#077 – Iterating Your Way to a Product That Customers Find Valuable with Andy Cook of Tettra
Dec 7, 2018
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Andy Cook, co-founder of Tettra, discusses how they iterated on their idea to turn it into a business that now generates hundreds of thousand of dollars in revenue. Topics covered include growth and revenue goals, building a valuable product through customer research, making good hires, managing psychology as a founder, customers willingness to pay for B2B SaaS product despite price increase, and advice and story sharing from Andy Cook of Tettra.
Timing and channel fit are crucial for startup success, as Tetra's pivot to a freemium model and focus on content marketing and integrations generated qualified leads and accelerated growth.
Building a strong team with transparent communication and empowering individuals with growth opportunities is essential for collective ownership in company growth.
Integrating with popular messaging platforms, like Slack, can significantly increase product adoption and usage by leveraging existing user bases and habit loops.
Deep dives
Tetra: Wiki software for knowledge sharing in teams
Tetra is a wiki software designed to help teams share knowledge. It aggregates scattered documents, emails, chat logs, GitHub issues, and more into a centralized repository. The software integrates with popular chat tools like Slack, making knowledge easily accessible for team members. Tetra's focus is on streamlining onboarding processes and providing quick answers to repetitive questions, allowing teams to ramp up new members faster and align them with the mission. With a monthly recurring revenue (MRR) of $40,000, Tetra aims to reach $500,000 annual recurring revenue (ARR) and beyond.
The importance of timing and channel fit in startup success
Tetra's early experiences highlighted the significance of timing and channel fit in startup success. Initially, they pursued an outside sales approach with a direct sales model, but it proved challenging and unsustainable due to pricing limitations and the simplicity of the product. Recognizing that startup founders and engineers prefer trying out products themselves, Tetra pivoted to a freemium model, allowing potential customers to explore the product independently. They found success through content marketing and integrations, engaging their target audience and generating qualified leads. Understanding the dynamics of product-market-channel model fit and finding sustainable acquisition channels has been crucial for Tetra's growth.
Building a team and the importance of transparency
As Tetra grew, the co-founders understood the significance of building a strong team. They focused on hiring individuals with potential energy, providing opportunities for growth and allowing them to take on meaningful roles. Transparent communication became a key aspect of Tetra's culture, with information and decision-making processes shared openly among the team. By centralizing knowledge and keeping everyone informed, Tetra enables better decision-making and collective ownership in the company's growth. Additionally, the co-founders emphasized networking, mentorship, and learning from other founders as valuable sources of guidance and support.
Importance of Integrating with Slack
The podcast episode discusses the significance of integrating with the popular messaging platform Slack. The hosts highlight how they initially struggled to engage users with their product until they connected it with Slack. By leveraging the existing user base and habit loops of Slack users, they were able to gain traction and attract big companies as early adopters. This experience taught them the importance of finding ways to integrate their product into people's existing workflows to increase adoption and usage.
Discovering the Right Product-Market Fit
In the podcast, the hosts recount their journey of discovering the right product-market fit. They emphasize the challenges of accurately understanding customer needs during the early stages of a venture. While initial customer feedback might be positive, it is often aspirational and doesn't reflect true use and engagement. The hosts highlight the importance of persistent customer engagement, continuous product iteration, and the ability to pivot based on customer insights. Integrity and knowing when to scrap an ineffective product and rebuild a new version allowed them to align their product with the needs of their target market.
Rather than jump immediately into writing code, Andy Cook (@AndyGCook) and his cofounder Nelson (@nelsonjoyce) began their journey by spending weeks talking to and learning from potential customers. This wasn't their first time around the startup block. But to their surprise, when they finished their product and it was time for people to start using it, nobody wanted to. Learn how they iterated on their idea to turn it into a business that now generates hundreds of thousand of dollars in revenue.
Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/077-andy-cook-of-tettra
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