Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Alex Ross is the co-founder & CEO at Gregarious, Inc. Gregarious is the company behind Greg, an app dedicated to helping people grow healthier and happier plants. Greg’s community has grown from 100 beta users in August 2020 to over 50,000 monthly active users today.Alex graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied data science and statistics at MIT. Alex has worked for companies such as Cisco, The Daily Aztec, and Cannon Trading.Prior to founding Gregarious, Alex spent 4 years as Director of Engineering at Tinder. Alex also co-founded Enplug, a digital signage company that was acquired earlier this year.In this episode, you’ll learn:
The two critical steps in making a successful app
An ingenious strategy for partnering your app with retail companies
Why you should involve your customers in content creation
Links & Resources
Tinder
Enplug
fitbod app


Y Combinator (YC)
Alex Ross’ Links
Greg app

Alex’s Twitter: @AreteRoss

Job opportunities at Gregarious

Alex’s LinkedIn

Gregarious, Inc. on LinkedIn

Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingRevenueCat: https://twitter.com/RevenueCatSub Club: https://twitter.com/SubClubHQEpisode TranscriptAlex: 00:00:00The two steps in making a successful app business are make something worth using, and then put it in front of the people who would use it.If you have a plant, and you don’t know what to do with it, we solve that problem.So, what we did is we reached out to a bunch of plant retailers, “Hey, we will help your customers have a positive outcome with your product.”Can you put in our little QR code? And now when these retailers ship out a new plant, every single one of them has this little QR code in it.It led to our first 15,000 users, I’d say. David: 00:00:30Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. I’m your host, David Bernard. And with me as always, Jacob Eiting. Hello, Jacob.Jacob: 00:00:53Happy to be here. David: 00:00:55You sound incredibly happy.Jacob: 00:00:57It’s great. It’s a Friday, David. The sun is shining. They’re grilling a bunch of chickens in my hometown. I got nothing to complain about. It’s gonna be great.David: 00:01:05Our guest today is Alex Ross, founder and CEO at Gregarious, makers of Greg, an app to help you grow healthier and happier plants. Prior to founding Gregarious Alex spent four years as director of engineering at Tinder.Alex also co-founded Enplug, a digital signage company that was acquired earlier this year. Welcome to the podcast, Alex.Alex: 00:01:27Thank you guys. Good to see you. Thanks, David, Jacob.Jacob: 00:01:29Hi. David: 00:01:30So, I’m going to try really hard this whole podcast and not call you Greg, but I’ve made that mistake.Jacob: 00:01:36I was thinking like, I get like annoying company name questions. Sometimes. I’m like, I’m sure you get more worse than me.Alex: 00:01:43But I’m considering just legally adopting Greg as alias or something. Jacob: 00:01:48Yeah. You know, I mean, that’s a news cycle right there. A little bit of earned PR. David: 00:01:55So I wanted to ask you, so obviously, you know, director of engineering at Tinder that’s, I mean, what a rocket ship that must’ve been quite a wild ride. So, tell me a little bit about, about how you ended up at Tinder and then, you know, if you do have any fun, war stories from there, that’d be great to hear. Alex: 00:02:16Yeah, definitely. It was a rocket ship. Definitely some war stories, some wins, some losses. So, I came across Tinder and I was looking to get into like a consumer application. so I was interviewing with Uber and Twitter, and then I came across Tinder on an angel list. Actually the head of recruiting at the time reached out to me and I kind of took it on a whim.To be honest, I had not used the app before, before even interviewing or anything. that’s kind of a challenge for Tinder is like, do you, how many of the teammates need to use Tinder? Because a