Will van der Sanden of Dux-Soup

Founder Coffee episode 047

I’m Jeroen from Salesflare and this is Founder Coffee.

Every few weeks I have coffee with a different founder. We discuss life, passions, learnings, … in an intimate talk, getting to know the person behind the company.

For this forty-seventh episode, I talked to Will van der Sanden, Founder and CEO of Dux-Soup, one of the leading LinkedIn automation tools in the market.

Dux-Soup started when Will wanted to help his wife with reaching out to prospects for her business. As a developer, he built tools to scrape different sites, like Yahoo, the Yellow Pages and LinkedIn. When he showed his software to other people, he got quite some interest going for the LinkedIn scraping, so he decided to specialize on this.

Despite the uncertainty of building a tool on top of another platform, especially unofficially, Dux-Soup has now been around for five years and has gathered over 60.000 users on its software.

We talk about how to build a remote team, why Dux-Soup mostly employs freelancers, why they price their product lower than competitors, how Chrome sets the internet standards, and why listening is a founder’s most important skill.

Welcome to Founder Coffee.

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Jeroen:

Hey, Will. It’s great to have you on Founder Coffee.

Will:

I know you are very kind to invite me to your excellent podcast.

Jeroen:

Thank you. You’re the co-founder of Dux-Soup. For those who don’t know yet what you guys do, please explain it to the listeners.

Will:

Sure. Dux-Soup is a software tool that helps you use LinkedIn for the purpose of lead generation. It helps you by being able to grab data from LinkedIn and automating the work in that you would otherwise do manually.

Jeroen:

What are some of the most common use cases for which people use your software?

Will:

The most common and basic case is to use LinkedIn’s internal notification system. And in that scenario, you would use Dux-Soup. You would first use LinkedIn to find a group of people, as in your target audience and then you would use Dux-Soup to automatically interact with them – at a pace that is within what is humanly possible to avoid tripping up or upsetting LinkedIn and then visiting each profile one by one, triggering the notification system. And by that way, getting in touch with people who will be interested in your products or suites.

Jeroen:

Using Linkedin as a prospecting platform then?

Will:

Exactly. But that’s simply using the notification system in LinkedIn. So you would actually set up your profile in LinkedIn to make it clear on what products and services you offer so that people who receive the notification will be able to tell who it is that you are or what you could be helping them with.

Jeroen:

So just visiting profiles and then when people see that you visited their profile, they look and then they might be interested.

Will:

And obviously when you do that at scale, when you do that with thousands of people each month, then if you have let’s say 5% of people actually connecting with you, then you already have a lot of leads to work with. That’s the most basic scenario. Then the next level up from that really is to use automation of Dux-Soup to automatically invite or to automatically message people in LinkedIn. And those messages are ultimately personalized for a profile that you’re targeting. You start with a Sales Navigator search or a search in maybe LinkedIn and type the message. Then you start the robot and then the robot will send out the invites for you.

Jeroen:

So you don’t need to do that manually?

Will:

Particularly.

Jeroen:

You guys have been around for how many years now?

Will:

Well, over five years already.

Jeroen:

Five years? I know of many LinkedIn tools that came and then went again. How is it that you guys stay around actually?

Will:

Well, obviously being determined to make it work but also being able to deliver software that is more than just a gimmick. Quite a few tools that were out there when we started, well, they weren’t really very user friendly or they weren’t really built with a particular workflow in mind. And we really try to make a difference by providing software that does think of how we use this. And by doing that, we’ve really differentiated ourselves and managed to build up a huge following and a huge customer base of people who are using the products on a day to day basis. I think it’s really being determined to make it work and looking and listening how the product is used, which allowed us truly to grow from only a few hundred in the first year to over 60,000 users right now.

Jeroen:

Nice. And all of that without really upsetting LinkedIn. I suppose that’s partly because of the limits that you guys have clearly set up in the software. With a lot of warnings when a user wants to up them. Is that the main reason why LinkedIn has not decided to ban you guys?

Will:

Well, it’s not really up to LinkedIn to ban us, fortunately. We’ve had a lot of measures in Dux-Soup on the one hand. Measures to make sure that the pace at which the robot works is as much in line with what is humanly possible because obviously, a robot could just churn out a hundred messages in an hour. But that isn’t something that you wouldn’t really do. We always aim to really just build something that automates the human process but not overuse the generosity of LinkedIn to make them upset. On the other hand, it’s also that we built it from the start and looked at technical measures to avoid any technical detection by LinkedIn as well. We worked on both of those areas.

Jeroen:

Understood. If I’m not mistaken, you started Dux-Soup because you wanted to help your wife with one of her projects. Is that correct?

Will:

Yeah. That’s correct and that’s very good that you remember that as well.

Jeroen:

I think I read it on your website or so. I don’t remember exactly.

Will:

It’s true. My wife was setting up a publishing business and she was aiming to get in touch with different schools and as part of the exercise, we were trying to get a hold of leads or contacts at schools to approach. At first, we used cheap labour from cheap labour countries to do this manually from different websites. But then, me being a software developer, I figured surely I can just write a script to do this, which I did. And I started building out something that would scrape basically things like Yahoo when Yahoo was still a thing, Yellow Pages when Yellow Pages, that’s our only audience.

Will:

And when we started using it and showing it to people, it turned out that LinkedIn was definitely of interest to a much wider audience than initially expected. That’s when we started to have a look and see what was on the market and found that at that point, the products that were out there clearly showed an interest of people to have something to work on LinkedIn but the products were charging too much for too little functionality. And then I thought, this is a good place to see if we can establish ourselves as a leading LinkedIn automation tool.

Jeroen:

I didn’t know about that part of the story where actually you built a whole series of scrapers and then ended up specializing on LinkedIn. That’s interesting. Is Dux-Soup your first startup company or did you have startup companies in the past?

Will:

Well, I worked for a startup in England for a while as a developer. And after that had started on my own with a product called Swivel Script. And before that time, even before my professional career, I was basically coding up stuff, solutions that were hopefully useful. But it was when I started with Swivel Script that I thought of doing more. Well, Swivelscript was already a product in a similar space to what Dux-Soup does. It was more a technical solution where you could script automations in the browser. And it was fairly difficult to sell – meaning that people basically couldn’t get their head around it, what it really did. We were looking at that and I thought that I could just build something like that. To make myself self-sufficient at the very least. I started looking at ways of tweaking what I knew and what I had to do, something that would let people just install and use the tool without doing too much thinking.

Jeroen:

Swivelscript was basically like a Swiss army knife but people didn’t know exactly how to use it. And now you’re really basically making a scalpel with Dux-Soup. Really, really focused on one single thing.

Will:

Absolutely. That’s the big difference. And it just makes it all easier for people to try it out. With Swivel Script, you couldn’t really just install and then try it. You’d have to basically be the fellow for really doing anything with it. But now with Dux-Soup, you could just be an end-user. If you read the blurb, it says, “Well, this is what it does,” you can just click and install and within two or three clicks, you will be actually using it. And that was always key – to make the journey of the customer as simple and as short as possible from reading about the product to using it.

Jeroen:

I’m personally a Dux-Soup user as well. It still has a ton of functionality in there but it’s not terribly unclear how it works. It doesn’t have the most modern design either but it’s very clear and like, “I am going to do this and then that’s going to happen.” I do appreciate that. If I’m not mistaken, you started Dux-Soup all by yourself, right?

Will:

Yes. That’s right. Basically I started coding it in the evenings and on the weekends until we had enough users for me to quit my day job.

Jeroen:

How many users was that?

Will:

That must’ve been I think between five and 10,000. Somewhere around that.

Jeroen:

Is that 5,000 users who are paying a subscription?

Will:

No. Just 5,000 users. Especially at the start, we really tracked the number of users, just by the number that you see in the Chrome web store which is in effect the number of people that have the extension installed.

Jeroen:

Got it. Now you are a team of four? Because I see four people on the website or is it more than that?

Will:

It’s more than that. For marketing, we’ve got two people and for our support team, there’s three. And then for professional services, Joel’s joined recently. Then I have someone for QA. We have two more and for development, there’s another two and there’s me.

Jeroen:

I lost count. Around 10 to 15 then?

Will:

Yeah. Well, to be honest, all these people are all freelancers. The number of people tends to fluctuate. I know this sounds a bit harsh but it’s always between 10 and 15, depending on the things that we’re doing. If there’s additional development required I’ll get a few developers temporarily onboard. But I would say the actual core people who are always within this expanding and shrinking – there’s two in marketing, there’s three in customer service, that’s five. There is one in professional services, one in QA and for engineering, I do all the development myself.

Jeroen:

Well, that’s still impressive that with that amount of people you’re able to serve 60,000 users. Are there any things you do to make that possible?

Will:

Yeah, absolutely. Basically from the start when I was doing everything myself including support, development, including the upkeep of the service and well, basically everything that goes with it, we realized that a small change in a part can either increase or decrease the loads you can support or in product maintenance et cetera. And from the start, I always had the aim and we made it a goal to make sure that there was a minimal support requirement. That’s also why the product had to be easy to use. It had to be easy to install and easy to upgrade and to manage those subscriptions, so that would be easy for us to roll out new releases. From every angle, we are the product with as much zero maintenance as I could get it.

Jeroen:

That makes a lot of sense. Reducing the amount of help people need is definitely one of the major things you can do with your product. Out of interest, what were you actually doing as a day job before you launched Dux-Soup or while you launched Dux-Soup actually?

Will:

I was mostly a freelance programmer, working for different government entities. Doing development work.

Jeroen:

Self-employed already but still how did your life change from being a freelance developer to now leading your own software company?

Will:

The biggest change is that I now do everything from home. All the team is there. Everyone works from home. We all get together remotely to discuss or just to update. Definitely the amount of travel went from driving up and down an hour every day through traffic to just not at all. You really have to go out of the house just to make sure you get out of the house. And that was really the biggest change. And the lack of social interactions that you have to fill with other activities. It was definitely the biggest change but for the good.

Will:

One of the biggest changes on this as well is that you’re actually working on a product where you are in control and you’re the one calling or making decisions on what should go in and what shouldn’t go in and what gets built first and what doesn’t get built first. There’s no politics about who wants what. People I’m sure who’re listening and work in medium or large companies or for the government know that when a project or any activity gets done in these areas, there’s always a lot of time spent on sorting out the politics really. I was glad that for Dux-Soup there’s no politics anywhere.

Jeroen:

That’s also definitely one of the things that I very much enjoy about leading a small company is that you don’t have to deal with a whole ton of politics. We try to keep it as much away as possible. It also sounds like you guys do some things in a pretty typical way, using a lot of freelancers instead of hiring people for the long term. Are there any companies in that respect that you model yourself after or that you look up to when you do these kinds of things?

Will:

No. I’ve read about a few companies. I remember reading about one. I can’t think of the name of the company. They did a presentation, online meeting software, they were bought by Salesforce. I do remember reading but I thought that’s the environment that I would like to work in. It was two guys who founded the company, living in different cities. They only worked remotely and they built an entire company just as a remote company, I guess until they were sold. I wouldn’t say that I’m remote myself but they did inspire me to think like that. That’s definitely the way to work and the way to build a company, especially for a small company where you need all the flexibility that you can get where you can’t really commit, especially in Holland – with the laws around hiring people and firing people.

Will:

Just the cost of hiring people permanently, the commitment is not something that is not a burden that you need, if you don’t even know if your products will last for half a year or even a month. Coming from that starting point of maintaining maximum flexibility, there really is no other option than getting filtered in and with the current state where basically everyone has broadband that is good enough to do online meetings or just online get-togethers. Meeting sounds a bit too formal, that’s all.

And with all the technology for software development where this development is really straightforward to deployment of software that’s all in the cloud. If you don’t have to commit to anything, any permits expenditure or a lump sum expenditure, then you avoid it and you just basically pay for what you use because you don’t know if you’ll receive the next day so to speak.

Jeroen:

It’s much better to keep everything variable, especially if you’re a bit dependent on LinkedIn perhaps.

Will:

Absolutely. That plays a role as well. It has a pretty big role. At the moment now we’re just at such a mode of operation that I don’t see the need to really change the model apart from maybe getting a few permanent hires in just to make sure that the knowledge about the product and the business is secured in case I get overrun by a bus, as we say.

Jeroen:

What is it actually that keeps you up at night lately?

Will:

I’m just thinking about how Dux-Soup can improve and in what areas we should be spending our time and also which areas we should be possibly dropping from the products. I have a lot of interaction with customers in the opening support context but also customers who do webinars. And whenever you have a conversation with someone who either runs into an issue, I mould it over and think, “Well, this is what they said.” Just trying to place these things and seeing how we can help or use that to improve the products and basically make sure that Dux-Soup always stays relevant and always stays ahead of the curve.

Jeroen:

It sounds like you spend most of your time working on building the product and thinking about the product and conceiving the product and all that. Is that correct?

Will:

Yeah. Absolutely. My background is software development. I’m from the era of when the 8-bit home computers were popular or when they were existing. That’s when I started working with computers and started coding a bit. Coding has always been the part I enjoy most. Well, apart from that later on, especially coding something that people use. I remember one project from years ago, one of my first jobs. I remember when I approached him, we spent I don’t know, I think nine months with a team of somewhere between six and 10 people, building a solution that just got canned.

Will:

And I thought it was shocking that there was so much work that was going on from all areas. I guess since then I really felt that you can’t just code for the sake of code but you can do that, obviously it takes a short time. If your code is unused, if there’s no customer to use your product or to run your script or whatever, then you might as well not have written the script at least from my perspective and the way that I approach it. Later on, I really got more coding in the context of something that does something useful for someone.

Will:

Then when I started building, you obviously end up having to do a lot more like deployment, marketing. Basically, everything that comes with the business. At first, you do it yourself and as Dux-Soup grew, the first thing I did was move some more support for a function, get a permit of a freelancer who full-time agreed to handle support. But also actually on the accounting and then later on the marketing. And so it’s really just for me, just basically pushing out the testing, pushing out all the functions that weren’t really adding much value and also to be honest, that I didn’t find to be that interesting. That just leaves me with products or with actual software development but also the product management basically goes to a box.

Jeroen:

And related to that, I have a question for your fellow technical solo founders. How is it in the early days that you approached sales and marketing and what would be the advice that you give to fellow solo founders that come from a technical background?

Will:

Well, the advice I would give them is to build for the market. When you build a product, you always have a vision in, “Well, this is what the product’s supposed to do,” and you should always build towards the vision. But when you start delivering a product and put it in the market, then you should really see what the market does with it. If the market does not respond to your product, then you can’t blame the market. You have to blame yourself for building something that nobody wants and as painful as that might be, the sooner you realize that and start seeing what changes you can make, the less painful it will be. I would say, make sure to build something to what you believe in and test it out and then change as much or as quickly as you can to do something that people actually want to use.

Jeroen:

And maybe related to that because that’s still a bit about product I would say. Did you very much take the “build it and they will come” approach? I build something and then it will grow by itself or were there specific things you did to actually accelerate that growth?

Will:

The strategy of the go to market was around basically building something that does something that we know people want. And because we saw that there were LinkedIn automation products that were being bought and it was an actual demand for that work, to price it in such a way, which in effect was about a third or a quarter of what the going rate was, or even less than fifth. That the pricing was a real way of breaking open depths to tiny markets that existed. That was one element.

Will:

The other one was to get involved with a few of the LinkedIn, what you’d call these trainers or speakers, especially the early adopters of LinkedIn for social selling and to get in touch with them to try the product and just to make sure that they were aware of the product.

Quite often, these guys were quite keen on seeing what else was being developed because it also meant for them that they were always ahead of their competition in terms of what they knew that was coming on the market. And approaching a few of those guys, we definitely got some traction by having them speak and also write about the software.

Jeroen:

Easy to use product, price it low so it can gain market share and talk to influencers. That’s how I need to summarize it.

Will:

Absolutely.

Jeroen:

Cool. What gives you energy and why do you work on Dux-Soup every day?

Will:

Well, the thing that gives me energy is especially when there’s a new development in the products that we worked on for a while. And the last big development that we did was the dashboard showing the statistics of your campaigns. And then just hearing back from customers being really happy about the features or “Well, maybe put this.” Just getting feedback both positive but also let’s say, constructive criticism.

Will:

Just seeing what you built. And maybe I sound like a broken record but once you build something that you think gives a cool feature or that does something cool and then I put it out there and then actually get people to just get in touch with you, to tell you about what they think. Like I said, I’ve worked years also on other projects where you just build stuff and you build and you build and you’re at zero. You don’t do zero then you want to pitch to a customer and just get all this feedback and just have all this momentum with the community. I would say that for me, is the biggest thing really about what makes me happy about doing all this.

Jeroen:

Building stuff and seeing that people care about it.

Will:

Absolutely.

Jeroen:

You mentioned that you work from home from the start. At first, you were doing a day job and then Dux-Soup on the side. But now it’s like every day working from home with the team remotely. How do you manage work and life? Do you put clear barriers between the two? Is there a work time and a life time or is this overflowing into each other? How do you manage that?

Will:

Well, there is definitely an overlap. Well, I have a basic schedule for my day. It’s not a very tight schedule. Although now my oldest daughter started cycling to school so there is one less family task on my list in the morning but otherwise I’ve been cycling the kids to school. Then when I get in, I check my mail like everyone else and generally speaking, I do about a one or two hours of product development, then have lunch, then check up with my support team. In the afternoon do an hour of support for tickets or support goals. And then towards the end answer some emails or do some writing.

Will:

In the morning I do the coding, in the afternoon more of the communications, just writing. And that’s generally what I do every day. And obviously depending on what the main activities are, there are still the marketing events happening or if certain content is producing them, I end up spending more time on creating content than doing coding. But as a general rule, that’s how I break down the day. They definitely overlap. And often still do a bit of work either taking a feature that I like, a webinar or when LinkedIn has an update that needs to be addressed or when there is an influx of support tickets that indicates some other issue in a product that needs fixing.

Will:

Some bug fixing in the evening would also be done. Weekends I would say, I will spend about half the weekend also doing work related things. And on all days I would say, I will probably spend about two to four hours a day working, doing just catching up with the team and making sure everything runs smoothly. For me, there is no real separation really between my work life and my private life. And I quite enjoy not having this strict separation.

Jeroen:

A lot of time spent on work it seems. How do you stay mentally and physically fit while taking on this amount of workload?

Will:

The one area if I’m not really seeing it as work, basically by pushing out everything in the business that I don’t enjoy naturally or most things that I do, I just enjoy doing it. That really helps. But definitely I do about one hour of some cardio exercise each day, just to make sure that I don’t turn into a job at heart. And every couple of weeks meet up with some people in terms of drinks, just to blow off some steam and just to get out of my Dux-Soup. Just to see some other parts of the world.

Will:

Although we know with the whole Corona crisis, it’s been a bit better now but in the past few months, that element really was going on possible review. We tend to do quite a bit of traveling as well as a family. Like I said, I still do a bit of work but it also is good to just see other places and other people, even though you’re working in the meantime as well. Outside travel, a bit of exercise, going to the pub and I do like going to concerts as well, which is also impossible at the moment.

Jeroen:

What concerts do you like to go to?

Will:

Quite like alternative rock. I think it’s called stoner metal or stoner rock. I quite enjoy the genre. But also hip hop and electoral drawn bass. Well, most things that play in venues of around between five and 800 people where musicians are clearly really into what they’re doing, that’s a great atmosphere.

Jeroen:

Where are you based? It can be yourself and the Dux-Soup.

Will:

I’m in Breda.

Jeroen:

Breda. That’s, for the international listeners, very close to the border with Belgium in the Netherlands.

Will:

Exactly. Especially Antwerp. It is only a 40-minute drive and Rotterdam is about half an hour. Amsterdam because everyone knows Amsterdam – it’s about an hour but then again most places in Holland are about one hour from Amsterdam.

Jeroen:

Are there a lot of startups in Breda? I personally don’t know.

Will:

There’s quite a big community, which to be fair I don’t really mix with. Not on purpose or anything but it’s only later on that I realized that there was a community, mainly via a guy called Gino.

Jeroen:

Gino Taselaar.

Will:

Gino Taselaar. Yeah. And Pascal van …

Jeroen:

Pascal van Steen.

Will:

Exactly.

Jeroen:

I also know them.

Will:

I meet up with them once a year in Breda. Because he’s in Amsterdam but he’s thinking of coming back as well because there’s quite a lot to do in Breda.

Jeroen:

Cool. But before we switch into learning; books and stuff, a question I still want to cover. Where does the name Dux-Soup come from?

Will:

Dux-Soup? It basically comes from an expression in English. And when you Google it, you will find it. It’s called something as easy as duck soup. There’s also a movie from the ’60s I think that uses duck soup in that really. There it was, easy as duck soup, which is something that is easy or seemingly easy to do. And that’s why duck soup then the X represents Excel because initially a big elementary product was downloading data from LinkedIn into a structured format to a spreadsheet. That’s why the X is there.

Jeroen:

Got it. I never understood that. I saw the duck and I thought, “Sure soup, I guess.” That’s cool.

Will:

Well, my wife also actually came up with that one and it really stuck. I think a lot of people just like the imagery of the duck. We are happy now we have lots of duck soupers who are really enjoying the duck.

Jeroen:

Now going into learning. What’s the latest good book you’ve read? And why did you choose to read it?

Will:

I’m probably one of the bad examples here but I really don’t read any books.

Jeroen:

Zero?

Will:

Yeah. I think just zero. When I say I’m trying to read books. I think I read books like Jerry nonfiction or a comedy. But this is years ago. I haven’t read any real book in probably 15 or maybe 20 years.

Jeroen:

I’ll change that question. Do you do anything else to keep learning? Do you follow things on social media or do you listen to podcasts or specific blogs you follow? What is something that you’re reading or listening to or whatever they really recommend to other people?

Will:

Not really. There was a website called the Register, which you might not know. It’s an English technology website. I used to read Wired, which I quite liked. And they do sometimes still have interesting interviews with people who’ve done interesting things. But I can’t really say that in my routine or in my day to day life, I do that. I only can use a phone and whenever there’s new technology, I hear about it via communication with my team or just reading the news over the internet. I don’t really have any startup websites or blogs that I really follow and say, “You should really go and spend some time there now.” No.

Jeroen:

No worries at all. It also doesn’t have to be a startup. It could be anything else that inspires you.

Will:

I would say Spotify. I spend most of my time on Spotify.

Jeroen:

Music.

Will:

Absolutely.

Jeroen:

Cool. Is there anything you wish you would have known when you started out with Dux-Soup five years ago?

Will:

Well, what I would have maybe known, although I’m not sure able to make much difference, is how much of stranglehold Google has on Chrome and on the development of web segments, which can be a real pain. As a product we fight a lot against it. We’ve built stuff that caters for changes in LinkedIn but also changes in Chrome. That can be a real pain. Well, recently, I don’t know if you noticed they did different cookie spec that changed the way that the cookies ultimately make sense.

Jeroen:

I heard something about it.

Will:

The same site that attributes…

Jeroen:

Producing changes too.

Will:

… you and many other companies. And this is just one example of many where you think that it should really be Google who’s making these decisions. But because Chrome is now just closing down the openness of the web. And I think maybe this is a more fundamental problem of the current development that because Chrome is really, especially with the chromium alternatives is becoming a de facto standard for web development that the HTML spec and everything around it becomes secondary. And it’s just Google calling the shots and I think it’s just bad. If I knew differently or if I knew better so many years ago, it wouldn’t really have changed.

Jeroen:

No. Your impact on Google is probably not a thing.

Will:

No. I don’t have much impact on Google but I know they don’t seem to have a very good way of communicating with their paying customers. That’s on the one hand. It also created the opportunity, obviously Chrome being a platform where you can build an extension like Dux-Soup. You couldn’t have done that if you still had all the different standards for building extensions and all the different subtleties with the HTML into implementation. The fact is that Chrome is the platform that also creates the opportunity.

Jeroen:

Two-edged sword.

Will:

Yes, exactly. Now I’m just happy that it’s succeeding.

Jeroen:

Final question. What is the best piece of business advice that you ever received or something that you would like to share with our fellow listeners, mostly startup founders you can think of? What is one thing you would like to share with them that you find valuable?

Will:

To stay critical of what they’re doing and really critical. I’ve said before but not to build something and nobody understands it to say, “Well, it’s their loss.” No, it’s not their loss. If you build something, just make sure that you always listen and understand how people are using it. If they aren’t, then why not? Because if you don’t listen, nobody’s going to be using your software.

Jeroen:

Keep listening and take responsibility when things go different directions.

Will:

And don’t take it personally.

Jeroen:

And don’t take it personally. That’s great advice.

Will:

It’s very tricky. If you’re a techie like myself, you can be quite stubborn, which can be a good thing. It’s not about you, it’s about the customer.

Jeroen:

Exactly. Cool. Thank you again Will for being on Founder Coffee. It was really great to have you.

Will:

Well, thanks for having me here.