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Startups For the Rest of Us

Episode 599 | Finding the Bootstrapper Hockey Stick

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Management, Entrepreneurship, Business, Marketing

4.8 • 792 Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In episode 599, Rob Walling chats with Dominic “Dom” and Tracy Phillips of CodeSubmit. CodeSubmit provides a library of real-world, take-home tasks in more than 60 coding languages. Some of their customers are Audi, Netflix, Carbon Health, 3M, and Apple. Dom and Tracy were also a part of the spring 2020 batch of TinySeed. During that year, they managed to 25x their MRR. In this episode, we’re digging into how they did that, what led to their bootstrapped hockey stick growth moment, what it is like working on a company with your spouse, and much more. Topics we cover:  [2:20] How Dom and Tracy came up with the idea for CodeSubmit  [6:59] The approach they used to build their product MVP on nights and weekends  [11:16] Running a startup with your spouse  [13:42] The catalyst that led to their hockey stick growth moment  [17:06] When they knew they had product market fit   [21:46] The number of different marketing channels they tried before they decided to double down on content marketing and SEO  [26:19] The biggest mistakes that hiring managers and recruiters make when vetting new developers via take-home challenges  [29:40] Thoughts on building a lifestyle business  Links from the Show: CodeSubmit Dominic Phillips @domrdy I Twitter Tracy Phillips @tracy_s9z I Twitter ScrapingBee If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you. Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the first ASMR episode of Startups for the rest of us.

0:05.0

If you don't know what ASMR is, look it up on YouTube.

0:07.0

My kids troll me with it all the time, and so I wanted to do that so I can show it to them later.

0:13.0

I hope you're having a great week.

0:15.0

Today I have an awesome conversation with the co-founders of Code Submit.

0:19.0

Code Submit is a SaaS with built-in take-home coding challenges

0:23.9

that allow you to identify great candidates using real tasks, not brain teasers. And the married

0:29.7

co-founders, Dominic and Tracy, were part of our Tiny Seed Batch two years ago. I think it was

0:35.1

2020. I can't even keep it straight anymore. But they made

0:38.3

amazing progress during that year. In fact, they 25xed their MRR during our batch year. And today

0:45.3

we dig into how they did that, that moment where they hit what I'm now dubbing the bootstrapper

0:50.0

hockey stick, working on a company as a couple, finding the right marketing channel that allowed

0:54.8

them to do this, and of course, the recurring segment, how did you know when you had product

0:59.7

market fit? So without further ado, let's dive into our conversation. Tracy and Dom, welcome to startups for the rest of us.

1:16.9

Thanks for having us.

1:17.7

We're all, really excited.

1:18.5

Thanks for having us.

1:19.8

Yeah, it's great to have you on the show.

1:22.3

You are the founders of code submit.

1:24.1

It's codsubmit.io.

1:26.3

Your H1 is make better hiring decisions with take-home coding challenges.

1:31.2

Identify great candidates using real tasks, not brain teasers. So I like to give listeners an idea

...

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