Colleen Schnettler
Appearances
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Environmental, like, survey companies. I was like, all of these sectors. have products. I think I even told you, I filled out a, they call them requests for proposal for this like really niche thing. Like it was, I was like, no one's gonna, no one's gonna apply for this or submit a proposal to this because no one has ever heard of this. I didn't get it.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Like the product development has to be a continuous cycle. Right.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
But that was another example of like, there were like hundreds of competitors. And I was like, who are these people? And so... It's a little bit of a rant and it's good for capitalism, but it's bad for me in that these products are really good. And no matter what you think is unique, like it's probably not. Someone's probably doing it with more money and better UI.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
So you really just have to put the work in to make the product better. Like the product development has to be a continuous cycle.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
I agree. I think, you know, one of the things with what I have now, if you look at it as chat with your database, build reports. That's not really solving a problem. Like, what is that? Like, that's cool. But what is it? Like, what is the problem you are solving? Like, what can you do with that? I think general, like some people, so chat with your database is not in any way unique.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Everyone's doing that. And a lot of the companies doing it are trying to position it as the data analyst for your company. I don't think that's right because I think that is still too vague. People are still like the whole point of hiring a real data analyst is they tell you what you don't know that you don't know. So I think you're right. I think this is all about exploration.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
This is about finding out what tools they're using that maybe aren't good enough. It might be an aggregation of tools. Like I can see a world where it's dump everything in BigQuery. Like I do it for you. Dump everything in BigQuery and I sit on top of BigQuery because Looker gets really expensive really quickly. So... Yeah, I mean, but this is, again, this is like the beginning still.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Well, yes, it's been a few months and it has been quite a wild ride. I'm going to be honest. So my first vision last time we talked was going to be this product. And it was I was targeting engineering managers in the hopes that it would help their developers save time by allowing other teammates like non-technical teammates to build their own reports.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
When you're trying to go zero one is really fun. And there was a lot of, it kind of felt like there was a lot of energy and momentum around the initial product. But truthfully, that fizzled out pretty quickly. So at that time, it kind of felt like I had more of a, oh, gee whiz, this is cool. And not a, wow, this is actually a useful product I'm going to integrate into my workflow.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
So I, at the time there were maybe three or four people who were actually interested in using the product to build reports. So I worked really closely with them to say, how do we decrease the kind of cognitive overload for the person using the product? So you'd come into the product and it's AI on top of your database to build reports.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
And you say, but what, what do I want to know from my database? Like, I don't even know what I can ask. So, you know, I built in suggested questions based on your schema. And then I shortened the time from, someone has this book, I forget her name, but it's called like First Time to Wow. And it's this idea of you get something in front of your customers, how do you wow them quickly?
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
So now I have it set up in a way where you come in, it shows you a sample question and customized to your database. You click it and you immediately get a chart. So you can immediately see a visual that represents the data. You can add it to dashboards. All of that to say there was a lot of early development working tightly with potential customers.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
But as I continued to go down that path, I just wasn't getting the engagement I thought I would get from developers and engineering managers. When push came to shove, it just felt like they were casually interested, but this product was not really solving a pain point.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
And I think part of that was because you can't put it in front of completely non-technical people yet because the AI is just not good enough. So a lot of development work, talking to a lot of developers, talking to a lot of engineering managers, but ultimately I don't think they're my target market.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
That is such a hard question because I feel like for every successful bootstrap business out there, you'll hear both sides of the story, right? You'll be like, this person was successful because they pivoted so quickly. This person was successful because they stuck with it for three years. So, you know, I was really just going on what I felt was the right decision.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
And for me, the reporting that I was looking at, targeting engineering managers and developers, that was going towards embedding reporting for customers. And looking deeply at that space, I just didn't think I had any unique angle. I mean, there's a lot of products out there that's embedded reporting for customers, and they're really pretty good. And I didn't have any kind of unique take.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
So at one point... I even almost took a consulting job building embedded reports for a potential customer in order to learn more about that space and the limitation of that space. But I decided not to do that because talking to a couple different people, it seemed like the requirements were so disparate.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
And I didn't want to get myself back in that situation where I was a consultant who thought I was building a product, but I was really just consulting.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
So I actually, to be completely honest, I went and spent a week in the woods. And that gave me some time to really think about, do I want to pursue this embedded reporting idea? Do I want to stick with this idea and try another take on it? Do I want to shut the business down? Because there's obviously a huge opportunity cost to continue to pursue this idea.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
And what I landed on is I'm not done with this idea yet. I want to take another swing at it, come approach it from a different direction.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
I actually hired a marketing coach to help me figure out an ICP. And I sat down with him and there was this immediate thing that happened where before he was a marketing coach, he was a marketing analyst. And he was like, oh, I literally would have bought this tool. This was a problem I ran into all the time where I needed data from my database.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
I have, I think you can really reach these people by teaching marketer SQL. So teach marketer SQL and see if it resonates. And so I said, all right, let's try it. And, you know, marketing, I think is really good for me because I am a developer and I'm really, really interested in the marketing space. It's something I really want to learn. And one of the things I do well is kind of learn in public.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
And. So learning about the space and talking about the space is something that comes very naturally to me. And like I said, it's something I've wanted to do anyway. So it felt like a good alignment of things I wanted to do and potential customers.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Yeah, so I am all in on this new idea. And the new idea is I help marketers build better reports. I'm targeting marketing data analysts, people who are marketers. So there's actually, you know, I've been in this space for a while now. There's a big difference between data analysts, who are pure data people. They're with Python and R and whatever.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
And then the marketing data analysts and marketing, those people are marketing first. So they're trying to take their existing data and figure out how to use that data to do better marketing, right? To sell more product. And so I'm all in on those people. I started a newsletter. I, you know, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm sending thousands of cold DMs on LinkedIn.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
I have a whole strategy behind helping them get data out of their database using SQL. So that's kind of what my newsletter is about. I have a couple of users and I have my first paying customer, which is pretty exciting.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Two weeks. Okay. It just happened.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Yeah. What's interesting about this person is I got on a call with them and they... hate my UI. I don't know how else to say it, but they're like, this product isn't even very good. And I was like, oh, okay. But I do think it's interesting that this person was like, this product isn't very good. So I didn't think they were gonna convert. And then it was kind of fun. I was in the woods.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
having my soul searching and I didn't have Stripe notifications set up. So it was two days later, I realized they had converted and I sent them a message and they were like, yeah, well, I needed to run more queries. I was like, awesome. But I mean, this is still the wild west, right? Like this is still, my plan is focus in on these marketing data analyst people with everything I have.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
I think what I'm gonna find is Their data is in many different data sources. But try to find, you know, I'm just really, really trying to find that one pain point, like one little niche where I can just grab a foothold while simultaneously, I'm a one woman shop now, right? Because like budget is tight. So simultaneously making the product something that these people want to use. And so it's crazy.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Yeah, so the product today is, it's a chat with your database, but you ask, it's fine tuned to, you ask a question, it returns a SQL query. You can edit the SQL, which was funny because that was like a heavily requested feature, but no one actually does it. It's like, people just want to know that they can.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
They want to see it. You can edit the SQL. You run the SQL. It gives you charts. It gives you tables that you can export or add to a dashboard. So the dashboard seems to be kind of an interesting thing right now. Like the marketers so far, and again, it's a very small sample size I'm working with right now. They seem to really be leaning into like, what can I do?
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Like, what reports can I build with this? Right. And you also have a live shareable link. And so one of the things I've thought about is you can do triggers. You could do triggers off your database, which is actually something I'm really excited about. Like my one paying customer really wants me to do that. And, you know, I need to talk to more people, but...
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
There were like hundreds of competitors and I was like, who are these people? And so... It's a little bit of a rant and it's good for capitalism, but it's bad for me in that these products are really good. And no matter what you think is unique, like it's probably not. Someone's probably doing it with more money and better UI. So you really just have to put the work in to make the product better.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
I don't know, I think there's something there. I think there's possibility there. The goal is to have something, they come in, they set up and they don't have to log into Hello Query. So if you look at like product analytics tools or some other tools, even like a Google, like they send you emails once a week, like here's what you need to know. And you're like, sweet, I'm happy with that.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
So that's kind of where I want to go with this.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
I literally made it up.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Honestly, I think it just seems that the products are so good. And it seems like every niche that you can think of, that's what it feels like to me. Has five or six products. Like there's no world of like, oh, there's one competitor and they have a crappy product. People are just building better stuff than they were 10 years ago, right?
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Like 10 years ago, you're like, oh, this thing, it looks crappy, but it does exactly what I say it's going to do. And that kind of worked for some people. But I just feel like the level of polish you need in a product is so much higher now. And it's funny because I think of it because... very first version of my product, I thought it looked pretty good.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
And then I put it in front of people, like five people. And I was like, oh, and they were like, ooh, like, where do I change the name? And I expect to be able to do that in line. And, and this font looks weird and it's too big. And like, I was like, what, what, but it does what I said it was going to do. Like, okay.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
Yeah, things are polished. And I don't know, it feels like this whole revolution of everyone shipping product is great, but everyone is shipping a product. So there is a ton of competition, even in like, so when I was thinking if I wanted to do other ideas, I was talking to friends that work in other industries. I talked to someone in insurance.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 761 | TinySeed Tales s4e7: Identifying Pain Points
I talked to someone who's in this like really niche, really niche industry you've probably never heard of. And I was like, definitely they don't have tools because no one even knows what they do. But they, like, they do. They have like, she was like, yeah, we have like five competitors. I looked at the schools. I looked at, like, I was looking across anything where I knew someone.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to spend a week, maybe 10 days shipping a new feature that I know I need, and then following up with these people who are trying it to see how it's working for them. So kind of getting that cadence as I go forward.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, and whenever I start to like, Panic a little like, oh my gosh, this isn't working. Okay. I only shipped it two weeks ago. So it's a little early for that. But I try to think about that. I'm right. I'm like, okay, this goes on as long as I want this to go on. Right.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
And in a positive way in that, like, yes, this needs to work on a, you know, relatively quick timeline because got to pay the bills. But also I can spend a year. I can spend five years. Like this can be my... I want this to be my future. Like I don't want to go get a job and I want that so badly. I think it's just good to remember like for most people that don't quit, it eventually works out.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Like most people, if you look at these success stories and you really dig into them, like most people that don't quit, it eventually works out.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Like I have other ideas. I'm going to pursue a different idea. Yeah. And it had been a while since I had shipped code. And so I really, I was having a little bit of self doubt about what it takes to get an app from zero to paying authentication, the whole deal. And so I wanted to ship something and I wanted to go in a different direction. And so at that time, I had this idea.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
On one hand, I think if I went the marketing route, People would just be, I think people in my network, this goes back to, is it worth having a social media following? My people would be so excited if I put AI on top of your Google Analytics. They would be so excited. That is one direction. And people have asked me for that. And then you have this other thing, internal BI tool.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
And honestly, like, I don't really know. I am just taking my best guess. And my best guess is that One company in particular that has approached me about the internal BI tools, like a pretty big company. And I realize like there is a demand for this inside big, bigger, like established businesses on the BI side. And that's a customer that would probably pay a premium price for it.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Whereas marketing data, marketers have a lot of money, but I also think they have so many tools. so many tools at their disposal already. And they probably already kind of sort of understand Google Analytics. So I don't know if that AI on top of Google Analytics is as valuable. So that's why I'm going BI tools.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
But I think this is like a false, like there could be a false demand signal if I launched the Google Analytics thing, because my people would be so excited. So that's why I'm really torn on the decision, to be honest with you. Like, I think I could go either way.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
I used to be a podcaster and we always had this problem finding and managing sponsors to the point where we literally stopped taking sponsors because the overhead was just too much of a pain. So I started going down that direction.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Fine. It's more just like, I'm still in the phase where I don't know if this is going to
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
No, but it is like like talking about it. I'm like, all of the things I said are true. And I do feel good about it. But also, man, I guess it's just we've been recording this podcast for so long. And it's like, what do I have to show for it?
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
right like i've been doing this for so long it feels like and it's like man here i am again not making any money it's just a little it's fine but um you know it's just a little like oh you'd think after doing this for a year i'd be a little further along
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Sick burn. I kind of, yeah, I don't know. So I launched it, launched on Twitter. So I tweeted about it once and I did start DMing people because I know everyone podcasts, right? And so I am fortunate too that I actually know a bunch of people that own podcast hosting companies. So it was kind of cool to be able to go right to the source and talk to those guys.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
And what I found out when I was doing that is podcasting is a tough market. Low margins. Podcasters are broke. So the fact that they would shell out additional money seemed unlikely. It could have been... I think it could have been like a productized service. But still...
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
It's not like if I'm going to do productized consulting, like I should do it in rails and make real money, not for podcasters who are like, I'll pay you 20 bucks if you find me a sponsor that'll pay me 200. Like the math of the business model just didn't seem like it was going to work out.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
First of all, Rob, you crush my soul all the time.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
It's like our history. I'm used to it. So it's fine. You know what? I think I knew before I built it that this was going to be the outcome. But building it for me was more about... getting that muscle of shipping activated again. Because it had been so long since we had shipped, because I hadn't gone zero to full app in such a long time, I just needed to activate that muscle.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
And I had really wanted to play with the AI APIs. And I hadn't. And I was like on the sidelines watching everyone. And I was like, I want to get into this. Like this is the future. And so the podcast thing was cool because there's this huge podcast API that I bought data from and then ran it through Deepgram to transcribe and then ran it through OpenAI to try to extract sponsors.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
It's just good to remember like for most people that don't quit, it eventually works out. Like most people, if you look at these success stories and you really dig into them, like most people that don't quit, it eventually works out.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
So I got to kind of like piece all these different APIs together. And I had a lot of fun. And it gave me a lot of confidence in my ability to ship something. And so I do not regret it. Um, but I do think I already knew the answer because again, if you're getting a podcast sponsor for 200 bucks, like that's, that's so like, what are you going to pay for that? Not much.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
So then I was at the bottom of another trough of sorrow because I was like, oh, wow, this was a terrible idea, which I think I knew, but I really just wanted to ship something. So now you're at the bottom of the curve again, and you're again like, crap, what am I going to do? And so I went back like full circle to what is my unfair advantage here? Like,
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
And it's hard with this because you have to separate sunk cost from unfair advantage, right? And so that was really my struggle is it was another time of a lot of kind of confusion, anxiety, whatever, where it's, well, is my unfair advantage that I have been immersed in reporting for two years or is that a sunk cost and I should just walk away?
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
And I realized that I still think that's an unfair advantage that I have been immersed in this world of internal reporting. And it is a problem. People want to solve it. Like it is so hard as someone trying to start a business just to come up with a problem that people are willing to pay money to solve.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
And I was like, okay, if I take all of the complicated emotions around what I have already done going down the hello query route, if I separate that from like the practical, logical, what is the business opportunity here? I still think there's a business opportunity there. And I'd been playing around with all these APIs.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
And so I was like, I wonder if there's a way I can combine what I learned with get podcast leads and like the new tech out there and the original vision. And so what I have now, what I just launched, it's AI assisted SQL report builder. So it's still called Hello Query, but it's a different product.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
So, you know, I just launched it last week. So it's still very early in terms of ideal customer. So what I am finding is when I first built it, I had thought it would be more for the developers to kind of like remind you how to write SQL because we're not all checking all the time. But everyone I have talked to wants to put it in front of their non-technical teammates.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Yeah. Yes, internal users. And so what that looks like is that looks like, you know, Jim from accounting asks a natural language question. That's converted to SQL under the hood. It's run against this database. And the product, though, is the... reports, if those are the answers that Jim wants, he can then export it to CSV, export it to Google Sheets.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
He can schedule that report to be sent to him and his team every week, rerun and sent. So the product is really all the reporting around the initial query.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Yeah, 100% agree. And the AI also, I wasn't even going to ship that. That was like, I added that... Cause I, it was almost gonna be like more of a marketing gimmick to be like, ooh, AI. And then people were so excited about it. And I was like, oh, right. Okay, people are so excited about this. So this should be part of the offering. But yeah, that's exactly what this is.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Is this went back to, I was like, you know what? Let's go back. Let's think about, you know, what I wanted to do. And I wanted to do little, take off little bites of this problem, right? Little bites at a time, put it in front of people, let the vision change as needed.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
First of all, amazing. And amazing because... for whatever reason, and I think it's just the way that the speed at which we were working in terms of shipping product last year, there was a lot of thinking, right? It was like, we only have, we have to ship the right thing the first time. So we have to have figured all of this out, which is terrible. Right.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
But, but I do think it's important to remember we got into that mindset because have you heard that thing? Like all advice is true. There's like a, I don't know, it's some famous article. It's kind of like all advice is true because it worked for the person giving you the advice. So you're always going to have people in the business building community who have both sides of this.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
You have the people who ship frequently and iterate. Then you have the people who are like, oh, we spent two years building this thing by talking to our customers. And this thing is amazing and successful. And so I say all of that to kind of explain why we were in such like this. We're going to think the perfect product the first time.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
And so going back to this whole one of the biggest reasons I think this particular product could fail will be because people won't connect their production databases. And you're like, well, you can just you can just find out. I was like, yes, I can literally just find out. Like it doesn't have to be, maybe they will, maybe they won't. Maybe this group will, maybe this group won't.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
I can just ship the thing that I've built and then see if people hook up their production databases.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
That's what I was thinking as you were saying that, like this just makes the feedback cycle faster because I can access people who are my target audience faster.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Yeah, they're, and again, like, I think at the, in the end, not that there's ever an end, but. I don't know if I'll be targeting developers or like finance teams or C-suites. But yes, the developers will have to touch it at some point and they can be the people because they're often the people being asked to pull these reports.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Like so many people were like, oh, yeah, I get asked to do this all the time. Like it's such a pain because it's not my job. So they they are an in for me for them to pull it into their company.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
It's tough. I mean, this whole thing is tough, right? If we all knew what to do, we'd just do it. I am in a... I think I learned enough with a very small group of initial people who are interested to know what needs to happen next in terms of feature sets. So I am... I'm trying to... I don't know if I'm going to go the whole week, marketing week, coding week thing. I don't know if I'll do that.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
So right after we recorded and we recorded so quickly on the heels of the co-founder breakup, I was, I was pretty upset. Like you're absolutely right. There was a lot of stress. There was a lot of anxiety in terms of what to do next. And my immediate gut reaction was, I need to walk away from this idea. I need to walk away from this name. I'm just going to do something else.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
But I am trying to make sure I stay in a cadence where I'm talking to people and I'm building. And what I have learned, okay, so I feel like there's this whole concept with building a business, especially as a solo founder. Um, of emotional runway. I don't know if we've talked about this, but it's like this concept of, okay.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
So it's this concept of emotional runway where this is like a ultra marathon, right? Like this isn't going to be done to, despite what people on the internet tell you, you're not going to ship something in a weekend. That's going to make you a million dollars. Like, highly unlikely. And so what I have found for me is I really, really enjoy being in the code.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Like I like talking to people, but it's very draining. So I'm trying to balance like the talking to people and especially when you talk to people and you think your idea is so brilliant and they're like, I can't use it because of this or I can't use it. I mean, that's demoralizing. Like that's hard to come back from and come back from and come back from.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
You know, it's funny joining TinySeed because you go to the retreat and meet the other TinySeed founders and they all say, we don't need the money. And we joined TinySeed because we need the money. Okay, so I guess technically we didn't need the money because this enterprise client is paying my salary as I develop for them. But the money is going to make a huge difference for us.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
It is going to enable me to free myself up as a consultant and work on the business full time. And the other reason is, you know, it's funny, Rob, listening to this podcast years ago, and you would talk about like your mastermind, like your secret mastermind. And this is before I knew anyone in this space. And I was like, how do I get in a secret mastermind? Like, I want to be in the club.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
And so TinySeed has really is giving that to us. We're in a mastermind. I have access to you. I mean, it's really expanding our network. We have people who have reached out, offered to help, people offered to share contacts. And The more I get into this, the more I really think your network makes a tremendous difference, especially when you're first trying to get off the ground.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Yes. And the thing about TinySeed too is the whole not crazy, not like hustle bro has been very nice because again, military spouse, I have three kids. I'm still mostly the primary caregiver, you know? So it's not only a network, it's a network of like-minded founders. And that's really important.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Yes. So our product, as I said, it's a visual drop-in query builder. When I say that, people don't know what I'm talking about. So we have really struggled with positioning this product. And one of the ideas we had, because we already have it made in Laravel, is Laravel has a admin panel that you can purchase that I guess everyone in the Laravel space uses.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
So we thought we'll drop our price from $1,000 a year to $250 a year and sell it kind of as an add-on.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Exactly. So we announced it. We emailed our list. The day before we dropped the price, someone bought the Laravel package for $1,000. The next day we dropped the price. One person buys it from our list. So now we...
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
have to refund the guy who spent a thousand dollars seven you know the the difference and we only have the one other sale so we're net negative on that so so that was not awesome fun yeah oh that sucks at least to look on the bright side of that it's it it
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
We are confused, I think, as to... Right. So basically, let's just say it was one sale because the other guy bought it at full price. And we just don't get it quite why people aren't buying it. I mean, we don't have a huge mailing list, but we have 500 people on our mailing list. All of those people at one point expressed an interest. So to have one sale feels just like...
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Are we just totally wrong?
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Oh, it's painful. But yeah, we thought price was the issue and you're right. Clearly price is not the issue.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
A high point. Okay. I like this. So we have been talking to product managers because we are repositioning, we think, away from selling directly to developers and talking to product managers. And something that keeps coming up is custom reports for customers. So they want... So we've talked to analytics companies. We've talked to healthcare companies. They want their customers...
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
to be able to come in and get custom reports that they can save, that they can email, to choose to email to themselves. Well, we've built out 85% of that. We've built out the hard work of that with this query builder. So to build the scaffolding around custom reports, which is literally just like an index view, you download the CSV and you set up a background job to send you an email once a week.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Like we've done the hard part. So Aaron and I have been talking about kind of fleshing out the rest of that and providing custom reports for customers. And because we've done the hard part, he's just kind of been hacking away on that this week. And he's almost done, like 10 hours. And we're so close.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
I was ready to go back to work and I wanted remote work. I didn't know anybody who was doing this. It felt like this pipe dream, like this unobtainable pipe dream. Like there is a world where you can make six figures working from home. It seemed impossible.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
So we think from these product manager conversations, we're going to lean into, instead of visual query builder, whatever that means, to custom reports. That's amazing. Yeah, we're super excited. Not an admin dashboard, but it's for your customers.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Yeah, it feels clear. Now, you know, I talked to some founders who talk to like 15 customers a week and we do not have that volume of customer interviews anymore. So our sample size is smaller, but we do keep hearing it. And every like customer we have that we've talked to, I mean, we just keep hearing it. So it feels like a really enticing kind of pivot, although it's not really like a pivot.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
It's kind of just like a gentle recorrection.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Yes, I would say that is what I'm most excited about. On the Rails side, we are also responding to a lot of early customer feedback and building out essentially a V2 of our product. And so I'm also, so a lot, I mean, we're going to do a lot this month. So I'm hoping next time we talk, both of these things are done. And I am really excited to get over that hump because the current product is,
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
It's an MVP running in an enterprise client's application. So it's a lot of work, I guess is the best way to say it. Like we're making changes quickly. And so I think this kind of rewrite that we're working on behind the scenes is going to make working with the product so much easier for the Rails customers.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Yeah, we're super excited.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
My name is Colleen Schnettler, and I am the co-founder of Hammerstone.dev.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
So this is kind of a good story. My co-founder, Aaron, he was working for a tax property company and they kept getting asked for custom reports. And so he built out this custom component, this Laravel and Vue query builder. And kept the IP in his contract and decided he was going to start selling it in the Laravel space.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
And then a huge company in the Rails space, so we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars a year, ARR, came in and said, we want this for Rails. And... He's not a Rails developer. So he hired me as a consultant. So I joined, I didn't join him. I worked as a contractor for him for this big enterprise client. I did that for about eight months. I built out the product.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Then I thought our contract was over. So I went and got a full-time job. And then two months after that, the original enterprise client said, no, we need full-time support on this product. And so I quit my full-time job after three months and became a full partner in Hammerstone.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
So this company was doing a complete rebuild. So the timing was excellent for us. They were doing a complete rebuild of their product, and they're also using a Ruby on Rails framework called Bullet Train. That's an open source framework. So their philosophy is keep their team lean and small.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
I mean, they have 50 engineers, so I don't know that it's that small, but keep their team lean and basically use off-the-shelf components for everything they can. And honestly, Rob, I kind of think that they're doing hundreds of millions of dollars in business. They don't care. Like if we do 5 million a year, they don't care, right?
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
It's just so, it's not, you know, it's critical to their app, but it's also kind of like a boilerplate thing that is not a distinguishing feature.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
I did not. I am a self-taught Rails developer.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Well, I was a stay-at-home mom. I had, you know, three kids under five or something, so I'm dripping with children. And I wanted flexible remote work. And this is back in 2014, before COVID, before, you know, that was easy to find. And honestly, at the time, I didn't know anyone that had flexible remote work except this idea of software developers. And so that's what I decided I wanted to do.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
So back in, gosh, 2011, I think I published an app to the iOS App Store. That was my very first foray into software development. And I made $60. But you have to pay $100 to be in the App Store.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Net loss on my first product. And I, you know, again, this was crazy time. Like my husband's in the service, so he's gone a lot. He deploys a lot. Little kids were home, you know, I was home with little kids. And so I thought not everyone needs an iOS app, but everyone needs a website. So I am going to learn how to make websites. Yeah.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
And Rails was the hotness, even though Rails maybe isn't the hotness anymore. I still think it's the right place to start. It's a very, you know, it's a very, it's a very descriptive framework with like, and it's not, I don't want to say it's easy to learn. It's not, but it's,
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
You can learn, you know, there's enough in there that you can learn following a lot of tutorials and publish stuff to the web. And so I just started doing that. And then I worked for free. I mean, I did all the things they say you aren't supposed to do. Like I worked for free for like a year until eventually I got my first consulting job.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Well, desperation breeds discipline. I think that, I mean, I wasn't desperate. It's not like we couldn't put food on the table, but I was ready to go back to work. And I wanted remote work. And that is what is so interesting to me, too, is I didn't know anybody. I didn't know anybody who was doing this. So it seemed like I can still remember what it felt like.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
It felt like this pipe dream, like this unobtainable pipe dream. Like there is a world where you can make six figures working from home. It It seemed impossible. And so for me, I just, it was a grind. I mean, I just would grind. I would listen to, I'd do the dishes and listen to the Code Newbie podcast, which was very popular at the time, excellent podcast.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
And then I'd work every night trying to teach myself Ruby on Rails. from like 8 to 10 p.m. And I just did that for years. The thing that I would like to tell people is it's not easy. I hate when you go on the internet, and I think we could probably make a lot of these same analogies with business building.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
You go on the internet and you read, like if you Google, like learn to code, you'll see all these articles where people are like, oh, I spent four months and now I'm making $120,000 working from home. And that just doesn't feel like reality for most of us. And so I kind of had to learn that, but I am like the most persistent person on the face of the planet. So it was just, but it was a grind.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
But one more thing I want to say about it. It was a grind, but it changed my life. Like I would do it again in a heartbeat, 100% worth it.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
I do too. And this was always the end goal. But when you're looking again, when you're so far from it, it was like, okay, first I've got to learn to code this. I feel the same way. It's kind of neat to have had that experience because before you have reached a goal, sometimes they can feel like somewhat unobtainable. Right. And so having already lived that once, I think you're right.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Like, I think this for me, a hundred percent, this is the next thing that's going to change my life.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Yes, both of those things are true. I think the thing I said a little earlier about desperation, we move a lot. Before I had kids, I had had a job that I had to go into every day. It was an hour commute each way, eight hours, come back. And military spouses are traditionally underemployed for this reason. When you're moving a lot, it is hard to build a career. So the remote was so important to me.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
And there's another thing that I think has influenced me. People look at me and they seem to be really worried that I'm going to burn out because I work a lot and I love what I do. But I have this context of being a military spouse. And let me tell you, Rob, nothing in the world is harder than single parenting three little kids. Like if I survived that, you know, I've kind of lived through.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
I just feel like my life experience and also this is a little bit darker, but also true. Like we have friends that die. It happens. You know, we went through a really hard period. In like 2013 to 2015, where there were a lot of bad things happening in the world and we lost a couple really close friends. So I feel like I have been through some really hard things.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
And so when people complain about having to work too much or they're worried that like I'm going to burn out, like I don't know how to take care of myself. I'm like, that's not accurate because I've had these really challenging life experiences. And I was in my 20s and I got married young.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
So I've had these really challenging life experiences that I think have kind of changed who I am and how I approach the world and how I approach life. And I think now at this point in my career, that's going to help me get over the challenges of trying to start a business.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 749 | TinySeed Tales s4e1: Introducing Hammerstone.dev
Well, we're very early. So we haven't, we're kind of in that position right now where it's kind of sort of working, but we don't feel like we have landed on real product market fit. So it feels like anything could happen, which is both exciting and terrifying.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
What's interesting is you hear so much about how important it is to do customer interviews, but if those are not focused, then it can be hard for those interviews to lead you in the right direction. This is probably our third round, and I've probably talked to 20 people since I spoke with you last.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
As we refine our vision for what this product should be, what we learned was there's even higher value for our customers' customers to get their data. Our customers' customers need to build their own reports. These companies are constantly being asked for custom reports from their customers. And so that to us means embedding in your application.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
Exactly. So if you're an email service provider, maybe your customers want to segment their email list. This is a very common thing, right? And so you wouldn't have to build that out. You can drop in a hello query embed, set up some custom base queries for tenancy concerns, and they can then build out and save and segment their own customer lists.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
That's a tough question. I feel like this is 50% confidence, 50% gut. Because literally from the beginning, Rob, this is what I have wanted to build. What was happening when we get on these customer calls is when we ask them about internal reporting and we say, how many times does your C-suite, for example, request a report? Maybe once a week. Once a week is not that painful.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
And then if you move upmarket, the upmarket companies are using a Power BI because they want all of those additional features that we don't plan to add. So it feels like a bit of a gut decision, but also it was almost like we've always wanted to build this. And we now have talked to, you know, 20 plus people that confirm that we are probably on the correct path.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
Yes, they're definitely competitors in the space. Even on these customer calls, I saw at least two people show me a different embedded solution to solve this exact problem. So we know it exists. And we found this with the first iteration of our product, giving someone else like a different company control over that. People do not like that. That is generally not what we are trying to do.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
So the companies that seem really excited about this are companies that are data heavy companies. Visual interfaces aren't what they're looking for. Their users want to get their data out. Their customers have their own data analysts. So data analysts don't want you, you the SaaS owner, to build charts for them. Data analysts want their hands on their data.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
And so these are the kind of companies we're going to target.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
Exactly. Those are the kind of people we've been talking to is my customers want their data out. They want it in Excel because they're going to put it in Power BI or they like Excel because that's where they live. And building out reporting and filtering and custom export CSVs and scheduling is not core to our product. We don't really care, but we've got to give them this feature.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
Oh, and by the way, we can upcharge them for this feature. And I love that because now we're closer to the money.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
So here's what we've decided, right or wrong. We've decided that this is what it looks like, full stop. So this last round of interviews have been, they're not quite sales yet because I'm still trying to fully wrap my hands around people's problems, but I also show them what we have and it looks very nice. I mean, it looks great.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
And again, I think for us, like we can't just target everyone in the world. We're a small team of two. We are going to niche down really, really tight.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
Yeah, no one has had an issue with that yet.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
I am naturally a pretty social person, so I just thought I would be magically good at customer interviews. And no, I'm really not magically good at them. You have to go in with understanding your own personality and understanding how to get people to be honest with you. and kind of walk that line.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
Like when I first started doing them, I heard everyone say yes, because I'm just naturally energetic and enthusiastic and optimistic, right? I was projected by, oh my gosh, don't you love this? And they were like, yeah, I guess so.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
And after doing so many of these, I think I have hit a really nice balance of really being who I am, like still being myself, but also not pushing them in a specific direction. When I get on a call with someone and I say, how are you solving this problem now? If they haven't even tried to solve it. It's not a big problem, right? Like I've done so many of these.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
I know what questions to ask and I can tell pretty quickly by the size of your business, how frequently you have this problem, what you are already paying to solve this problem. So I think that's just something you learn the more you do it.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
So right now, our social networks are still our number one source of traffic. So some of these people came in through cold LinkedIn outreach, but I did a whole LinkedIn cold outreach campaign. And it was great because I learned a lot and I actually got a decent number of responses, which was very exciting.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
I had a much better success rate with people coming in from Twitter because it's kind of like a warm intro. Based on all of these calls and people have reached out, I've got a group of what I'm calling founding customers, three to four people depending.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
The plan is to give them the V1, see if it solves their problem, work with them, iterate until we can kind of like narrow the funnel on who really is our target customer. Because I think long-term cold outreach is going to be one of our traction channels. But again, I can't outreach to people if I don't know who those people are.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
Yeah, the customer thing is really hard.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
We have a working, secure, embeddable link that shows what your users will see. If I were to embed this in my application and they were able to use it. And so it's been really fun because I have been able to play around with it and see... how useful it is and what kind of things do I want to do that I can't do and what's important to me.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
And so it feels like we've made a ton of progress on product.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
Yes. So we had a large part of the code already exists because we are using our old product in the new product.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
Yeah, no kidding. That's nice.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
Because I'm just naturally energetic and enthusiastic and optimistic, right? I was projected by, oh my gosh, don't you love this? And they were like, yeah, I guess so.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
Absolutely. And I think that data is just such a good place to be. So I have been spending a lot of time in the like big data analysts, Tableau, Power BI forums, hanging out, seeing what those people are doing. And everyone needs data. Like our world is controlled by data. So people are going to want to access their data. I think...
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
It really is interesting too, like some people just want to throw their Excel files into ChatGPT and we can enable that. It's literally like at its very, very core, all of this packaging and positioning, we're still solving the same problem.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
And the fundamental problem we're solving is you want your data out of your database so you can actually understand it, play with it, build visualizations, whatever you're into. And so, yeah, it does feel like a true pivot as opposed to it. Let's scrap all of this. We've been working on it for two years and just start, you know, start from zero.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
I am most looking forward to getting this into customers' hands because these interviews, Rob, I mean, we are in this position now where it feels like momentum. It feels like it's going to work. And you know what else is really tricky about this is finding the right balance. To your point, this isn't an MVP. These people are going to put this in their production software.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 755 | TinySeed Tales s4e4: Customer Interviews + Pivoting
So we have to be really, really careful when we look at the quality versus minimal features to value, you know, figuring that out. And so that's why on one hand, I'm super excited to get in front of people, but I'm also very nervous that if we do it too early, we will erode trust and lose those potential customers.