597: How She Built a $33M App with ZERO Ads | Tezza Barton

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Welcome back to another episode. What if you could bootstrap an app to 25 million downloads without spending a single dollar on ads for the first four years or while keeping your team under 16 people? Well, that's today's guest, Tezza Barton, co-founder of the Tezza app. It's a creative editing platform that's transformed how millions of creators and brands approach visual content. With negative dollars in their bank account, Tezza and her developer husband Cole built their business by treating their app like a beauty brand.

1:17So you're going to discover how to build a loyal community before you launch, how to turn users into your best marketers, and why bootstrapping and staying intentionally small can be a super competitive advantage. So this is a masterclass on building a profitable, sustainable, growing business from a founder who chose passion and community over venture capital.

1:39Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

1:53Thank you so much for joining us. The first question I want to ask you is, you grew up surrounded by artists and entrepreneurs. Was there a particular moment where you realized, I'm meant to build my own thing? I think from the very beginning, if I'm being honest, I grew up in kind of a Norman Rockwell type of situation where I lived in, I shared a backyard with my grandparents and my cousins lived across the stream and then my other cousins lived down the street. And we were all a really close family, but it was more than that. My family all worked together. They started business together. They were all creating.

2:34And I saw all these women working and being successful at being creative. and then I also saw people that just like had a dream and they were going after it and I thought okay yeah like that is just what I meant to do there was no question I started a candy shop when I was like seven at my brother's baseball games I started teaching art classes to the kids down the street I was like curating and throwing neighborhood birthday parties because I loved like curating an experience from a young age I just like I was trying to figure out how to get my hands in something but I knew I was going to start something so it was always kind of just it was there you know I feel like I'm still in that same place like chasing the same dream so was Tezza like Tezza is massive the Tezza app is massive so many people use it like tell me did was this your first business no my first business was I mean like I said I started a lot of little things um but then I started I became a photographer and that was really my first business I learned how to work with clients like please people you know all those kinds of things and then what you know fast forward all the way to like when my husband and I started working together we started a million businesses but never really succeeded at all other than like a few sales um but our true true first business was collage kits which was like art prints that you sell and you put on your walls and that was kind of like we had moved to New York City just the two of us and I had I was a freelance photographer he was a app developer working at a company that he was deferring his salary.

4:24So he had like basically no income. And I remember we got a notification, like you have negative dollars in your bank account. And I was like, Q, Q, Q. Okay. We're going to need to figure out how to make some money. So we were coming up and starting and trying so many different things. And we would just hang collage, like magazines on our walls and people would be like, how did you do this? And I didn't come up with the idea of collaging a magazine on your wall, of course, but I was like, wait, like people still don't feel like they can do this themselves. Like I could curate this experience for them.

5:00I take so many photos, like I could make this a product. And so the collage kit was born and that was like a physical product, our first kind of like true product that we still actually sell today. Yeah. That's cool. So what happened next? How did Tezza start? Talk me through her. I mean, truly like if I take it all the way back, you know, let's take it back to the beginning. I was in art school and it was social media was really starting to take off I'm talking like Instagram came out okay and of course everyone in art school was like this is the worst thing ever everyone thinks they're a photographer now and I was like no you know I see something different people are caring in a way they haven't cared before and I grew up obviously in this family of amazing entrepreneurs and artists who never questioned if that was a successful path for me.

5:54And I realized it was a lot of people's, um, they didn't have that experience. People told them they weren't creative. They couldn't succeed. Like, what do you really want to do? You know, creativity was not accepted at all in this era. And I felt like it was my mission to give people that gift to discover the artist that is inside all of us because I truly believe everyone has some form of some form of creativity and I mean to take it a little deeper I also played in a band at the time and my husband was my bass player but before that my sister and I played in a band we toured we did the whole the whole thing together and she actually passed away um suddenly it was like a very tragic experience thank you I was uh 19 she was 17 and we were like best friends you know at that age you feel like you know what you want you know what you're going after I mean we were so driven to be these musicians and and build this life together and it felt like everything was taken away from me um and my sister was like this incredible dreamer and she had like after she passed I found a list in her room and it was like 100 things I want to do before I die and it was great I'm like who writes that at 17 you know I haven't even written my list today I need to but she had on there like play a show in front of thousands of people like just basically everything was about following her dreams and I was kind of shy at the time I was kind of more the even though I was the older sister I was kind of the one behind the scenes.

7:35And I just felt this immense responsibility to seize the moment and treat every day like a gift and not waste another minute on waiting what tomorrow's going to bring, but going after what I actually wanted to do. And so that kind of really, I think was what was the fire behind, I mean, is the fire behind everything that I do today. I truly believe that like every day is a gift and you need to chase your dreams and go after it you know um so when I met my husband we kind of like found this creative magic together I I was always a creative on my own but like when you can find creative synergy with somebody else I think there can be something really beautiful because you're bringing two different perspectives to one and that's really kind of like why everything's happened today.

8:32I can't take credit for it myself because of course I love it. And I'm the one curating the experience and I'm the creator behind the brand, but my husband is extremely creative and no one would consider him creative, right? He's kind of the behind the scenes guy, but he was the person that I wanted to go after to say like, Oh my gosh, Like no one told you were, you were creative, but like, look at all that he's doing now, all that he's building. And so together we've been able to kind of find success in that. Yeah. You said something interesting, um, around when two creative people, when they just jam really well together.

9:14And you brought me back to like, when I first started founder, I went through quite a few different magazine designers. And then I found Karen, similar story to you, you guys like bootstrapping couldn't afford it and you know to do a proper magazine like properly properly properly would cost tens of thousands of dollars and I had like such a shoestring budget it was a digital magazine right and on the app store google play store and I'll never forget like he was the more expensive choice and I think it was only like 500, 600 US dollars or 800 US dollars per edition. And I said to him, man, I don't know about these costs.

10:02Like it seems too expensive to me for this business. I'm like, I'm not getting any money coming in yet. And he said, look, Nathan, I know I might be more expensive than other designers, but if you place an emphasis on design, for your brand and you know spend that little bit of money that extra money up front it will pay it might seem expensive now but it will pay its weight in returns and he was so right because i was able to build the founder brand over time to make it unique different and he was like a driving force and there was this magic when we worked together we used to create the coolest stuff we don't work together anymore obviously you know we've got a full-time team and all this kind of stuff but like you brought me back like when you find that person or that person you collaborate with kind of like you know Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive like they had this magic when it came to creativity and just creating cool shit and it sounds like that's what you've had with your husband Cole a thousand percent I do think it's like a lot of people look at the one person right like the Steve jumps.

11:15But there is somebody that's kind of tugging and pulling at that, that really can really bring the true beauty out in something. And I think like people that are just trying to start out or you feel alone, like maybe that is the one thing you need to be starting with is finding somebody that can like give you the life of the areas that you feel are lacking, you know, or make you believe in what you are actually doing. Cause sometimes you feel alone in it. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think it's, it's a whole nother topic in of itself, how to choose the right co-founder. I started a business with my now ex.

11:53I personally wouldn't do it again. And it's a tough one, but that's a whole other battle. Yeah. Yeah. But look, talk me through just for, so people have an idea of size of this business, how many downloads, revenue you bootstrap the business talk me through oh man you know me I'm so like truly for me I stay out of all of that no I know what it is but I can I so I'm gonna botch the numbers on this but for me I have to stay I still feel like I'm just like the girl in my little apartment starting the brand and I'm focused on like every little single person but oh I mean how many downloads I and like feel like I need to ask Cole.

12:36Um, I know we've had like over 25 million downloads. We'll, we'll throw that out. Um, we've been around for seven years. We have about 15, 16 employees and we're bootstrapped. Yeah. Yeah. Great business. Great business. So how'd you come up with the idea? Like this started as a passion project, right? it's truly like my truest passion um but yeah my husband and I so we moved to New York and we were just trying to start a million different things my online social presence at the time and I'm talking I had like you know 20 30 000 followers it wasn't massive but I was speaking to these new people on the internet that were trying to figure out how could I take beautiful pictures and and participate in this like new wave of social media.

13:26And so I was helping people understand that I wrote a book called Insta style that was about how to work with brands and take better pictures. And I was peeling back the curtain on everything because I was like, if I can do this and I'm new and nobody like we can all do it. And I really believed in that. Um, I sold online like Lightroom presets and I kind of watched like the look of the internet change, right. For the pro photographer, It was like people took my special sauce and made it their own. And I watched everyone like kind of take on this new role of being a pro photographer. But there were so many people just so mad at me because they weren't going to edit in Lightroom.

14:02They weren't going to take a photo on their DSLR. And so people were begging me to make something easier. And I looked at the apps at the time and it was really, truly just all very tech based, filled by a bunch of dudes no offense we love the dudes um but there was nothing speaking to that creator space there was nothing speaking to the women that were like coming up in the space um owning advertising making all the ads for these brands and nothing that felt as fun as the act of creating and i was like we this there's got to be something better out there that feels like a brand not just an app on your phone and really the goal from the beginning and the goal now was not just to build an app, but to build this, this world, this creative universe.

14:48Um, and so I was so fortunate that I married a developer and we just thought we were silly enough to think we could build an app. And I don't think we were thinking, Oh, we're going to take over the app store and be the next biggest app. I mean, I think my husband's deepest wishes for that, but mine were just like building a cool brand. Um, and so we, for like a year and a half, like every night till like 3 a.m. We would just be grinding on this app trying to make it just the two of us. We designed everything in it. We tested everything in it. It was all built by us. And we launched seven years ago.

15:24And here we are today. So it's kind of crazy because I think we we really did build the community first. We didn't just build, you know, the tech and hope people would come. Like we were curating a community of people that were super interested in what we were building and we were building it for them for me um i was a creator in the space as well so i was always coming with that lens like how can i make this easier for everyone how can i make it approachable how can i make it pro enough for like the person who's doing this as a career and inviting enough for someone that's like i want to dip my toes and tell me you said you built the community first you didn't just build an app and then launch it or build a product then launch which is what most people do how did you do that talk us through that um i was extremely just i mean social media is just it's in your pocket you can talk to anyone all the time i was heavily talking to people through dms through like commenting backs of people people were emailing me i was meeting up with people in person i was truly going the extra mile on figuring out how i could help people create in a better and easier way.

16:34Um, and building that trust. I think people felt like at the time, nobody was talking about, you know, now it's a different ball game, but at the time it was like how your social media feed looked was your brand. And no one was sharing that, but I was like, I'm going to share that. And then what else do you guys want? I will help you create it and let me create it for you. And I was bringing them in on the experience. And so they definitely felt loyal and like they were building it with us which I think was really a big part of the growth and when did you start that process 2016 and then we launched the app in

17:18I mean really I've been starting it for a long time if I'm being real because I've been on I was blogging I was a musician it's all like it was all speaking to the same world that I was building um when did we launch the app 2017 so it sounds like not that long but I mean it was years it was years so you started talking about the app when what you and Cole were building at least six to twelve months before you released it definitely yeah um I think the app like only came out about eight months in we cried and we were like this isn't working we can't do it like this is this was a dumb idea and we had gotten it so far but it was just you know and we didn't even think we were just young kids like we just didn't even think to try and hire somebody or try and bring someone else and it was just our thing like I didn't really even understand business to that level at that age um which i think now like you have such an opportunity to obviously collaborate or bring people in but there is something to bootstrapping your business understanding your community exactly what they want exactly how they're going to talk about your product what works what doesn't you know because for the first four years of launching the app we didn't run a single ad we didn't pay for anything it was all strictly organic did you look at any other apps in the design creative space that was similar to what you guys were building the first version of Tezza or did you truly just build from conception what you had in your head and playing around and like yeah I mean I think we definitely looked at other apps like there was no question we were like okay so what's out there how are they doing it and how can we bring a different experience.

19:15And we had, you know, in our app, we had guides, like places you could shoot, how you could pose, brands you could work with, creators you could connect with. Like we really wanted to build a world and we wanted it to feel punchy and fun. Like the first version was bright red, big, big, bold text. It was fashion. It was like very feminine because no one was speaking to the women on the internet it was all like coming from this you know tech background and we were like this is not the people that are using this product they're going to be people that are you know people today which is the people that run the internet and working with all the brands and curating like the experience of how the internet looks and what's really cool is you guys you guys kept it pretty small for a long time in terms of team and staff right yeah yeah it's we're still a little too small but we like it was it really fast growing like talk me through the first day of launch did you guys think it was gonna go really big because you were taking your community on a journey or what happened tell me for the first day launch the first day of launch we were bawling and crying and we were like delete it out of the app store because this is where it's like good to hear because I think some people like there is um benefit to being naive when you start a business because you just roll with the punches and you have to make moves quickly but for example we were building not just an app but a world so like our um subscription cost was maybe a little high But we were coming from like the Lightroom preset pro world, which is where people would spend more money.

21:03So I think we charged, I want to say$7.99 for a subscription. And if I didn't log into the app store, I wouldn't have known. Like the social media response was gorgeous and stunning. But then when I got into the app store, the amount of people raging at me, acting like I was trying to rob them. it was just crazy it was crazy and i was like okay we need to delete the app like i we were this was a bad idea we should have never done this and then we we just like kind of started talking to people started talking to the community and we were like okay we should change the pricing structure um and go for a totally different demo and it was just like i don't know that we you know know, we were 24 and just kind of shooting from the hip.

21:54So that was really good. It was a time we should have listened to the community because we did and it worked out and we made it through. And then, you know, in the first year we had over a million downloads and we had dedicated fans. We didn't have to run an ad because people were obsessed and so grateful for our product. They were sharing it left and right. And it was just such a beautiful thing to to be able to have a product where you give someone so much that they feel so grateful they're going to do the work for you. And what I really love is you guys didn't just like pour the gasoline on the fire.

22:32Let's keep building. Let's scale this thing. You guys have made some strategic decisions, intentional decisions to keep the team lean and not like bloat and, you know like really try and grow like what why is that why talk me through that you know i think like when you do bootstrap a business every dollar you're like watching so closely and you don't feel like you can just take guesses right i think sometimes we do obviously but i think sometimes you're you're you can't just say let's dump a bunch of money into this and hope that it works we know what works because we've done it so slowly and so it does actually support now that we do do paid ads or or whatever like paid marketing things we're able to say like we know that organic growth is supporting the like paid growth because i think like when people see the or like the paid stuff come in if they know the organic exists it only supports the other.

23:39I also think like it just really helps you find your like your initial niche when you're launching because I think sometimes you're thinking these are the people I want to get this is the community I want to reach and it's super broad I still have I still feel like I'm in that you know where I'm like I see now seven years in And I'm like, okay, peel the onion back. I went after what I knew really well. And I knew how to market to this group of people. But now I see another group of people. And so I have to figure out how to organically work my way to those people rather than just dumping ads and hoping that it works.

24:18And I feel like when you can organically find that connection with somebody, it will last longer and your retention is going to be better. And I feel like it's just such a healthier business. and when it comes to like resisting hiring for quite a few years um it was intentional uh was there can you talk me through that i mean if i'm being super real in the beginning it was just like we built this to be our business we weren't like we're going to build a business and sell it or we're trying to grow to be the next whatever million dollar business we were like this is our passion project. Can we make this our job?

24:58Can we support this community that actually really needs the product? And that was it. Um, and so once we started growing at like such a rapid pace, we were, we were definitely needing to hire, but I think my husband and I, if I'm being honest, we're so passionate about it. We have a hard time letting go even to this day. So it's, you know, we want to do all the work. Like I'm still writing the coffee. I'm still approving everything that comes in, even though I know I need to let go of certain things. And going back to our initial conversation, you know, working with my husband and finding that beautiful synergy of creating together and being able to take something to the next level, like, that does definitely exist with employees and people on our team.

25:43And it's so cool. And so I've been loving experiencing that, but it is still a challenge for me. yeah look I can resonate with that because when I started found a similar journey like passion project didn't I literally did not think it would be where it is today and that's why I struggle with letting go because I started this thing just to do work that I enjoyed because my previous career wasn't something I enjoyed you were lucky right you added a career you enjoyed but you want to just keep doing passion projects so I treated founder like a passion project I didn't know where it would go I used to take that magazine uh on the iPad to job interviews I didn't I didn't think like most people think most people think when they start a business right they go 10 years ahead a couple years ahead and it can be this it can be that and I just I literally didn't think that like my whole thing is same as you like life is too short to not do work you don't enjoy and so I can really relate to that and yeah it's this kind of tricky battle when you have a business and it grows and you need more help but you want to you like to do the certain things but you know it's you probably shouldn't be doing it and then you hire a few people and then you know those people need support and then it keeps growing and then before you know it that title ceo actually means something and you actually have to learn how to hold people to account and set goals and have a clear vision it's not just play like where are we going people need direction how can you you know help people you know do the best work of their careers and all these different things which becomes it's this whole other thing and I think that's a dichotomy that uh founders that truly love to just build and create uh it's it's a really challenging thing to work through how have you worked through that i'm still working through it it is so challenging i think it's you know there's part of letting go and making room for the growth i think when i'm feeling uncomfortable i'm like okay this means we're going somewhere and i have to let myself be in that.

28:01Um, I do get fulfilled by my employees saying like, I never felt like I got to be this creative in my life. And this job allows me to do things I never thought I could do because that is part of like the mission of what I hope our users feel. You know, I want people to feel that creative. And so if I can do that for my company and create that culture, like that does fulfill me in another way um but I I am finally realizing and this is like I'm in the last month okay that in order for me to ever get back to being the creative person that I want to be because we're always trying to get back to that I think as creatives you know we're always like wait but i don't gotta do this that i used to do but um there is a way to build process and to build teams around you that can do things that you can't do and i think hiring the right people that can fill those voids and do and you do the only things that you can do the best is the most important thing you can do for your company so i am trying to like make those steps and I see the light where I'm chasing it.

29:20So I don't know. Maybe you have tips. Tell me, what should I be doing? Oh, look, we're all learning. It's a never-ending journey of learning and I could probably another conversation, I could talk for days around getting that piece right. I'll call you after this. So what advice would you give to founders that want to create an app, right? That want to create something that is different in the marketplace, that they have an idea for an app because everyone has an app idea, right? Most people you may say, yeah, I've got an app idea, right? What advice would you give? You know, the advice I would have given five years ago is maybe different than the advice I would give today.

30:06And I think we've come into a cool new space where building an app is maybe not as hard as it used to be. Um, because we have AI, we have, there are tons of great developers. So one, like if you just want to build an app and you don't know where to start, there are so many amazing developers that maybe could share your idea or your passion and you guys could, could work on something together. So I would recommend like finding someone you could team up with, maybe give equity to, or maybe just, you know, pay them to help, help you start the business. And then on top of that, I would focus more on like what makes you different?

30:45What sets you apart? You know, for us, we've never thought about ourselves like software. I think of us like a beauty brand and that's how I build our marketing. I, we almost do it reverse, right? Like we come up with, because we're bootstrapped and we can't just dump a bunch of money into a feature and then hump it out and hope it reaches a bunch of people. I think, how am I going to reach the people through the marketing and what kind of feature am I going to build that's going to really connect and how am I going to like do something that really touches differently on social media and that ties back to the product and I feel like that's what helps growth um so I think like marketing is really important because we live in a time where there's just so much social media so much in your face and so how are you having a different point of view if you're building an app how can you connect it to a world that doesn't connect back just to tech like build something that makes people feel something, build that community, build that like strong affinity for your brand.

31:45Um, I mean, how much time do we have? I could talk about so many ideas, but I, I just feel like the important thing truly is to like do something just a little bit different. It does. I think like you look at the world of like beauty, right. And you look at road or you look at skims and it's like these brands that I obviously look up to because I'm a creator and I'm thinking about branding in that way they launched with one really good product and they did marketing that was so different than any other thing like doing the phone case or doing the photo booth things like we're always trying to bring that in-person real life experience um to our community because that's different than any of our competitors in the app space what's been the most effective marketing campaign tactic or strategy that you guys have done that has really given Tezza just a step changing growth in the early days we you know none of our competitors were naming their effects or their filters based off of like a real life thing it was all very you know, techie, A4, B6, whatever it was.

33:01And we brought like experience to creating. So for example, if it was, um, the first day of spring, we created something called, uh, no, I'm like forgetting what it was called.

33:18Anyway, so a wildflower. Yeah, that's what it was. Gosh, my brain. So we created something called wildflower and then we built a whole like experience around that. Then we threw an event around that. And it was just like, how can we keep inspiring you to want to create and coming back? And it actually like an interesting fact is a lot of our downloads are re-downloads, people that have used the app before, and then they come back again. And I think that's because, you know, the way we market is not just here, we're an app, we have a bunch of tools, we have a bunch of things. We're constantly like thinking about what's culturally relevant.

33:50How can we keep you inspired and wanting to create? And how can we to build an experience around something that you can do so i think that you know not many people are going to want to go to an app event but they like to come to ours because we they know we're going to curate an experience and inspire you to want to create with like-minded people yeah and from a marketing perspective you've also done some interesting collabs yeah what's been your favorite oh so many favorites i mean the 818 club was really fun because it was coachella there were just thousands of people there wanting to create and we created like an in-person kind of photo booth experience that we would take people's photos and then we created these two new effects and it was just so fun to watch like over the whole weekend people use these two effects that not only represented and curated 818's brand experience, but like spoke to ours as well.

34:49And I think people have like a trust for our brand. They know we're going to bring a brand's aesthetic to real, to life in our app. So we've done things with like Hourglass Cosmetics, the American Music Awards, Summer Fridays, so many brands. And I think that's really fun to see communities connect like in real life and then also in the digital space and everyone can participate yeah what was your first collab it was actually summer fridays how'd that come about so i'm uh friends with mariana hewitt who's one of the founders of summer fridays we've always just you know been social media friends and she actually approached us and she was like i have such a good idea we should do a filter collab because everyone at summer fridays uses tezza and it makes sense like then the photos that they're posting for our brand can feel a little bit more like our brand if we can put our little brand stamp on it and so we worked back and forth for months to create a filter that they feel like represented them and it absolutely went viral and it still is one of the most years uh presets today yeah crazy and what advice would you give to founders looking to do collabs partnerships tapping into other creators or brands audiences to build and grow especially in the early days because some people will be watching this and they go well oh well hey it was easy for you right like and i don't want people to think that because you can create something from nothing like I started a digital magazine 12 13 years ago it cost me 2 000 us dollars I was making 50 000 Australian dollars a year and you know in the first few months I got an interview with Richard Branson right and I was a nobody it was my first business my I had no connections whatsoever I didn't know anyone that was a founder I was just genuinely curious about entrepreneurship.

36:51I don't come from an entrepreneurial family. My dad was a teacher. Mine was a nurse, but I was able to create something from nothing. And I don't want people to go, oh, well, it's easy. You're just friends with marriage. So what advice would you give here? Because I think this is key and important. This is key. You're right. I like this. I like this a lot. I mean, just to paint the picture clear, I moved to New York from Salt Lake City, Utah. I had$0 in my bank account. I remember two months in, I got a notification from my bank account said you have negative dollars in the bank account. And I was like, okay, okay.