Enterprise Business with YC Founder | Decode Academy UC Berkeley Course Fall 2020

Decode2020-10-24

387 views|3 years ago

💫 Short Summary

The video segment discusses the rise of B2B business models, focusing on Software as a Service (SaaS) and Salesforce's growth. It emphasizes Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) in optimizing marketing efforts. Founder stories like UpKeep's Ryan highlight the journey of building a B2B SaaS company. Lessons on coding, startup challenges, and perseverance are shared, along with insights on hiring and scaling a company. The importance of prioritizing customer needs, resilience, and innovation in entrepreneurship is underscored, with advice on building a successful startup and navigating the Y Combinator experience.

✨ Highlights

📊 Transcript

✦

Importance of B2B Business Models:

01:36

B2B business models are gaining popularity due to increased business spending.

B2B involves complex processes and transactions, setting it apart from B2C models.

The segment highlights Software as a Service (SaaS) within the B2B sector and upcoming case studies.

Emphasis is placed on the potential for B2B businesses and the market opportunities they provide, showcasing profitability and transaction complexities.

✦

Sales process for enterprise startups is more organized and sales-oriented compared to consumer startups.

03:27

Enterprise startups have longer gestation periods due to testing and multiple decision-makers.

Security requirements for enterprise startups are higher to build trust with customers.

The buying cycle for enterprise startups is slower and relies on building long-term relationships.

Revenue generation for B2B is slower but more sustainable, emphasizing the importance of trust for long-term success.

✦

Salesforce's growth was attributed to transitioning to a software-as-a-service model.

06:45

Traditional software models were expensive and not user-friendly for small and medium-sized businesses.

Salesforce's subscription-based software eliminated the need for additional hardware.

The shift in business model provided flexibility and scalability for customers.

Revenue metrics for B2B companies improved as a result of the transition.

✦

Importance of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) in understanding customer spending and retention.

09:07

CLV calculation includes average spend per customer, length of customer relationship, and purchase frequency.

CLV assists in determining the value of each customer and customizing marketing strategies.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is connected to CLV, representing expenses in acquiring new customers.

Analysis of CLV and CAC helps optimize marketing efforts and enhance customer retention.

✦

Ryan's journey of starting UpKeep, a B2B SaaS company, after being a chemical engineer.

11:58

He noticed inefficiencies at a manufacturing plant, used competitor software, and eventually created UpKeep.

Despite lacking coding skills initially, Ryan taught himself and raised $50 million in venture capital.

The talk aims to inspire others to pursue their entrepreneurial journeys.

✦

The speaker shares their experience with Y Combinator, raising series B funding, and growing UpKeep to 3,000 paying customers and 100 employees in four years.

14:28

The discussion focuses on startup failure rates, with an emphasis on product-market fit as a key factor.

Building a B2B SaaS company is highlighted for its clarity around product-market fit.

Emphasizes the importance of solving a business need and getting customers to pay.

✦

Low success rate of startups achieving unicorn status.

17:45

Speaker shares personal journey from chemical engineer to startup founder.

Emphasis on outdated technology in manufacturing plant leading to startup creation.

Goal is to inspire and provide insight into building and growing a startup.

✦

Disappointment in Lack of Innovation in Manufacturing Plant

20:35

Speaker contrasts initial excitement about technology and AI with outdated systems and manual processes at work.

Lack of alerts and reliance on spreadsheets and paper are highlighted as major issues.

Disconnect between technological advancements in headlines and reality of workplace is discussed.

Gap between expectations and actual implementation is emphasized.

✦

Transition from Engineer to Founder of UpKeep

22:37

Started as a process engineer and taught himself coding in 2014.

Created UpKeep, maintenance software for non-tech users in manufacturing plants, optimized for mobile devices.

Joined Y Combinator, grew team by 300%, and secured substantial seed funding.

Expanded team to 100 people, acquired 3000 customers, and processed millions of work orders on the platform.

✦

Success of UpKeep in solving business problems.

25:27

Importance of addressing basic industry issues over complex technological solutions.

Underserved market of businesses needing problem-solving software and growth opportunities.

UpKeep's journey includes team expansion and user adoption.

Potential of building a huge company by focusing on straightforward business challenges.

✦

Entrepreneurial Journey of Speaker

29:20

The speaker started from working in a manufacturing plant and faced challenges to establish his own company.

Emphasized the importance of learning from mistakes and seizing opportunities in the technology sector.

Started the business in his mom's garage to save money and expressed gratitude for the chance to work on his product without paying rent.

The narrative serves as a valuable lesson for aspiring entrepreneurs on perseverance and seizing opportunities.

✦

Learning to Code Through Hackathons

30:23

The speaker learned to code by participating in hackathons despite having no initial coding knowledge.

Hackathons required teams to create products within 48 hours, with many participants having ideas but lacking coding skills.

Through attending multiple hackathons and persevering through failures, the speaker was able to improve coding abilities.

The experience taught the importance of claiming to know how to code even when lacking expertise, as it can motivate learning and improvement.

✦

The speaker shares their journey from learning how to code on the job to founding a successful startup called UpKeep.

34:51

Despite facing challenges and imperfections, the speaker highlights the importance of starting a company without all the necessary resources.

The speaker advises focusing on launching the product first and continuously improving it over time.

Universal Studios Orlando was the first paying customer of UpKeep, demonstrating the success of the speaker's startup journey.

✦

Speaker shares experience of developing iOS app while working full-time job.

36:33

Made daily improvements to app until user offered to pay for it.

Invited to Universal Studios Orlando by team using his app.

Emphasizes starting a company doesn't require quitting job or dropping out of school.

Highlights importance of hard work and dedication in building a startup while balancing other responsibilities.

✦

Importance of Networking and Community in Hiring for Startups.

39:25

The speaker found his first employee on Reddit, emphasizing the value of looking for team members in unexpected places.

Potential team members can be found on online platforms like Reddit, highlighting the importance of exploring various avenues for hiring.

College students are advised to join local entrepreneurship groups and clubs to find potential co-founders for their startups.

Networking and community play a crucial role in the entrepreneurial process, making the journey easier and more successful.

✦

Success story of transitioning from full-time job to building a successful business.

42:07

The speaker received advice from a friend to quit his job and focus on UpKeep full-time, leading to significant progress over two years of hard work.

Building trust and reputation in the B2B industry takes time, but dedication in developing the product in his mom's garage paid off.

The success of UpKeep was a result of the speaker's hard work and commitment to the business.

✦

The speaker shares his entrepreneurial journey and the role luck played in his success.

43:30

He credits his entry into Y Combinator to a series of fortunate events.

The importance of building a product, talking to users, and launching quickly is emphasized.

Persistence, hard work, and following Y Combinator's advice are key factors in his luck.

Consistent effort over time is highlighted as essential for growth in entrepreneurship.

✦

Speaker's journey from living in mom's garage to building a company.

47:29

Sacrifices made to save money, including marrying his wife, moving to L.A to save on rent, and living with her family in the Bay Area.

Finally getting their own office after raising funds.

Starting small with minimal furniture and emphasizing the reality of early-stage company building.

Contrasting the scrappy and thrifty approach with the glamorous image often portrayed in the media.

✦

Challenges of running a startup and importance of saving money and securing investments.

48:56

Experience at Y Combinator, pitching to investors for funding.

Initial struggles of building the company, moving offices, and receiving support from early investors.

Typical ups and downs of building a startup, emphasizing perseverance and strategic decision-making.

Reflects the entrepreneurial journey and showcases the importance of perseverance and strategic decision-making.

✦

Team overcomes flight cancellation to secure Series A funding.

54:03

Joe, in his fourth month on the job, pitched in person and secured the investment.

Unpredictability of life and importance of adapting to challenges emphasized.

Team's resilience and ability to make the best of the situation led to positive outcome.

Value of perseverance in the face of obstacles highlighted.

✦

Key to Success in Entrepreneurship.

54:20

Overcoming challenges and persevering is crucial for success in building a startup.

Understanding customer needs, targeting a market with a significant problem, and offering a simple solution are essential.

Learning coding and sales skills, even for engineers, is important for tech companies.

✦

Key highlights for building a successful B2B SaaS company.

57:45

Success requires strong product development, sales, marketing, and design skills.

Focus on continuous iteration and improvement of products rather than a one-time launch.

Challenges are inevitable in the entrepreneurial journey, persistence is crucial.

Belief in oneself and pushing beyond perceived limits is essential, as well as upholding core values like transparency and trust.

✦

Importance of Choosing Customers Over Revenue.

59:56

Prioritizing customer needs, continuous improvement, and perseverance through challenges is crucial in building a successful company.

Emphasizing progress over perfection and grit over prestige leads to long-term growth and success.

Decisions should be based on core values and long-term growth rather than short-term gains.

Building a successful startup requires resilience, determination, and the ability to capitalize on opportunities for growth.

✦

Importance of gaining exposure through internships and real-world experiences.

01:02:56

Value of thinking outside the box and going against the grain in building a startup.

Experience of using Reddit for networking due to cost-effectiveness and ease of access.

Emphasis on seeking diverse experiences and embracing unconventional approaches for success in entrepreneurship.

✦

Challenges faced in hiring and retaining employees as a company grows.

01:06:21

Three out of five engineers left after a significant seed round, causing concerns about investor perception and product knowledge loss.

The team regrouped by reaching out to connections for help in staffing.

The experience emphasizes the difficulties of scaling a company.

Adaptability and resourcefulness are crucial in overcoming obstacles in business growth.

✦

Experience of starting a startup in India.

01:08:11

Initial challenges faced included taking over product development from engineers who started their own company.

Importance of customer interaction and receiving feedback early in the iterative process of launching a product.

Emphasis on feedback cycles and adapting based on customer input to drive product growth and success.

✦

Comparison of Inbound and Outbound Marketing Strategies.

01:11:33

Emphasis on building the company through inbound marketing by offering freemium products that convert to paid.

Highlighting the effectiveness of inbound marketing in generating demand without traditional sales tactics.

Acknowledgment of outbound marketing options such as cold calling and email campaigns.

Decision on strategy focus based on factors like average contract value and target customer base.

✦

Transition to Remote Work in Tech Companies During Pandemic.

01:14:36

Speaker's company played a critical role in helping manufacturing and facilities management companies go digital with remote workforces.

Despite initial hiring freezes, the company resumed hiring and found success.

Speaker believes now is an opportune time to build a tech company due to increased demand for technology, especially in the B2B SaaS sector.

Emphasis on not focusing on competitors and staying focused on their product and space.

✦

Startup success is not about outshining competitors in resources but about the ability to learn, move fast, iterate, and improve.

01:16:59

The key to startup growth lies in being better than the previous day and maintaining an iterative mindset.

Y Combinator (YC) experience emphasizes working towards a singular goal, connecting with a group of smart entrepreneurs, and learning from peers at a similar stage.

YC provides a valuable funding and investor path.

Despite not being profound, YC is worth applying to for the opportunities and growth it offers.

✦

Overview of Y Combinator Application Process

01:19:24

Emphasizes the importance of being strategic about product and target audience when applying to Y Combinator.

Notes that YC is not the only route to success, with various resources accessible outside the program.

Stresses the significance of self-motivation and continuous growth, regardless of acceptance into Y Combinator.

Encourages reaching out for assistance or application review, ending with a reminder about homework and gratitude towards a guest speaker.

00:03can everyone see my screen

00:06yep looks good yeah well

00:09welcome to week six and today i'll

00:12agenda again logistics speaker

00:14presentation followed by q

00:16a and uh for logistics

00:20please turn on your camera if possible

00:22like our speakers would love to

00:24not speak to a wall so like

00:27yeah and then for assignments this week

00:30again

00:31enterprise business assignment and

00:32project assignment six will

00:34be due this sunday and i'll give you the

00:37quiz quote later

00:39and if you have any questions like email

00:41us at

00:42me gmail.com yeah and also

00:46very exciting weekend we have our

00:50conference and we're offering a free

00:52promo code for

00:53all of you as our decode students so

00:56the free promo code is here go bears all

00:59caps and no space

01:00and these are some of our future

01:02speakers and you can see familiar faces

01:04michael siebel will be there again so

01:06uh come to our conference and uh you can

01:09sign up just

01:10through going into our facebook group

01:12chat and

01:13the link should be there okay so today

01:17we'll

01:18be talking about enterprise startups and

01:21um why we're talking about this is

01:22because

01:24we usually think that startups looks

01:26like instagrams or like

01:28startups can be seen and used by us

01:30consumers on a daily basis

01:32but actually not all startups look like

01:33that and

01:36one example is the b2b business model so

01:39b2b is like the exchange of products of

01:41information

01:42so we can also see it as e-commerce and

01:46rather than between businesses and

01:47consumers we usually have businesses

01:51working with businesses so when we talk

01:53about

01:54b2b model there's a very interesting

01:57segment called sas so software as

02:00um software as a service and i'll be

02:03talking more about it later and giving

02:05some case studies

02:08yeah so the reason why we are

02:12focusing on b2b for this module is

02:13because it's

02:15definitely on the rising trend so as you

02:17can see on the chart here

02:18um this is business spending and this is

02:21consumer spending

02:22so just a lot of untapped potential

02:25because businesses tend to spend a lot

02:27more than consumers

02:28and we can also see that there's a

02:31bigger market for b2b businesses

02:35so many people wonder like what makes

02:37b2b different from b2c and how exactly

02:40does the b2b model make so much money

02:43so the reason why is because b2b

02:46actually has a lot of processes it's not

02:49just like b2c

02:50where you fulfill a customer order and

02:53you deliver to the customer

02:55the supply chain as you can see here is

02:58very complex

02:59and b2b transactions include things like

03:01sales

03:02design build deploy fulfill and every

03:06single step of this process like you can

03:08make a lot of modifications

03:10and it is not it is not like the b2c

03:13transaction where it's literally just

03:16the sale of the finished product to the

03:18end consumer

03:19so there's a lot of different variations

03:21that you can make over here

03:24and going more in depth about what

03:26exactly makes them different

03:28so in consumer startups customers are

03:30acquired through marketing strategies so

03:32a lot of like heavy advertisement but

03:35for enterprise startup

03:37they're usually selling a paid product

03:39so they acquired a business through

03:41a very sales oriented team so it's

03:43definitely a lot more organized and a

03:45lot

03:46more systematic as compared to

03:49just through marketing pure marketing

03:51for b2c

03:52and second of all the sales cycle the

03:54consumer startups

03:56usually focus on sales process being

03:59like a one to one in nature

04:01kind of transaction but for enterprise

04:03startups they have a lot of decision

04:05makers and a lot of stakeholders

04:07so products and services of enterprise

04:10startups usually have like

04:11a longer gestation period because of how

04:14they can test

04:15each of their face and

04:18they have a lot of rounds to go through

04:21i guess like

04:22they have to test a lot of different

04:23things to make sure everything is on the

04:24right track

04:26and then third of all for security the

04:28level and degree of security

04:30uh required by a b2b or an enterprise

04:33startup is a lot higher than b2c because

04:36just think about it if i'm a company and

04:38i want to find

04:40another business to help me solve one of

04:42my problems

04:43i want to feel assured that like the

04:46data that i'm sharing with them are kept

04:48safe and also

04:51in order for a business to be more

04:53sustainable they have to build trust

04:55which i'll talk about it

04:56later and followed by security is growth

05:00so enterprise buying cycle is actually

05:03very slow as compared to

05:05b2c so sales happen a lot through like

05:08building

05:09long-term relationship with the business

05:11and also

05:12usually occur on a one-to-one manner as

05:15compared to

05:16b2c where it's very diverse

05:19so this the revenue model of b2b

05:22is a much slower process because even

05:25though it's more sustainable but growth

05:27takes a longer time and usually for b2b

05:31they also have a longer testing period

05:33in the beginning so it's like one year

05:35to just produce one product and then

05:38last but not least trust is also very

05:40important because

05:42b2b's main goal is to build a business

05:45that's sustainable long-term and

05:48that requires a lot of trust with their

05:50customers if

05:52one reputation like um if one crisis

05:55happens

05:56then their reputation is ruined and that

05:58will be very

06:00complex as compared to like because

06:03building a sustainable relationship is

06:05their key business differentiator

06:08yeah and so now uh we'll go over some

06:11case study and

06:12one that i picked out is like salesforce

06:15because i think

06:16the recent growth that we have seen on

06:18the previous slide is largely driven by

06:21the adoption of software as a service

06:23and that's like the short-term sas and

06:26so sports is very unique in this case

06:28because so sports actually

06:30had a huge transition so it evolved from

06:33the old school software model

06:35uh to a buy subscribe model that they

06:37use

06:38uh currently and as you can see like

06:41here

06:42because of salesforce um transition

06:45their growth actually exploded here and

06:47that you can see like it's huge

06:50growth for them and

06:53the problem that basically salesforce

06:56solved was that

06:58in in the beginning traditional

07:00softwares are not really friendly for

07:03small and medium-sized enterprises

07:05because the price is always set very

07:07high

07:07and it's very costly to manage and

07:10maintain the software's

07:12as like they sell in a package so it's

07:14not just selling the software but it

07:16also sell

07:18hardware and hardwares have to come with

07:20the software in order to run the

07:22software properly

07:23so what they did was in 2004 they

07:26realized that

07:27they can use the staff model and they

07:30begin to

07:31have like little components that they

07:33can be added to

07:34those um companies that need like

07:37software assistance

07:38and it's no longer just um you know

07:41selling as a package

07:42of both software and hardware so that

07:44definitely solved the problem

07:45that they faced in the very beginning

07:49yeah and one question that a lot of

07:51people usually ask is like when is my

07:52business earning money because we all

07:54know for

07:54enterprise startup since you have such a

07:57long testing period and you have to

07:58develop your product it usually takes

08:00like one to two years to

08:02even get started and that's a lot of

08:05initial investment

08:06so here i've compiled like uh

08:09five metrics for b2b companies to see if

08:12you're actually making money

08:14so the first one is monthly recurring

08:16revenue over annual recurring revenue

08:18and this is the measure the metric that

08:21you want to be improving overall

08:22because you want your monthly recurring

08:25revenue to

08:26change every month and hopefully have

08:28improvements

08:29and for that to change you usually based

08:32on three things

08:33so one is your churn churn is actually a

08:36term to describe like

08:37if you're losing customers so it is a

08:40matter that you want to look

08:41um closely at and kind of look at it

08:44from

08:44like monthly or annual basis because it

08:47defines your

08:48average lifetime of your customer and

08:53second of all is um the growth of your

08:55existing customers

08:56if you want to have more customers you

08:59have to attract new customers and to

09:01keep it going

09:02so um one

09:06one factor to measure that is actually

09:07customer lifetime value

09:09if if you are taking ugba10 you're

09:13probably

09:14going to be familiar with this concept

09:15so it takes in like three inputs

09:17the average customer spend on your brand

09:19per unit of time

09:21length of average customer relationship

09:23with your brand and the unique

09:25unit of time so is it like based on

09:27weeks months

09:28years so like for example if you have

09:32two months of subscription that's ten

09:33dollars an average lifetime per

09:35customer is two years then the customer

09:39lifetime value here is

09:40ten dollars times two years times six

09:43time of purchase for example

09:45and that's on otp

09:49and then lastly we have the customer

09:50acquisition cost

09:52it's very linked to ltv actually because

09:56it is basically how much you spend in

09:59terms of

10:00sales people sales team and how much

10:02you're spending on your marketing in

10:04order to acquire them

10:05that many customers so

10:08yeah and with that the quiz quote for

10:13this week is go vote yeah and

10:16now let's welcome ryan chang he is the

10:18founder of upkeep and now speaker for

10:20today

10:25all right is this me summer

10:29all right good evening everyone thank

10:32you to

10:33uh anci reno and henry for turning on

10:37your camera really appreciate it it

10:38makes me feel like i'm not talking to a

10:40wall

10:41so thank you guys really appreciate that

10:43oh we got a few more

10:45thank you to matthew come on can we get

10:48a few more

10:49milo hey these are real people

10:52i love it all right here's what i want

10:56to do i don't know if we've ever done

10:57this before thomas but

10:59i want everyone to uh unmute real quick

11:01on the count of three and just say good

11:03evening to everyone

11:04else you guys ready are you gonna make

11:07me just do this by myself

11:09are we all gonna do it together yeah all

11:11right on three one

11:12two three we're gonna on mute

11:15[Music]

11:21thanks everyone for uh doing that with

11:23me today is uh

11:25hopefully gonna be a little bit more

11:27interactive

11:29um let me figure out how to do

11:32this where's the chat bubble

11:36yeah here we go

11:41all right you guys can all see my screen

11:45i hope so today is five things that i

11:48learned while building

11:48upkeep my name is ryan i'm the ceo and

11:50founder of upkeep

11:52you guys ready let's do it

11:56all right so thomas originally asked me

11:58to talk about like

11:59how to start a b2b sas company um

12:03so sorry thomas and summer i've i've

12:05actually only done this once

12:07so instead of uh you know going through

12:11how to start a

12:12sas b2b company i'm going to tell you my

12:14story instead

12:16so that's kind of the goal of today and

12:17my goal of today is hopefully convince

12:19some of you guys to follow my journey

12:21into starting a b2b sas company

12:24or not you guys can also do the opposite

12:26what i wanted to say

12:27here is you know no journey is ever the

12:29same but i wanted to share with you guys

12:32my journey and hopefully we can all

12:35learn something from it

12:36i think i was told by thomas we've got

12:38about 60 minutes and i've got 68 slides

12:42so we're going to try to power through

12:44this and hopefully you guys don't fall

12:45asleep

12:46i know it's late so thank you for taking

12:48the time

12:50a little bit about me my background i

12:52went to cal 2 so go bears

12:54uh i was a chemie i wasn't haas i wasn't

12:56eags i was a chemical engineer

12:59uh i worked at a manufacturing plant it

13:01was called tricep right after

13:03college it was down in sunny santa

13:05barbara it was beautiful

13:06i loved it it was a company spun out of

13:09dupont chemicals

13:10and um i started upkeep after seeing a

13:13bunch of the inefficiencies

13:14working as a process engineer at a

13:16manufacturing plant

13:17and we actually used our competitor

13:19software and i was actually part of this

13:21team

13:22responsible for choosing and

13:23implementing technology

13:25there so this is a little bit about my

13:27background i graduated from cal

13:29seven years ago in 2013 so it's been

13:32a fun journey i think all of us are

13:34still

13:35here at cal and um you know hopefully

13:38you guys go off and do even bigger and

13:40better things than me

13:41seven years later few interesting facts

13:44about myself i'm a solo founder

13:46i had no clue how to code i actually

13:48taught myself how to code

13:49and i created the first versions of

13:51upkeep about four years ago

13:53over the past four years basically

13:55raised about 50 million dollars in

13:57venture from bain capital battery

13:59ventures emergence

14:00y combinator i think michael sibo

14:02actually spoke earlier

14:04this uh this class so um got a chance to

14:08uh hang out with y combinator and that

14:09whole team and crew

14:11and then more recently uh raised r

14:13series b

14:14from a group called insight partners

14:17upkeep we have about three thousand

14:19paying customers

14:20companies the team is about 100 people

14:23and it's grown from a team of one person

14:26to a hundred over the last four years

14:28and we're still growing so

14:31that's a little bit about me my

14:33background hopefully

14:34everyone is still here and not asleep

14:37just yet so i said i'm gonna make this

14:40interactive

14:42um you guys are part of this

14:44entrepreneurship

14:45class i want everyone to type into the

14:48chat box what percentage of

14:49startups do you think fail

14:5299 oh wow there's a lot of 99 oh okay

14:55wow everyone's saying 99

14:58wow you guys have low faith in in a

15:0299.01 there we go i saw a 92

15:05did i see a 92 percent i saw 95

15:09all right 92 of startups fail

15:12um what's the definition of fail i have

15:15no idea what's the citation i have no

15:17idea but it sounded about

15:18right um what's the number one cause of

15:22failure i want everyone to type into the

15:25chat box what do you guys think is the

15:26number one

15:27cause of startup failure

15:32team run ad money funding team time

15:36what else bad idea yeah lock

15:40oh there we go thank you i was gonna

15:42just

15:43uh wait until um everyone

15:47until someone had the answer it looks

15:50like we did have a winning answer

15:51product market fit

15:53again um you know where where is this

15:56cited from

15:57not sure uh but it sounded about right

16:00and it feels right to me

16:01uh so again we're basically here talking

16:05about building b2b sas companies um what

16:08are the largest pros and i think some

16:09are actually hit on this too one of the

16:11largest pros towards building a b2b sas

16:13company is clarity around product market

16:17fit

16:18so we just talked about the number one

16:20cause of startup failure being product

16:22market fit

16:23and you know one of the biggest pros

16:26around building a b2b company

16:28is this clarity around product market

16:30fit so you'd think

16:31that you know all you need to do right

16:34is build a product that solves a

16:36business need

16:37get them to pay for it and you should be

16:41done right

16:42this should be super easy because we

16:44just uh

16:45screwed it against that uh number one

16:47root cause of

16:49startup failure but is it really that

16:52easy i don't know

16:53maybe not uh

16:57let's try this one again

17:00so what percentage of startups become

17:04unicorns after raising their first round

17:06of funding

17:08so everyone i want you guys to type into

17:11the chat box what do you guys think

17:13one percent one ten percent less than

17:15one percent

17:16so this is basically of startups that

17:19have raised either a seed round or

17:21series a

17:22what percentage of them become unicorns

17:26effectively zero percent oh man nancy we

17:29gotta be more optimistic than that

17:34but close to it yeah close to it we're

17:37in the right ballpark here

17:38again um you know actually this is

17:41probably a more uh

17:43more reputable source cb insight says

17:451.28

17:47of startups that raise their first round

17:49of funding

17:51go on to become a unicorn company so

17:54that's pretty low uh like i said again

17:58the whole goal here is not to dissuade

18:01everyone from starting a b

18:02to b sas company um the goal here is

18:05hopefully take away

18:06some learnings into my journey of

18:08building

18:09upkeep so hopefully that's what we'll do

18:12so kind of talked about how difficult it

18:15is to start a startup what i want to do

18:17is talk

18:17to you guys and showcase walk you guys

18:20through my um

18:21my easy story so i mentioned

18:24already i graduated from cal in 2013 as

18:27a chemical engineer

18:28this was my graduation day and i know

18:31that for all of you guys

18:32your guys's uh commencement speech and

18:36graduation day last year if you guys had

18:39gone to it looked very very different

18:40than this one but that's steve wozniak

18:43that's me

18:43getting to shake steve wozniak's hand so

18:46i graduated from calchemi 2013. my first

18:50job out of cal was working in a

18:52manufacturing plant

18:54um i was a process engineer there every

18:57single

18:57day i was thinking about how do we speed

18:59up our manufacturing line

19:01so these are reverse reverse osmosis

19:03membranes this is a

19:05thin thin film composite so basically

19:07it's a sheet of paper that goes through

19:09a series of chemical reactions

19:11you uh wrap it up into this cylinder

19:14stuff some

19:14uh spacing in between it you wrap it up

19:17into this

19:18again cylinder put it in and you

19:21basically pump

19:21dirty water uh into this cylinder and

19:25you suck out clean water that can

19:26essentially be used

19:28for uh drinking water so that's

19:30basically my

19:31job every single day um but what i

19:34realized when i worked at this

19:35manufacturing

19:36plant was the technology that we're

19:38using was horrendous

19:41what happened is a boiler would go down

19:43in one of our plants one of our

19:45facilities someone called facility

19:46manager

19:47who writes it down on a piece of paper

19:49pencil calls a technician

19:51writes it down on a piece of paper goes

19:52out to the boiler opens it up does the

19:54repair writes everything down on a piece

19:56of paper and then goes back to the

19:58office

20:00and then this was the technology that we

20:02used so when we think about b2b sas when

20:04we think about b2b

20:06companies this is what we're up against

20:09oftentimes what we think about at least

20:11for me i'll speak for myself when i was

20:14in college when i was your guys shoes um

20:17you know

20:17roughly 10 years ago i was thinking oh

20:20man

20:21technology is great you know the

20:23technology that i use the facebooks the

20:25um what's been a big instagram fan or

20:28user at the time but

20:30you know technology at the time was was

20:32great or so i

20:34thought but then i stepped foot into

20:35working at a manufacturing plant

20:38and this is the software that we were

20:39using

20:41and i said hey i thought berkeley is at

20:43the heart of innovation this is like

20:46you know silicon valley but you know not

20:48fully silicon valley because i didn't

20:50get into stanford

20:51uh we're close enough right um

20:54and i was basically saying hey i had

20:56gone to cal berkeley

20:58working in this manufacturing plant

21:00where the hell is all the technology

21:02that

21:03you know we were promised you know the

21:06simple idea the simple fact of like

21:08having a mobile app uh

21:12was non-existent in our manufacturing

21:14plant

21:15we didn't get alerts before equipment

21:17went down and everything was still filed

21:19away and filing cabinets

21:21um on tons of spreadsheets and paper

21:27and then i kind of remember you know

21:28again this is me being the like

21:31you know hey uh aai machine learning

21:34this is going to take over the factory

21:35floor

21:36i was really excited about all this

21:38technology that i was reading in the

21:40headlines

21:41you know i'm sure all of us have kind of

21:43read it you know 30 million

21:46u.s workers are going to lose their jobs

21:48because

21:49because of ai and you know how bad is it

21:51going to be

21:52it's going to replace american workers

21:54uh robots have already taken

21:56all of our jobs but then i stepped foot

22:00into this manufacturing plant and i was

22:02basically going

22:04well shoot uh i'm seeing something

22:08in working in a manufacturing plant but

22:12i'm reading headlines

22:13of something just wildly different

22:17and so again my my goal today is just

22:19share my journey of upkeep

22:21and walk you through like the the

22:23timeline of upkeep

22:25so i i stayed working as a process

22:28engineer at this manufacturing plant for

22:30about a year

22:32um i wound up leaving my job as a chemie

22:35i taught myself how to code that was

22:37june of 2014

22:39and that's kind of the timeline of

22:40upkeep and what i said was i'm gonna

22:43rebuild

22:43uh traditional maintenance software it

22:46wasn't the sexy

22:47you know instagrams chat snapchats and

22:50facebooks of the world

22:52um i basically said i'm gonna take the

22:55product that we already use

22:57i'm gonna do two things i'm gonna

22:59mobilize it put it on a mobile device

23:01and i'm gonna modernize it i'm gonna

23:02make it really stupid to

23:04to you stupid easy to use because

23:07you know the people that are currently

23:09using our products and software

23:12in this manufacturing plant they're

23:13probably the least tech savvy users

23:15of the world so i said i want to give

23:18them something different

23:20then over the last you know five six

23:22years done

23:23quite a bit uh my journey was

23:26you know wind up leaving my job taught

23:28myself how to code

23:29got a job as an ios developer i'll get

23:31into that a little bit later

23:33um i created the first product

23:36the first versions of upkeep in october

23:39of 2015.

23:41uh i wound up releasing the first

23:43versions of upkeep for android and web

23:45in april of 2016. i got the chance i got

23:48stupid lucky you guys all talked to

23:50michael siebel already i got stupid

23:52lucky

23:53um applied to y combinator in january of

23:562017

23:58got to go there i grew the team by 300

24:00percent

24:02you know group from one person to three

24:04people this

24:05was pretty massive growth um after yc

24:08again just got stupid lucky met some

24:11amazing folks along the way raised a

24:14three million dollar seed round in april

24:16um yeah we've just been on this awesome

24:19path towards growth that

24:20growth that uh summer was showcasing to

24:23everyone

24:24at um salesforce you know that that is

24:27what can really happen

24:29at a b2b company and um you know i would

24:32say

24:32in a large part you know that happened

24:34to us and we're still on that journey

24:36though

24:37february of 2018 we raised another 10

24:39million series a and then more recently

24:42in december of last year we raised our

24:46series b raised another 36 million

24:48dollars

24:49uh approaching about 100 people on the

24:51team 3000 customers and

24:53uh tens of millions of work orders

24:56created on the upkeep platform

24:58so it's been a pretty fun wild ride and

25:01um

25:02you know when i think back at what the

25:03hell upkeep is i would say

25:05there's one thing that we did it was

25:07basically

25:08very very simple we basically said we're

25:11going to take maintenance software

25:13one of the most unsexy things you could

25:14probably think of we're going to put on

25:16a mobile device we're going to modernize

25:18it

25:18and really we're just going to make it

25:20super collaborative

25:22and so as i think about the five things

25:25that i learned that i hope you guys take

25:27away

25:27from today's uh lesson

25:30is essentially this learning number one

25:33for me at least

25:34is that products or products and

25:37problems

25:38don't have to be incredibly complex

25:42they can actually be quite simple and i

25:45would say that's what upkeep was

25:47it wasn't a crazy complex

25:50ai machine learning big data product

25:53it was saying hey we're going to solve a

25:55problem that we see

25:56within a business we're going to do two

25:59things we're going to mobilize it we're

26:00going to stick it on a mobile device

26:02we're going to make it stupid easy to

26:03use

26:05and these are some of the problems that

26:07you find

26:08working in industry they're not like

26:11crazy complex they're actually

26:12quite simple but what our investors have

26:16said

26:16is that this is a drastically

26:18underserved market

26:20you know a lot of people that are super

26:22focused on tech

26:23go straight towards thinking about the

26:25snapchats the instagrams of the world

26:29but they forget that there's a massive

26:31market solving problems for businesses

26:34it's kind of why we're here today and

26:37what that does is create a ton of

26:39opportunity

26:40a ton of white space opportunity that in

26:43many ways

26:44is much easier to tackle than trying to

26:47build the next social media startup for

26:50the next photo sharing

26:52application instead you can actually

26:55solve

26:56uh relatively simple business problems

27:00and build a massive company

27:04again we're kind of still on our journey

27:06here uh

27:08we've uh we've grown a bunch the team is

27:10100 people

27:12uh and over the past four years we've

27:14had about 400 000 maintenance

27:16professionals

27:17in a trust upkeep to to basically do

27:20their work

27:20obviously we're still early on in our

27:22journey

27:24but what i also want to talk about is

27:27what's our origin story

27:29uh we talked a lot about what upkeep is

27:32the pain point that we solve

27:34but i know that this is kind of like an

27:36entrepreneur entrepreneurship

27:38class you know i kind of walked you

27:40through four years

27:41five years maybe even six years of my

27:44life grinding it out every single day

27:46and a quick like 15 minutes but our

27:49origin story is

27:50is much much longer than that so what i

27:53wanted to do next

27:54is kind of walk you through uh upkeep's

27:57origin story because if you guys decide

27:59to start a startup

28:01my guess is that you'll probably go

28:03through some of the same learnings that

28:04that i did and hopefully

28:06you know my goal for you guys is

28:08hopefully uh avoid a few mistakes that i

28:10made along the way

28:13so i'm going to walk you through my

28:14journey i was a kemi from berkeley

28:16graduated first day of work

28:18uh this was me i look like a total

28:21goober

28:22leaving my my little apartment uh

28:25you know for for those of you of you

28:26guys that don't know working in a

28:28manufacturing plant is actually

28:30pretty messy and i was like oh yeah i'm

28:32going to wear this like

28:33button-down shirt and like nice pants

28:35bring this bag to work

28:37i worked in this manufacturing plant

28:38where they had pretty gnarly chemicals

28:40if it got on you

28:41basically stain your clothes like this

28:43gnarly brown spot

28:45my wife said at the time she was like

28:47ryan i don't believe you that you work

28:49in a

28:50manufacturing plant i i think you're a

28:52painter

28:53um but this was basically me working my

28:55my uh

28:56my job as a chem me um and one once i

29:00saw i walked you guys through my story

29:02once i saw how bad technology was

29:05i said man there's such a big

29:07opportunity here there's such a big

29:09opportunity

29:10to build better software and technology

29:13for the

29:13manufacturing industrial workspace so

29:17i got an opportunity to move back home

29:20to live with my mom in the garage if you

29:23guys are curious

29:24seven years later i'm actually calling

29:26you guys i'm uh

29:28i'm still in mom's garage so it actually

29:31hasn't

29:31it hasn't uh changed too much but i i

29:34moved back home

29:36to live with my mom in the garage

29:39uh and i i basically did that to save

29:43money because i was like i'm gonna start

29:44this company

29:45and i have no clue how i'm gonna pay for

29:48rent

29:49so i wanna moving back down from santa

29:52barbara that's where i was working as a

29:54chemie

29:55uh back down to los angeles where my mom

29:58was

29:58and i i got this amazing opportunity

30:02to work on my company work on my product

30:06and not pay rent

30:10um i i mentioned to you guys that i

30:12learned how to code by myself

30:14um you know i actually i sort of learned

30:18to code by myself but i actually learned

30:21a lot through going to a bunch of

30:23hackathons

30:24you guys gone to a few hackathons before

30:26yes no heard of them

30:29yes thumbs it up thumbs down maybe

30:32i got a few uh i learned how to code

30:35through going to a bunch of hackathons

30:36oh

30:37nice even the people that didn't turn on

30:39their videos gave me a thumbs up i love

30:41it

30:42uh thank you i learned how to code by

30:45going to

30:45hackathons uh for those of you guys that

30:49have never been to one it's

30:50you know 100 people 200 people crammed

30:52into a small room

30:54you give them you give everyone

30:56basically 48 hours

30:58overnight to go create a product and

31:01for those of you guys that have gone

31:04to a hackathon i'm sure you guys know

31:07it's basically like of the 100 people

31:09that go there there's

31:11roughly like 90 people with great ideas

31:14and 10 people that can actually build a

31:16build the product so i said

31:20you know i'm gonna i'm gonna go to these

31:21hackathons i had no clue how to code

31:24but uh i'm gonna say that i know how to

31:26code and it's a great forcing function

31:29to figure it out because you literally

31:30have 48 hours to learn how to code

31:33figure it out

31:34and uh if you don't then you're going to

31:36let down your team so that was kind of a

31:39my learning process and this was one of

31:41the hackathons that i went to and

31:42actually

31:43got to win a little chromebook here

31:46so this is kind of like this is learning

31:49number two i was actually catching up

31:50with thomas right before this and i know

31:52that half of you guys are eeks half are

31:54um half of you guys are potentially haas

31:59but for me i didn't know how to code and

32:01um if you don't know how to code

32:03and you're building a tech company

32:05that's going to be really difficult

32:07so uh learning number two at least for

32:09me was if you don't know how to code say

32:12you do and it's one of the best forcing

32:13functions

32:14for you to figure it out i went to

32:16probably 20 hackathons

32:19where uh the first one was absolutely

32:21horrendous and the product that i built

32:23was terrible

32:24but the second one was a little bit

32:26better the third one was a little bit

32:27better than

32:28that one the fourth one the fifth one

32:29the sixth one this by the 20th

32:32hackathon that i went to i think i was

32:35decently okay

32:39i got a job actually um so

32:42so the the funny story wound up moving

32:45back down to la

32:47after um leaving my job as a cami and i

32:50got a job at

32:51as an ios developer at westside rentals

32:53and i had again

32:54no formal like schooling on how to code

32:58um i got this insanely lucky opportunity

33:01it basically said ryan you still have no

33:03clue how to code even though you think

33:05you do by going to a bunch of these

33:06hackathons

33:08but we're gonna give you a job we're

33:10going to teach you how to code and we're

33:11going to pay you to do it

33:12so i'm for forever grateful to to the

33:15team at west side rentals it wasn't a

33:17sexy job but

33:18insanely grateful to those people that

33:22gave me that opportunity

33:24and i think what i'm trying to showcase

33:25here is that

33:27you know even if you don't think you

33:30have all the tools

33:31resources in your tool belt to be able

33:33to start a company

33:34go figure it out i believe that all of

33:37you guys and

33:39um everyone is so much more capable than

33:41we originally thought

33:44my second job so i worked there for a

33:46little bit a few months

33:48my second job i got a job at dts i was

33:51basically um i was a ios

33:55developer there too got to learn from

33:57some insanely

33:58insanely smart people

34:01and on the nights and weekends when i

34:03was working this full-time job

34:05basically getting paid to learn how to

34:07code on the nights and weekends i was

34:10building the first versions of upkeep

34:13the first versions of upkeep the logo

34:15was green i was the designer

34:17i was the salesperson i was the engineer

34:20i was the product manager

34:22uh and i was pretty bad at all of them

34:26uh i'm sure you can see the logo was

34:29green and

34:30it was a pretty gnarly the first

34:33versions of upkeep shelly is my wife

34:35actually

34:35shelley went to to berkeley as well she

34:37went to cal

34:39um and every single work order that i i

34:42would first create

34:43is wake shelly up but what i'm trying to

34:46showcase here is that

34:48again when we're first starting a

34:50startup i'm sure

34:51i i didn't listen to michael siebel's uh

34:54you know lecture lesson to you guys but

34:56i'm sure the one thing that he said is

34:59you know do things that don't scale if

35:01you're worried about building the best

35:04initial first product uh you know

35:07just let that worry go away that was

35:09definitely the way that we released and

35:11launched our product

35:13upkeep was imperfect in so many

35:15different ways that i wasn't happy with

35:19but uh we did it and over time it just

35:22got a little bit better every single day

35:27um i want to share showcase a uh one of

35:30our first paying customers our very

35:31first customer at

35:32upkeep believe it or not it was

35:34universal studios orlando

35:37i was working a full-time job i think i

35:38mentioned to you guys already i was

35:40working a full-time job i had

35:42built this ios application um

35:45on the nights and weekends i released

35:48this product for free it was

35:49really bad too but it would just like

35:53slowly get better every single day i'd

35:55make these minor improvements on a daily

35:57basis

35:58and um you know we had this support

36:01function called intercom

36:03baked into our application and then one

36:05day

36:06uh someone came in by the name of brad

36:09riddy he came in

36:10and into intercom in our support

36:12function tool

36:13and he said hey ryan uh you know the

36:16product that we're currently using

36:17is is quoting us half a million dollars

36:20for it

36:21we like your free product that you have

36:23on the app store that you built

36:24uh we want to pay you for it and again

36:27this at the time

36:28upkeep was a 100 free product he

36:30basically said ryan we want to pay you

36:32for this product

36:33that's currently free

36:36um and basically he was like all right

36:39we'll pay you 10 bucks a month for 35

36:41users

36:44and that was the point where i was like

36:45 yeah mom i made it

36:48350 bucks a month

36:51and i i think that was one of the the

36:53moments where i look back and i'm like

36:55man

36:56that's so cool we're solving a real

36:58business pain point

37:00that literally universal studios orlando

37:03is getting quoted half a million dollars

37:05for

37:07brad called me up one day and said hey

37:09ryan do you want to come to

37:11universal studios orlando and meet the

37:13team mind you i was working a full-time

37:16job i said brad give me a second let me

37:19check with the finance department

37:22put the phone down yell to shelley hey

37:25shelly you want to go to florida

37:27and go to uh universal studios orlando

37:30with me

37:32yeah sure let's do it hey brad finance

37:35team says it's okay

37:36uh we'll be there on friday literally

37:39what i wound up doing was taking a red

37:41eye on thursday night flying to florida

37:44on friday morning i took a sick day from

37:46work

37:47got a chance to meet um universal

37:49studios orlando is a ton of fun

37:52what i'm trying to showcase here is that

37:56you don't need to quit your job full

37:58your full-time job to start a company

38:00you don't need to drop out of college

38:02you don't need to drop out of cal

38:04uh to start a company what i always say

38:07to people is that starting a startup

38:09is an 80 an hour is an 80 hour a week

38:12job and so with your 40 hour a week job

38:15or even 40 hours per week

38:18in school you can prepare by getting one

38:20more part-time

38:21job of company building so this is my

38:24lesson or learning number three that

38:27i wanted to share with everyone

38:31um just another like funny story here at

38:34upkeep because

38:35and thomas basically said hey ryan share

38:37some you know personal anecdotes i said

38:39okay here's some personal anecdotes

38:42the very first employee that i hired

38:44believe it or not

38:46i found them on reddit

38:49i had built this ios application

38:52i had coded it up all by myself i was

38:55like oh man like you know one of the

38:57most

38:58the the future that people are asking

39:00for the most now

39:01they're asking for an android

39:02application that sounds like that makes

39:04sense right

39:05they're basically asking for an android

39:06application a web application

39:08it's like i don't i don't know how

39:10to code in you know

39:12at the time i was at java now it's

39:14kotlin um i don't know how to code

39:16android applications or even web

39:18applications

39:19um so i wound up putting up a job

39:23posting on reddit

39:25and um this group on kerr and on keep

39:28from code my mobile

39:30wound up say hey ryan we can certainly

39:33help we've got three

39:34we got a javascript developer's parse

39:36experience

39:37great i was like how much on current he

39:40said three thousand dollars and i was

39:41like great you're

39:42hired this is the same team that's with

39:45us

39:46four years later actually so you know

39:49hired my first employee

39:51uh off of reddit learning number four

39:54for me for you to

39:55for you for you guys here what i wanted

39:57to say and showcase here is that your

39:59first co-workers

40:00employees and co-founders can come from

40:03anywhere

40:04and if mine came from reddit i think

40:06that uh you know you guys are

40:08all at cal with incredibly smart people

40:11you guys are in this group organization

40:13club

40:14filled with a bunch of other uh aspiring

40:18entrepreneurs or already entrepreneurs

40:21this is a great place for you to find

40:24your first co-workers employees

40:25co-founders

40:27so as you guys are in college thinking

40:29about what startup you should build and

40:31who you should build it with

40:33don't look too far um you know i was uh

40:37i was i was kenny at berkeley and i had

40:40no clue that there's this whole like

40:42you know decode group that existed

40:46that was filled with other aspiring

40:48entrepreneurs if i did know i think my

40:50life would have been

40:51a little bit easier um and maybe i

40:55wouldn't have had to search

40:56on on reddit to find my first uh

40:59employees and first co-founders but

41:01you know regardless what i want to

41:03always say here is that

41:04the path and the journey is never just

41:06straight it's filled with tons of

41:09tons of ups and downs

41:13all right my journey continued got

41:16accepted to yc

41:17got really lucky uh i remember filling

41:20out this application

41:21so this was literally uh the the

41:24storyline here

41:25was i um i was working a full-time job

41:29as an ios developer for about two years

41:31actually i did that for about two years

41:33and up until about

41:36you know roughly um the end of 2016 so

41:40the start of 2017.

41:42um and then one day i was meeting up for

41:45coffee with one of my friends who's also

41:46an entrepreneur he

41:48runs a company called goguardian down

41:49here in los angeles

41:51and the way that i always look at him i

41:53always said advice

41:54you're about two years ahead of me in

41:56life um his company was about two years

41:58ahead

41:59his wife was a pediatrician and my wife

42:01is a pediatrician both down here in l.a

42:03anyways

42:04um i met up with him for coffee one day

42:07and advice said hey ryan you should quit

42:09your job and work on upkeep full-time

42:12because you've got a real business you

42:13have universal freaking studios orlando

42:16paying you money for a product that they

42:19got quoted half a million dollars for

42:21that's a real business i'd been building

42:24upkeep on the nights and weekends just

42:26for fun for about two years

42:28when people say hey ryan it's been four

42:30years and you've grown a company from

42:31one person to 100 over the past four

42:33years

42:34you kind of forget the two years that i

42:36was working

42:37in my mom's garage all by myself just

42:40slugging away

42:42people always look at upkeep and say oh

42:44it's this rockin ship

42:45towards growth and i think summer was

42:47was also alluding that to

42:49this earlier too but oftentimes b2b

42:52sas companies b2b companies often take

42:54longer to

42:55develop out um you know products and

42:58solutions it's really it's more

42:59difficult to build that trust

43:01and reputation for companies to believe

43:04in you

43:04so that's what two years of my life was

43:08working on building this product nights

43:09and weekends mom's garage i remember one

43:12day

43:12had lunch or had coffee with my friend

43:15and he said ryan you should quit your

43:16job in that same day

43:18force me to look back over the last two

43:20years

43:21of just building this product on the

43:23nights and weekends just for fun

43:25and realize we've come a long way

43:28we've come a really long way over the

43:30past two years and that same day that i

43:32had coffee with

43:33my my high school friend i want to call

43:37my boss and say you know brent

43:40i've got this side project that i've

43:42been working on that i just have to

43:43pursue

43:45um and he was basically his response to

43:47me it was along the lines of

43:49hey ryan i you know

43:52very sad obviously but a lot of

43:56what was the stat again it was 92

43:58percent of startups fail

44:00so something along the lines of 92 of

44:03startups fail

44:04just uh call me just call me when uh

44:08when when you need your job back and i

44:09said uh thank you i appreciate it

44:12i haven't called him back yet so uh i

44:14haven't failed

44:15yet um the reason why i'm

44:19talking about this whole story is i got

44:21stupid lucky

44:22i would say that entrepreneurship

44:25company building is

44:26a ton of luck involved the next

44:29it was like the next month after

44:31quitting my job

44:33i was applying to this thing called y

44:34combinator

44:36and i got really lucky i got in

44:41it was uh it was it was just a series of

44:45i think dumb luck because i think you

44:47guys know there's

44:48thousands of applications and there's

44:51like a

44:51one percent two percent acceptance rate

44:53in the y combinator i don't attribute it

44:55to anything except for

44:56a ton of luck hard work and a little bit

45:00more luck

45:01i think the trick behind yc and what

45:03they care about if you guys are

45:04you know thinking about applying once

45:06you start a company

45:08i think the main thing about yc and i'm

45:10sure michael siebel said this too

45:13is that build a product go talk to users

45:17launch quickly iterate test repeat

45:21and i think that's what that's the

45:23reason why i got in that's one of the

45:24reasons

45:25why i feel like i got lucky to get into

45:27yc i had been building this thing for

45:29two years on the nights

45:31and weekends and i was just constantly

45:33talking to users

45:34getting feedback learning iterating it

45:37was never this like hey

45:39release this product and overnight i had

45:41this

45:42rocket ship insane growth

45:45my story looked a little bit more like

45:48day one

45:48released the product no one downloads it

45:51day two

45:52text my mom hey mom can you download the

45:54product and rate me five stars

45:57day three i asked my brother he was

45:59super reluctant day four it took me day

46:01four

46:02to get my wife to download the

46:03application

46:06but if you do this for 365 days of the

46:10year

46:11one day you have coffee with one of your

46:13friends and he says

46:15or she says hey hey you should turn

46:17around and look at how far you've come

46:19and you realize you come actually very

46:21far away

46:25um you know i'm sure a lot of you guys

46:28are probably thinking

46:29oh you know how do you support yourself

46:31how do you like

46:32um how do you support yourself while

46:35also building a company where

46:37you you might not have a full-time

46:38income uh i was super scrappy i think i

46:41mentioned to you guys at the very start

46:43of this

46:44i'm currently living with my mom in her

46:46garage

46:47uh i married the love of my life from

46:49cal berkeley uh

46:51and she actually the longer story is you

46:53know we actually moved down to l.a she

46:55got into med school

46:56at ucla uh and we were living

46:59in my mom's garage to basically save

47:01money on rent

47:03and then i got into yyc and i'm sure you

47:05guys know why c is

47:06up in the bay area shelley's family is

47:09you know shelley my wife her family is

47:11actually up in the bay area so there's

47:13this

47:13period about four or five months where i

47:16was living with shelley's family up in

47:17the bay area

47:18well shelley was living with my mom down

47:20here in l.a so

47:22you know that's the type of stuff that

47:23we did to save money

47:26um basically enable me to build the

47:28upkeep and

47:29uh basically spare no expense

47:34in the very very early stages of upkeep

47:38finally did hire i guess this is like

47:40our second

47:41employee you know our our first real

47:44employee here in the us

47:46and we got our own very own office after

47:49raising

47:50you know after going through yc and

47:52raising some money

47:53i was super cheap i didn't i got this

47:57office it was super tiny i had no

47:59windows

48:00and then shelley my my uh my wife her

48:02mom came into the office one day and

48:04said ryan this

48:05this place looks super depressing you

48:07should get some furniture so i went to

48:09i actually went to go to savers bought

48:12this like starfish

48:14painting and some zebra chairs for five

48:16bucks

48:18that's what company building is that's

48:20what the early days

48:21are like so when you see these big

48:24rounds of oh yeah we just raised 50

48:26million dollars and

48:27venture and everyone gets free lunch

48:30we've got

48:30ping pong tables in the office this is

48:33what it

48:34really looks like it's like these uh

48:36dungeon offices with

48:38zebra print chairs and starfish

48:40paintings

48:42what real startups are like it's kind of

48:45like

48:46it's it's doing whatever you have to do

48:48to save money

48:50and give you enough of a lifeline to uh

48:54essentially stay afloat continue to

48:56build your product

48:59told you guys stupid lucky this is me on

49:02yc demo dave if you guys are familiar

49:04with it

49:05it's basically you get four three three

49:08months

49:09ish to build your product and at the end

49:11of three months

49:12you have to get up on stage and

49:14basically present to

49:16you know a thousand two thousand

49:18different uh

49:19investors that basically hang money over

49:21your head and say if you present well if

49:23you pitch well

49:24we're gonna invest in your company i'm

49:26not gonna play it

49:28but again just got really really lucky

49:30our first investors were bane capital

49:32ventures

49:33a guy named jameson guy named aj they

49:35were one of the first folks that

49:37that invested in upkeep and really

49:38believed in me and the mission of upkeep

49:41that's what that that's what the

49:43beginnings of upkeep really look like

49:47our second office still too cheap for

49:50windows

49:51moved down to lla uh i said you know i i

49:55love the bay area

49:56i love norcal i love being um you know

49:59close to silicon valley but

50:02you know at the time my wife was still

50:04in med school at ucla so i said i want

50:06to move back down to l.a got the second

50:08office

50:09again it was just two of us at the time

50:11actually still too

50:13cheap for windows um but the

50:16the desks were a little bit nicer and

50:18got rid of the

50:19zebra print chairs that's what company

50:22building was like in the early

50:24early days

50:27you know as we were building the company

50:29and as we continued to see more traction

50:33got this awesome opportunity to go

50:35around the country and pitch

50:37to raise our series a we had just

50:39finished y combinator

50:40maybe three months four months later we

50:43got this amazing opportunity to go

50:45around and

50:46you know go attract top tier investors

50:49to pitcher series a

50:50i'm gonna walk you through this journey

50:52because i think it's i i think it's very

50:54reflective

50:55of of uh what it's like to build a

50:58company and i guess this is not really

51:00uh centered towards building a b2b sas

51:03company

51:04but just building a startup in general

51:07all right so

51:08i think you guys saw the headliner here

51:10so driving around

51:12or we were flying around the country to

51:13go pitch our series they got this

51:15amazing opportunity to pitch this group

51:17called emergence capital

51:19um i was uh you know traveling

51:23a bunch and i timed it super perfectly

51:26where i'd fly to

51:27atlanta georgia take a red eye from

51:30atlanta georgia

51:32go to um go to san francisco the next

51:36day

51:36and be perfectly in the emergence

51:39office at i think it was like 1pm

51:44get on a flight to atlanta

51:47people on the the flight attendant uh on

51:51our on our flight basically says

51:53you know hey there's been a power outage

51:56at the atlanta airport we're diverting

51:59everyone to nashville tennessee

52:01i'm sitting on the plane freaking out

52:03i'm like oh my god this is the most

52:05important meeting of my life

52:08i'm gonna miss it wound up uh

52:12wound up landing in nashville tennessee

52:15um every single flight was canceled out

52:18of

52:19out of atlanta georgia there was no way

52:21for me to get

52:22from either nashville tennessee or

52:24atlanta

52:26to get to um san francisco to do this

52:29pitch

52:30and so this is kind of my um my email to

52:34uh our prospective investors saying i'm

52:37really sorry

52:39uh unfortunately my timing was cutting

52:42it too close

52:43my flight got canceled joe who's our

52:45head of customer success

52:47i was supposed to meet joe our head of

52:48customer success up at the emergence

52:50office

52:51to pitch with him or series a

52:54this was joe's like fourth month on the

52:57job

52:58i said joe i'm super sorry i'm gonna

53:01zoom in

53:02you're gonna attend in person and

53:05represent the entire upkeep

53:06team good luck this is joe's like fourth

53:10month on the job he had never done this

53:11before

53:13we talk about building a startup

53:14building a company going through the ups

53:17and downs

53:18uh it's it's it's

53:22kind of crazy it's a ton of fun

53:25um i'm sure you guys kind of could have

53:27guessed but

53:28obviously we were very successful in

53:31being able to do that

53:32what i want to showcase here is just you

53:35know life hits you with a ton of ups and

53:36downs life hits you with

53:38uh you know your perfectly timed plan

53:44um and there's the big fire at the

53:46airport

53:48uh but ultimately you make the best with

53:52what you have and

53:53we did that and we got very very lucky

53:57that even though i zoomed in i missed

53:59the meeting

54:00joe went there in person to pitch on his

54:03fourth month on the job

54:05we were successful we actually did it we

54:07raised our series a from that

54:08exact group that i actually missed the

54:11meeting of

54:15in the last learning here and this is

54:16kind of like learning number five for me

54:18for you guys

54:20is that this idea of like company

54:23building building

54:24a startup entrepreneurship it's never

54:27straight up into the right it's never a

54:29smooth

54:29smooth line it's going to be filled with

54:32tons of ups and downs

54:34you're going to be filled with

54:35challenges that hit you in so many

54:37different ways

54:38you're going to have fires that come up

54:39literal fires that come up

54:43and what really defines a company from

54:47being able to survive or thrive is the

54:49ability to

54:51go past all these challenges um hunkered

54:54down and

54:55continue building over the past

54:58five years we've this is kind of like a

55:01small

55:01small subset of the team when we could

55:03go in person but this is us

55:05and i absolutely love what i do i tell

55:07my wife i tell my mom

55:09that i'm retired because i absolutely

55:11love what i do every single day and i

55:13don't

55:13work a day of my life

55:17all right so i know that this was

55:19supposed to be

55:20you know how to start a b2b sas company

55:22so i

55:23put together this like genius uh

55:26founder's guide towards starting a b2b

55:28sas company

55:29i know there's a lot of tongue in cheek

55:31here but you know again i think the one

55:34thing that i want to point out is that

55:36there is no singular

55:37journey so here's my founder's guide to

55:39all of you guys if you guys are thinking

55:41about

55:42building and starting a b2b sas company

55:45number one don't fear about theorize

55:47what people want experience it firsthand

55:49go out talk to customers do interviews

55:52go and shadow them how they work what

55:56they're doing what buttons are they

55:57pressing

55:58go through the entire workflow with them

56:02the next thing that you do go look for a

56:06sneaky big massive market that solves a

56:08deep pain point

56:09that has a large total addressable

56:11market terrible competitors

56:14the premise behind this is again it

56:16doesn't have to be this

56:18hyper complex uh problem that you're

56:21trying to solve

56:23tons of technology to be something

56:25really simple actually that just has

56:27a really big addressable market that has

56:30a deep pain point that customers feel

56:32and that your users feel

56:34build a solution do whatever it takes to

56:37get there

56:38learn to code if you're building a tech

56:39company you don't know how

56:42do sales even if you're an engineer i

56:43know we've got some x folks here

56:46say like okay great my my uh my goal

56:49here

56:49is you know build the best product and

56:51they will come

56:52i'm sure you've also heard that that's

56:54not always true someone that's never

56:56true actually

56:58you got to be great at building a

57:00product you also have to be great at

57:02selling and marketing a product

57:04and learn how to design even if you

57:06think you're terrible at it

57:07you shouldn't be super super crazy proud

57:11of the first product that you launched

57:13i think this i'm gonna pull like a yc

57:15quote here probably somewhere

57:17someone said this at some point uh

57:21but but again like you shouldn't be uh

57:24you should be embarrassed by the first

57:25product that you release

57:26but it's not about that big uh one-time

57:30launch it's about all the iterative

57:32steps that you take after that

57:34so that's uh you know

57:38step number four test iterate rinse and

57:40repeat

57:42if you do that that's my founder's guide

57:44towards building a

57:45successful b2b sas company and you

57:48should be done right

57:51maybe many takeaways for today

57:54uh maybe three one is don't give up on

57:57your ideas too easily

57:59uh especially building a sas company

58:01especially building a b2b

58:03company um these problems often take

58:06a long time to solve and if you give up

58:08you're just gonna be pivoting

58:10um into uh nothingness believe in

58:13yourself

58:14um we talked about this a little bit as

58:17well but

58:18the path is not not always straight up

58:20and to the right

58:21it's going to be filled with tons of

58:23challenges

58:25fun ones good ones bad ones really

58:27really

58:28really difficult ones too

58:31uh and then the third one that i hope

58:33everyone takes away from here is that

58:35you know you guys all of you are capable

58:39of

58:39so much more than than you think or at

58:41least than i

58:42think that i thought in myself

58:48i'm going to end it here or i'm gonna

58:50wrap things up before i open it up for

58:52you guys to ask questions to me

58:54i'm gonna uh basically wrap it up here

58:57with uh what are upkeep's core values

59:00and the reason why i'm bringing this up

59:02is because i think our core values

59:04relate a lot towards company building

59:06at the very very early stage our core

59:09value is we've got three of them

59:11and it's rooted in this idea where

59:15it's not just like oh transparency oh

59:17trust

59:18it's rooted in this idea where if times

59:21get very difficult

59:22and someone on our team has to make a

59:24really difficult decision

59:26on what to do this is not a oh you

59:28should be transparent

59:30because what the hell is the other

59:31option don't be transparent

59:33now we said we're going to root it into

59:36real

59:36problems that we face on a day-to-day

59:38basis and we're going to use our values

59:40to help guide our decisions

59:42we choose customers over revenue we

59:45choose progress over

59:46perfection we choose grid over prestige

59:48the reason why i'm saying this

59:49i think all three of these values relate

59:52a lot

59:53towards building a company in the very

59:55early stages

59:56i'll walk through each one of them

59:59choosing customers over revenue i'm sure

01:00:01you heard

01:00:02you know michael siebel and everyone

01:00:04from yse basically say

01:00:06you know it do things that are

01:00:08unscalable do things in the beginning

01:00:10that don't

01:00:11necessarily make a ton of revenue but do

01:00:14things for your customer do what's right

01:00:16for them

01:00:17the second one is choosing progress over

01:00:20perfection it goes back to this idea of

01:00:23you know we just we launch we test we

01:00:26iterate we improve

01:00:28it's not about releasing that first

01:00:30product on day one and having

01:00:32explosive growth the minute you launch

01:00:35it

01:00:37it's about making that launch and being

01:00:40better than you were yesterday

01:00:42that's what progress over perfection is

01:00:45um we believe here at upkeep that

01:00:48nothing is perfect

01:00:49we we think that there's potential to

01:00:51improve everything that we do

01:00:55the third one is grit we choose grit

01:00:58over prestige

01:00:59and it goes back to this uh what we are

01:01:02alluding to

01:01:02earlier it's not about all the successes

01:01:05that you've had in the past

01:01:07it's also not about all the failures

01:01:09that you've had in the past either

01:01:11it's about what we choose to do going

01:01:14forward

01:01:14that's what grit over prestige is and

01:01:17when we think about

01:01:18building a company and building a

01:01:20startup you need a ton of grit because

01:01:22you're going to be faced with

01:01:24a ton of uh difficult decisions

01:01:27and you have to have the grit the

01:01:28perseverance perseverance to uh

01:01:31go through all the downs so that you can

01:01:33experience

01:01:34some of the many many ups

01:01:40all right that was enough of me uh

01:01:43babbling i'm gonna open it up to

01:01:46everyone here

01:01:47happy to answer any questions you got

01:01:50for me

01:01:54awesome um if you have any questions

01:01:56please use

01:01:57the reset feature and then i guess ryan

01:02:00can just

01:02:00you know cure you and you can ask

01:02:04questions

01:02:07what do you guys think i'm down for

01:02:10awkward silence if that's what it takes

01:02:12i'm not ending here

01:02:17i'm gonna start calling on people too

01:02:20raised this hand oh there we go

01:02:23yeah yeah go ahead wish

01:02:27uh hi thanks for giving the talk um i

01:02:29have a question

01:02:30what's your suggestion of like what we

01:02:32can do to like build off

01:02:34skills or in order like any skills that

01:02:37we can develop

01:02:38in order to build a successful like b2b

01:02:40sas company in the future

01:02:43i i think the i think it

01:02:47goes it relates to building a b2b sas

01:02:50company and it also

01:02:51relates to building a um b2c company but

01:02:54the whole premise behind it is like

01:02:56our exposure you know your exposure in

01:03:00school or at least i'll tell i'll take

01:03:02my perspective

01:03:03my exposure in school was so limited

01:03:06and so once i actually got into the real

01:03:08working world i wound up seeing so many

01:03:10different possibilities like

01:03:12endless possibilities to go fix and

01:03:14solve

01:03:15so maybe the goal maybe um what i would

01:03:18say here is like go out into the world

01:03:21get internships

01:03:23go and um

01:03:26you know go shadow go do go go outside

01:03:29of just the school setting

01:03:31and you'll find that there are just

01:03:33endless opportunities

01:03:34for uh you to solve and for for

01:03:37technology to solve and i think that's

01:03:39what's

01:03:40one of the most exciting parts

01:03:44okay thank you of course saloni

01:03:50hi um this may not be exactly related

01:03:54it is not related entrepreneurship but

01:03:57um i'm just curious like what made you

01:03:59go on to reddit to get your first report

01:04:03like what

01:04:03what were you thinking what the hell was

01:04:07i thinking

01:04:08it just seems a bit it seems

01:04:12unusual

01:04:13[Laughter]

01:04:16great i love that question why so the

01:04:18question why

01:04:19why the hell would you go to reddit of

01:04:21all places to like

01:04:22find someone the answer's easy actually

01:04:26because it was it was cheap easy and

01:04:28that's kind of what i

01:04:30thought of at the that's i don't know i

01:04:32use reddit so i was like all right

01:04:34that's cool there's a thread for a fur

01:04:36hire um

01:04:39i'm gonna try like that i think that's

01:04:41one of the beautiful things about

01:04:42building a startup like the whole

01:04:44premise of building a startup is doing

01:04:46something

01:04:46that no one thought of before

01:04:49if you think about like the novelty of

01:04:51what you're doing you have to think

01:04:53about like

01:04:54going against the grain i feel like

01:04:56that's uh

01:04:57maybe you don't want to like go against

01:04:59the grin on everything but that was very

01:05:01much my attitude

01:05:02i basically said nothing was not worth

01:05:05trying

01:05:07you can probably see that's where that's

01:05:09how you get to these really weird

01:05:10situations

01:05:12of like hiring your first employee off

01:05:14of reddit who the hell would have

01:05:16thought

01:05:16oh ryan you should go on reddit to go

01:05:18hire someone

01:05:20but then you can also say the same thing

01:05:22about you know why would you

01:05:24who would have thought about building a

01:05:26mobile first

01:05:27maintenance software application who'd

01:05:29have thought to build the search engine

01:05:31i don't know

01:05:33it's it's a lot of these like doing

01:05:35things that no one else

01:05:36would have thought was possible or

01:05:39doable achievable so yes

01:05:43i went to reddit to find the first uh

01:05:46software engineer for the team

01:05:50[Music]

01:05:55anything else um let me jump in real

01:06:00quick

01:06:00um can you share one of the

01:06:04most challenging moments uh when you're

01:06:07running upkip

01:06:09oh man

01:06:14one of the most challenging oh man

01:06:17it's so as as the company grows in

01:06:19scales you're gonna find the most

01:06:21difficult thing is actually hiring and

01:06:23retaining people

01:06:25um in the very early stages of the

01:06:27company there's roughly

01:06:29there was um roughly about like eight of

01:06:32us

01:06:33and we had hired uh at the time

01:06:36this was after yc after raising our

01:06:38three million dollar seed round

01:06:40we had hire roughly the team of eight of

01:06:42us were

01:06:43it was like five engineers

01:06:47and three like operations people

01:06:50and over a course of like 30 days

01:06:55three out of five of our engineers wound

01:06:57up leaving to go start at their own

01:06:59company

01:07:01i love them to death because i think i

01:07:03inspired them or at least we inspired

01:07:06them to go like

01:07:07start their their own company

01:07:11but man that was really tough because i

01:07:13was like oh

01:07:14we just raised our around um what are

01:07:17our investors going to think

01:07:19what are what's going to happen to our

01:07:20product they have all this

01:07:22knowledge that just went out the door

01:07:24head of engineering

01:07:26just left to go build his own company

01:07:28that was really tough thomas

01:07:31but i'm sure you kind of know the the

01:07:33story the outcome there obviously we're

01:07:35much

01:07:35much bigger than eight people um

01:07:39you kind of just figure it out

01:07:42uh the the the that

01:07:45actually what actually happened after

01:07:47that was that team that we found on uh

01:07:50reddit celloni um we basically wound up

01:07:53saying oh hey our head engineers left

01:07:57um do you know anyone that can help

01:08:00build the product and they're like yeah

01:08:01let me call my buddy

01:08:03and so we wound up like uh staffing that

01:08:06team out in

01:08:08india actually to uh basically take over

01:08:11a lot of the product development that

01:08:13was

01:08:14uh left from the three engineers that

01:08:17that

01:08:17left to go start up their own company

01:08:20you know it was it was really tough

01:08:22though for

01:08:23a few months where i was like oh my god

01:08:25what's going to happen what am i going

01:08:26to do

01:08:28but then you realize like you know hey

01:08:30it's a

01:08:32it's just another experience

01:08:37also um let's see

01:08:40someone else uh henry go ahead

01:08:44hey ryan um so i was just wondering what

01:08:46was your favorite part about starting a

01:08:48startup

01:08:49i just i love building man um

01:08:53i love building um

01:08:56i love talking to customers i really

01:09:00loved uh this this whole like cycle of

01:09:04i i was like the number one engineer i

01:09:06was the number one support person i was

01:09:08the number one sales person i was the

01:09:09number one product person

01:09:11the part that i loved the most was just

01:09:13that feedback cycle

01:09:15i would talk to a customer get on a

01:09:16phone call with brad riddy from

01:09:18universal studios

01:09:19yeah hey ron i would i think that this

01:09:22would be such a cool feature

01:09:24like i think so too brad so i'd

01:09:26literally stay up

01:09:27the entire night coding it out building

01:09:29it out next day i would like released it

01:09:32show brad he'd be like holy that is

01:09:35insane

01:09:37i think that's that's kind of like one

01:09:38of the favorite one of my like favorite

01:09:40parts

01:09:41within like starting a startup at the

01:09:44very beginning

01:09:46if you don't love that if you don't grow

01:09:48to love that it's going to be very

01:09:49difficult because it's a grind

01:09:52but i think one of the coolest things

01:09:54about launching early and launching fast

01:09:57is that

01:09:57it enables you to have these feedback

01:09:59cycles because

01:10:01the um you know the uh the the

01:10:04alternative

01:10:04to that is you're just working your

01:10:06mom's girl eyelids for me

01:10:08i work in my mom's garage all by myself

01:10:11theorizing what the hell people want

01:10:14i love this like customer interaction i

01:10:17love

01:10:17being able to see how people use the

01:10:19products that i've built

01:10:21and uh i think i would have there's no

01:10:23way we would have gotten to where we are

01:10:25today if i

01:10:26if i didn't launch early launch fast and

01:10:28have that iterative cycle talking to

01:10:29customers building product

01:10:31and seeing their feedback and oftentimes

01:10:34also henry

01:10:35they would be like what the hell did you

01:10:36build that's terrible that's not what i

01:10:38was asking for and

01:10:39you learned to take that feedback too

01:10:43that's really cool thank you yeah of

01:10:45course

01:10:47anything else what else oh

01:10:50anshi

01:10:53all right so earlier in the presentation

01:10:57you touched on how

01:10:58universal studios uh reached out to you

01:11:02to essentially become your first paying

01:11:03customer

01:11:05what was the recruitment what was the

01:11:08pitching process like

01:11:09to fetch to other customers who did not

01:11:12come to you in the first place

01:11:14so the question is like how do we move

01:11:17from

01:11:17you know customers coming to us versus

01:11:20us going out and finding customers

01:11:22is that is that right

01:11:26yes that would weird so it's a good

01:11:29question

01:11:30um it's the the terminology is called

01:11:33like inbound versus outbound inbound is

01:11:35when

01:11:36you know you have a product people call

01:11:38you and say hey i want to purchase your

01:11:39product

01:11:40outbound is this process of like moving

01:11:42from capturing demand to

01:11:44creating demand so i think your question

01:11:47is

01:11:47how do you create like this outbound

01:11:49cycle how do you create demand in a

01:11:51market that no one knows that you exist

01:11:54the short answer there is we haven't

01:11:56figured it out actually

01:11:58our product is uh we we've um

01:12:01we've built and scaled our entire

01:12:04company off of what's called inbound

01:12:05marketing and the whole premise behind

01:12:07that is

01:12:08you know we've actually got a free

01:12:10product a freemium product

01:12:12that customers use sign up for and they

01:12:14get feature gated based off of different

01:12:16features that they may want so think of

01:12:18your

01:12:19you know asanas where you can use the

01:12:21free product of asana and then later

01:12:22you'll pay

01:12:23that's essentially what upkeep is as

01:12:25well what that does

01:12:26it it creates this inbound marketing

01:12:29machine where you actually don't need to

01:12:31like

01:12:31hire sales people cold call send flyers

01:12:35and whatever

01:12:36but that but i will also say that is

01:12:38another strategy

01:12:40of building an outbound marketing sales

01:12:42team

01:12:43where you actually pick up a phone call

01:12:45you pick up the phone

01:12:47you get a list of customers you blast

01:12:49them

01:12:50spam them with emails and then you call

01:12:52the hell out of them and hope that they

01:12:54pick up

01:12:55and you try to sell them your solution

01:12:57that's another option

01:12:59it's very simple to figure out what what

01:13:01route you should go though

01:13:03it kind of depends on what's called your

01:13:04average contract value

01:13:06big average contract values big

01:13:08customers and let's call it paying you

01:13:12maybe upper five figures or more

01:13:16uh in revenue so let's call it fifty

01:13:18thousand dollar customer you can

01:13:20actually go out and do this like what's

01:13:21called

01:13:22outbound uh cold calling and outbound

01:13:24sales

01:13:25but if you have smaller average contract

01:13:27values let's call it sub ten thousand

01:13:29dollar deals

01:13:30um then it becomes very expensive to

01:13:34actually like

01:13:35hire a salesperson to do like direct

01:13:37dials and calls and

01:13:39send spammy emails hopefully that

01:13:42answered your question

01:13:43i kind of went on a little bit of

01:13:45tangent

01:13:50anything else anything else um

01:13:54awesome uh i was curious about how um

01:13:57like how's the team doing uh during this

01:14:00pandemic

01:14:01is there any changes or

01:14:04um anything's going on yeah i'm sure all

01:14:08of you guys have probably noticed this

01:14:09too but basically every tech company has

01:14:12gone remote

01:14:13and it's very fascinating so are we

01:14:14we're down here in la and

01:14:16kovid's i think a little bit worse than

01:14:18you guys up in the bay area

01:14:21but since kovade there's an initial

01:14:23shock of like oh

01:14:25with froze hiring kind of like put a

01:14:27pause on everything

01:14:28but then we realized oh crap we're

01:14:30actually a very critical

01:14:32tool for manufacturers manufacturing and

01:14:35facilities management

01:14:36companies that are needing to go digital

01:14:40when their workforce is remote

01:14:43and we realize oh actually like this is

01:14:46we actually have a critical solution for

01:14:48our customers to

01:14:49be able to work and um over the last

01:14:52three months

01:14:53even though we're all still remote we

01:14:56turn back on hiring it's been a ton of

01:14:58fun

01:14:59you know some of our customers are hit

01:15:01pretty hard and other than other

01:15:03customers are thriving but you know

01:15:06right now is a great time to build a

01:15:09tech company because

01:15:11it's accelerated covet has accelerated

01:15:14a lot of the need of technology um

01:15:17especially in like b2b sas

01:15:21especially for b2b sas products so

01:15:24great time right now technology is a

01:15:28great

01:15:29great sector to to be in

01:15:38um then i guess in that sense um i was

01:15:42curious about how do you deal with um uh

01:15:45competitors in the same space

01:15:48competitors i think i i was like reading

01:15:52you have this like quote somewhere where

01:15:53is it where is it

01:15:55you have this quote somewhere and i was

01:15:57like i forgot the exact

01:16:00words but it was like don't worry about

01:16:02your competitors screw competitors don't

01:16:03even look at them

01:16:04i forgot where i saw that i think it was

01:16:06like in the waiting room of

01:16:08this uh competition is for losers

01:16:12yeah competition i genuinely believe

01:16:14that our space

01:16:15our product has probably 50 different

01:16:18products that we compete with

01:16:20but it's not about the competitors it's

01:16:22about how how fast you can move how fast

01:16:25you can iterate

01:16:26what i've always said to everyone on our

01:16:28team

01:16:29is that we don't have more capital

01:16:32we don't have more people resources

01:16:34expertise

01:16:35or knowledge even than all of our

01:16:39competitors our competitors outshine us

01:16:41in every single one of those areas

01:16:45but the one thing that we do have as a

01:16:47startup

01:16:48is the ability to learn the ability to

01:16:51move fast the ability to

01:16:53iterate and improve that's what a

01:16:56startup is all about it's the nimbleness

01:16:59and the ability to improve iterate

01:17:02and get better than you were yesterday

01:17:03that's what defines a startup

01:17:06competition i wouldn't worry about them

01:17:08just focus on yourself

01:17:10focus on um again just being better than

01:17:13you were yesterday and

01:17:14that like have that iterative mindset

01:17:17and i think you'll

01:17:18you know outshine your competition and

01:17:22crush them i i think that's uh is my

01:17:25my view of the world

01:17:28um awesome so before we wrap up

01:17:31uh i guess one last question is um can

01:17:34you tell us more about

01:17:36uh some of your ydc experience because i

01:17:38know uh some of our students

01:17:40are looking into applying to yc and

01:17:44um yeah if you wanna if you want

01:17:48uh if you're curious about the whole yc

01:17:50process

01:17:51you could shoot me an email i'm happy to

01:17:53review the yc application for you guys

01:17:55too

01:17:56um but the yc experience is nothing

01:17:59crazy it's nothing profound

01:18:01sorry to burst that bubble it's not

01:18:03anything that's gonna be like oh my gosh

01:18:06they told me one piece of advice

01:18:08and completely changed the trajectory of

01:18:10my entire business

01:18:13there's a few things that yc does and

01:18:14does really well one is that it forces

01:18:16you to work it forces you to have a

01:18:18singular goal

01:18:20and it just puts this fire under your

01:18:22ass to go figure it out

01:18:24it gives you a great group of other

01:18:27people

01:18:28other entrepreneurs really really smart

01:18:31people

01:18:32it batches you into these groups and

01:18:34says you know hey you should go

01:18:36not learn from us yc but you should go

01:18:38learn from other people

01:18:40that are at a similar stage than you

01:18:42that's what i learned through ycc

01:18:44maybe the third thing that yc does is it

01:18:46sets you up in

01:18:47this incredible like funding investor

01:18:50path which is

01:18:51you know something you can't really get

01:18:53elsewhere but what i

01:18:54do want to say is like yc is definitely

01:18:57worth applying to

01:18:58because it's going to full it's going to

01:19:00force you to

01:19:02you know fill out that application get

01:19:03really really smart about

01:19:05what your product is who you're solving

01:19:07it for

01:19:09but also just know that like getting

01:19:11into yc

01:19:14it's not anything like crazy profound

01:19:17there are so many out

01:19:18existing resources if you don't get in

01:19:21there's so many resources that exist

01:19:23today that you can learn

01:19:24from um it's not about yc and getting in

01:19:28or not

01:19:28it's it's uh you know can you do all of

01:19:31this without that fire under your ass of

01:19:34michael siebel yelling at you telling

01:19:36you you gotta grow up 10

01:19:38week over week you cannot you can do

01:19:41that yourself

01:19:42um and it's a it's something again

01:19:45whether you get in or not something that

01:19:46all of us can do

01:19:48and even if you don't even if you or

01:19:50even if you do i'm happy to help out

01:19:52shoot me an email um thomas i think you

01:19:55have my email

01:19:56put it in the chat too if anyone wants

01:19:58to reach out to me

01:19:59shoot me an email just put in this ch

01:20:02chat if you guys are interested in

01:20:03playing to the yc

01:20:04happy to take a look at your guys

01:20:06application um

01:20:10or answer any questions if you got any

01:20:17i don't see any more questions

01:20:21um so i guess we will just end here um

01:20:24again the

01:20:25the homework code is go votes without a

01:20:28space all lowercase

01:20:31um just make sure you get that done by

01:20:33this sunday and then

01:20:34thank you ryan for coming in it was

01:20:36really informative

01:20:37and funny and yeah a lot lots of energy

01:20:41um thank you for that um with that um

01:20:44this is the end um thank you guys for

01:20:47coming

01:20:48all right thanks everyone for staying

01:20:49awake i appreciate it

01:21:01you

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