Summary

Mike Preuss and Kyle covers topics such as their diverse range of hobbies, the early stages of building Visible, the challenges and pivots they faced, and finding balance as a founder. They discuss the importance of trusting your gut, the struggle of market sizing and messaging, and the shift from selling to investors to selling to founders. They also touch on the growth of Visible and the balance between work and personal life. The conversation concludes with a discussion on remote teams and maintaining culture.

Mike discusses the challenges and strategies of building a remote-only business. He emphasizes the importance of off-sites and intentional communication in creating a strong remote culture. Preuss also shares his key takeaways for founders, including trusting your gut, moving faster, not being afraid to burn cash, and charging more. The conversation covers topics such as pricing and packaging, growth marketing strategies, and the future plans for Visible.

Takeaways

• Trusting your gut is important as a founder, even when faced with doubt and self-doubt.
• Market sizing and messaging can be challenging, and it's important to pivot and adapt to find the right customer fit.
• Visible experienced growth and success by focusing on selling to founders and providing a product that meets their needs.
• Finding balance between work and personal life is an ongoing process, especially as a founder.
• Remote teams can maintain culture and collaboration through intentional efforts and a distributed work model. Building a remote-only business requires intentional communication and a strong remote culture.
• Trust your gut, move faster, and don't be afraid to burn cash.
• Charge more for your product or service and be open to testing and raising prices.
• Focus on one or two key marketing channels that work best for your business.
• Create repeatability and predictability in your sales process.
• The journey from zero to one is the most rewarding and exciting part of building a business.

Meet Teja Yenamandra
Founder & CEO of Gun.io ( @gunio )

• Gun.io - World-class engineering talent, on tap. 🤠 - http://gun.io
• Gun.io - X - https://x.com/gundotio
• Teja - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejayenamandra

Summary

Teja and Kyle discuss the early days of building a startup and the mindset required to be successful. They talk about the challenges of starting a business with limited resources and the need to be scrappy and resourceful.

Teja shares his experience of burning through savings and taking on personal debt to fund the business. They also discuss the importance of having a strong support system and a team that can cover different areas of the business.

Despite the challenges and doubts that arise along the way, Teja emphasizes the need to stay focused on the long-term vision and make decisions based on the potential for success rather than the probabilistic likelihood of failure. Teja reflects on his journey as the CEO of Gun.io and shares his vision for the future of the company. He discusses the importance of building a long-term business and setting it up for success beyond his own involvement.

Teja also emphasizes the value of meeting with people and listening to their feedback to continuously improve the product. He envisions Gun.io as a modular platform that can support various hiring needs and provide value to both companies and developers. Overall, Teja's goal is to create a company that lasts for the next 90 years.

What is this? What does the title of this podcast even mean? What is a Stacklist?

All these questions, and more, will be answered in this very short five minute introduction. I look forward to a long and wonderful journey of interviewing founders and entrepreneurs to understand how they started and grew a company from idea into reality.