Fractional Product Management to SaaS Cofounder with James Lewis
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Brian: [00:00:00] from fractiOnal product manager to co founder of a new SaaS, you're about to hear my conversation with James Lewis, let's get into it.

So I'm about to roll my conversation that I had with James Lewis. And we recorded this on December 8th, 2023. I originally invited him on to talk to me about what it means to be a fractional product manager, which is something that I had been exploring for myself working with. Other SAS founders in sort of a coaching and fractional advising capacity.

So I want to kind of pick his brain about what, what that looks like, but the conversation turned into his transition from being a fractional product manager for a company to moving into a full time much more committed to position with a SAS, an early stage SAS company. So that was super interesting.

And then we talked all about his SAS. Business lemon, which is in the payments space for, for other SAS companies a really great story in this [00:01:00] conversation. And and I learned a lot. It was great to meet James. So here it is. Here's that conversation with James Lewis. Enjoy. James Lewis, great to have on on the show. Great to meet you.

James: Hi. Yeah, good to meet you too.

Brian: Yeah. So, so as we were just talking off air, I mean, a big part of this whole podcast, this show is me randomly navigating around the internet and finding people who I happened to find interesting and doing interesting work. And I don't even remember when I came across your profile.

It might have been on Twitter, maybe on threads. I don't even know. , but I was like, this, this guy's up to some interesting work and I wanna learn more, so I'm gonna invite him on the podcast.

James: Cool. Yeah, it was probably threads. I'm not very active on Twitter these days. Almost to the point where I missed your message. You dmm me and I I didn't see it for a little while, but thankfully I did catch it. So here I am.

Brian: you know what I, I'm, I'm just starting to get into threads myself, and I [00:02:00] wish that like our whole industry would just all move over to threads all at once. like we could all agree, let's just stay on one platform and not be kind of fragmented across two or more. It's really annoying. But,

James: Yeah.

James' current day to day
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Brian: Anyways so I think in this episode we're gonna talk about one of my favorite general topics, which is like transitioning between different forms of business and maybe different chapters in our business careers.

And it seems like you're sort of in the midst of, of one of these transitions, but . When I found you and May, I don't know if this is still the case or not, it, I, I see that you've been a product manager in the past at startups

and then you've got into coaching, advising, consulting, and this concept of fractional product management or product strategist.

So yeah, like how do you why don't we start with that? Like how do you describe what you do today Essentially?

James: So [00:03:00] I. ? I am, yeah. So I'm a product manager. I'd, I'd say mostly I actually started my career as a developer back in the day. And I was working at a digital agency and kind of discovered my kind of like, interest in product. At that point. There wasn't really anyone doing that. And I kind of just

Took it on as an extra role to my to what I was doing. And really got into it. And so then in my next job, I joined as a, the first project manager of of a small startup here in Manchester where I'm based. And I kind of like progressed in that company to the, I was the chief product officer at the end of that about seven years with that company.

Brian: You know what, actually, let's just, let's just pause right there. We're gonna get into how you went out on your own into like coaching and advising and, and now your current thing with, with with Lemon. I wanna pause there on just this concept of [00:04:00] being a product manager. 'cause All right. Like, like personally, I come from, I started working at a web agency like 10 plus years ago, like 15 years ago now.

Wow. As like a designer developer. Then I went out as a freelance consulting for a while. Then I got into bootstrapping and founding different products. And now I'm like a kind of full stack developer slash. Product maker and founder, but I feel like I've never actually experienced what it means to be a product manager in a company.

I was a project manager, I was a developer, I was a designer. But today, this whole role of product managers incredibly important at so many companies, especially like SaaS companies. I've never really seen what that looks like, but from what I can tell, I think that most of what I do day to day in my own products is like I'm a product manager.

I, I manage my team, I talk to customers, I figure out which features to build[00:05:00] what the job to be done is. And that's mostly where I spend most of my time and effort.

Transitioning from dev to project management
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Brian: So I don't know, like, can you gimme like a primer on like what, and maybe like for developers or designers who, who might be listening to this. What does it mean to transition from being just like a developer and somebody who works on it to being a product manager in a company? What does that role entail?

James: Yeah, and to be clear, I didn't go through any sort of training or anything. I just kind of felt my way around it. But I, for me it was kind of, really trying to define the sort of where, where we thought we were going. So I guess, you know, the, the vision and how we're going to . What, what are, what are the, the, the kind of the steps to get there?

And then kind of work with the team to figure out what we actually need to do, what we need to build in order to, to, to kind of like get to that vision. But it was off.

Brian: I, I feel like it's such an invisible part, but it's so important of [00:06:00] the whole process. Like I, when I just think about my day-to-day, I spend so much of my hours and mental effort shifting around tickets to try to figure out like what we need to build this week, what we should push off to next week, what we should push off to next quarter, what the roadmap for the year looks like, and deciding on that stuff.

James: Yeah. And, and I never , even though I was with that company for seven or so years, I never got to a place where . Kind of creating a, a roadmap that goes a year out was that, that never made sense because we were still kind of trying to find our way and, and there was things happening, opportunities happening, crises happening that just meant that a, a roadmap, which just wasn't really worth planning out that, although I did many times try and do that only to be frustrated a few months later when it was thrown out the window.

Brian: Hmm, interesting. How much of like, customer interaction is involved with a, [00:07:00] with a product manager? Are, are you the person talking to customers? Are you managing other customer research happening? I.

James: So I was talking to customers in the early, in the early stages. In fact, I, yeah, I continued talking to customers throughout, but not necessarily in a product manager kind of role. But yes, in the early days, it very, very much was joining the . The CEO on, on sales talks sales discussions to kind of get a better understanding of, of who our potential customers were and what the, what, what we were trying to, to solve for them.

The, at the time the company was, was going after large enterprise retailers. And that made things difficult. It was, it was a very slow. Process. We had it, we did have a few wins, but again, there were very large customers paying . A good amount of money, but in terms of trying to determine whether we had, whether we had product market fit, was, was very difficult because it was, you, you almost dunno whether you're at [00:08:00] that, at that kind of stage, whether you are, you're just a glorified service company building what it is that they want for their specific

Brian: Right.

James: Um, so that was, that was challenging.

The first big move and early learnings
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Brian: Yeah, I can imagine. Well, let's, let's move along in your story. So, so you were there and then, and then what was kind of like your next big move.

James: So, yes, at the beginning of this year I decided to to move on. And I wasn't really sure exactly what I. Wanted to do next. But I knew that I enjoyed talking with other founders, with other people in similar sort of startups. And I felt that I had after you know, experience at multiple places that I could help people kind of like in the earlier stages with kind of, how to go about kind of f figuring out what to do, the kind of the right process, the people that they need to you know, bring on board, that kind of thing.

Brian: Were you thinking, 'cause this is also what, like, led me to reach out to you. 'cause I, with we record this, I'm starting up this company [00:09:00] around instrumental products and my initial offering there is like this coaching and product strategy thing. I'm, I'm curious to know at that point when you started that, like who were you thinking of in terms of like the ideal client for you?

Was it a startup who's like at the idea stage and they're exploring, creating their first MVP? Or was it a startup that's like further along, maybe they have an MVP or a version one, and they just need some direction on where to go from here. Like who, who would you

To work with in that?

James: so I, I think ideally that very early stage to kind of bec because I, I'd seen many times where people were . Trying to build too much too quickly or even employing a, a third party, an agency or an offshore agency to, to build out that, that MVP, which typically wouldn't be an MVP, it would be far, it'd be, you know, too many, too big.

Yeah, exactly. [00:10:00] And cost too much. , but people in tho at that stage don't don't typically have enough money to, to hire consultants and advisors. So that was, you know, I could I could help people and, and I did talk to a lot of people and but there was nothing in there and sort of commercially for me.

So then, yeah, the next kind of obvious place was the, the next, next stage along where people had already . Some sort of product a small team. And there I, I found a lot of challenges around prioritizing the right thing to, to go after the, the process of, you know, if you have a, a handful of developers, maybe a designer, how that, how to run the sort of design the development process,

Brian: Yeah,

James: those kind

Brian: you're, you're describing so many of the same learnings that I, that I'm going through or that I have gone through over the past month or two. Getting my version of this off pretty, it sounds like a very similar type of offer. Getting that in front of different startups at different [00:11:00] stages. And first of all, for me, having even a hard time writing the sales page, 'cause I don't know exactly who I'm speaking to

and. I have some thoughts around like what kind of value I can offer to another startup in terms of this like product management type of strategy. But yeah, like you said, like number one, I definitely saw like the super I early idea stage.

They just, they're too bootstrapped and they don't have a budget to bring on an extra consultant. Then the ones that are a bit too far along, they already have a whole team and a process and a workflow, and it doesn't quite make sense for me to like kind of slot in there. There, there've been a few clients that I've been working with in different stage, in different capacities, but I'm still kind of feeling out like what actually makes sense for me and for them.

So, yeah. So, so what else did you learn there?

James: So, yeah, just, just to kinda like kind of play on what you were just saying there. I yeah, I've, I've really struggled to, and , [00:12:00] it's almost ironic as a kind of, you know, you have to, as a product manager, you need to define your ideal customer and like, you know. work out exactly what your value proposition is and, and all the advice that I'm, I'm, I'm giving to people.

I'm really struggling to do that for myself. I really wanted to try and find some sort of, rather, rather than I can help you here, here, here, and here, which is true. I wanted to try and find maybe some sort of discreet package, something that I could offer. Um. Uh, but I, you know, I, I've continued to, to actually struggle to, to find that, that thing because there are so many different problems I can, that, you know, we can help people with.

So

Brian: that that's so true. 'cause again, like this idea of like product management. It has all these branches that touch so many different parts of the process from customer research to technical development, implementation to design, ui, ux, you know, mar like product marketing.

James: Yep.

Brian: and, [00:13:00] and so, but then, then it's also a question of like, all right, well, each individual startup that you work with, they tend to have very different In-house competencies, like the founder might be technical, or the founder might be non-technical, or maybe it's a partnership, maybe it's not. Maybe they have a developer who's on board, maybe they don't, and they're considering hiring one of these agencies. Or, you know, there's so many different variables at play, you know.

James: Yeah, for sure. And. And, and not, not, and as, as well, I was also I had the role of COO at the previous company as well, so I, I have experience in marketing, operations, people management as well. So again, another sort of a bunch of experience that, that could be helpful, but doesn't help me pin down what it is that I'm trying to offer.

Working as a fractional product manager for lemon
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Brian: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. This idea of fractional product management there, you know, I, and this, I, I haven't kind of slapped [00:14:00] that name on, on my thing, but I've, but multiple people have like, suggested it to me and I've seen it around in different productized consulting offers. Like I've seen, like fractional CTO,

fractional CFO, fractional. Ui ux design, like, it, it does sort of make sense theoretically to offer like a fractional product management service to help with this directional strategy advising type of thing. And I'm actually talking to a few clients in this capacity right now but . I'm curious what, like what do you think of as this around, around this term of like putting like fractionals pro fractional product management on it and what's been your experience with that?

James: Yeah, so I did offer myself as a, a fractional product manager. And I joined the company that I'm with now, lemon, which you mentioned earlier. Initially as fractional head of product. And to be honest, again, it kind of, it, it makes sense in theory, [00:15:00] but, or at least for me, I, I really struggled to kind of

Not go, go all in on something if I'm really interested in a, a problem and a challenge. Once I kind of got started working with Lemon and I got really got on with the, the founder I found it very difficult to try and think about other things and, and also keep an eye out for opportunities at the same time to the point where I am actually now going all in on, on Lemon.

And that's, that's kind of a, a, my, a recent development.

Brian: yeah. So I mean, what can you share about like, what's your status with lemon today?

James: So, yeah, so I'm now the, the head of product at Lemon which is yeah, I'm, I'm full-time all, all in it. So, so the journey, at least for now, my journey with, with kind of the, the fractional or the the . Consulting is kind of, has come to an end and I'm, and I'm kind of like, excited to, to, to like go with

Brian: so, so it's interesting, like you, you sort of like, connected with them with this like fractional product management offer.

James: Mm-Hmm?

Brian: Then that evolved [00:16:00] into like, well, let's, let's, let's grow this, this role for you and make it official and, and make it much more significant in terms of your, your participation there.

James: Yeah. Yep.

Um.

How James landed the lemon role
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Brian: I'm, I'm really interested in that transition. I'm, I'm always in interested in transitions. So like, so how did, do, do you have a pre-existing relationship with, with them before the, the fractional. Offer came about or did they just like kind of find you somehow and then that's like how, how did the initial engagement begin with them?

James: Yeah. So, at the beginning or Yeah, beginning of this year or Yeah, around springtime I think it was, I was just meeting with, with and going for coffees with anyone who fancy going for a coffee as I was trying to fi, you know, figure out what was next. And a mutual friend of ours put us in in touch and said.

Matt James. Think it'd be great if you met for a coffee. So I'd never met Matt before. And we just kind of, he, he talked about his [00:17:00] initial ideas for what he was thinking about doing. And it sounded, it did sound really interesting and I, you know, we just kinda like hit it off from there and kind of kept on, kept in touch and, you know, kept and I kept on yeah.

Brian: Very cool. I, I do want to get, get into a little bit of the, of what lemon is and the, and the problem that you're solving. It is super interesting. We'll get into that in just a minute. Um. So, okay, so like you, you met his, his name is Matt, you said?

James: Matt.

Brian: Yeah.

So, so you met Matt and what was their situation at the time?

Like, did they have a more of a team in place?

James: So he had a another, yeah. One co-founder at that point that he, that was working, that they were working together on this, you know, just the sort of beginnings of the idea at that point. Um, uh, the, the other guy he he actually moved on at some point. So it's just, right now it's just myself and Matt working on, on the the product.

Brian: I see.

James: So yeah, it was, it was very early stages. It was just kinda like, [00:18:00] here's some ideas and.

Dusting off the dev hat
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Brian: is he, tech is Matt Technical is who's building it.

James: So I'm, I'm building it. I've kind of dusted off my developer hat. Found it down the back of the sofa somewhere and got back into developing again. Which has been really financially it's been a long time, but I'm, yeah, really enjoying it.

Brian: How long have you been out of the game in terms of code?

James: I am gonna say 10 years.

Brian: Oh, wow.

James: Yeah. And a

Brian: you're able to just get, get back into it like riding a bike,

James: Well, thankfully at the same time, chat, GPT sort of came along and that's really, really, really helped me. I have to say,

Brian: You know what's funny? I I had a sort of similar thing where early in my career, so I started as a, i working at an agency in New York around 2005, started as a front end web developer. So, you know, that sort of early days, not the earliest days, but like [00:19:00] a, a lot earlier than today, like,

The building websites was a lot messier than it, than it is today.

Then, and then went out on my own and I, and I continued as a freelance web designer developer heavy into front end and, and everything like h TM LCSS around like 2008 into 2012. But then I kind of, I, I put more of my founder and and marketer hat on for the next eight plus years. And it wasn't until like 2018 that I got back fully into the code and. Learning full stack and front end and backend and rails and everything. And like that 10 year gap of, especially on the front end of web development, it went from like HTML and CSS and the FTP to a server to like just. Mountains of complexity, especially on the, on the front end and JavaScript and, and all this crap.

So that, that was a big pain to, to get back into. And it was like just a little bit too [00:20:00] early for the AI wave. Like now I'm loving AI in, in my workflow, but like, if I only I had it like two or three years earlier, that would've been perfect.

James: Yeah. So I think when I left development, I was working with Symphony, PHP, jQuery, I think that kind of thing.

Brian: Yep.

James: And now I'm building a next app and I think maybe I've missed some of the, the real complexity and it's kind of, I dunno if, if if you, if you, if you think the same, but it's kind of, it seems like it's almost simplifying again,

Brian: it it is starting to simplify and I, and I definitely seek out the, the simpler, the better. Like, I, I tend to stay away from the heavy JavaScript frameworks and like I've, I haven't even worked with like React and. Or, or next, or any of these. I, I stick with, currently I mostly use like rails and stimulus jss, but, but recently I've been getting into Alpine jss, which are really just really lightweight wrappers around vanilla [00:21:00] JavaScript, which is, I I love that.

Like, simpler, the better, you know? Um, very cool.

What is lemon?
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Brian: All right, so, so back into your Transition into working with lemon. So now it's just the two of you, kind of co-founders on this thing. You're, you're building it. Tell us about lemon. Like what, what is it? Who's it for? What, what problem is it solving?

James: So lemon is for, predominantly SaaS vendors. So, it's a, it's a SaaS checkout for people who are selling SaaS. The idea is that a lot of SaaS is sold either in monthly or annual plans. If you choose the annual plan, you typically get some sort of incentive, like a 20% deduction or something.

On the buyer side, . Most people want to save money, but they can't afford the upfront annual plan. So we offer buyers the ability to, to commit to that [00:22:00] yearly plan but spread it over 12 monthly payments and then we pay the the vendor upfront. So it's it's not dissimilar to sort of buy

Brian: I love how simple. Yeah. Buy now, pay later. I, I love how simple this is. It makes so much sense Even the, for me, as a buyer of SaaS, I, I, more often than not, I go for the monthly

subscription, even if it's something that I know that I'm gonna be using for well over a year. Just 'cause like, I just don't wanna plunk down a thousand or 2000 or 5,000 bucks for, for an app.

I'd rather just pay a couple hundred a month or something. What, whatever it is, you know.

James: Yep. Yeah, so it's a pretty simple idea. And the idea, although we, you know, there's, there's still lots to learn, lots to experiment with, but the idea is that we are a sort of a, a checkout widget on the, you know, the SaaS pricing page or the payment page or wherever.

...And how does it work?
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Brian: Right. So if I'm a sa, so like on my SaaS on clarity flow, I could, [00:23:00] because I do offer the typical monthly or annual and annual, you get like 20% off. So I would offer like a your lemon widget to my customers so that they can choose the annual price, but pay monthly.

James: Yeah.

Brian: And then what, what does the flow look like?

So they, they like click your widget and then what happens?

James: Yeah, so you click on the, the, the, the banner. It is currently a banner. And then that would open up a little. Panel. And then you go through the, the process to to connect your bank so that sorry to connect via direct debit. So we can take the the, the payment on a, a direct debit basis and we will.

And we'll be, oh, no, that's right. Yes, . It's been a while since I've, I looked to this side of business. So then you do connect your bank currently so that we can ensure that. So we do an instant kind of credit check with, with with your bank. And and then you can, and if you pass, you just go straight through and we pay, the p would pay you upfront and the,

Brian: So the customer. [00:24:00] The end customer of the SaaS needs to use direct debit. They, they can't pay with a credit card.

James: Right now. So that's, that's, yeah, that's what we're, we're thinking at, at the, at this minute. But again, it's all kind of like, we, we'd like to offer, as, you know, whatever p however people want to pay eventually. But that's, that seems to make sense to us at the minute. But yeah, we've gotta just see how people wanna use it.

Brian: Yeah, I'm, I'm not very familiar with this, with this whole space but I know that like, huge, like Apple has like their card, the, the, the Apple card, right? And, and there's probably a few others that sort of do this thing with, with any purchase, right? Like,

if I wanna do, if I wanna spread out payments for a big purchase, I could use, I've never used it myself, but I, my understanding is it's sort of like that.

James: Yeah. So, I think Klein on the sort of consumer side is the most obvious one. Where you so, and, and Klarna are similar in that they kind of integrate into the checkout experience [00:25:00] and clear pay and firm, I think.

Brian: Right, right, right. Um, cool. I mean, I love how simple it is. I love how clear and direct. It is are you, like, what's the requirements for a SaaS in order to work with you? Like, do I have to be on Stripe? Or what does this look like? Does it, does

James: So, so we at, at, so if you, if you go with lemon, or if the, if the buyer chooses lemon, then essentially the buyer will be paying . Two lemon, the, the, the monthly cost. So therefore the stripe fees for the vendor go away, which is another nice benefit because we will just be paying the vendor up front, straight away.

Brian: Wait, the stripe fees for the vendor. So, so, oh, so, so like, so if I'm the SaaS owner

James: mm-Hmm.

Brian: and I, and I put, and I engage Lemon to put that widget on my site for my customers, lemon will pay me directly[00:26:00]

instead of like paying through my Stripe checkout essentially. Interesting. So you're doing like, sort of like direct bank payments both ways.

Between the customer and Lemon and lemon to the, to the SaaS.

James: Yeah.

Brian: Super interesting man.

lemon's current roadmap
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Brian: Where are you at with, with the whole process and building it and launching it and customers and all that?

James: So we are, we're pre-launch. We are still kind of going through the getting our first pre-seed round raised. That is, . I'm hoping that that is kind of, we're very close to, to being able to announce something on that. And maybe by the time this comes out that we'll, we'll be in a, in a good position.

Um, in, in the meantime, whilst we're kind of waiting on that I've been looking at the, the the buyer side of things. So if you, if you're paying for software through Lemon or maybe even multiple . Products through Lemon, yet you'll want to be able to log into your [00:27:00] sort of lemon dashboard and see all the different things that you are paying for.

And right, right now we're working on a, a SaaS management a simple SA management platform or tracker that you can add all of your SaaS subscriptions into and just kinda like get an overview of all the things you're paying for. . And in time we'll add the, the lemon payments into there as well.

Brian: Oh, I like that too.

James: so it's a way to kind of like, um, sort of start, start engaging with the sort of the bio side of the market.

Brian: Yes. Okay. So is that, so, so what you're saying is like, it's essentially a tool for any consumer of, of many SaaS apps as, as most SaaS business owners are, or any business owner is. Like, I have a whole bunch of SaaS that I subscribe to and I often forget about 'em,

James: Mm-Hmm.

Brian: I end up paying for them for, for too long.

So you're saying like this is a tool just to manage. All of my SaaS subscriptions, and eventually I'll have the option to say like, all [00:28:00] right, I've got my list of 20 SaaS that I subscribe to, maybe like these, 10 of them, I want to actually use lemon's, like annual payment service. Let's optimize some of the costs on this.

James: Exactly. Yeah.

Brian: I love it. And is that are, how are you thinking about pricing? Like is, is that tool gonna be like a, is it like a free, kind of like lead gen tool

James: It. Yeah, initially we're seeing that as a lead gen A, a an acquisition kind of tool on for the buyer side. It may evolve to, at some point be, you know, feature rich enough that we can consider thinking about maybe paying for certain features or tiers, whatever. But yeah, initially it's a, it's a free product.

Brian: Very nice. . I guess I kind of coming, we'll, we'll we'll start to wrap up here, but kind of coming full circle, putting your product manager hat on. So Lemon is a, is an early stage startup, you know, pre-seed. As of this recording and pre customers, what [00:29:00] kind of things are you doing in terms, I know you're obviously building the product too, but like from a product management standpoint, like are you doing customer interviews are like, how are you deciding on strategy and Roadmap for, for V one and things like that.

James: So I I made, I think one of the things I kind of . I very first did when I joined, was kind of get a website up and running that could accept emails from people who are interested. And that, that's a great exercise in just kind of thinking of in terms of what, how you want to position it and how you want to, you know, talk about the product you're building and, you know, try and articulate the, the problems that you believe that you are, that you are solving.

Brian: Percent.

James: So that was a really important thing for me. And then as people have started to register interest on both the buyer and the seller side a that's, you know, that's a nice sign of initial validation. But [00:30:00] also it's, it's, there are some people there you can reach out to and, and have a chat with and, and kind of like just understand a bit more.

Brian: I just put out a, actually a tweet about this yesterday, but it's, it, I love this pattern and I've seen the same thing with all of my past products. One of the earliest steps is to put up that initial stab at what a landing page should, should say. Like, write it up in terms of your hypothesis on like who you're speaking to and, and the problem that you're solving.

This idea of like ship and then see, you know, like, like put this out there. See who resonates with it. Capture their email address and then talk to them and, and then iterate off of that. Like you, like I, I've never had much success with nothing out there for people to see and then just talking to customers.

I can maybe observe the markets a little bit, but I, I need to put something out into the world first and then gauge some reaction off of that, you know?

James: Yeah. Yeah, it's really true. . [00:31:00] Yeah. So I think that's, that's kind of like, that's been my approach. And then it has been a, not a struggle, but it's, it's very easy to fall into, you know, when you go into the build phase of thinking about what is the true MVP, what is the smallest thing that we can build and release that will

Get, get some sort of learning for us versus the kind of the perfectionist in me who wants to make sure that the, you know, the ur l as nice as it can do, and that feature there would be, it's not essential, but it'd be really nice if we added that and, and trying to kind of find that balance between, you know, bare bones, like just the, the minimal things that would actually make it usable and kind of what makes it just that little bit nicer.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, I could see, you know, first of all, I, I just love the problem and your solution to what you're describing, and I love the idea of having like the, the front end sort of lead gen product for, for buyers [00:32:00] to manage all their sass. Like that in itself is, seems, does seem useful and it seems like a clear path to getting into the payments system.

But it's still a two-sided marketplace. I think that would be my biggest. Fear

of this kind of thing. But I, I, unlike other two-sided marketplaces ideas, this one seems a little bit more clear cut. And, and it seems like you could even be successful even on either, either side of the market. Like you, you could still be successful just selling to SaaS companies or just selling to buyers of SaaS.

You know, it, it's not like, it's not like it won't work unless you have both sides.

James: Yeah, I think, I think that's right. It's not a, it's not a pure marketplace. Kind of thing. And I think, you know, as we learn more, it's gonna evolve and it's, yeah, it's it's an interesting problem space that I'm, yeah, I'm looking forward to kind of like working with.

Brian: Very cool, James. Well, [00:33:00] I'm glad we got to talk here. I, it's, it's, it's, this is, this is why I love this podcast. I call it open threads. 'cause I sort of. It's, it's open. I never really know where it's gonna go. And when I invited you on, I was really just interested in like, the fractional product management idea as a, as, as a, as a way to like make a living in this industry.

And it turned into this whole transition interesting conversation about how you got into lemon. So, yeah, really cool. I'm definitely gonna be

following along.

James: Cool. Okay.

Brian: All right, James. We'll, we'll get all your stuff linked up in the show notes and yeah, thanks for doing it.

James: Yeah. Great to start.

Brian: All right. See you.