74 min listen
How I failed: We were playing the wrong game, with Jonathan Anderson
How I failed: We were playing the wrong game, with Jonathan Anderson
ratings:
Length:
13 minutes
Released:
Oct 27, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Jonathan Anderson is the co-founder and CEO of Candu, a no-code platform that helps people build their own products. They are used by companies likeAdobe, Thought Industries, and Gorgias and have raised over five million dollars.
But his first business wasn’t such a success. In 2011, when Jonathan was a student at Stanford University in a CleanTech programme, he came up with the idea for a smart thermostat controlled by your smartphone with a couple of his fellow students. The problem they’d identified was that programmable thermostats at the time were really hard to use meaning customers just didn’t do it.
It was early days for the smartphone but also exciting times. They realised they could use the GPS on customer’s smartphones to say when they were coming in and out of their homes, making heating much more efficient. After securing twenty thousand pounds with convertible note financing, they worked with a Chinese supplier to build a prototype. They were pumped to be at the forefront of the revolution in household technology
But they’d made a fundamental mistake.
Listen to find out what.
If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better?
hello@secretleaders.com
Sponsor links:
quickbooks.co.uk/secretleaders
But his first business wasn’t such a success. In 2011, when Jonathan was a student at Stanford University in a CleanTech programme, he came up with the idea for a smart thermostat controlled by your smartphone with a couple of his fellow students. The problem they’d identified was that programmable thermostats at the time were really hard to use meaning customers just didn’t do it.
It was early days for the smartphone but also exciting times. They realised they could use the GPS on customer’s smartphones to say when they were coming in and out of their homes, making heating much more efficient. After securing twenty thousand pounds with convertible note financing, they worked with a Chinese supplier to build a prototype. They were pumped to be at the forefront of the revolution in household technology
But they’d made a fundamental mistake.
Listen to find out what.
If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better?
hello@secretleaders.com
Sponsor links:
quickbooks.co.uk/secretleaders
Released:
Oct 27, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Moonpig: Nick Jenkins and the £120m card company: Nick Jenkins is the founder of Moonpig.com - the wildly successful personalised E card company that sold for £120m to photo printing giants, Photobox in 2011. More recently he’s been an avid angel investor which saw him becoming more of a household name every sunday night as a dragon on BBC1’s Dragon’s Den. As both his own seed investor, and a sole founder - he shares his unique journey from startup to exit, and we learn about his background, and indeed how he got started on the founder ladder.But it wasn’t all smooth sailing - like many, he’s failed along the way, and he also went all in with 100% of the money he’d made in his career. by Secret Leaders with Dan Murray-Serter