing to pay for the products. And like you said, More direct feedback as to why folks might not be willing to pay for, uh, the product. Um, and that's one of the things I feel like I struggle with, like you, and I'm sure you get like a lot of product suggestions and feedback and like, you have to like roll your eyes at like half of them to say like, yeah, that's just something we're not going to do, but then like the other half are, are good.
And I, I, for me, it's always kind of a balancing act, uh, to, To understand like what we should make and do as a result of that feedback. Um, but you mentioned that, uh, you know, going from a hundred customers to a thousand customers was, uh, was a different experience. Um, and in that article that you wrote, uh, you mentioned that, uh, that press, uh, was, uh, was an important strategy for you, or at least it was pretty helpful in terms of, uh, of acquiring customers.
Uh, did that happen in that phase between like a hundred to a thousand? And is that where like. Press started to become more important for you guys for sure.
It, it happened, it definitely helped. I mean, a hundred percent help there. Um, I think the reason why, um, so, so first of all, the difference to me in terms of kind of the, the, the way that we, uh, landed our first hundred customers versus a hundred to a thousand.
I think first hundred was like very much sales and want one on one. But I think from a hundred to a thousand, you really just can't do that. Uh, I can tell you, I can recognize everyone who was our first hundred customers, but beyond that, I kind of physically don't remember kind of, it's just kind of, uh, luckily you start scaling.
Uh, so really between a hundred and a thousand, it becomes more like marketing less like sales. And I think that, uh, in terms of press and the way it helped was really two things, right? The first piece was. We are the kind of product that has a pretty, um, we're not very niche, right? We have, we serve all kinds of businesses.
So when tech crunch writes about us or, um, we launched on product hunt, for example. Because we also serve a good number of startups, we, we get, um, we get in front of the audience that can really relate to, to what we're doing. So, uh, if we were more niche and more kind of narrow in terms of what we're doing, uh, perhaps it wouldn't be as, as, um, wouldn't have that big of a lift.
The second piece for us was actually interesting is that press and, um, again, like, for example, getting picked up by, uh, by. You know, um, TechCrunch as an example, I think it's also less about purely net new people. Um, I think it's also about building trust with prospects and people who are considering using you, but aren't using you yet.
So for our category of a product, you know, we are a business phone solution. If you're a company using us, you want to make sure we're going to stick around. You know, we have funding. We're not going to just shut down. You want to rely on a service and make sure it has longevity. So anything we can do in that regard just helps people really kind of build trust and say, Hey, like, here are the people who are building this product.
I see who they are. They're not like hiding or anything. They have some level of funding or whatever. Um, I can see, I can trust them with my business. So I think that's a second piece. That's, that's important. Equally important, if not more important.
Yeah, you mentioned building trust a few times, uh in that piece of content, uh, and it sounds like press was important in that You know reassuring potential customers that you are going to continue to exist But I also think you mentioned that like, uh, you know Fantastic customer support, you know, being very hands on with them was also quite important in terms of building trust.
Is that right?
So many things around it is about building trust. Of course, like press helps building in public and talking about your experience online is very helpful, but in terms of customer support, I honestly think that amazing customer support is. Maybe like your best, your best marketing, especially in the early days, you, you really need your early customers to, I mean, it's everyone's dream.
You want your early customers to love you so much. They don't just use the product themselves, but they actually tell their friends and others. And the only way you can do that is of course, by delivering an amazing product. But I think that. Customer support is a part of the experience. So, um, but naturally, look, here's the other thing.
We were like thinking back to that time we, you know, We just got into YC. We had, we just received back in the day, YC gave you less money. So we had very little money. We didn't really, couldn't really afford to hire yet. We didn't know what we needed to hire. So like I was doing all customer support and as a person who is like super passionate about the product, like I, every customer support interaction for me.
Was an, a chance to not just help the customer, but like, I was like, how can I help the customer impress the customer? How can I like over deliver for every single customer? That's how I approached it. I also could afford to do that because we didn't have many customers. So I just think like customer support looks so different at that time.
You basically just like have to make things remarkable for them through sheer passion.
Yeah. With, with our business, I would say we're kind of in that phase now. Like I've got something like 200 customer Slack channels set up and I'm the one who does all of our customer support. And, uh, I agree with you that like very.
You know, active and helpful customer support is a marketing tactic because then those folks tend to tell other folks that they had such a great experience with Nate and positional help.
Interesting tidbit for you, by the way, which is, I'll just mention you, you, you can, this is like, I'm going off the rails here.
You feel free to edit this out if you want.
No, we're going to keep it in here for what's coming next.
Whatever is happening here. Okay. So one of your customers actually mentioned to me that they're using your product and they spoke about it very passionately. And that made me actually, because you know, I've, I've known about you a little bit.
Um, and I was actually checking out your site and thinking, Hey, we actually should maybe consider using your product too. So it's interesting that you're, you know, you're saying this. And I do the same for the products that I really love too. I think people are really willing to, to, to talk about products and services that they.
That they find helpful. Um, so just like another validation, like word of mouth actually works. So, and yeah, I'll be, I'll be also, maybe we'll talk later about your product.
And now just a quick word from one of our sponsors, actually our only sponsor. That is Positional. com. Positional has what I think is an awesome tool set for content marketers. We've got everything you need. To take you from start to finish and help you scale this channel as I've done over the last 11 years of my career.
We'd love for you to check it out at positional. com. I do want to talk about word of mouth and we're kind of skipping around the outline a little bit because I had a question here about the word of mouth. Um, is there anything that we can do to like, I don't know, expedite word of mouth? Like word of mouth will happen, but is there anything we can do to like, Accelerate word of mouth or make it easier for our customers to tell other potential folks about our product, or is that just not possible?
I definitely think there are things you can do to accelerate it. Um, but maybe I think it's like, let's look, I think I think about his foundation. So like first things first, your product needs to work, needs to be great. And like, Fulfill the promise. If the product does not fulfill the promise, not going to happen.
Right. But I think beyond just fulfilling the promise. There needs to be an aspect of it that is exceeding the expectation. So, so you meet expectations, but there has to be like an angle in which you exceed them. So, for example, maybe it is the product does what it says it does. And the customer service is exceptional.
So I'll talk about it because of that exceptional customer service, or maybe the product itself is like a 10 X product and every other product in the space is just very like bare bones. So I'll talk about it because of that. I think at this point, you know, consumer expectations are always going up.
Right. We're constantly, you know, it's getting harder and harder to break through the noise. So I just really think that there's got to be something about the product, the service. Maybe, maybe you have like really fun content around your product. Maybe your product does the job, but your content is hilarious and it's just like funny and people are like loving it and I'll talk about it because of your content.
But there has to be something about, there's got to be something that you do that exceeds customer expectations.
So we need hopefully like one at least, but maybe like two things that are 10x better.
Well, I think if you have two that you're like off, you know, things are off the charts. I honestly think most companies, I think it's just knowing what that is, you know.
Because I think some companies don't even know what it is and they're trying to do everything where a better strategy is just leading into one thing.
I agree with you totally as far as, uh, you know, go to market strategies go, um, transitioning a little bit, but I think a mistake that a lot of early stage startups make is that they try to do like six different Customer acquisition strategies.
And as a result, like they just don't do any of them that well. Um, speaking of like your customer acquisition strategies, you mentioned like marketing started to become really important from customer one on one to customer a thousand, um, and I know you've got an amazing blog and content and SEO strategy was that.
A focus in that, uh, customer 100 to a thousand, uh, range, or did that come later?
That came a little bit later that came. I wish it came. I really wish to be honest. I, I, I'm trying to remember who I said this to, but At some point, I basically, and I, and I still think like, honestly, we should have started our blog, like day one of the company, uh, you know, get a domain, start, start creating content.
And when I say blog, I mean, obviously you can think of it as, as like classic website blog, but really just content creation, uh, I've really. I am so bullish on content that I am basically, I think, at this point, telling everyone to do content right away. Um, but the, the spirit of it is that, look, uh, for us, uh, we, uh, certain content efforts helped us get to our thousand customers, but content really drove our growth.
Shortly after because you see, I think, um, I think a mistake that that we made, and I kind of wish I could go back and correct. That is, you know, I was writing some guest posts for other blogs. I was writing things on medium. I was writing things on LinkedIn. I think I was like doing content, um, in, in the first thousand customers kind of journey, but I didn't really kind of, I accidentally stumbled into it.
I didn't really embrace it. I didn't know that, Hey, this is what I'm doing. Um, and it worked right. It helped us get to our first thousand customers. I just wish that maybe I was more intentional about it. The truth is like for our kind of product. There are existing, you know, you don't have to convince businesses that they need a business phone.
There's a lot of demand for this category online. So we really should have immediately said, okay, we want all of that authority on our website, but we don't want to be on medium. I mean, maybe we want to be on medium too, but like it should not be on medium. It should be like on open phone. com. Um, and. I really wish we did that sooner.
Like just start building our own domain, um, you know, reputation and creating content that we own versus, you know, content that we just put out on other sites.
Yeah. I feel like we're seeing less of it in the last like year, uh, like less startups, like building their blog on medium. And I always tell folks like, Don't get the content off medium.
Put it on your side. Of course.
Well, also, by the way, keep in mind, you know, we, this was like 20. I feel I'm, I'm really kind of aging myself. This was 2018, 2017, you know, those are the days. Yeah. I don't think people talk about medium anymore. I feel so old now.
Still around, I think. Um, you actually answered my next question.
I was going to ask you, like, you know, because founders always ask me, like, when should I start working on content marketing or SEO? And I tell them it depends. Like, I tell them, like, if you can, if you have the resources to take it seriously at the early stage, That's great. You're just going to be happy that you did it later, but I understand if you don't have the resources to do it right now.
Um, and so I'm wondering like in the very early days of building your content SEO strategy, was it like you doing all the work, writing all of the blog posts, or did you like hire folks around you to, to help kind of facilitate this?
Yeah, well, maybe if you don't mind, I'll answer your first question about or just something you mentioned about when is the right time.
Right. So I believe that it depends on your business model. So for us, quantum SEO is a critical channel. And for us, I think if I could go back in time, all the way all the way back, I would just say, Oh, well, yeah, Based on, uh, you know, based on the fact that we serve a lot of different types of businesses.
Our total addressable market is massive. Um, again, we have a product that people are actively searching for, um, based and there are some other things, but based on that. I would say, okay, like content is, is going to be a key demand channel for us. Some other companies, perhaps they are, you know, they're selling enterprise SaaS, they have massive contracts.
They, you know, for them, uh, maybe account based marketing and a sales led approach makes sense. So if that's the kind of company, they're much better off. Really figuring out their sales motion. That seems like a better use of time in the early days, but for us, given our business model, figuring out content is, is essential.
So we should have done it maybe even earlier.
I think you make a really good point in that, like your business is set up well to succeed with the content SEO strategy. Uh, and I think I missed that in my point. So I really appreciate you. You mentioning that, like you, just to play it back to you, like, you've got a product where, you know, there is demand.
Like if open phone didn't exist, like someone would need a different solution for this. And then, uh, you also have a product that, you know, this starts at like 15 a month, 23 a month that someone can self serve onto like. They probably don't want to talk to a sales rep given like the customers you mentioned earlier.
Um, and whereas like, like you said, if you've got like a very enterprise heavy sales motion or a product that people aren't looking for right now, like, or they don't know to look for it, then, then maybe content isn't as good of an early investment.
Absolutely. And going back to your point around you really, when you're early, you really can only figure out how to do maybe one or two things really well.
So, for example, you know, we, uh, Some of our first customers, like I cold emailed a bunch of people and I was doing so, so many cold emails. I think that was very helpful in getting us a first, um, you know, first hundred, first thousand customers. But from there on, you know, right now, for example, for us, content is a far bigger part of our kind of demand strategy.
So I, of course, looking back, I wish maybe I spent some less time there and more time investing in a longer term plan, which is for us, the content motion. Um, so again, it depends on the kind of really depends on the business model. Um, and the, you know, whether there is existing kind of demand for what you're building online that you can kind of capitalize on.
Totally and to that second question, because I want to make sure we don't forget, uh, in those early days, was it you writing all of the content? Was it you building the strategy or did you hire anyone to help you with it at those early days?
So the journey to a thousand customers was.
Primarily me, but shortly after we brought on an amazing freelancer, and I'm going to give him a shout out here, uh, Terran. He was, he's awesome. Really, really helped us. I mean, some of the pieces that he, uh, you know, helped us produce are still very, very valuable. So, um, you know, it was, It was just amazing to be fair, like to all the founders who may be, you know, watching, listening, just like beautiful things happen when you bring on people who, you know, who know what they're doing.
So that's a huge shout out there to Taryn. And then shortly after we brought on Philip, a big shout out, he's, uh, he's on the team, he, he, he's a content marketing manager at open phone. Um, I'm now excited that I'll tell him to for sure, uh, watch and listen to this. Um, he, you know, he's been with us since the early days and he really helped us, um, build that content motion.
Um, so yeah, we, we brought on folks fairly early and I always wish we did that even earlier, you know.
Yeah, and Philip, I don't know if you're listening, but we chatted like a year ago. I hope you're, I hope you're doing well.
Oh, that's nice. Okay, cool. I love it.
It's been a while. It's been a while, Philip. But, uh, but yeah, maybe like a year ago we chatted, but I hope you're doing good.
Philip is great. He, I mean, A lot of what you see us producing. And again, even from the earlier days, like we set up that set out that foundation. So, um, yeah, I am, uh, so, so grateful.
I was doing a little more digging and I saw that like, it looks like you do a very good job of hitting like those different stages of the funnel, uh, with the content that you create.
Again, you don't have to be specific, but like, uh, are there certain sections of the website, uh, that, that drive a lot more conversions, but maybe drive less traffic? And then are there other sections of the website that might drive a lot of traffic, but not drive as many conversions? Is that something you see across your site?
Well, sure. I mean, we have So like kind of the way that things have evolved when we started out building our content, we kind of focused so much on some of the like bottom of the funnel terms. We really, really went for basically things that people are searching for just as they're about to make a decision.
So basically, we started out super bottom of the funnel. And then as we've scaled, we've. Uh, started building, um, content for, for things that people, um, may be curious about, things that we can add value with, but, you know, don't lead to an immediate buying decision. So the way things have evolved is. That's kind of the way we've evolved our content strategy.
Daryna Kulya
But right now there are sets of pages that drive a lot of traffic. Maybe don't convert as well or right away. Um, and then there is a very, you know, there's a set of pages. where people are essentially, essentially ready to make a buying decision. They're kind of shopping around and we know that if we present, um, you know, the product, uh, and, and kind of what we offer in the right way, chances are they're going to like convert and make a buying decision right then.
So it's, it's can be a really polarizing set of pages too.
Yeah. You know, there's, I've always found there's certain pages on the site where feels like you're trying to like squeeze a rock and like, you just can't drive that many conversions from them. If they're like very like evergreen or like, uh, you know, top of the funnel pages, whereas like the, you know, bottom of the funnel pay pages that serve keywords like, you know, best tools, best software, alternatives, things like that.
Yeah. Those are always like, uh, going to be a lot higher converting.
Maybe I can give you an example of it, if it helps. So here's an example, which is maybe a fun one because you're, you're a YC company too. So we published our YC application. Um, and anytime the new batch, basically anytime it's application season, uh, we get a ton of traffic for people searching for YC application because.
We published ours and we published the video. It's, it's all out there. And, um, so from a traffic perspective, I love seeing kind of, and also like, I just love the fact that we can add some value and do that, but of course, from a conversion perspective, I can't expect someone who is obviously like. You know, applying to I see they're working on their application.
They're not going to be like, oh, cool. Open phone. Let me just sign up right away. That's not going to happen. But what actually happens in reality is people, um, you know, 1st of all, hopefully again, I'm a little biased, but I hope that's valuable that add some value to to these folks. Uh, we serve a lot of startups and.
And maybe when they, uh, you know, they check out our application and they read something else about open phone, or we like to open source other things about our business and share useful resources, maybe then they read the article about how we got our 1000 customers as they are trying to get their first 1000 customers.
And hopefully then. When they are ready to, uh, you know, maybe scale their team and they're looking for a solution for their customer support team to do phone or text or for their sales team, then they will, um, when they are searching for something, they'll be like, Oh wait, open phone, uh, open phone was already helpful in some way.
And they have some level of brand affinity, brand awareness. So for me, that's, I mean, I love that. And I've had plenty of people who do that. And they actually told me, Hey, I found out about you guys through your YC application, which is like crazy, but yeah.
Yeah. It looks like you're on the bottom of the first page of search results for YC application, which is a fun keyword.
Uh, and I'm looking at the, some of the blog pages now, like you, I think you do a really good and interesting job of going like very deep Very specific. Like you've got a piece of content that I'm looking at about like SMS compliance. Um, but then you've also got like a piece of content about like the best call recording software.
And then you've got one that's even a little bit broader than that, about just the best small business software. And I'm guessing that like open phone is one of the top small business software is that folks should be considering. Um, And, uh, I, I've asked this question to a few of our guests in the past, uh, is there a keyword where if you could wake up tomorrow morning, you were like number one for that keyword and you're number one for the next five years, like you've got it locked down.
Is there a certain keyword you just would want to rank first for?
So, I wish, if this was truly like, you're gonna grant this, you're like the uh, the Google wizard, you're the SEO wizard, you're gonna grant us this, could I ask for topical authority instead, uh, so I would want to ask for, you know, Of course, right, like, uh, I mean, my, my direct answer would be business phone system.
Uh, I would, that would be my answer, but I wish, like, if, if I could ask for that wish, please grant us better topical authority on business phone system, because that hopefully helps us rank for more keywords that are around that topic. So that, that would be my answer.
Great keyword. And also a good point for all the listeners just getting started in building out an SEO channel.
Topical authority is this, um, it's kind of SEO jargon. Um, and you can't really quantify it. It's more, uh, it's like a way to describe how like Google views your website as a very trusted source of information on a given topic area. Uh, and you do that with content. You can also do that with backlinks as some people would argue.
Well, you see, I'm trying to. Speak the language. I know you have a lot of SEO folks probably listening and content folks listening to this. I'm trying to like blend in and be like, Hey, I, I, I get the, uh, I get the jargon.
This is a fun hybrid episode because we're talking a little bit about SEO, but we're also talking about like, uh, you know, go to market and, and your story more broadly.
And we, you know, we've done like 60 plus episodes just about SEO. So like these types of conversations, I'm having a lot of fun with this.
Oh, thank you. Yeah. We can, we can, uh, yeah, we don't have to just talk about SEO.
I'm sure we could, but, uh, there's a few other non SEO questions I want to ask. You know, open phone, it's like a fairly mature company now.
I think you've raised like a series B, uh, how are you thinking about growth and go to market and let's say the next 12 to 24 months, uh, being in your shoes today.
We definitely want to continue investing and kind of have our content motion evolve. I think that. Um, 1 of the big things that stop of mind for us is really going going outside of that just pure bottom of the funnel focus.
I think we did. We've done a good job there, but. As the company is, is, is, uh, as we are maturing as a company and we also, I think, have more confidence in who we are as a, as a company, frankly, um, we are excited to invest more in brand. Um, and really kind of, um, go stronger in terms of the areas where we can, um, really build brand affinity.
Uh, I was talking, I shared that example about. People finding our Y. C. application, hopefully finding it useful and, like, creating that, you know, positive brand association. I think we want to do more there. Um, so I think high level more investment in brand more investment in. Kind of top of the funnel stuff.
That's where we want to go, uh, over the course of the next little while. And of course, like we're still doing, you know, paid marketing and a bunch of other stuff. Um, but I think the difference between what we are willing to do now is given where further along brand just becomes something that we are, we are able to invest in more versus before we kind of had to rely on a more short term investments.
Yeah, well, to your point earlier, content can also be a brand building exercise. Like even if someone doesn't convert today from that piece of content about SMS compliance, like they've been on open phone before. So like the next time they see your ad or you hit them with like an outbound email, like they're, they're going to have heard of your business at least once.
Um, and then as far as like brand building goes, Not focusing on content. Are those like, uh, things like billboards or like sponsoring a sports team? Like how do you go about investing in brand?
I wish, Hey, if, uh, my favorite team is, uh, Toronto Raptors NBA. So if anyone's listening, just kidding. Um, Hey, I can, uh, I have, I have dreams here.
Um, In terms of I think I think frankly a lot of it is going to be around content. Um, you know, we, uh, yeah, we're not yet going that crazy. But hey, you never know. Um, I think, you know, I think a lot of the a lot of what we have, uh, that is top of mind for us is, you know, Is delivering value, really delivering value to our audience to, you know, folks who are there.
There are so many topics kind of adjacent to what we do that we want to, um, do a better job sharing. So. A lot of it ends up being content, but maybe it's not. It's more brand content and less focused on immediate conversion. So we're really going more into the top of the funnel world. And, uh, and also, by the way, it's going to be a lot more video.
So that's, that's, that's a big one.
I don't know if you've ever heard of like service Titan. I feel like they might sell to a similar customer then as you do. I, you're not competitive though, from what I understand, but I feel like they do a pretty good job in terms of like, uh, brand building with content.
I don't know. Um, but, uh, you don't compete with service, right?
You just reminded me something. I feel like because I'm talking to you. Partnerships is huge. Yeah, I'm talking to you and we're obviously I know we're talking about more than just content, but because for some reason I'm associating you with content and SEO.
I'm only talking about content SEO, but we're investing so much into partnerships. In fact, we also, by the way, have a big exciting launch coming up. In the, in the, in October. So, uh, I can't really share too much, but partnerships are really big for us this year and beyond.
Well, that is exciting. And in October, I will definitely retweet or reshare your, your LinkedIn.
And now stay tuned more to come.
I have one more question before we get to the lightning round. Does that sound good?
Love it. Yeah.
It's on, uh, hiring. Uh, startups, I feel like often struggle to make those like early, like go to market and, uh, and growth marketing hires. Uh, is there like one thing or two things that you look for when like interviewing a candidate for like a go to market or growth role?
Yeah, I think that the biggest learning I've had and really something that, um, especially is important early on, you want people who really, really love what you're doing. I think that over indexing on drive and curiosity is important. You essentially want people who will, um, especially for a go to market roles where, um, You know, mark marketing in particular, do you want folks who can get truly, truly excited about the problem you're solving your customer base and, uh, and of course the product.
So I think if I were to give one piece of advice, if there's one thing I learned is to really, really, um, you know, I would over index there because, because look, there's tons of talented, amazing people out there and. Um, you know, many people who can, uh, you know, kind of who have the skills you're looking for.
But when you're early, you're not just looking for someone who has the skills. You're really looking for someone who has the drive to figure things out because things are not always what they seem. So you think you need someone with a skill set, but maybe the skill set is slightly different. So you want someone who can actually be excited enough to To even like pivot their role a bit to adapt to what the business needs.
Um, and yeah, you really need that drive and curiosity, especially when you're.
This has been so much fun. And, uh, I've got three lightning round questions. Does that sound good?
Love it. Let's do it.
The first is I feel like very recently I saw that you were hiring for like an SEO role on LinkedIn, or are you still hiring for that position?
We are absolutely depending on, I mean, I, uh, depending on when this goes out, we, uh, you know, we are, we're actively interviewing folks
Probably about like three weeks. So, for, for any of our listeners, a lot of people who do SEO full time, uh, they should find an application to that job posting on open phones website.
Oh, absolutely. Please do. People can ping me too, but of course we have, uh, yeah, it's on our careers page.
Cool. And, uh, you've got a podcast now, right? Tell us about that.
Yes. Hey, I am, uh, nowhere near the, the, the kind of the number of episodes you've done. I'm still very new. I should ask you for, for advice here, but.
But look, we, uh, we're experimenting, uh, talking about brand awareness and, you know, trying new channels. Uh, we just started a podcast called Founded Founder. It's, um, it's really about telling stories and learning from other founders in the trenches of building a company. People can check it out. It's on YouTube, Spotify, et cetera.
Um, it's very early. But I'm learning a lot. Uh, it's a lot harder than it seems. That's my learning.
It is hard. It's hard to be a force and to be a guest. Um, I, you know, I, I'm still figuring it out as we go, but I found that it's a little bit like SEO. Like nobody listens to like the first, you know, 20 episodes, but then you'll hit like certain inflection points where all of the sudden things will start to scale faster.
And then what happens is people will actually go back and listen to those like first 20 episodes that you did that nobody originally listened to same like with your first 20 blog posts. Um, but yeah, founder to founder, I'll definitely be checking that out this weekend.
Thank you. Oh my God. Thank you so much.
But I, Hey, I, uh, I hope I'm being a good guest, by the way. I think that being, trying this out, it's, it's actually gives me very different level of empathy for what you do. So I'm just like sitting here being like, I hope I'm a good guest.
You know, what's harder than podcasting, in my opinion, is creating YouTube videos.
Uh, you mentioned videos earlier. Are those YouTube videos?
Well, look, we have just such a wide, I mean, uh, there is a spoiler alert. There is like one sort of YouTube style video. I'm going to try and see how it goes. But, um, but yeah, some of it is that to be honest, I think all video is hard because, and maybe, maybe it just depends on the person and like, yeah, it's just a difficult medium to get right.
Um, so, um, so yeah, we're also doing some like. Tutorials and various kind of product videos. Yeah, I'm really big on video. So, uh, just experimenting with all kinds of formats.
Totally. Yeah. I would much rather personally write like 15 blog posts than to, uh, than to film five YouTube videos. It's just so hard for me, at least.
My last question is how can our listeners learn more about OpenPhone?
For sure. openhone.com is the, uh, we have. Obviously open on, uh, if they're interested in checking out the product, uh, please, you know, uh, just go on our website, but in terms of our content, uh, you know, I mentioned founder and founder, which is a new podcast we just launched, um, we have our blog and speaking of video, uh, there's going to be a lot more coming to our YouTube channel.
So if you're into video, um, subscribe to our YouTube channel.
I'll include links to the, uh, the, the new podcast founder to founder, as well as, uh, the open phone site. So you've built at least one backlink today.
Oh my God. Uh, my, the team is going to be so thrilled. Like yay backlinks.
Yeah. You know, I don't know.
We're not the highest domain authority website, but every link counts. Anyways, thank you so much for coming on this week's episode of the optimized podcast.
Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.
And that's a wrap. And I just want to thank our sponsor Positional. They've got what is a pretty awesome tool set for content marketers and SEOs. They've even got a couple tools for social media. Uh, we'd love for you to check out Positional and the tool set that we've created, uh, over the last 15 months at positional.com and you can always reach out to me if you have any questions. My email is Nate at positional. com whether you've got questions about our tool set or comments and complaints, uh, or even positive feedback about this podcast, I'd love to hear from you. Um, and don't forget to hit the like and subscribe button, uh, wherever you are listening to this podcast.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
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Positional's tools are an essential supplement to any search-driven content effort. They help us save time and produce better content for both our company blog and our clients.
We used to create outlines for our posts, either by paying a consultant $75+ each, or by spending 1-2 hours researching and creating each one ourselves. With Positional, we can create the best outlines for our target keyword clusters and get alternatives within a couple clicks.
Positional has proven indispensable in our SEO strategy. Its rapid optimization capabilities for our blogs led to noticeable improvements in search rankings within a month. From planning to making our content better, it’s like having a teammate. Our team loves it!
Positional is a must-use tool for any growing startup that cares about SEO. It's simple and easy to use but as powerful as anything out there. Plus their customer support is next level.
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Positional has been an amazing addition to our SEO and Content team's workflows, enhancing our overall efficiency. We particularly love using AutoDetect and Internal Linking on a daily basis!
Nate and the positional team are the best of the best in SEO, content marketing, and helping you grow your organic traffic. The combination of their expertise and the SEO and content tool they’ve built has allowed us to build a scalable content engine. Reach out to me anytime for a testimony. They are truly phenomenal.
As an SEO novice, Positional makes it easy. I can quickly go from keyword research, to clustering, to content outlines, then go focus on just making good content. I felt like it helped bridge the gaps between what would’ve taken 3 or more tools in the past.
The first time we used Positional's toolset was to revamp an older but important piece of content. We used Optimize for optimization, and Internals for internal linking suggestions. We went from position #6 to #1 with the changes and increased our organic search traffic to the page by 400%. Today, Positional is an integral part of our blogging strategy, from topic generation to blog renovation.
“We’ve been moving up the search rankings. When we first started using Positional, we had about 1,000 visitors from organic search per month, and today, we have over 12,000 visitors from organic search per month. And obviously, Positional has played a large role in our growth.”
Positional takes the guessing game out of our content and SEO strategy. It allows me to do extremely quick keyword research which I can then turn into detailed instructions for our content writers through their Optimize tool. I love the speed new capabilities are being added!
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Positional's tools are an essential supplement to any search-driven content effort. They help us save time and produce better content for both our company blog and our clients.
“We’ve been moving up the search rankings. When we first started using Positional, we had about 1,000 visitors from organic search per month, and today, we have over 12,000 visitors from organic search per month. And obviously, Positional has played a large role in our growth.”
Positional takes the guessing game out of our content and SEO strategy. It allows me to do extremely quick keyword research which I can then turn into detailed instructions for our content writers through their Optimize tool. I love the speed new capabilities are being added!
I've been using Positional since its closed beta, and it boosted our SEO results so far! We've published over 80 articles with Positional and it has gained traction very well. The "Optimize" tool is my favorite — it ensures we use the right keywords for better rankings. The "Content Analytics" tool is also great for showing us exactly where we should improve our content.
Positional's tools are an essential supplement to any search-driven content effort. They help us save time and produce better content for both our company blog and our clients.
