Matt Ronge is the co-founder and CEO at Astropad, a product that turns your iPad into a second screen both on Windows and Mac, started back in 2015. Back in 2019, their business was almost destroyed when Apple launched a feature that almost made Astropad defunct. What did this lead Matt and his team to do? Pivot and find a new idea? Lay off the team? Absolutely not. They doubled down on their product. Through challenges with big tech, raising kickstarter funding and building physical products, Matt has been on quite the journey with Astropad and we’re going to dive into all of that today, along with a mini-masterclass on PR.What we covered in this episode:
Origins of Astropad
Having two technical co-founders
How they tackled marketing with no prior knowledge
Most useful books to learn the basics
22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
Burned Out Blogger's Guide to PR


How Matt leveraged PR in the early days
How indie hackers can use PR for their projects
Size of Astropad in 2022
Why they built a hardware product
How to get into building hardware
The benefits of hardware products
How Apple stole their product
How they saved their business after being crushed by Apple
Recommendations
Book: Radical Candour, The Making of a Manager

Podcast: Dithering

Indie Hacker: Monica Lent

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