Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 759 | TinySeed Tales s4e6: Does AI + Pivot = Success?
Thu, 20 Feb 2025
In this episode of TinySeed Tales, Rob Walling speaks with Colleen Schnettler, co-founder of Hello Query, as she shares her latest startup journey pivot. After reigniting her “shipping muscle” while briefly dabbling in an AI-based project, Colleen refocuses on her newest pivot of Hello Query. She shares the challenges of determining the market viability of an AI-assisted SQL report builder. She stands at a crossroads, torn between catering to internal BI teams or exploring marketing analytics. Topics we cover: (1:25) – Reflecting on the co-founder breakup (2:42) – Trying a scratch-your-own-itch project (6:27) – Unfair advantages inform another pivot (15:07) – Respecting the “emotional runway” (19:23) – Marketing insights vs. an internal BI tool (23:01) – The curse of the audience Links from the Show: Applications for TinySeed are Open Through Feb 23rd Colleen Schnettler (@leenyburger) | X Colleen Schnettler (@leenyburger.bsky.social) | Bluesky Hello Query If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
Chapter 1: What is TinySeed Tales and who is Colleen Schnettler?
It's Tiny Seed Tales, Season 4, Episode 6, where we continue hearing Colleen Schnettler's startup journey, and we ask ourselves, does AI plus a pivot equal success? Before we get into the episode, applications for our next batch of Tiny Seed companies are open from now until February 23rd.
If you want to be part of a world-class accelerator, receive the perfect amount of funding, mentorship, advice, and community, head to tinyc.com slash apply. And now let's dive into the episode.
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.
Welcome back to Tiny Seed Tales, a series where I follow a founder through the wild roller coaster of building their startup. I'm your host, Rob Walling, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Tiny Seed, the first startup accelerator designed for bootstrappers. Today, in episode six of this season of Tiny Seed Tales, we're diving back into Colleen's journey.
It's been a whirlwind since we last checked in with twists, turns, and moments of uncertainty. But that's what makes her story so captivating. It's a tale of resilience, ambition, and the pursuit of something bigger. So buckle up and join me as we explore the latest chapter in Colleen's adventure.
In last week's episode, Colleen and her co-founder Aaron had decided to go their separate ways, and Colleen seemed to be quite stressed.
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Chapter 2: How did Colleen handle the co-founder breakup?
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.
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.
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.
Four months have passed since our last conversation, and Colleen dove headfirst into a new project called getpodcastleads.com, seeking to scratch her own itch and solve a familiar pain point in the world of podcasting. But as the dust settled, she faced the harsh reality of market viability. There was certainly a problem there, but would the market actually pay to solve it?
Chapter 3: What was Colleen's experience with getpodcastleads.com?
So I asked Colleen how she launched it.
Launch would be a strong word. I think I tweeted about it like once.
Hey, that's what we call an indie hacker launch. Yeah, well. Ooh, that was savage. Burn. That was brutal.
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.
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...
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.
And. I'm trying to figure out how to ask this question delicately, but could you have found that out before writing the code? And do you feel like you were... Do you have a regret about spending the time writing the code? Or was getting your shipping muscle working again worth it?
First of all, Rob, you crush my soul all the time.
You're used to it.
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Chapter 4: How did Colleen pivot to AI-assisted SQL report building?
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.
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.
Yeah. Economics don't work out. Do you think it is, it is tasteless to say that, um, get podcast leads was your rebound relationship after hello query? It was like, I knew it wasn't going to work out, but I don't regret it.
Got you back in the game. It's totally appropriate. That is absolutely correct.
While getpodcastleads.com may not have been the runaway success she envisioned, it reignited her so-called shipping muscle. It was a necessary step, a rebound relationship of sorts that ultimately led her to her next endeavor.
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,
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?
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.
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.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges of launching a new product?
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.
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.
Right. And that's something you and I have been talking periodically about. How do you get just a little more data or a little more information so you're not guessing? And you're not just thinking and ruminating, right? Because you and I can sit for two hours and guess what people are going to do.
And in fact, I think it was three weeks ago, you and I had a chat and you were asking the question of... I'm concerned. No one's using it. It wasn't launched yet. And I'm concerned. Are people going to be willing to hook up production databases? And on that call, I said, well, go ask them, right? Should you just launch? It was a question. Should you just launch? Like, go tweet it. I'll retweet it.
See if people do it. And what was that experience like for you?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 6: Should you build an audience for a SaaS product?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I like it. Sounds like a good plan. Shipping often, shipping early, shipping often, small pieces. To piggyback on your emotional runway, I have this thing that I tweeted once and then now I say it now and again, and it's, Funded companies fail when they run out of money. Bootstrapped companies fail when the founder runs out of motivation.
And I would count, you're a mostly bootstrapped company, you know? And what I see, what we see with Tiny Seed and outside of it is some people will have some traction after a year, two, three, four years, they're at 4K, MR, 5K, but you just get so tired of doing it.
And you feel, you know, you watch other, the success stories come out and you feel like, can I just, so that's where bias towards action, mostly working on the right things and getting enough of them correct that you have momentum. Because once you lose momentum, it's demoralizing. And you can only beat, you know, demoralized for so long.
And so that's where your shipping, your shipping muscle that you're rebuilding right now, as well as the fast feed, as well as the fast feedback cycle, I think is going to help with that motivation. It helps refill your, helps shorten your runway. No, the opposite. It helps lengthen your runway or helps, you know, kind of refill your motivation, your bucket so that you can keep going.
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.
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