In this episode of the Elixir Mentor Podcast, I chat with Enrique Leigh, founder of Prende Café in Chile. We explore how he built a specialty coffee subscription business using Phoenix LiveView, his journey from marketing and ad tech to becoming an Elixir developer, and why he chose custom e-commerce over platforms like Shopify.
Enrique shares the WordPress crash during a Chile vs Brazil match that sparked his interest in Elixir, and how building his own coffee business became the perfect way to finally learn the language. We discuss UX principles from "Don't Make Me Think," marketing frameworks like Jobs to Be Done, and the counterintuitive lesson that adding more checkout steps can actually increase conversions. He also explains the specialty coffee value chain, from sourcing beans in Brazil to roasting and running a physical café alongside the e-commerce platform.
Our conversation covers practical entrepreneurship topics including MVP philosophy, building subscription and coupon systems with Mercado Pago, using Oban for job scheduling, and content marketing strategies that work. Enrique shares insights on balancing Iron Man training with running a family business, productivity techniques from the Flow Research Collective, and the evolving landscape of ad tech after GDPR. We also discuss his future goals of learning Nerves to build IoT coffee machines and the growing Elixir community in Chile.
The episode wraps up with advice for aspiring entrepreneurs: just launch it. Enrique emphasizes that the cost of inaction is often greater than the cost of action, and with tools like LLMs that work remarkably well with Elixir, there's never been a better time to build your own products.
Resources Mentioned:
- Don't Make Me Think: https://sensible.com/dont-make-me-think/
- Oban: https://getoban.pro/
- Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord
Connect with Enrique:
- Website: https://www.prendecafe.cl
- X/Twitter: https://x.com/EnriqueLeigh
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/enriqueleigh/
Sponsors:
- Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io
- Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord
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- Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com