Jeremy Thiessen is an entrepreneur. In his early journey, his first company failed because he wasn’t able to grow it fast enough. Since then, he has been involved in numerous companies and has learned from his first failure. He is currently running Rogue Technologies.
He has been working with his co-founder for 10 years now, and they both are technical people. For them, focusing intently on creating the product was awesome for them. The problem was, they didn’t take the time to invest in sales and marketing.
To create a product and grow it is one problem. The other is to deliver it to your customers. At the end of the day, you need to have solutions for both problems in order to grow a company.
Before building a startup, build an audience, build a community in the space that you want to sell to. It’s important to get to know people while you’re building your product. Don’t make a product for yourself, but do it for others since they are an important part of the equation.
He says that as soon as he adds a landing page into the mix, he would have to deal with it because it could prompt more problems. He says he could make one, but he’s putting all his assumptions into the site.
Jeremy says that if he’s talking to a person about a product, he is able to be more engaging and straightforward with what he’s selling. If the person isn’t seeking his product, he can further the conversation to find out what it is that the person is wanting and determines if it aligns with what he could create.
The company did virtual reality for real estate. The product was a way to change how real estate worked by letting you virtually walkthrough a house without visiting the home.
They received feedback from realtors to see if they would use the product. They would, but there were two problems. First, how did they get access to the houses? Second, his company couldn’t call realtors randomly because they may already have the information that they need for a home newly on the market.
He says that cold calling is hard, but he found out that most realtors are pretty talkative. He says it’s important to get straight to the point and ask good questions. Sometimes you will get hung up on or yelled at, but more often, you will have people talking to you when you offer them help.
Jeremy states that you still have the same reactions as you would from cold calling, but minus the yelling part since you’re in a public setting. You will have a higher chance of someone willing to talk to you in person.
It’s similar to Webflow, but Rogue Tech is more functionality based. In the long run, it’s building a platform for someone building a SaaS website, marketplace, or complex website without coding.
Jeremy says that pricing is client dependent. Since entrepreneurs and startups do not have a lot of money, they are more price sensitive. He says that when it comes to small businesses, it’s a different price and dynamic.
No matter what, Jeremy and his partners have a business that they can keep developing and growing as a company. They can either become a super efficient web developer company or branch out and offer a no code platform.
Figure out your target customer. Before you start building anything, you need to at least have an idea of who wants your product, where to find them, and how to engage them. If you have all that information, then don't wait, call them and start selling your product!
Jeremy usually declines any potential client that does not have a clue about this target customer.