Sharath Kuruganty: The beauty of having an audience for your product

Transcript of episode 19

Matthias:
Welcome back, dear listeners, this is The Audience Explorer podcast again. And today I’m very happy to have Sharath Kuruganty here. Did I pronounce that correctly?

Sharath:
Yeah, you did it right!

Matthias:
Okay, cool. He’s the co-founder of shoutout.so and he’s with Product Hunt today, all kinds of stuff going on! I’m very happy to welcome you here, Sharath!

Sharath:
Yeah. Good to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Excited to talk to you about audience building and a lot of other things I do.

Matthias:
Thank you for being here. So, to introduce you a little bit to our listeners, would you tell us something about your back story? What did you do and what do you do today with Shoutout?

Sharath:
Yeah, for sure. So, I won’t talk too much about myself. I’m more interested in diving deeper into audience building.

Matthias:
Okay.

Sharath:
A little bit about myself; I’ve been actively shaping projects using no-code tools for the last three years. Before that, I used to be a product manager.

Matthias:
Oh, okay.

Sharath:
And I worked at Fortune 500 companies. And my latest project is called Shoutout where we try to solve the problem of social proof and the way it should be displayed and so showcased and can be leveraged in the advantage of creators and startups. So, that’s like the latest project I worked on. And I shipped like 15 plus projects in the last three years.

Matthias:
Oh boy, that’s a lot. That’s a lot of stuff.

Sharath:
Yeah.

Matthias:
When did you get started with Shoutout? When was the initial idea?

Sharath:
Yeah, Shoutout started literally, I think, a year ago, you know, roughly, I think, a year ago. Usually, I’m very active on Twitter and I get a lot of shout outs. And I thought, like, “These are all nice people telling nice things about me.”

Matthias:
Yeah.

Sharath:
So, I felt, why should I not gather them and put it on one place? You know, it only gives me some benefit. And obviously, like I said, social proof is so much an underrated thing and people are sleeping on it even till today, especially creators.

So, I thought, “You know, let’s actually build something for myself. And that was the idea. Actually, nothing to do with embedded walls, solving social proof as a big mission.

Matthias:
Yeah.

Sharath:
It was really, “What if I just gathered all the tweets, you know, nice things people say about me and put under one place, just to feel good about it.”

Matthias:
That’s a really good idea.

Sharath:
Yeah, that’s how it literally started; like, you know, nothing fancy.

Matthias:
Yeah.

Sharath:
So, KP, one of my best friends, he tweeted about me; just like he gave me a shout out, and I felt like that literally triggered the idea. So, yeah, it was a wild ride so far, and I’ve been enjoying building it.

Matthias:
Wow. Did you stay alone or did you do it with somebody else together?

Sharath:
Yes. So, the first few months, I did by myself, like ship the landing page, get the initial validation, the hype; build that hype around the product and we got like 500 sign ups in one month, if I’m not wrong; one or two months.

So, I did all the foundational work before I met a few people, the early believers, who said – they asked for a few features.

Matthias:
Yeah.

Sharath:
After they used the first MVP, I built. So, again, I built the initial MVP using Bubble; a no-code tool, just to try it out and you get a sense from early believers, mostly feedback. So, yeah, they gave me some feedback at the same time, said, “If you build X Y Z, we’re going to pay you.”

Matthias:
Oh, cool.

Sharath:
We’d love to use it as a as a product. And that since I’m a non-technical maker, I felt like now it’s time to actually find a technical co-founder.

Matthias:
Find someone to work with.

Sharath:
Yeah. So, that’s when I sort of like, put a back signal on Twitter saying, “Hey, I’m looking for a co-founder. These are the reasons you should join Shoutout and me.” So, I got like, what, 16 plus DMs in a day or two; engineers all around the world who have worked at Microsoft, Amazon, and so on and so forth.

And finally, I met like five to six people who I really am interested in; I felt like the vibe. And Curtis Cummings, who’s who works at On Deck now as a senior engineer, back then, he’s just getting started with On Deck. And we both clicked in the first two meetings. We felt like we can work together; there is some chemistry. And yeah, that’s how.

So, he joined me, you know, around November. So, starting November, we were like fully focused on building the actual product using fully-coded platform, robust, with high performance and whatnot.

So, yeah, so we launched, I think, private beta in December. We invited like hundred people, well, less than a hundred people. By then I got like a thousand people waiting on the wait list.

Matthias:
That’s amazing; a thousand people already on the waiting list. That’s really amazing. About finding this co-founder, let me ask you, what made you decide for a certain person? What had to be true so that you know, “Yes, that’s my co-founder”?

Sharath:
So, it depends on people to people. So, for me, what I did was I actually wrote a set of values which I adhere; in which I follow.

Matthias:
Okay.

Sharath:
And on top of that, I wanted to see the other person in action; like, you know, ideas are always great, but it’s just the execution actually differentiates.

Matthias:
And how does that work; seeing someone in action? Did he code before you or what was it?

Sharath:
Well, not necessarily before me, but I actually gave a little task, in part, like what else can people do about it? So, most of them, they did just that task, and they were like sort of like complaining, “Why this? Why that?” and all that. But Curtis, on the other side, he actually went one extra mile.

Matthias:
Wow.

Sharath:
He did it beyond what I expected. And more than that, he was very excited about it; like I saw a lot of passion while doing it.

Matthias:
I think this is really; having important having energy and passion, because start up is a roller coaster ride. Yeah.

Sharath:
Exactly.

Matthias:
So, you need energy and passion to push through. Yeah.

Sharath:
For sure. Yeah. And he was like chipping in ideas. How can we make this better? So, he was very much hungry like me.

Matthias:
Yeah.

Sharath:
So, I saw that and I was like, “Yeah, this is the guy. I think we should just go for it.

Matthias:
That’s cool. It’s almost obvious, right?

Sharath:
Yeah, let’s not waste any time; just like get on with it.

Matthias:
Cool. Tell us a little bit more about this Shoutout product. I’m using it myself, but I want to hear it in your own words, for our listeners.

Sharath:
Yes, for sure. Yeah. So, like I said, right, it was just started as a naive idea, but it evolved as like any other product. That’s the beauty of putting it outside and building in public.

Matthias:
Yeah.

Sharath:
People let you know that these are the use cases you can focus on/these are the features you should work on.

So, it evolved and obviously, the mission evolved. We were focusing on how we can empower creators to leverage their social proof and startups to like rely on social proof and get more eyeballs, get more sales and build trust, fundamentally, with their audience and the future customers. So, that was the whole, you know, it evolved, like I said.

So, the platform is pretty simple. It’s not like too complex. You basically can create a wall of love for yourself in less than three minutes. It’s quickly, it’s fast. It’s like responsive, then {indistinct 9:46}.

Matthias:
For our listeners, what is on this wall of love?

Sharath:
Yeah. So, like I said, it’s all the good things people say about you, your product. And you can gather them. We use Twitter as a fundamental base. So, as a daily active user on Twitter, I see a lot of people shouting out others in a good way and just encouraging them to build something, either projects and whatnot. So, in a way, if you capture it and channelize it, it’ll help you build trust.

Matthias:
Ah, yeah. So, you’re showing positive tweets, for example, on your wall?

Sharath:
Yeah. All the positive tweets, all the nice things people tell about you and your work. It sorts of elevates you. You’re not bragging about yourself, but people are bragging about you.

Matthias:
Yeah.

Sharath:
It’s a nice way. And yeah, this wall, you can actually use it on your website. You can take the unique link, which we give you for the particular wall. You can put it in your email, tweet it out and let others know; your audience.

Matthias:
Yeah.

Sharath:
Yeah, that’s like the fundamental idea of Shoutout. And so far, we’ve been focusing on how we can showcase social proof. But going further, we wanted to like help creators gather social proof. So, like, how can we solve that problem?

Matthias:
Hmm, that’s also an interesting problem.

Sharath:
So, by far, we have customers/users who have some sort of audience. They have some sort of social proof build already. So, it’s easy for them to like plug in Shoutout, build this wall, add and embed them to their website and grow from there.

Matthias:
Yeah.

Sharath:
But on the other side, we see people who are just getting started. So, they’re building their work. They’re just like building their audience. So, how can we help them?

So, we actually launched something called Shoutout Forms, where basically whatever you do with your work, you can basically plug in this form and let people know that they can leave a review. So, the reviews, the testimonials, everything are collected through this form and directly added to your wall.

Matthias:
Oh, that’s nice. I didn’t see that yet. Wow. I was always working with Shoutout in the form of tweets, but I didn’t see this form yet. That’s amazing.

Sharath:
Yeah. So, we are giving the form as an embed as well. You can use that from anywhere you want.

Matthias:
That’s cool.

Sharath:
And on your approval, you can basically add it to your wall and the wall gets immediately updated because you don’t have to do anything. So, that’s the beauty of Shoutout. Once you set up this wall, it’s hands free. Now, you just add, remove tweets/shout outs.

So, yeah, that’s the idea. And in future, we want to expand it to, not just Twitter. We want to do LinkedIn, Facebook, basically any place where you can-

Matthias:
Oh, okay. Other social networks.

Sharath:
Exactly. And you just get that legwork up. We actually build this manual way of uploading shout outs. So, right now, people can add reviews from Product Hunt, Google reviews. If you are a podcaster, you must get a ton of reviews from Apple Podcasts. You can add that. And so on and so forth. So, you can basically like diversify the social programming. So, yeah.

Matthias:
That’s adding more value; even more valued than it does.

Sharath:
Exactly.

Matthias:
I remember when I joined Shoutout, I had this difficulty to say, Oh, I’m very critical about myself, so I have a hard time finding positive things. And when somebody tweets about me in a positive way, it was so easy to add it to Shoutout because Shoutout was scanning my tweets and was looking for the replies when somebody replied to me and I could simply select them from the list and say, “Yeah, this one is good. That one is good” and so on. So, yeah, that what was really great.

Sharath:
Yeah.

Matthias:
Now, this is called the Audience Explorer podcast, so I’m very much interested in how on earth did you find your first people who were interested in your idea and your product? How did that work?

Sharath:
Right. So, I’m very fortunate that I already have some audience waiting for me to drop the next thing. That’s the beauty of having an audience. And like I said, over three years, I’ve built so much and I started doing this in public and started sharing my lessons, tips and everything I’m learning.

Matthias:
So, building in public was already an important factor because people started to know you.

Sharath:
Exactly. And they know me and they were actually waiting like, “What’s the next thing Sharath is going to drop? So, at that time, I was just like figuring out what I’m working on next. And yeah, just fortunate enough, dropped right on time, and they were already very familiar with my work.

And at the same time, the idea is really simple. And it was like, I think, back then, the only thing that dealt with short social proof, especially in the creative economy space. So, everybody loved it. And they jumped on it quickly, obviously. And I had to call a few people like KP, Arvid – These were few folks who believed the idea at the very beginning – and they were amplifying on my behalf on Twitter.

So, it’s sort of like I do have audience and I have like few people who I really admire and friends with amplify it, and the idea worked well. So, a lot of factors played in.

Matthias:
Yeah, I remember KP and Arvid. Yes, they were talking about your tool as well. And from, let’s say, day to day or week to week, there were more and more people talking about it. I remember that.

Sharath:
Yeah.

Matthias:
And I also remember that your co-founder, Curtis, published a screencast recording. So, I could see, yeah a new button is here, that when I click that, it happens over there and so on. So, the screencasts were also very helpful, I think.

Sharath:
Yeah. So, I think we are really aggressive, in terms of building in public; like we were very transparent, letting people know what we’re working on. And that actually changed the whole course. I feel like we didn’t rely on marketing budget or anything. We didn’t buy any ads. It was all us doing in public, whatever we’re doing.

Matthias:
Yeah, that’s a very important factor because people develop a relationship towards the maker. I’m also building in public, forget the audience, and sometimes I get feedback like, “Hey, I’m following you. I was reading your tweets at night” and so on. And I think, “Hey, people are really interested in my stuff” and it’s fascinating.

About your audience, do they use a role name for themselves? Do they say something like, “I am a so-and-so”, or is it just people who want to display testimonials regardless of their role?

Sharath:
In terms of Shoutout, we have like creators like yourself, like your podcasters who make info products, who write newsletters, who have communities.

We do have like the other side, literally startups. And we see forums, like Village Global is one of them, who are our customers. So, there are a wide variety of people. We have like startup operators who just rely on their audience for their work.

Matthias:
Yeah.

Sharath:
So, fundamentally, it’s creators and early-stage startups/CV startups. So, those are the customers, you know, I can say.

Matthias:
Okay, I see.

And now, once you have your audience and once the product is progressing, do you do anything special to keep them interested or to keep them at bay to develop your audience further?

Sharath:
So, yeah, one of the things – I think we haven’t been that active lately, because of our full time jobs, both Curtis and I, we were like focusing on that. But we used to be very aggressive in social; like involving people. I think if people who are listening, cleverly involve your product in community so that you don’t have to sell your product; they will already buy it, because you are bringing value for them of with.

Of which, Shoutout, one of the campaigns we ran, every week pretty much, is we used to highlight makers and creators, let’s say, Arvid Karl in this example, and say, “Arvid wrote this book. If you’re by any chance affected by him, give him a shout out.” So, we are gathering shout outs for him.

Matthias:
So, that’s good idea. Yeah.

Sharath:
So, organically people use the product by itself because they know what we’re doing. So, that’s why I think cleverly marketing, putting it out is very important to scale the audience and get more eyeballs in a way.

Matthias:
Yeah.

I always wonder about what good marketing is. I recently talked to Cory Haines, and he said – I think he quoted that from someone-

Sharath:
And Cory Haines, by the way, is also a paying customer.

Matthias:
Oh, okay, nice. Yeah. Cory is a good guy.

Sharath:
Yeah.

Matthias:
And he said, marketing is helping people to buy, getting people to know you and helping them to buy. This takes a little stress out of marketing, I think, because for me, as a as a developer, as a software engineer, it’s always a little strange to work in marketing. But I have to; as a founder, I have to, because otherwise nobody will notice.

But if I think of marketing as helping people to understand and to get the value and then to buy it, it becomes natural, it becomes more natural than if I think of it as, “Yeah, buy my product. It is so great” and so on. So, this is not marketing, I think.

Sharath:
Yeah, I think marketing is really fundamental. We all market in one way or the other way. We don’t know that yet. I mean, we don’t realize that. It’s about like how you project yourself out.

Matthias:
Yeah.

Sharath:
And whatever it is, like if you are working on a product, how you’re putting the product out and letting them know – When I say “them”, everybody else – know that this product is going to benefit you.

And the value is what you need to sell, not the product. What’s in there for them is what you need to sell, not the product. And how better they are going to be become once they use your product is what you need to sell, not the product. So, I think those are the factors people should focus on when they are marketing it.

It’s a very abused word, marketing, but once you put it this way, you know, sell the benefit, sell the story, sell the why, then it becomes very neutral; like, you know, “Oh, I know why.” Everybody who’s developing whatever they’re working on, they know why. So, start amplifying that, then it’s a different ballgame.

Matthias:
That’s a good idea. And that’s a point to get started, especially for new creators, new founders, when they think, “How do I market my stuff?” Simply sell the why. Yes, that’s good.

Sharath:
Yeah.

Matthias:
And what feedback channels does Shoutout have? How can people give feedback to you?

Sharath:
Yeah, we use Intercom primarily where people can hop on to the chat and chat with us. I would say it’s all Twitter; like, we get a lot of ideas from Twitter. People chat, “You know, we need this. Can you work on performance issues?” or sometimes they find a lot of bugs and they just report in our DMs. That’s primarily our fully transparent channel that we use, which is I have my open DMs. Curtis has his own. So, we just reach out and like, you know, they say good things and the improvements we can work on.

Matthias:
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. And I recently heard that you were with Product Hunt today.

Sharath:
Yeah.

Matthias:
Tell us a little bit more about how that happened.

Sharath:
Yes. So, like I said, everything I’m building is on the side, all my side projects, and I do have like nine-to-five job. So, while my full-time work is at Product Hunt, I manage the community there; build the community there.

So, I was just looking for a little gig and found Product Hunt is hiring for community roles. So, I applied in public, again, and people amplified it. That’s the part of audience as well. They sort of like rallied that I would be a good fit. So, yeah, it all worked out well. Hopped on a call with the team.

And at the same time, I actually was nominated, Shoutout was nominated for Maker Grant award by Product Hunt, by the way. And there is so much history between me and Product Hunt; like, you know, I ship many projects there. I was nominated as Community Member of the Year for 2019. There is so much history between both of us. And it all worked out well in the end. So, I lead and initiate some programs at Product Hunt for community.

Matthias:
Hmm. So, how do you do that; building a community? I always respect people who do that, for example, Rosie Sherie, she’s also fantastic in community building.

How do you do kind of this stuff? Do you have certain activities? Do you animate people to do something or what is it?

So, yeah, community building is fundamentally service minded act. So, you should you should think about what you’re doing. There is no certain way to do community. Everybody has their own flavor of building a community, but whatever they do, how would they do, everybody should be like service minded.

When I say that, it means it should come from; how can I help others? How can I serve others. So, that service-minded attitude helps a lot in building a community.

And yeah, I think, you talk about details, I feel like you should find ways where people can talk to each other and provide value, irrespective of your presence.

Audience building is slightly different. Audience building is one to many. You’re a creator of your brand and you’re amplifying, creating content and building audience.

Matthias:
Yeah, that’s right.

Sharath:
Community is you’re part among them. You’re not like one to many. You’re like within them.

Matthias:
That’s a good way to put it. Yeah.

Sharath:
So, you interact with them and they interact with themselves. You bring these initiatives and work on these initiatives where you bring people together; like literally likeminded people. That’s how you build a community over time.

Eventually, the only difference I tell people from building an audience and building a community is, if you’re gone, for some reason, let’s say tomorrow, your audience are gone with audience building because they don’t have a means to come to you because you are not there.

Matthias:
Mm hmm.

Sharath:
But with community building on the other side, if you’re gone, your community stays alive because they already have familiarity with themselves, they know each other and they know how to run things with themselves.

Matthias:
Yeah, that’s true.

Sharath:
So, it’s not entirely dependent on you. Right at the beginning, yes, you are the leader and you are amplifying and you’re working on these initiatives that bring people together.

Matthias:
And on Product Hunt, you have these Makers and the Hunters and what activities do they do together? What happens there in the community?

Sharath:
So, we have discussions; it’s one of the primary things where people can come and just share their experience, their learnings and their questions as well. Like if someone is really struggling with something, they can hop on the discussions and like, you know. I wouldn’t say Hunters, but it’s more of like tech savvy people.

Matthias:
Okay, yeah. Okay. So, have a common ground in tech.

Sharath:
Yeah, everybody loves products. So, our communities are people who love products, who are tech savvy and who are really into the next big thing; finding the next big thing. And there are builders like yourself, creators and founders. We see, you know, a flavor in that. So, it’s a wide variety of identities come together just to celebrate people and the work they do.

Matthias:
That sounds great. That sounds great.

Sharath:
Yeah.

Matthias:
That was fantastic. Sharath, thank you very much for being here today.

Sharath:
Oh, sure.

Matthias:
I really enjoyed our short chat. It was fantastic. Thank you.

Sharath:
Definitely. Yeah, good to be here and thanks for inviting me, Matthias. Glad that we finally met.

Matthias:
So, greetings to your co-founder and good luck for Shoutout and for your work at Product Hunt.

Sharath:
Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate the kind words.

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Outro

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