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How Did Pat Walls Go From Delite to Starter Story? · The Failory Podcast

The Failory Podcast

Turning a Side Hustle into a $9k/mo Business, with Pat Walls from Starter Story

Pat Walls (@thepatwalls) is the founder of Starter Story, a site interviewing successful entrepreneurs, and Pigeon, a Gmail CRM extension. Prior to this, he co-founded Delite, a SaaS platform for B2B wholesale orders, that would shut down later on. From graduating from UCSB with a degree in economics to learning to code, find out how Pat’s drive for a new…

Notes

Who Is Pat Walls, Founder of Starter Story? at 2:04

Pat Walls founded Starter Story, interviews with people who have built businesses, and Pigeon, a Gmail tool he describes as a CRM. Full answer
How Did Pat Walls Go From Economics at UCSB to Writing Software? at 3:01

Pat Walls says he never knew what he wanted. Full answer
Why Did Pat Walls Leave Salaried Engineering to Start Companies? at 9:41

Pat Walls says leaving a salary was another turn of the same habit: find the next challenge. Full answer
What Was Delite (pat's Failed Startup) at 11:10

Brandon does his typical question of asking the founders how would they describe their startups to a 10-years-old person. Full answer
Why Did Pat Walls and His Roommate Start Delite? at 12:19

About six months after a coding bootcamp, Pat Walls was a full-time software engineer on a roughly nine-to-four schedule. Full answer
Why Did Pat Walls Say Delite Failed? at 15:47

Pat Walls says Delite was a cool idea rather than something buyers had to have. He and his co-founder did ask, and people said they wanted Delite. Full answer
Why Did Y Combinator Rejected Pat at 16:51

Pat has applied to Y Combinator twice and has been rejected in both of them. He shares the story behind applying to YC and his view about funded startups. Full answer
Why Does Pat Walls Say Businesses Pay, Consumers Do Not? at 22:54

Comparing Delite's buyers with consumer subscriptions, Pat Walls says a bootstrapped founder will usually collect money from other operators more easily than… Full answer
What Personal Mistakes Does Pat Walls Blame for Delite's Shutdown? at 24:58

Besides the market problems, Pat Walls names two mistakes at Delite that he thinks were avoidable. Full answer
How Did Pat Walls Go From Delite to Starter Story? at 26:53

Pat Walls ended Delite soon after a Y Combinator rejection. The will was gone, and the idea had belonged to his roommate. He still wanted to start something. Full answer
What Delite Lesson Did Pat Walls Use When He Built Starter Story? at 31:34

The Delite fact Pat Walls carried into Starter Story was that nobody used Delite. Starter Story was the opposite. Full answer
How Has Pat Grown Starter Story at 33:45

Pat shares the behind scenes of getting the first interviews, going viral on Reddit and Hacker News, building an email list and growing a content site. Full answer
Why Did Pat Walls Quit His Job the Day After a 24-hour Product Launch? at 37:10

Pat Walls ran Starter Story for a year before leaving his job. Full answer
What's the 24-hour Startup Challenge at 40:10

Pat shares the story of his 24-hour startup and how the success of it motivated him to start a challenge for people to do the same, in which +200… Full answer
How Has Pat Gone Viral So Many Times at 46:20

Brandon asks Pat about the science behind going viral in Reddit and Hacker News with what he publishes on his site. Full answer
Why Does Pat Walls Make Starter Story Founders Publish Their Revenue? at 50:52

Pat Walls says a revenue figure is the point of Starter Story. A founder who wants the front page has to say what they make. Full answer

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