Heyo: The Human-First Live Chat
Meet Nico, a 28-year-old entrepreneur in Asia and founder of Heyo and Adkit. Discover how he built a live chat tool focused on creating genuine conversations, not reducing them.
We spotlight outstanding products from our community and the stories behind them, to inspire more makers to build great products.
Who is behind the mic?
I'm Nico, I'm 28. Right now I'm living in Asia, and I'm the founder of Heyo and Adkit. I've been doing entrepreneurship for about 10 years, and I've been involved in indie making and startups, particularly in SaaS, for the last three years. I learned to code three years ago, and that's when I started.
Introduce your product in a human language.
Heyo is the human-first live chat. Unlike many live chat software that focus on reducing support requests, Heyo aims to create more conversations to better understand users, improve products, and ultimately drive more sales. There are no AI features or automated replies; the goal is to foster genuine conversations to gather actual feedback.
Who is this for?
Heyo is primarily for founders and product managers who want to improve their products. It's for people who genuinely care about creating great products.
What makes Heyo so special?
What makes Heyo special is its focus on creating more conversations, not less. This approach is essential for obtaining feedback, improving products, and ensuring user satisfaction, which in turn helps retain subscribers.
What are your favourite tools or workflow?
My favourite tool is Milanote, which I use for note-taking, organisation, and brainstorming. It's essentially my operating system. I also use Cursor to assist with coding. While I don't vibe code, I find AI tools very useful.
What's one growth experience that surprised you?
For Heyo, I never planned to create a live chat. After a year of building various projects that failed, I launched a live stream for fun and ended up creating a live chat app. I made a simple waitlist landing page and went on vacation. When I returned, I found people had signed up for the waitlist. I started interviewing users and discovered many had issues with existing tools, which were often bloated. Although it's a small market, there was genuine interest. I decided to launch it, and after spending a week preparing a launch video, it went viral, bringing in a lot of users.
Nominate three makers you'd love us to interview.
This is a tough one. It really depends on what you're looking for. I think Christopher Wogan would be a good choice; I'm meeting him on Friday. Christian Space is another; he has shown resilience and has a growing product generating revenue. Lastly, I would suggest Max Blade; he's a cool guy who experiments a lot.
Something we missed here?
I sold my first startup for $65K, another for $200K, and a third for $25K. I've experienced the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, going from having thousands to starting from scratch. One thing I've learned is that many business owners have no idea what they're doing. When I had my business, I thought I had it all figured out, but starting from zero is incredibly challenging. Good luck to everyone starting out!
