“There’s often a desire to keep adding features because ‘Oh wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this or that?’ The reality is if a customer is only spending five minutes with your product, they’re only going to interact with a very tiny subset of your feature set. And so, you’re better off usually improving something that 80% of [customers] interact with that is really core than things around the edges that are more functionality.” - Phil Kimmey
We are very excited to be joined by Phil Kimmey, one of the co-founders of Rover (and a frequent member of various 30 under 30 lists), who designed Rover in its infant stages at a Startup Weekend! In this episode, we dive into Rover’s initial design, how the business model was proved, and wrap up with a lengthy discussion on Value-Add Features vs Data-Driven Features. Phil also provides his opinion on what makes new tech and development teams successful and explains why PayPal still sends Rover’s monthly summary statements to his parent’s house.
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Links from the Show:
Conjoined Triangles of Success
The Outsiders Book Club Discussion with author Will Thorndike
Primer on SPACs with Kevin Hartz and Troy Steckenrider of A* and AONE
Recording -- 7 Powers Book Club Discussion with Hamilton Helmer
VC Fundamentals Part 2: Investment Decision Making
Arming the Restaurant Rebels with Tock CEO Nick Kokonas
VC Fundamentals: Consumer Investing Master Class with Sarah Tavel, General Partner at Benchmark
VC Fundamentals Part 1: Sourcing
Pricing: everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask, with ProfitWell CEO Patrick Campbell
High-performance Hiring & Interviewing with former Amazon Worldwide GM of Prime Membership, Anna Collins
The Jason Calacanis Special (cont.)
Adapting: Mystery - How to Grow When Your Original Business Goes to Zero (with cofounders Shane Kovalsky & Vince Coppola)
Everything you need to know about Pre-Seed (with Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures)
Remote Work, No-Code, and Products that Sell Themselves (w/ Zapier CEO Wade Foster)
Reverse Interview: Acquired Strategy, with Nathan Baschez of Divinations (& former Gimlet Media + Substack)
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (with Chetan Puttagunta, General Partner at Benchmark)
Cameo CEO Steven Galanis on building the first non-advertising driven social media company (at least in the US!)
Building Webflow, and the No-Code Movement (with Vlad Magdalin, Co-Founder and CEO)
Early Stage and Enterprise Investing (with Chetan Puttagunta, General Partner at Benchmark)
Chewse CEO Tracy Lawrence on growing both as a company and a founder
Marketplaces Deep Dive with Ramesh Johari
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