He Built a Shopify App for MrBeast, Now It's Doing $2M ARR

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let's get into it hey

I'm Hamish McKay

co founder of Order Editing and this is founders in motion

for someone who's never heard of order editing

what's the simplest way you'll explain what it is

we're a software company

that online shoppers use to make changes to their order

after they buy something online

and online retailers pay us a monthly subscription

to use that software

we need to give customers a Grace period where they can make changes

just like you can do on Amazon

but bring it to Shopify specifically

which is where we're operating yeah

so if we think about it from a systems point of view

how are you able to achieve this

secrets

not quite trade secrets

but we like a Grace period is a really good way to define it yeah

these systems are still fixed

some of them we've integrated with and we've made them like

change their ways perhaps

or we've done it through API calls

but the majority of the time we've just built our own technology

like our own IP

that guarantees that

that system doesn't get the order until we say so hmm

very simple but very effective

hmm so when you think about

pitching this to potentially some of your clients

how do you articulate the value proposition

say you're a brand that does $50 million a year

and you maybe ship out 50,000 packages in a month

yes

I know that

about 2% of your customers are making a mistake at checkout

and contacting customer service

so I can immediately deduct that

you get 1,000 emails a month from customers saying hey

can you change my address for me

can you cancel my order I forgot my discount code etcetera

ultimately you're getting pretty close to a full time employee

that spends every single minute of their day

over an 8 hour day on a

on a five day work week making changes for orders

and that's just a completely ineffective use of time

alongside that

when we give someone a Grace period

they can also buy more products

yeah and so that total that they spend at checkout is no longer fixed

you've got a whole 30 minutes

or a whole hour to convince every single one of your customers

to add another item to their order

and incentivize them to do so

and so we've got brands that are making like $500,000 a year

or $1 million a year by monetizing their post purchase

and getting customers like me and you

to go from two to three items after we've made the initial commitment

like breaking up the purchase into smaller chunks

mm hmm

so you're the reason why I always make post purchase orders exactly

exactly

um yes

super interesting

when you were first starting out

were there any mistakes that you made very early on

when you were trying to pitch your first few clients

heaps heaps

positioning

positioning is a really hard

a a really hard thing to know before you start

before you start your business and start pitching

like what positioning what value proposition is really gonna land

I had started this business thinking that

the most valuable part of our company

the most interesting part

exciting part is that we save you time and money on customer service

like the editing of the order

the amount of emails you get

like removing that was why we were gonna grow

yeah and I remember we were doing this for like six months

and we hadn't made a single dollar

by centering around this positioning on our marketing

and then I did a post on LinkedIn

where I showed how you could send an email out to a customer

after they buy and say

hey Thea there's space in your package for another item

get 20% off for the next half hour

we posted that immediately

we signed our next our first two clients from that like one from what

like we signed the hoodie

like signed a nine figure brand as soon as we posted it

they were our first client

and then signed one directly after called Nike

who are now investors in our business and from that point on

like I guess the veil was lifted off of us of

you know actually what we thought was most interesting

what we thought our marketing should be positioned around

yeah was wrong

yeah so going on that a little bit for new founders that have um

that are just starting out on their selling journey

how do you think about testing different value propositions

balancing that with kind of being cohesive telling

um a coherent story in your early stage

yeah when you just get started

you should take as much advantage of possible

as possible of the fact that no one knows who you are

let alone cares about what your messaging is

agree and that transfers from messaging to pricing

to the structure of your business model

so you've got 10 sales calls in your

in a month mm hmm

you can take every single sales call differently

and ultimately that's probably the best way to spend your time

rather than selling the exact same way and thinking

that's correct yeah

because you may perhaps close relatively less deals

mm hmm

cause you're doing all these different pitches and some won't land

but you're far more likely to find the best pitch that you can

then use ongoing

um like I remember we would

we changed our pricing almost every two months really

yeah I mean we

we launched it like four hundred dollars a month

uh huh and then we thought

oh can we sell it at 500

uh huh and then you find out you can

you know I wonder

we can sell it at 600 and you sell it at 600

and you just gradually find out what people's willingness to pay is

cause how do you know yeah

like you start a company you put a price on it

what's the pricing based off

it's very hard to know until you've got clients

and you can see what type of value they get

and how they perceive the value and and things like that

that whole period of like

testing and doing things without asking for too much permission

is so important

you kinda have to play around with it

have a little fun with it

you do have to have a little fun first

it was brutal

but the one thing I missed was that there were just no expectations

yeah like you can genuinely do whatever you want pretty much

it's a very liberating and fun experience

so you hit a million in AR

mm hmm um

pretty early on within the first year

so what were the key levers that got you there so quickly

we had a very

a very strong ambition to hit a million in our first year

and what we ultimately landed on

what we thought if we only do three things that year

what would they be

it was building in public

and like me being a face to a brand

and doing marketing from organic social

and that was ultimately that was a decision that was influenced by

being surrounded by famous Youtubers

that's my friend group here

and I just could see the power of having an audience

the way that we're gonna get the majority of our revenue

is by organic and boundaries

coming from our socials

what can I focus on and I go to market to get to $1 million

that makes organic socials really viral

mm hmm

and so we did things like making sure our first customers were massive

massive brands

first client in the UK is Opoli

100 million pound brand that's viral people like

how did you get that client so early

and that's interesting to follow and engage with

we did these big road shows where

you know very much initially it wasn't profitable

I'd spend like 30 grand touring around the US for three months

and then going to Europe I would like overseas for 120 days filming

going and seeing clients pitching

recording the journey

and that was very much like a marketing decision

because if that can make our LinkedIn influence blown out

I know we've got some

like some conversion rate on that and it'll work for us

and then the last piece of the strategy

which was slightly external to uh

Lincoln perhaps

was raising money from influential investors within our industry

we raised money from three different angels like very small checks

we lost maybe like 3% of the company's equity

but they brought back like four

three or four hundred thousand dollars of annual recurring revenue

like around about today's time

which for us like they've added they've added millions of dollars

yeah to our company valuation

and they gave us money in capital to ultimately grow the business

and that was very much like how we got to that goal

right at the finish line on the first year

yeah yeah OK

so let's talk about scale

you your average customer value per store is roughly about 5,000

mm hmm if we work backwards on the math

that's literally thousands of pitches a year

to hit a very vocal goal that you have for 5 mil AR

this year how are you thinking in terms of avenues of growth

I just went through this period of anxiety and then clarity

where we'll we'll finish this year doing about two and a half arrow

which was like the goal it was about 3 x on where we were last year

we've always like internally tried to do we wanna do

we wanna do VC back growth without the VC backing

so I was like

freaking out about how do I go from 2.5 to 7.5 in 12 months

like that is actually insane

uh cause it was

it was like if we have a 50% close rate and we don't change our ACV

we have to pitch 2000 people next year

roughly like 22

it's like eight deals a day 50% close rate is also very high

also very high yeah

also very high yeah

so like it could be 3,000 deals that we have to acquire

which you know

if you don't have a team of STRs

and you've got only the profitability to reinvest into ads

or whatever it might be

and you're not the world's most famous Youtuber

like how do you get 3,000 deals to come your way in a year

in a pretty small market of the Shopify ecosystem

also you know

what does this look like

if we double our ACV or if we double our close rate

what the strategy update we just wrote was

was very much you know

how do we build an a a product team

mm hmm and make room to come up with ideas

then also how do we build a account management layer

and like such a strong client management layer

that it's easy and fast and efficient

to sell these products to existing customers

okay so right now order editing exists as an add on via Shopify only

um you could totally expand it to other e commerce platform

but you've decided to not do this and double down on Shopify

um can you explain to me more about the decision

both me and my co founder Carol we

we decided before we started this business that we were going to grow

what could only be described as like a medium sized company

there was no ambition to build a massive organization

and so a lot of the way that we think about scaling

is kind of driven by speed

and perhaps these like medium term ambitions

as opposed to longer term ambitions yeah

if you're building or editing for the long term

you do need to diversify that product and

and build it for other e commerce platforms

there's a whole market out there

you could sell this to Nike

for hundreds of thousands of dollars a year

you know they would they would pay that

and so why shouldn't you and the reason why we shouldn't is one

because we don't want to

but the reason why we don't want to is because that would take

you know two or or three years perhaps yeah

to build it and get out to market and then grow awareness and

and ultimately get to where we are right now

in the ecosystem of shopify yeah

whereas if we spend two to three years investing in Shopify

you know we could get to 10 or 12 million a r r yeah

like within that time period

and so it's just kind of nonsensical when you're not looking to

perhaps be the operator for your business in five years time

let's talk about building in public

so you've been extremely open on LinkedIn about all your numbers

so yes revenue churn and even your acquisition goals

so why take that approach

when I decided that I wanted to be a founder when I was a 20 year old

one of the first things I did was start posting on LinkedIn

before I had a company or anything

like

I just started posting on LinkedIn and effectively self promoting

cause I thought it would increase

my likelihood of being a founder in the future

yeah and I just immediately started telling stories of

of who I was and where I wanted to get to

and what I was doing in my job

and just generally being candid and open and

and myself

and it's a very addictive thing

our first year it was 100% the most viral way to grow

like we knew that we would close more revenue

if we were candid about what our revenue was

cause we were just trying to maximize feelings like FOMO

or inspiration if like affinity

love rooting for us all of those things

and if customers

and potential customers know exactly where you're at in your journey

it's a lot easier to root for someone

yeah and you can see and feel their growth and you understand it

once you cross $1 million

it immediately becomes not that interesting

the only regrets that I have is that naturally

I look back at myself and I cringe

but it happens yeah

like you I mean

if you're not looking back on anything and cringing

like you're clearly not evolving and growing in a certain way

and has there been any downsides

from sharing so vocally a huge mental burden

I would say yeah

I like to say um

we part of the reason why we didn't raise a venture capital

was because we didn't want

the pressure associated with venture capital yup

we didn't want other people's expectations influencing our business

and just like the mental fog that that might create

mm hmm and I like to say that we

we traded off intra capital pressure for just general public pressure

like we just laid it all right back on

by involving the whole world and what we're doing

and understanding where we're at

if you're going through a low month or a low week or a low day

it's really hard to meet that expectation

I've posted things you know

in a reflective way about hard times of my life perhaps yeah

or like positive things and people will misinterpret it

cause they're just reading a thing

and they can't hear my tone of voice

like perhaps it's a comment

like a reflection of my writing

but people reach out and about like

I hope you're okay buddy like you seem really stressed

and I'm like no

like I'm I'm good

like I don't mean that post in that way

I think about what people think of me a lot

I think about how I'm presenting myself a lot

figuring out how to leave all of that behind

once you finish posting and once you finish your like

social engagement for the day is quite important

for founders that are just starting out

who's trying to build a very strong founder LED brand

what are some advice you have for them starting out

every time you post the next post should be incrementally better

yes like you should be constantly analyzing your work

understanding what landed what didn't and how you can improve it

and that's why when like Youtubers talk about this all the time

they go if you post a video a week

I guarantee that in two years you'll be successful

because if you post 100 videos

there's no way that by the hundred

and you constantly are getting better and editing it

there's no way by the hundredth video

you're not writing like top 1% content

recording top 1% content

and I think that's a really important thing to put into your writing

which perhaps is hard to comprehend on social media

cause it's so transactional and fast and easy to share things

but it's very important to read those things and analyze

effectively the results of them

while posting every day is a is a

it's a nice cadence to get to

and it's a nice way to build like a strong community and audience

and it is important you don't necessarily need to start there

yeah what's actually more

important is making sure you don't dilute your content

or dilute dilute your thoughts

and you post when you actually have something meaningful to say

mm hmm

I think a lot of people will start on LinkedIn and they'll like

feel this pressure and expectation to post every day

but again

like no one knows who the hell you are you've got no expectations

take advantage of that make sure every time you post it's

it's meaningful and it's a banger

and it'll keep your motivation consistent

the last piece of advice

which is something that I repeat regularly and

and one of the guys in my team loves is just like

always remember that if it's a shit post

no one will see it anyways yes

like literally no one if you write something bad

no one sees it when you write something good

everyone sees it like

I love the algorithm for that

and just never forget that like the algorithm is serving you

and then maybe specifically for LinkedIn

do you have any particular like tips and tricks to starting out

uh I mean photos perform better

make sure that when you post

you understand what it will look like on a mobile phone view

and make sure like

your hook is not gonna have 3 dots at the end of it uh

like make sure you understand character limits and things like that

formatting is really important

similar to writing cold emails

like as a writer

you should have the same respect for the people reading it

where constantly be evaluating

is this written in the clearest way

if a complete stranger that has no context on me read this post

would they understand what I'm talking about

mm hmm

every time you put something out on the internet

someone who has no idea who you are

should be able to read and enjoy it

throughout this journey what do you think has been the most

valuable lesson that you've Learned

as a founder maybe something you wish someone had told you earlier

like anything in life you're gonna

you're gonna get better at it over time yeah

there was so many times where I would really struggle mentally

and it would affect my energy and effectively

it would affect my output yeah

because I'd be stressing about something like hiring people

or firing people uh

or building a team

or making these big decisions that you've just never made before yeah

cause you're a first time founder

and I wish that future me could have been in my ear saying

it's all good it's gonna be imperfect the first time

but the next time is gonna be better and better and better

and eventually you're gonna be really good at this thing

like these are all puzzles to solve that you'll figure out and like

that's okay and I think um

you know at least for me personally

I went through a lot of points of time where I had existential dread

perhaps about where the company was heading

cause I didn't know how to manage a business that looked like that

but there's no point dreading that cause of course

you'd never managed a business like that

how could you have

when you just start like

just focus on what it feels like to manage three

and then try out four and then try out five

and suddenly you'll find

you'll be at the end of the year and you're like

holy shit I'm managing 10 people

people get paralyzed by thoughts

hmm all the time

like not even running a company

but literally for even small decisions everything yeah

so you started order editing since you were in your early 20s

hmm how do you balance enjoying your 20s and grinding this hard

uh you know

it's probably not super balanced

ha ha ha I uh

I like I balance it by way of acceptance

you know when

when I ultimately decided that I wanted this when I was 20

and I wanted this by the time I was 25

I reverse engineered what I would need to do

and what my life would look like

I was like what if I just slam life hard for five years

and then I have the rest of

the rest of it to kind of have a deep imbalance

for all of the stuff that give me the most joy

last year I spent I was averaging 30 hours a week on work meetings

and I was probably working like

I don't know I work from 7 to 11 or 7 to midnight every day

wow and they would work on the weekends

you know now that's not like that

now I have 10 hours of meetings a week

cause I've got a team that do things

I still work 7 to 11 but I knock off at 5 on Friday

I don't work weekends

building a company is just such a selfish endeavour

or at least I've found it to be very selfish

yeah where even when I'm out majority of the time

I'm still thinking about work

I'm not present

if money was no issue hmm

what would you do

hard to say cause money is an issue

but my my current dream

my current like dream is that I spend my twenty fives to 30s

which is hopefully a post exit a Hamish

you know financially free Hamish

I wanna go to a university and do a post graduate

masters in creative writing

love that and tackle a really scary and daunting challenge of perhaps

writing a novel

I think a lot about uh

making like some income telling stories on internet

uh doing a YouTube channel

that's really exciting to me

being able to share stories and

and educate

like that's how I'd like to spend my time post this having impact

it's like a great um

Oscar Wilde quote that I love that says we're verbs

not nouns

and it's essentially saying that you should never be self described as

like I'm a founder yeah

it's like I'm just

I'm doing the founder thing at the moment

that's what I'm doing

and I've got full flexibility to do whatever I want after this

and I never like put myself into a box

yeah and

you know for the next five years

like I'm gonna like

I'm gonna be writing mm hmm

but I'm not a writer yeah

I'm just writing at the moment

I like that like idea of the way of living life

part of being human is to evolve over time hmm

um and

and I think that's probably the most beautiful part right

100% so okay

how we like to end this is we like to play a little game hmm

um it's

would you rather

um okay

so I'm gonna give you some scenarios

and you can just tell me which one you prefer yeah

okay so

would you rather have one viral

LinkedIn post that lands 1,000 sign UPS

or a killer employee

killer employee sell order editing for 20 mil tomorrow

or grind 10 years

but you get 100 million AR guaranteed 20 mil tomorrow

hmm and you're like no

like crazy person no

um so what is your most controversial startup hot take um

um fuck growing to be as big as possible

hmm

for certain people

just like different types of people want different types of businesses

I think one of the saddest things about

the way that we've done our business is

so many people have said

I've never heard anyone know where they're gonna go

and I think that's really sad

I think it's actually like quite unfortunate that there's not a

at least a community of like a web of founders or a public thesis of

by founders

that you can be intentional with how you grow your business

yep uh

and like you can predefined parameters

perhaps of what would give your life the most joy

people should build businesses that they want to operate

and they want to be

some people don't want to build a billion dollar tech businesses

like super fair hmm

um and some people just want to make yogurt

some people want to make alcohol

some people want to grow a business and then sell it in a few years

um and I think these are all super fair path

but the media like just glamorizes all of these like huge valuation

gigantic companies and kind of billion dollar aspiration

but not everyone has to go down the path cause it's very stressful

hmm it is a lot of time

it is basically your entire 20s

potentially your entire 30s

and it's also not guaranteed

hmm things can fail all the time

like are you the type of person that wants to be that

maybe maybe not

hmm yeah

completely yeah

but thank you Hamish for coming on

this is a lovely conversation um

thank you for having me

I I can't wait to read your novel

no pressure no pressure

I can't wait to see found his emotion be the biggest podcast

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