Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their successes, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and here with us today we have Matthew Busel, the co-founder of Whalesync, a startup that's raised $4 million in funding. Matthew, welcome to the show.
Matthew Busel: Thanks so much for having me.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. So a little bit about Matthew. Matthew is a co-founder of the no-code data automation platform, Whalesync. Prior to Whalesync, he built products for startups including MakeSpace and Nextrev, and co-founded recruiting startup ReferralBoard. He's also the author of Game Changer: How Augmented Reality Will Transform the World of Sports. Matthew, before we dive in here, I'm always intrigued by people that write books and authors. What was the inspiration behind writing a book and what specifically is the game changer you wrote about?
Matthew Busel: Sure. This is you know a couple years ago now, but um this was back in, in 2017, uh 2016, 2017, really when VR and AR was um you know just starting to I think become a little more mainstream and, and be aware uh in people's minds. And I got just thrilled about the space, and and we're seeing it come to fruition now with Apple. But uh back then [I] wanted to explore some of the things that could make possible uh. Didn't have um let's say the, the funding to go you know attack something in the way that a Magic Leap might with a you know a couple hundred million dollars, and so I felt my, my first step there that I could provide something of value was to, to share a book and, and share my learnings.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Yeah, um it's a goal for a lot of people to write a book. Um but to actually accomplish it is great. Now you have a startup, Whalesync, and we're going to dive into this, but before we do, talk to me a little bit about the startup world, and, and what inspired you to get into technology and, and really start to get into wanting to create your own company?
Matthew Busel: Yeah, it's a good question. Um you know I, I grew up very much in a time where technology right was like taking over the world for, for my generation with starting with like the Wii and the iPhone and, and all that. But I didn't grow up writing code like a lot of I think founders do today. Um and actually went to school for international economics. Um and so at the time was exploring uh different spaces uh you know, careers and whatnot, and ended up with an internship at a product development agency uh in Washington DC. And that was really my first exposure to the, to the startup world. Like not just big tech, but like five people in a room trying to build a brand new product. Um and it was just like, it was game over for me once, once I saw what that was like, and kind of um what building again new products um could be. Uh I basically just committed my, my whole career to it. And um obviously the book and VR was one side of it, but um you can, we can talk about it more, but kind of following my career into product um kind of all stemmed from that.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. You know as a founder, um it sounds like you founded a company before this and then you have this company, is that correct? Is this your second company or is this your true first startup?
Matthew Busel: Yeah it's um, technically it's my second, although I like to think this is more as my first real one. Um the, the last startup you know basically I built a- while I was at MakeSpace, I was a product manager there, and um noticed a problem around uh referrals essentially. They're, they're incredibly valuable for a startup, but um something that is, is hard to encourage your employees to do. And so I built a Slack app um that essentially automated all that. Uh rolled it out at the company, it was doing well, and so I thought you know "what other companies might uh might benefit from this?" Um so went through an accelerator program called Pioneer, um started to sell, sell that product a bit. Um so learned a lot of the foundations that I'd say you know Whalesync um you know has helped me at Whalesync, but uh this is the first time I've gone out and raised capital you know, found a co-founder, built a team um, really uh consider this my, my first one.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. Well Whalesync wants to simplify the process of syncing data between SaaS applications. You co-founded this with your co-founder Curtis Fonger, who is um the CEO, and began his career at Microsoft working on OneDrive file syncing, and sold his first startup, a no code website builder Apptoss to Google in 2014. How did you find each other as co-founders? I think it's maybe the most important decision you make as a company, as a marriage, as friendships, as your partners. How did you guys find each other?
Matthew Busel: Yeah, well, well first of all [I'll] say I couldn't agree with you more. Um you know you realize very quickly that that partnership is really the foundation of, of the business, and, and I'm, I'm just so fortunate that uh you know Curtis and I were able to team up. But it's a really funny story actually. Uh Curtis and I actually officially co-founded Whalesync uh before ever meeting in person. Um so yeah, which is a you know crazy sign of the times. Um but yeah we met you know post- in a post-COVID world um through Y Combinator has a uh program called Co-Founder Match um that's almost like a Tinder for, for co-founders. And we were one of the first people on the, the tool. Um literally I think like the first day or two that it opened up we were, were trying it out. And we had each met you know dozens of other potential co-founders, we were both excited to try to find a part- and um yeah, once we matched we really just hit it off. It was uh kind of night and day between that and everyone else we had spoken with.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's amazing. You swipe right, you find a co-founder. You swipe left, you find your ex-co-founder. I mean wild.
Matthew Busel: Wild in retrospect, yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I, I, you might be the first person I've talked to that's actually found a founder that way. And you know, with online um matchmaking and dating and uh really there's a lot you can do with that type of platform. And, and to, to bring company founders together I think is amazing. The inspiration of uh, I think is really interesting. Uh I was reading on TechCrunch you know, the market and the landscape and you know most companies use you know 50 applications you know to help you know run their companies. Maybe it's much more than that. What's the premise behind Whalesync? What problem are you solving for companies that are, are looking to use a product or service like yours?
Matthew Busel: Let me give you the, the quick story on how we, we found this idea in the first place. So yeah, um we were both really excited about the no-code space, like you mentioned. Um Curtis had previously built a no-code company and sold it to Google, so we were exploring the different ideas there. And over the course of hundreds of conversations with builders and no-coders, the thing that kept popping up was people were using Zapier in this sort of crazy way. They're basically setting up like 20, 25-step Zaps or automations if you're not familiar with the tool um, essentially just to sync data between two different apps. So they wanted to keep data let's say in Airtable constantly in sync with data in Webflow. Um we saw this enough times that we just said you know what, there needs to be a no-code data syncing tool, not just an automation tool. Um and maybe to put it in another way, you know Zapier is again amazing, amazing tool, we use it today. Um but it was built a long time ago. And we said "what would Zapier look like if um, if we were building it from scratch you know back in 2021?" And so we take a, a data-first approach to data automation. We literally sync your data bidirectionally across tools. And what this enables is, it lets teams uh essentially use, use the best-in-breed tools for whatever they want to accomplish. So just as one quick example, we have customers that'll take HubSpot data and two-way sync it with Airtable. And then hand over that Airtable to people that aren't on the sales team, and so that way anyone on the team can update, manage customer records through a tool that they, they love like Airtable.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: It sounds like a great solution. Um what's been the response of that product and, and who, who are the buyers of that product?
Matthew Busel: Yeah, so uh first of all on the response side we've been uh been really happy. Um we, we now have a hand-, couple hundred customers today and, and growing every month. Um and so really we're, we're excited with where we've started and excited about what's next uh, taking it into the thousands and, and hopefully hundreds of thousands on day-, one day. Um but yeah, in terms of who the buyer is, it is a horizontal product and really depending on which apps you're connecting, we have a bunch of different types of, of buyers and users. Um but maybe to like summarize or generalize that, the buyer usually is the, the builder or the operations person on the team. So whether that's sort of the RevOps lead uh for a sales team or maybe the like Head of Engineering on the developer side, whoever is kind of responsible for building and creating internal tools or connecting your apps is the, the buyer for us.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I always like that term no-code or low-code based applications. It makes it feel like you don't have to be an engineer to use the product, where you can log in and just go to town with whatever the, the solution provides. Is your, how technical is the pro- product you guys built in terms of from a user's perspective?
Matthew Busel: Yeah, so we really modeled in this sense ourselves off of, of Zapier in that if you think about that, that tool really anyone whether they're technical or not can come in and start to use it. And that's, that's really what we want with Whalesync. Um you don't have to be a developer. Um it does help to have an understanding of like how do tables work and what are uh you know reference fields or you know linked records, things like that. Um but uh but yeah in general it's operations people that often have never written a line of code before in their life.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's, sounds like it would be really easy to use. Um you know, there's competitors out there in the landscape and I know that you know there's a lot of need for something like this. Um there's a lot of companies that are creating products that are you know product-led self-serve, you don't have to talk to anybody to try it. What's, how have you guys positioned your product?
Matthew Busel: Yes, um so we've uh very much gone down that path. Uh we are fully self-serve. You can just sign up and start using the product for 90% of our, our plans. We do offer Business and Enterprise plans that are a little more hands-on. But no, most of our customers come in today and just start using the product, they learn um as they go and, and certainly reach out to us if they have questions. But we've always wanted to, or modeled ourselves off of those Airtables, the Notions, the Webflows of the world that um we believe have done an amazing job of, of just giving you know a lot of power to that, to that user to, to get started.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Good strategy. You know, as a founder uh myself and as an entrepreneur, you know you start with an idea, you bring a product to market. Sometimes you got to make changes and pivots and multiple pivots. When you started your company a couple years back and where you're at today, has there been any major pivots you look back on and say you know "yeah that was something we had to make a change to really become what we are today," or what's been your process of navigating pivots?
Matthew Busel: Yeah, it, it's a really good question. We mean, we had that initial pivot right before we discovered this idea, we were exploring different ones, the no-code space around sort of the front end um and whatnot. But once we sort of settled on "this is the, the product and this is the, the problem we're trying to solve around data syncing," um we haven't had any major you know company-drifting pivot in, in the last again two, two and a half years now. Um that being said, it's like uh you know every month, every two months we're constantly evaluating what should we build, who should we target. And in a horizontal tool like we have um, there are so many different paths that we could go on. Whether it's focusing on let's say you know CRM connectors, or focusing on database connectors, or content management, building features that are more focused for developers, or building features that are more focused for no-coders. And so um there's a million micro-decisions that have gone on over the last two and a half years that could have taken the, the product in a very different direction. But uh when we use the term pivot I would say um we, we've probably uh you know stuck pretty, pretty, pretty much to the, the original vision.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: In today's market, what's keeping you up at night with your company and where you want to take it?
Matthew Busel: I, I love that question. Um so today, and when you say "in today's market" that makes me very much think about you know 2023. Things are not uh zero interest rate uh growing constantly, money thrown around all the time. Um and so for us you know, we're really trying to expand more and more into that mid-market and, and upper part of the market. Um we have a handful of really awesome companies that are there, we work with Webflow, Ramp, uh Alchemy. Um and so as we want to serve more and more of those companies we have to be conscious of the fact that in this market you really need to justify the value that you provide. And so um yeah we're laser-focused on being sort of an indispensable part of the stack for those mid-market companies.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: As a company you know online, and you go to focus on bigger, more enterprise type organizations. What's the strategy that's working for you to get in the door? What is getting you in that uncomfortable zone to really reach out, make those contacts, really sell... like what's, what's working for you to get, get introduced there?
Matthew Busel: Yeah, so I'll tell you what's working and, and maybe just to, to put this in context I'd say this is very much where we're trying to learn the most. You know, being a very product-focused team, my background as a PM and my, my co-founder is a product builder as well, um we really started from this premise of "how do we build something that's amazing? Um how do we put [it] in the hands of people through self-serve? And then we'll essentially iterate on the GTM, go-to-market you know from there." Um and so today you know what's worked for us is uh still taking advantage of that self-serve aspect of the product. If we go out and just try to do sort of the old-school sale, look at decks and whatnot, um which you know we, we've experimented with, we get a lot of you know times when we're talking to these builders, like "Hey this is great, I'm so excited! Like let me try it, I want to give it a shot." And that's when they really experience the value and get excited about the product. And so um for us you know, the thing that we're going to be leaning into over the next you know year, two years in selling this more is: getting in the door, explaining our value, but continuing to put it in the hands of people and let them experience it themselves.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I think it's a great strategy. You, you know uh another strategy that we've um been engaged with, have learned and actually have understood a lot of companies now [are] moving in this direction is: as a SaaS platform or online company you know, you take Microsoft for example. Um they go out into new markets all the time. And they don't hire salespeople to do this, they hire companies that go out and take their product, understand the value proposition, drive that into a new market in Middle America wherever it might be. You know, generate you know millions of dollars in revenue, come back with that data and then tell them, "Here's the playbook, here's what's worked." And they cut their risk down in terms of what the expenses would look like if they hired a full-time te- [team] to sell, full-time team to sell that product or service. And they also get the data of what worked well and then they can build a team around it. So that's, that's a service that um we have worked with a lot of companies that are using. And I, I think it's, it's also something to think about for any company out there uh if you're an online business uh uh to explore. Because the, the numbers net out, they make sense and also it reduces your risk as a company as you, as you look to innovate and you know drive your ARR you know, get into new markets.
Um having said all that, as an entrepreneur you have to take risks, you got to experiment, you have to test. You have to come back and tell and understand what the data is telling you. And then from there implement whatever strategy you want to do going forward. And none of that by the way happens without you know a little bit of fear and having courage to take those uh take that data and make some tough decisions. What's been a moment for you in your career so far, in your journey, in the startup journey that's taken a lot of courage, that you remember well when the fear was there but you made it anyway and you came out the other side?
Matthew Busel: This is a great question. And by the way, just on what you mentioned before, um such a fascinating idea around sort of spinning up that, that sales team to, to reduce costs and, and find things with less risk. But to, to answer your question um directly, you know one decision I think back on uh a lot that again as you describe it, it's, it's very much this learning process: you got to put yourself out there, try something and then see what the data says, um was our approach back earlier this year. So being a horizontal data syncing tool, we really wanted to essentially connect, or still want to connect data across all the apps that you use. And so our first thought back in January was "Hey, this thing's really working, people are getting a lot of value. We've got uh three, four connectors that we sync data across like you know, let's try to get that to 12. Let's try to get to 15 as soon as we can," right? Um and so we actually built out a really small team of contract developers to help us build this really quickly. And we, we pretty much kind of like put the pedal to the metal um for three, four months and kind of exploded in a relative sense our number of connectors um up from 3 to 10 you know very quickly.
And at the time you know again, everything made sense. We invested into it, that, that seemed like a strong strategy. And what we quickly realized in putting this back out there was, "Hey people come to Whalesync because we solve your problems really, really well. Like really deeply." And so when we put out those connectors more quickly, we didn't go as deep as we had in those first few. And so we just got a ton of requests and like "Hey, we want to you know, we'd love to do a little bit more here, I'd love to do a little bit more there." Um and so we, we kind of uh decided to, to quickly kind of reverse. Again, listening to customer feedback. We spun down that team um and took those, that, that same amount of resources to trying to improve the connectors we have. And that's um again a total reversal from what we thought we'd be doing a year ago. Um but to your point it's just you try these things, you listen to customers, you put it out there, you get more feedback, you try again. And um that's sort of the, the approach we'll continue to take.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. You, you talked about contractors. I want to just go back to that a little bit. As a team today, what, what's, what's your company look like team wise, team size? Are you remote, are you distributed?
Matthew Busel: Yeah, we're super lean um intentionally so. Uh so today it's myself, my co-founder and two full-stack engineers. We're actually just uh about to hire two more. Um with, we- of the 4 million we've raised, we've raised 2 million out over the summer so we'll be putting a little bit [of] investment to expand a bit. Uh but in general we've always felt like until you get to a, a certain stage of the company, uh probably raising a Series A or Series B, the, the fewer people you have the, the more nimble you are and the more you can kind of respond to market and product conditions. So um we've enjoyed that kind of small, high-performing team has been the goal. And then to your other point, we're fully remote. So I'm in California, my co-founder is in Florida. Um we are uh, we work out of a virtual office every day. And um yeah, again really kind of coming back to our roots being born post-COVID and uh you know pre-, not even pre- kind of before YC, meeting my co-founder online, that's always been how we've worked and enjoyed it.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I like that "being born post-COVID," sounds like a movie. Uh it's a cultural change for sure, and for a company operationally it's also a big change for companies that were prior to COVID uh having to work through how things operate today. I always believe remote-first is, can be very not just cost effective but also opens up your options of where you build you know, whether it's locally in the US or internationally. Um have you gone international yet? Have you thought about um you know growth that way or is that already in the plans?
Matthew Busel: We've gone international with contracting. Um so we've had different contractors, as well as um our, our virtual assistant who's with us today and amazing um is international as well. So yeah, we've definitely really um been, been happy with the benefit that it, it um, it gives us to be fully remote.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: As a company, I know you're smaller but growing, what's uh what type of culture are you looking to build and, and what's great to, to work for you?
Matthew Busel: I love this question. As, as a company that's actively hiring, it's, it's awesome to, to speak to this. So a couple things that, that we really care about and, and think you know make us unique. So first of all, like I mentioned by keeping the team really small um we have a really, really high bar for um the people on the team. They, they basically have to be able to work uh at this stage at least front-end, back-end, directly with customers kind of um you know really full stack. Um and so for the right type of person that uh you know just loves that, loves taking on um ownership and really kind of owning different pieces of, of the product um we see this as hopefully a pretty exciting place to be. Um and we pair that with the fact that our product in general is a very technical one. So data syncing is just a hard engineering problem. Um and so again the type of person that loves working with people and loves tackling those, those hard things as opposed to let's say just building a CRUD app um is uh is the one that we love working with and um would love to, to talk to.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Sounds amazing. As a company um and really as a leader of your company and, and co-founder, what's a lesson that you can share with other founders that might not have taken that step yet to start their own company that you've learned that you felt was priceless? Could have been pre-Y Combinator, during Y Combinator, post-Y Combinator or just as a company today.
Matthew Busel: The, the two things... let me, I'll give you two if that's okay. Um the two that really stick out in my mind, and they're not novel right? They're just hard to, to truly internalize I'd say. Is being really ruthless about speed and ruthless about the, the quality of the people that you work, work with. Um because at the end of the day, if you have an amazing, amazing team that's moving fast, um the market can change, the product can change, your customers can give you different feedback, but eventually you'll build something amazing. Um you take either of those things out of the equation, you're in trouble you know, in, in many of the cases.
And just to kind of lean into that or what I'm saying there is um, it's really easy to have reasons that say "Hey like this, this thing should take six weeks. Um this thing should, should take a month, you know two months, whatever." Um and it, it is much harder to push yourself to say "how could we make this happen in a week? A day?" Um right? "What would we have to cut? How would we have to rethink this um to make that possible?" And so you know keeping that constantly top of mind um no matter where you are. If you've started the company already um, or even if you're pre, pre-starting the company, why not launch it tomorrow? Um what could you you know, what could you do that would give you more, more access or more data now? Um so anyway, again, nothing too novel there but um just trying to internalize that constantly has been helpful for me.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: What's next on the roadmap for, for Whalesync? I know you're still building and growing, but if you look into this next year, more enterprise clients?
Matthew Busel: Sure.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Uh anything on the technical side that you're really excited about?
Matthew Busel: Oh my gosh, so much. Um let's see. Maybe just to give the, the, the high level um as you mentioned you know we're, we're trying to support more and more mid-market companies. So what's that mean? It means things like scaling right, supporting people that have millions of records and you know that, that need to keep in sync as opposed to let's say hundreds of thousands like we have today. Um that means adding new connectors, integrations. We're working on a Salesforce connector at the moment, other ones like, like that that support that mid market. And then I'll give you a really specific one which we're, we're just thrilled about. Uh we're about to launch a feature called Whalesync Rewind. Um so basically what our users will be able to do is pick a point in time, let's say 24 hours ago, a week ago um, and see all the changes that Whalesync has made and undo all of them. Right? Essentially rewind it. And this gives our users, or we believe what this will give our users is just ultimate flexibility, um an ability to, to keep their data in sync, know that things change, undo uh you know, be, be really again nimble. Um so anyway that one's a fun one that we're excited to get out in the somewhat near future.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That sounds really, really cool. You know you're on an amazing journey. And what I like about where you guys are at is, it's really earlier stage but you're seeing, and uh the, the path going forward looks like there's a lot there to, to tackle and, and, and opportunities to grow. Um so I'd love to stay in contact with you and, and maybe do a check back to see where things are in you know six, 12 months uh and, and, and kind of see where it goes. As we wrap up here um Matthew, I just want to share you know my thoughts about having you come on. I really appreciate you and, and spending your time with us, and, and also for the listeners out there listening. Appreciate you taking your time to listen to this story and, and Matt's journey here. And as we go forward um you know, my name is Jake Aaron Villarreal uh the host of this show. Uh excited to chat with you about other stories in the future and look forward to catching up you, with you on the next episode. Until then we'll talk soon.
Before we wrap up I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.
This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market and they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.
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