On today’s Tank Talk! We welcome Aaron Upright, co-founder of ZenHub to talk about “From Bootstrapped to Venture Backed.”
Aaron’s Background:
Aaron Upright is the cofounder of ZenHub a Vancouver and SF Based startup that was spun out of the incubator Axiom Zen which is also famous for starting Dapper Labs the creators of CryptoKitties and NBA TopShot. ZenHub is a powerful software platform that injects advanced project management functionality seamlessly into the GitHub interface, making centralized collaboration on GitHub faster, more visual, and less cluttered for engineers and developers.
In this episode we discuss:
01:45 ZenHub’s origins as a side project
03:57 The aha moment
05:52 The decision to pivot from side project to full time pursuit
06:51 Axiom Zen as an incubator experience
10:05 Getting ten paying customers on their first day
12:16 The decision to focus on GitHub
14:55 Bootstrapping for their first years
16:49 The discipline required when you are self-funded
18:56 How being a part of a larger ecosystem lessens the need for marketing
20:17 Challenges of recruiting while bootstrapped
25:09 Deciding to take VC money
28:18 The size of the opportunity now with VC money
30:21 ZenHub use cases
32:20 Challenge of scaling culture
34:47 The Vancouver startup ecosystem
Book Aaron recommends:
The Fish That Ate The Whale by Rich Cohen
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Aaron Upright, cofounder of ZenHub discusses going from Bootstrapped to Venture Backed, Tank Talks Episode 033