Jordan Hansen, founder of Cobalt Intelligence, shares his unexpected path to becoming a SaaS entrepreneur. He discusses how his company automates verification for alternative lending using public data via API. Jordan reflects on the emotional shift from corporate life to self-employment and highlights the importance of community and mentorship from TinySeed. The conversation also touches on navigating product-market fit, the challenges of content creation, and why focusing on revenue over subscriber count is key for startup success.
34:18
forum Ask episode
web_stories AI Snips
view_agenda Chapters
auto_awesome Transcript
info_circle Episode notes
question_answer ANECDOTE
SaaS at Lenovo
Jordan Hansen worked at Lenovo, building a SaaS product.
He found the process difficult due to corporate red tape and restrictions.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Niche Down
Choose a niche that isn't overly crowded.
This allows you to stand out and become an expert.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Content Creation Journey
Jordan Hansen started creating content about web scraping, initially through blog posts and later YouTube videos.
Despite minimal initial views, he persisted, leading to opportunities and eventual business growth.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
In episode 703, Rob Walling interviews Jordan Hansen, founder of Cobalt Intelligence. They dive into Jordan's unexpected journey into SaaS and the growth of his company, which specializes in business verification through API. Jordan reflects on quitting his job to pursue his startup and the benefits of community and mentorship he has received from TinySeed.
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:
2:30 – What does Cobalt Intelligence offer?
5:45 – Team scale, market, and business origins
9:55 – Starting YouTube and finding motivation to continually publish
13:27 – Working with a savings runway and applying to TinySeed
23:50 – Finding product-market fit
26:58 – Unlisting content to align with business goals
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!
Startups For the Rest of Us