The Giver story

Founder-product market fit. I first heard of this idea from Naval Ravikant and didn't quite understand what it meant until I reflected on the growth journey of Chat Everywhere.

I've always been a giver. I tend to give without expecting anything in return, which is quite silly in the business world since it's basically free work and, by definition, financially unsustainable. But it has always been a struggle for me to overcome because I don't want to give up who I am just to live the life I want.

So, I've been operating Explorator as a Giver company whenever we can, toward our people and clients (in that order). And of course, I've learned some hard lessons along the way.

I never knew if this was the right thing to do in the past 5 years, but I know this is exactly how I want to build my own company. If it fails, then at least I have no regrets.

Very fortunately for me, I've been able to attract other givers to join our team to build this 'unreasonable business,' and clients that trusted us. We've been operating this way but struggled to scale because I am not willing to give up our values.

Until last year, we did another giver move. We released Chat Everywhere for everyone to use, free of charge. In fact, we are absorbing the cost ourselves without knowing if this will eventually work out financially. Then, to our surprise, we gained a lot of traction in Taiwan because of how easy it is to use.

That said, we still didn't know if this project would last since we didn't have a pricing plan at all. But over time, more and more people reached out and told us what they wanted to see in the app. So, another giver move, we just built exactly what they asked for!

Then influencers made a video about us, helping us get exposure without asking anything in return. Resellers reached out to help us sell it to the B2B market.

Thank you 茶米老師，益師傅，Amy，貓老師 and everyone else for helping us all along. 💛

This is the moment I understood what founder-product market fit actually means.

We still have a long way to go. $24k revenue generated is only the very beginning for us, but we are clear about what our mission is, what our team is capable of, and how we are making this world a better place than we started.

Let's go get it.