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Iterating Your Way to a Product That Customers Find Valuable with Andy Cook of Tettra

Episode #077

Rather than jump immediately into writing code, Andy Cook (@AndyGCook) and his cofounder Nelson (@nelsonjoyce) began their journey by spending weeks talking to and learning from potential customers. This wasn't their first time around the startup block. But to their surprise, when they finished their product and it was time for people to start using it, nobody wanted to. Learn how they iterated on their idea to turn it into a business that now generates hundreds of thousand of dollars in revenue.

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    Hey @andygcook My friend recommended this podcast to me as I am pretty new to indiehackers and just wanted to say that I'm really grateful for your insights and honest sharing. I can completely relate to your journey and totally echo your experience. Thanks again and wish you all the best!

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      Glad you found it helpful!

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    My Main Takeaways:

    • Andy and his co-founder have been doing this for over a year, and went from $23k MRR a year ago, to over $40k MRR now (at the time of this interview) however, they are not profitable yet.

    • Andy met his co-founder Nelson in 7th Grade, they bonded over skateboarding. Years later, Andy’s first startup “Rentabilities” got acquired by HubSpot, while his friend Nelson was working at HubSpot. HubSpot then assigned Nelson and Andy to work together on an internal startup for 2 years.

    • Andy said he was entrepreneurial even as a kid, he sold lemonade, and did a paper route. Andy’s father owned a small business, so entrepreneurship was the norm to Andy.

    • Andy started his first company “Rentabilities” with his older brother, Alex. Alex learned web-design in high-school, and taught it to Andy.

    • Solve the problems you see around you: In college Andy and his brother Alex saw that one of their father’s vendors who handled rentals, could use an automated solution to manage the rentals rather than wasting so much time doing it manually. Alex and Andy built the solution, and sold it to the vendor, and the vendor did $25k in rentals through the software in the first year. From this success, they realised that other people could benefit from it, so they decided to sell it to other rental stores. They managed to get about 20 rental stores to buy it in the first couple of years.

    • Andy used to blog back in the day, he wrote a blog post on his lessons from a conference where a popular investor (Darmash Shah) did a talk, he shared it on twitter and it went viral, and the investor ended up getting in touch with Andy from that point. This Angel investor invested in Rentabilities when Andy was looking to raise money a few months later.

    • With two-sided marketplaces, you’re building two businesses at the same time.

    • Rentabilities ended up failing over time, so they decided to exit to get some of their investors money back.

    • Starting a business of substance is not a sprint. It takes about 5-7 years. Focus on health, relationships, and other important things in life, not just your startup.

    • Not being married, not having kids, not having a mortgage etc, gives you a lot of freedom to take risks like quitting your job with no salary.

    • Andy and his friend Nelson decided to leave their jobs at HubSpot together to start their own company, Tetra, because they really believed in it.

    • Don’t waste time building things that won’t really solve the customer’s problems. Talk to customers.

    • Pivot based on customer’s feedback until you hit product market fit.

    • Get the customer to pay for your solution BEFORE you’ve even made it.

    • A founder’s number one skill is managing their own psychology.

    • Have money saved for emergencies.

    • Product Market Fit is a moving target. It’s a never-ending journey.

    • Recommended Reading (Blog): The Four Fits - Product Market Channel Model Fit, by Brian Balfour

    • Andy loves reading business books.

    • Andy built up his network by joining a startup accelerator, which he highly recommends people do to rapidly expand their network.

    • People will be willing to pay you even if you increase prices, as long as you explain and justify the increased value.

    • Advice for beginners: Pick a problem that you’re really passionate about and stick to it over a long period of time. And when you think of a new problem, try and talk yourself out of it.

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    Hey @csallen, it would be helpful to have a "Show Notes" section for each Podcast episode which enlists references, links, articles you talked about during the interview. Last night I heard this podcast and I wanted to checkout the article which @andygcook mentioned which all the founders should read. Now I gotta scan the whole transcript to get that.

    PS - Loved the episode! There was so much to learn get inspired from. Thanks Andy and Courtland for this.

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      Hey there - apologies I missed this. The article I mentioned was Brian Balfour's Building a Growth Framework Towards a $100 Million Product: https://brianbalfour.com/essays/hubspot-growth-framework-100m

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        Thanks for the reply. I gotta listen to the episode again. :P

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    I honestly think this is the best episode I've heard yet (and that's saying a lot). It could be just that it's what I needed to hear right now but there's so much practical advice in here that it's really worth a listen.

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      Wow - I'm humbled. Thanks so much for the kind words 🙌

      Hope everything's going well since this was published (and sorry for the delayed reply. I miss this thread 🤷‍♂️)

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    @andygcook, you referenced a blog post in the podcast. Would you mind sharing the URL for that post? Thank you!

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      Apologies for the super delayed reply here. The article I mentioned was Brian Balfour's Building a Growth Framework Towards a $100 Million Product: https://brianbalfour.com/essays/hubspot-growth-framework-100m

      Hope it helps. Definitely worth watching the video on that page.

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    I really enjoyed the podcast. @andygcook you mentioned that you support your employees when they want to find a mentor/coach. Where do you find those?

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      To be honest, we haven't developed a good system for this yet. But in general, we tap into our networks, similar to way most companies do recruiting or raise money from investors.

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    This comment was deleted 5 years ago.