Four years ago, I discovered Outseta. From day one, I became a fan of the product's promise—an all-in-one platform that simplifies the complexities of running an online business.
Over time, I resonated more and more with the ethos in which you run the company: Prioritizing customers, building great software, eliminating noise, thinking long-term, and having a clear vision to build a company on your own terms.
Today, I'm reaching out not as a customer but as a potential teammate, with an open invitation to explore whether there is an opportunity for me to create an impact at Outseta.
Let me share a bit about myself first.
About me
I’m Daniel Wirtz. Dave and Geoff might recognize my name from the support tickets. Over the last four years, I have worked on a cohort-based course business called Facilitator School. Think Write of Passage or Building a Second Brain, but designed for professionals who want to get better at running better meetings, workshops, and events.
My primary responsibility was building an audience, growing our brand, and creating content across various formats.
To build the audience, I've focused mainly on creating long-term content assets, such as YouTube videos and SEO-focused resource libraries—like our workshop templates and ground rules libraries. I've also engaged in thought leadership on LinkedIn, which has proven to be the best platform for us to reach and engage with professionals. I also created educational short-form content such as tutorials and feature updates. (Example 1, Example 2).
At my core, I consider myself a maker and builder. I have always been interested in publishing ideas and making things that are useful to others. For me, entrepreneurship and technology have been the best vehicle to realize that.
I have a diverse skill set, with my strongest experience in digital marketing. With a knack for design and an interest in coding, I worked on and published several small projects in the last years:
Roam Highlighter: A Chrome extension used by 10,000 users to highlight text and save it in a customizable format using Markdown. (I also have a full rebrand lying around with the name Markway, but never got around to publishing it)
Greety: A simple website, to create interactive Christmas cards that can be sent to distant friends, family, or co-workers.
Markdown Editor: A handy Airtable plugin to preview text as Markdown. (I used this to better preview programmatic SEO content for our website)
Logseq paper theme: A popular theme for Logseq that declutters the UI and makes it simpler to use.
I also believe in the benefits of working in public and open-sourced the code of my website for anyone to gather inspiration. It makes me happy when I see that someone forks the repository.
Where could I add value to Outseta?
When I combine my experience and skillset with my observations about your market, team, and overall long-term strategy, I currently see the most value in the following three things:
Increase the firepower of Outseta’s content machine
Outseta’s content has always stood out to me because of its authenticity and practical value. I believe with my experience and skills that I could help amplify your efforts here.
Grow Outseta's brand presence and personality in the market
In my opinion, Outseta is a great product with a strong philosophy. With new content formats and a clear strategy, I think there’s room to further capitalize on your unique value proposition.
Explore and implement new ways to engage with existing and potential customer base
I think there are more opportunities to lean into in order to create a stronger sense of community among users and a stronger pull on outsiders to take part.
Overall, I could see myself taking a role that is similar to the role that people like Pedro Duarte (Raycast), Aron Korenblit (Ex Airtable, now Webflow), and Benjamin den Boer (Framer) have. All of them have roles that are at the intersection of Content, Community, and Education.
For example, Pedro Duarte is a great hype man for Raycast and has done a great job at building their YouTube channel. Aron Korenbilt has done amazing livestreams for Airtable, which helped me as a customer to find new use cases and grow my skills. Benjamin Boer is a great asset for Framer because he constantly ships projects that show how to do amazing things with Framer.
Since I have experience in all three areas (Content, Community, Education), I could potentially take on similar work. And since I have been on the customer side for four years I’m familiar with the product and the market.
What are my concrete ideas?
Below are some ideas that I could pursue at Outseta.
1. Grow the YouTube channel
Outseta’s written content is strong, but I see significant untapped potential in video content. The videos that are currently on the YouTube channel are practical and hands-on, but they are not packaged well (thumbnail, title, structure) and therefore are not being picked up by the algorithm for search and sidebar recommendations.
Concrete Example with the “Freemium or free trial?” video
Geoff published a great video around the question of “Freemium or free trial?” with direct experience and insights from making the switch with Outseta. Around the same time, another YouTube channel published a video about the same topic that currently has 7x the views.
The video from TK Kader has its flaws too (it’s long with quite a bit of rambling), but he does a couple of things better:
The thumbnail – although not great – is more personal
The intro is more engaging
He speaks directly to the viewer
He uses paper and pen to visualize the main concept
The video is structured in chapters and includes chapter marks
Since this is a topic that people actively search for, I would bet that with a better packaging, Outseta's video could have achieved similar results.
And since the people that are searching for this topic are likely in a “pre-launch” phase, those could all be potential customers since Outseta offers features for both of these pricing models.
I could take responsibility for producing high-quality videos for topics that we identify as promising in terms of search traffic, relevancy and importance. And generally work on making YouTube a stronger marketing channel for Outseta.
Here are some ideas for content that I could help produce:
Educational content: Covering broader SaaS or membership business topics with well-researched and produced videos, tying Outseta into the broader context of running a successful recurring revenue business. (Inspiration)
Product tutorials: Create more engaging and easy-to-follow tutorials for features like billing, broadcasts, and integrations, tailored for a non-technical audience. (Inspiration)
Product updates: A regular series showcasing new updates to quickly educate users and amplify the launch for marketing purposes. (Inspiration)
Customer stories: Highlighting how your users have built profitable businesses with Outseta, which serve as inspiration for others while reinforcing trust in the product. (Inspiration 1, Inspiration 2)
When done well, YouTube videos could become an evergreen assets to improve Outseta's discoverability and strengthen bonds with users.
2. Build a community around Outseta
Outseta already creates a great relationship with users through unparalleled customer support. You could build on this by creating a community around Outseta that benefits both users and Outseta as a business.
What I could work on:
Customer community: Creating and managing a platform (e.g Circle) where users can connect, share best practices, and seek help so they and others can get more out of Outseta.
Community events: Organize and host live events like office hours, expert talks, or simply dedicated time for deep work that Outseta users can take advantage of.
Stimulate feedback: Enable users to share feedback and ideas that could help inform product decisions.
Building such a community could reduce support demands as users become more self-reliant through shared resources and public support tickets. Also, feeling connected to the community (especially during the trial) could reduce churn and increase lifetime customer value.
By investing in community building, Outseta would also further amplify the ethos of “sharing success”. If the community helps users to be more successful with their business, this is a win for Outseta as well.
3. European Customer Support
Since I’m based in Europe, I can provide coverage of the support during European business hours. Instead of waiting for a day, European users would receive faster replies, freeing up your mornings in the US for deep work instead of clearing the support inbox.
And because I know Outseta, I’m confident that I don’t need a lot of time to be be productive in doing customer support. (Especially with access to previous support tickets)
4. Relationships with other tools & communities
As part of my role, I could also help create stronger ties between Outseta and other tools/communities.
Framer comes to mind as a tool which could see significant growth in the next 1-2 years. Their office is just 30 minutes from where I live, and back in 2016, I took part in a conference called LOUPE that they organized in Amsterdam (when they still focused on being a Figma alternative).
As you know, they have a thriving community, and it could be interesting for Outseta to be top-of-mind when anyone wants to add subscription or membership capabilities to their Framer site.
What’s next?
If this resonates, I’d love to have a conversation with you and learn more about your current priorities, challenges and explore how I could contribute to your growth.
