We've got a special guest on the pod today! Louis from Sparkloop joins to share how they evolved from referrals to recommendations and sold to Kit! 🚀 Meanwhile Andrew gets Louis's take on MetaMonster's positioning struggles and they debate how and why the SaaS landscape is changing. Plus: the most detailed rom-com ranking you've ever heard, featuring hidden gems and heated debates about classics.

Links:

• Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins
• Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
• MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/
• Louis's Twitter: @louisnicholls_
• Sparkloop (newsletter recommendations platform): https://sparkloop.app/
• Grow your newsletter: https://www.growmynewsletter.com/

For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:00:01.03
Andrew
Hey, what's up, man?

00:00:02.44
Louis
Hey man, how's it going? It's been a while.

00:00:04.43
Andrew
It has. Astute listeners might notice that you are not Sean Sun, founder of Miscreants. Do you want to introduce yourself real quick?

00:00:13.90
Louis
Yeah, my name Louis. I am the co-founder of Sparkloop. I'm a huge rom-com enthusiast, which I think we're going to get to later. and

00:00:23.11
Andrew
Hell yeah.

00:00:24.25
Louis
I guess I'm a probably more of like a reformed indie hacker. People might know me from that, but more likely nowadays, if you're a newsletter nerd in the newsletter space, you probably have come across Sparkloop or maybe seen me online or something like that.

00:00:41.21
Andrew
Reformed. Does that mean you don't identify as an indie hacker anymore?

00:00:44.76
Louis
Oh, no, no, I do. I just don't hang out in the as much in like the IndieHack bootstrap founder space anymore. my My Twitter and LinkedIn have been taken over by self-interested business interests of talking about newsletters, which is a lot more lucrative.

00:00:51.89
Andrew
Yeah.

00:00:59.73
Louis
Yeah.

00:00:59.94
Andrew
Yeah. So, okay. How long ago now did you sell Sparkloop? How long has it been?

00:01:06.67
Louis
We sold just over two years ago. We were bought by then ConvertKit, now Kit, which I think we...

00:01:10.16
Andrew
Okay.

00:01:14.78
Louis
Did we talk about this shortly before or shortly? Maybe we met shortly after, actually, I think.

00:01:19.18
Andrew
I think both.

00:01:20.17
Andrew
I think we, you and i met in New York. I was working for Grey Noise at the time. And you told me, i don't remember if you actually told me it was ConvertKit. I think you told me you were like considering an acquisition and that there was some stuff in the works.

00:01:31.86
Louis
Hmm.

00:01:33.80
Andrew
And then I think we hung out again, last year sometime after you'd sold to ConvertKit, when I was like starting to, oh yeah, because like last December, you and i were actually talking about like maybe collabing on some stuff.

00:01:48.50
Louis
Yeah.

00:01:49.80
Louis
Yeah, yeah,

00:01:50.82
Andrew
I quoted you some ridiculously high number to do something. I don't even remember what exactly. like I think some of the like personal brand stuff that you've started doing, was going to help with some of that maybe.

00:02:01.79
Louis
yeah. Mm-hmm.

00:02:03.39
Andrew
And then then, yeah, I think I probably talked to you to just like ask you for some startup advice at some point, which I'm now doing again under the guise of having you on as a podcast guest.

00:02:15.33
Louis
It's the the best way to do it. i yeah I remember we were, i think the last time we properly talked was actually not about about this startup at all. It was about the in-email charts thing, I think, was the last time we had like a proper long conversation.

00:02:33.24
Andrew
Yeah, good memory. I'm impressed that you remember what it even was. Yeah, that was ChartJuice. was I think at the time it was probably ChartKit.

00:02:42.64
Louis
Mm-hmm.

00:02:43.87
Andrew
And then had a co-founder, he left, and he owned the domain, so I bought chartjuice.com. And then...

00:02:54.82
Andrew
Built it, probably shouldn't have ever built it. Like, I don't think it was like ever really a great market. But I did the classic indie hacker thing where I was like, I kind of just want to build something and I wanted to learn to code again.

00:03:08.23
Andrew
And Chart Juice felt very like not intimidating. It felt easy to build. And so I spent a few months building it, launched it to Crickets and then was like, all right, I need to actually build something that I think people will buy now And so, yeah.

00:03:22.97
Louis
Always a oh it a good idea. I wish you had, with a name like Chart Juice, it wasn't called Chart Juice at the time, but a name like Chart Juice, that deserves to be a podcast growth agency.

00:03:30.27
Andrew
Yeah.

00:03:35.87
Louis
There should be a podcast growth agency called Chart Juice out there.

00:03:39.11
Andrew
Honestly, that is so true. Someone has like a, someone has a oh, it's, it's a productized service that will submit your startup to a bunch of directories.

00:03:54.29
Andrew
And it's called like submit juice or something like that.

00:03:54.53
Louis
see

00:03:57.23
Louis
I don't like that one so much.

00:03:58.44
Andrew
no, no.

00:03:58.79
Louis
That's... No. Gotta be careful with juice.

00:04:01.82
Andrew
Yeah, you do got to be careful with juice. Yeah, honestly, Podcast Curse Agency makes a ton of sense. I love that. I still like... I still have the the site up. like I have like sort of pipe dreams of you know spinning it out into a little like ah ah a little like plug-in for Webflow or you know ah maybe a kit app or something someday.

00:04:28.10
Andrew
But yeah, keep I have like ah ah recurring have like a use Todoist. And so there is a to-do in Todoist to...

00:04:38.11
Andrew
to like revamp chart juice and I just keep punting it out like two months every time it comes up because I'm like this is not the best use of my time right now

00:04:47.20
Louis
Yeah, I know that feeling. I know that

00:04:49.12
Andrew
Yeah. So what what has happened in the last like year? what's What's life like at Spark Loop? and Last we talked, you were pretty happy with the acquisition. like Things were going pretty well. And you all were really running independently, for the most part, under Kit.

00:05:06.00
Andrew
I imagine helping them build their kind of internal network and powering that, I would imagine. but then like really just sort of focus, you still running the business as the business is what I remember.

00:05:21.42
Louis
Yeah, spot on. It's been a very unusual acquisition, I would say, in that we have kept running separately from Kit for the most part. We do work with them very closely behind the scenes on overlapping tech that we have.

00:05:33.29
Andrew
Yeah.

00:05:33.63
Louis
like We power their paid recommendations network. They're much bigger company than we are, of course.

00:05:38.38
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

00:05:38.68
Louis
But we actually have we function as a sepa...