00:10:24 · Sid Yadav
That's what the teachable experience meant to me, which is, one, falling in love with the creator space, and two, getting to level up as a human being, as a manager, as a leader. At Teachable, when we first started in 2014, no one was using the word creator. We called them online educators. After I left Teachable, this was in early twenty nineteen, I knew that I wanted to build something in this space, and I knew that I was gonna partner up with, two of my cofounders. I'd known these guys from the Teachable days. We've now worked together for about ten years. I knew who I was building company with. I knew what space I was gonna be in, but I didn't know what the idea was. During that day, we would do is we would try and talk to as many people. We would talk to them about what their day to day looked like in building a business. What were the opportunities that they were seeing? And what are the problems that we could help with by building a product? So Circle was not actually the first idea. We had other ideas like that. One idea was to make a bank for creators to be able to give them loans, and another idea was around education. What really ended up with us deciding on Circle as the community product eventually was what we found when we were talking to the initial customers was that community for a lot of them was very disjointed from what their intention was. So to give you an example, we spoke to a YouTuber who was a a teacher of the German language, who had an online course teaching primarily students how to learn German as a language. And he had a community on Slack that was entirely disjointed from where his members were, which was on their online course. That disjointed experience made us realize that there really needs to be one product that caters to all of these needs. So building a community online, being able to sell an online course, being able to run virtual or even in person events. That was the initial goal of Circle, which is really to build that unifying experience, build a home for all aspects of community, not just the chat experience. When we showed the mock ups to the people who are talking to us and we asked them, hey. Is this the product you would want?
00:12:23 · S0, S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S7
Ad[00:12:23] S0: This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini in Chrome is here for it. Ad[00:12:39] S1: Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses, setup required, compatibility, availability varies 18 plus. Ad[00:12:48] S2: You've been asked to run the company's social channels, but company content plays by its own set of rules. It needs a logo in the first three seconds, but it can't feel like an ad. It needs subtitles, except when it doesn't. It needs to run at two times speed and deliver a complex message simply, of course, within nine by 16. Ad[00:13:10] S3: Thankfully, your company has Canva, Ad[00:13:12] S2: so you can easily edit your video and every version of it. What will you Canva today? Ad[00:13:18] S4: This episode is brought to Ad[00:13:20] S5: you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Ad[00:13:42] S7: Hiring now? Then this
00:13:43 · S5, S9, S10
Ad[00:13:43] S5: is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Ad[00:13:47] S9: I hope I don't have to cancel again tonight. Chronic migraine means 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox, onabotulinum toxin a, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It is not approved for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. Botox, the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment, prevents, on average, eight to nine headache days a Ad[00:14:07] S10: month versus six to seven for placebo. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Ad[00:14:42] S9: Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 18044 to learn more.
00:14:48 · Sid Yadav
[00:14:48] S8: A lot of them said yes. A lot of them wanted to commit before we even built the product to becoming a paying customer. That was very exciting. You know, we could build an education business, but that's not our expertise. We could build a bank for creators, but we're not finance people. But we know how to build a SaaS product, which is an all in one platform for creators. We actually built the first version of Circle, within three months after having the idea. So after we pitched to some of the people in our network, we found that a lot of them loved the idea. You know, I'm a designer. My cofounder's designer. So we designed the ideal product before we wrote a single line of code. We aligned on the the values of Circle as a company, and we booked ourselves an Airbnb in Santa Monica to build the MVP. Within three months, we had a very early version of Circle. It wasn't the best product, but it was enough for us to get our first customer and our first 10 customers that way. All of those customers, in fact, I'd say up to the first thousand plus customers had to be sold and onboarded by me or my two cofounders. So in the first year of Circle, I did a thousand demos myself. I would, compile the feedback. I would learn about what people are observing about the product that I'm showing them, what their needs are. That would inspire me to build. You know, part two of my day would be to code and to build a lot of the feedback that I gathered. We would evolve the product. We would make it better. We would then reach back out to some of those early demos and say, hey. It's a lot better now. Try it out. What do you think? And for the existing customers, we would solicit a lot of feedback. You know, all of the, I'd say, first 200 customers had my phone number, they could text me at any time. A lot of them were in our Slack giving us very concrete feedback. So the iteration cycle was extremely, extremely fast. And ultimately, it got to the point where now for a customer to sign up and set up Circle, it didn't need a demo from us. Someone could go to the website, create a community, set it up themselves, and if they need help, they could reach out to support. And only then did we launch the product publicly. So that took about nine months from the moment we started building it.
00:16:51 · Sid Yadav
What happened during those nine months is we've actually built up a wait list of thousands of people who are waiting for access to Circle. So there is word-of-mouth going around. A lot of our early community builders were talking about Circle publicly to their audience, which got a lot of other creators interested, in Circle and led us to finally launching the product. Post launching, we went from almost 0 to a million dollars in annual recurring revenue in three months. I've always seen myself as a generalist. You know, I started off as a writer. I then became an engineer, then became a designer, then became a PM, then a CEO. My advice to all young founders is to, number one, be curious and stay curious. It really starts with curiosity. It really starts with what are you interested in? What do you wanna learn more about? Before you even end up with a passion or a dream. And as you find yourself exploring that curiosity, you will find certain things that you're passionate about more than others. And the thing there that most people get tripped up on is, you know, when you start something, you're not very good at it. So when you start writing or when you start coding, you're not very good at it, but you know that you can be so much better. And the key to solving for that is to do it for the long term, see it as an infinite game. Don't see it as something you're just gonna learn overnight and master. Everything is very iterative. Everything takes time to build. You know, you have to put in your ten thousand hours or twenty thousand hours to really good... Get good at something. And really, if you're curious, your curiosity will keep you motivated every step of the way. There will be bumps on the road. There will be moments where you feel like you're not, succeeding at something or maybe you're not even getting better at something. And you do have to sometimes just suck it up and and then try to move on from that because that's what all the great people do. If you think about the the best sportsmen or the best athletes, the best actors, the best entrepreneurs, it's really in conquering the hurdles that they continue to get better and evolve as human beings. It's the journey that's that's most important. The destination is not incredibly important. In fact, there is no destination. We're all on a long term journey.
00:18:57 · Sid Yadav, S1, S11, S3
So to see it as a long term play instead of something that you're just gonna master and then make a bunch of money and retire, I think will go a long way. Ad[00:19:42] S1: The secret society of semi homemade, listen up. Sam's Club has premade dishes for a Thanksgiving feast that's ready in two hours, all while tasting suspiciously homemade. Ad[00:19:53] S8: Come join us. Ad[00:19:54] S1: Sam's Club. Ad[00:19:55] S11: Individual oven times may vary. Ad[00:19:57] S3: Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Ad[00:20:09] S8: Pricing participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Ad[00:20:12] S11: Now at Kroger, your points go even further. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, it all adds up to more ways to save. Because we know every dollar matters. That's why we're committed to making every shopping trip work harder for you. Kroger, fresh for everyone.