In episode 705, Rob Walling interviews Braden Dennis, co-founder and CEO of FinChat. They discuss Braden’s journey going from fully bootstrapped, all the way to taking venture capital as FinChat scaled. Braden shares his experience in initially launching to an audience, how they successfully launched a second product, and how FinChat operates well with multiple co-founders.

Episode Sponsor:

Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups

The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce. Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.

They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.

When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week.

And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups

Topics we cover: 

• 2:55 – What does FinChat look like today?
• 4:00 – Starting with an audience and building a SaaS
• 6:40 – Formulating the product and moving upmarket
• 8:35 – Launching a second product
• 12:25 – The common pitfall of launching a second product
• 16:25 – How FinChat found explosive growth
• 19:27 – Deciding to take venture funding 
• 26:13 – Making hard decisions with incomplete information
• 30:31 – Working with multiple co-founders

Links from the Show: 

• Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024
• Apply for Director of Marketing and Operations for MicroConf
• MicroConf YouTube Channel
• TinySeed
• Braden Dennis (@BradoCapital) | X
• FinChat (@finchat_io) | X
• FinChat
• Episode 681 | Why Launching a Second Product is Usually a Bad Idea

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 | Google