265. From vodka shots to Y Combinator: how a non-technical founder built a global tech company

If you’re a non-technical founder building your first product, this episode is for you.

In today’s lesson, Robyn Exton shares the real story of how she went from branding agency employee to founder of a global tech company — without writing a line of code.

She didn’t raise millions on day one. She learned by doing, made all the early-stage mistakes, and got her first users with vodka shots in nightclubs.

Now, her app has millions of users and she’s been through Y Combinator.

Robyn is the founder of HER, the dating app for queer women.

Listen to this episode to learn:

• How to build a tech product without knowing how to code

• What to do when your first version fails

• The difference between product design and graphic design (and why it matters)

• How to work with developers when you don’t speak tech

Whether you’re dreaming up your first MVP or struggling through version two, this is your honest guide to building in the dark — and making it work.

Chapters

00:00 — Vodka shots for downloads: the hustle begins

03:10 — From branding job to building a tech product

10:30 — The wake-up call: “You’re doing too many things”

14:00 — Fake research, failed MVP, and what she learned

27:20 — How a non-technical founder led a dev team

33:45 — Hiring a CTO, letting go of ego, and building trust

45:35 — Raising $1M before YC — and why she joined anyway

51:10 — Final audience Q&A: churn, product, and user feedback

FREE Course: 5 Tech Concepts Every Business Leader Needs To Know https://www.techfornontechies.co/freecourse

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Transcript

Robyn Exton - Speaker 1 (00:00.014)

So I would go to different club nights and a bunch of were like warehouse, kind of like underground parties. So licensing was pretty liberal. And so I would buy a bottle of vodka and agreed price from the bar. And then I would walk around the club and if people, would give them a shot if they downloaded the app then and there and created a profile. So I'd see them do the full journey. And then I'd also get to see like any issues they were having or what didn't make sense or if they were like excited about it.

Sophia Matveeva - Speaker 2

Welcome to the Tech for on Techies podcast. I'm your host, tech entrepreneur, executive coach at Chicago Booth MBA, Sophia Matveeva. My aim here is to help you have a great career in the digital age. In a time when even your coffee shop has an app, you simply have to speak tech.

On this podcast, I share core technology concepts, help you relate them to business outcomes, and most importantly, share practical advice on what you can do to become a digital leader today. If you want to have a great career in the digital age, this podcast is for you. Hello, smart people. How are you today? I've got a fun treat for you. You're going to hear how a non-technical founder built a global social network that's used by

millions of people. She also got into Y Combinator and she turned her early mistakes into one of the most successful apps in her category. You're going to hear from Robin Exden, the founder of Her, a dating app for queer women. And even if this product is not relevant to your life, listen to this interview and pay attention if you are a non-technical innovator who wants to have any kind of modicum of success, because you're going to learn

what a non-technical founder did step by step to build her company. You're also going to hear how she got her first users, which is relevant to anybody who wants to launch product. And you're going to hear how she dealt with her first failure and how that led to her ultimate success. We actually released an excerpt from this conversation five years ago. And that episode is one of our most downloaded episodes of all time. And so today,

Speaker 2 (02:15.52)
I'm releasing the full version for you and that has only been available to our members so far. And as always, if you get value from this episode, then give some value back. That's how karma works. Please leave this show a rating and a review wherever you get your podcast because honestly, it really does help me and my team carry on doing great work for you. And now let's enjoy learning from Robin.

My name is Robin. I'm the CEO and founder of Her. Her is a company that helps lesbian, bisexual, and queer people to connect with each other and connect with their community. So we primarily do that with our app. The app currently runs in 113 countries. It runs in three languages, on iOS and Android, and has about 5 and 1 million users. And then we also

Typically, we run events, so IRL events, as we used to call them, to bring people together in person. And those are currently on hold. And so we're doing lot of online events and exploring how to bring people together in groups online for video chatting and video events. Yeah. And so I'm often like, whoa, how the fuck did I get here? This is an unexpected career path. But I think that I didn't ever really particularly ever have a planned career path.

Like I, when I was younger, I was like interested in different fields and it would be like, I think I want to be a banker because I want make loads of money or I want to be a lawyer because that's maybe like a more intellectual version of being a banker with loads of money. Or I want to work in advertising because that's really creative. And that was just like growing up. And I think I went to university, spent three years getting drunk and partying and didn't, I didn't think for any period of time, really thought about my career afterwards. And then

I was at a 21st birthday party. was due to graduate in like two weeks. And yeah, hadn't thought at all about jobs or what I would do. And was sat next to someone I went to school with who was like, oh, have you got a job? I was like, no, not thinking about that yet. He was like, oh, I actually work for a recruitment firm and I work with this like advertising post-production company. Do you want to go work with them? And I was like, yeah, sure. Why not? Got nothing else to do.

Speaker 1 (04:30.018)
did the interview, got the job with them, graduated on the Wednesday, started with this company on the Monday. And everything just kind of like fell from one thing to the next after that. So when I was working with that group, one of our clients was the branding agency. And so I was working with them a lot. They then hired me. So I moved to the branding agency there. One of my clients was a dating business. And so I learned a bunch about the dating industry. And then that's, think there's like no doubt that like getting that.

background insight gave me a lot of, and I wasn't consciously aware of it, but it definitely fueled my understanding of the industry and desire to think about something for women in it. So yeah, decided to start making her. And so there was a couple of first years when we actually made a different product called Datch. And Datch was my first attempt at addressing a problem and trying to think about what was the best solution for it.

And that didn't work. so learned a lot, learned about the tech industry, learned about like what it was I was actually getting into. And then in 2015, we launched her. And so yeah, her is now five years old. That's right. Yeah. Five years old. And yeah, moved to the U S and now running the company out of here.

That's quite a journey, Robin. Sajik, I'm just curious, where is everybody right now? So I'm in London, Robin is in San Francisco. If you could just try where you are, that would be super fabulous. But I'm just curious, how did you go from you're in this branding agency and you're working with a dating agency client? I mean, there are lots of people who worked in branding agencies and have had dating agency clients. Not many of them have gone and said, yeah, I'm going to do this.

Like, how, what happened?

Speaker 1 (06:19.342)
think there was a bit of context and again, it's stuff that you're not fully conscious of. wasn't aware of it happening at the time and I now look back on it and go, oh, I think that's what was happening. So I think I was like 24, 25. And I think in my job, I was looking for something else. I had got to a point where I was quite comfortable doing what I was doing. I'd been asking the MD of the agency to like...

taught me through balance sheets and like explained to me how this company runs and how does this agency work. And I'd shifted roles slightly to try something different. Like personally in my life, I've started doing triathlons to like, I think there was like some kind of fix of like challenge and like a push that I was looking for. And then when we working with the agency, with the like dating website company, one of the guys in my agency who was working on a project with me, he was using Grindr and I think we just...

thought it was a really interesting problem. At the time, first inspiration was, this was before Tinder was out, so it was really like a match.com world and an eHarmony world. We were like, isn't it phenomenal that every dating site exists to make you believe that being single is bad and that you need to change that and you are going to be happier and better if you find another person and there's no company that celebrates being single. Grindr almost did quite a good job of that. It was empowering and

Like it felt like this cool secret tool that guys had that they could meet and do whatever the fuck they wanted and straight people didn't have it. And I was like, that's just like, it's amazing. And it's like incredible and fascinating to like see it. So me and that friend started and we were in the pub one night and like we'd pitched all these brand concepts to the client. They hadn't accepted any of them. didn't decide to go ahead with any of the like brand, like propositions that were suggested. so we were in the pub afterwards and.

We were chatting and me and my friend were like, you know, young and getting on our heels and being like, they're fucking idiots. We know everything. I'm like, I can't believe they didn't approve this. And our creative director was like, well, if you're so fucking clever, why don't you two go and make something then? And we were like, fine, we will. And so, yeah. And so like the next day me and this friend were chatting and we were like, why don't we do it? Why don't we actually like, we just believed in it. I think like Trudy believed that it was crazy. And so the two of us started working on.

Speaker 1 (08:43.17)
something and we'd like go for breakfast once a week and we'd make like PowerPoints about stuff and it was all driven around branding. So at the time I just didn't know anything about tech. So it was about like the positioning, the proposition, like what's the space we want to occupy.

So was the original thing kind of a fund dating app or fund dating community for Australian people or were you already?

and I were thinking about an idea. It was just, it was for everyone. So we didn't think about it based on any demographic. It was like, how do we celebrate singledom and celebrate the experience of being single? So I think for four or five months, we started developing this idea. We started trying to find different contractors to find out how much would it cost to build this thing, talking to different agencies. And as time went on, as it...

got closer, it of basically panned out between the two of us that I wanted to do more of this and was really enjoying it and want to spend more time on it and like had higher expectations. And my friend was like wanting to do less and less. And eventually he was just like, look, I'm going to actually move to Paris and join a different like agency. And I just want that kind of change in my life. So just that like path went in different directions. And I think, you know, it's good. hadn't got too far down the road, but it was like fine and easy to split. And we kind of agreed that.

And so then I was doing it myself and I realized like, I think the real upside of that was that I was suddenly like, I've got no one to talk to about this. I'm fully by myself. I need to find other folks to get advice from and figure out how the fuck I do this if I don't have that one friend to like bounce ideas around with. So I started looking up all the different meetup groups for different tech events. And so in London at the time, there was this one that was like burger Monday nights and there was still a drink about and

Speaker 1 (10:28.43)
the like, how can you use like events happening? So I started just going to a lot of those. Started asking friends that I knew if they knew anyone that worked in tech and just to like start having more conversations. And then I also got to one of my friends who was at the marketing agency with me. He had left a year previously to start a startup. So we reached out to him and he ended up coming like one of my closest friends. And so just, you know, people started.

sharing advice, explaining product, explaining how to think about product, what product design was, what engineering is, back end to front end, and just starting to understand a bit of vocabulary around it. Then one of the guys that I met at the burger night Monday, he was an engineer and he was definitely experienced. I don't think he had done YC, but he just knew his shit about startups and had a really good blog.

So I asked him for an invite session and I was still talking about the like generalist product at this point, not thinking about it. And he, he, he's Austrian and he was just like, this is not going to work. This is fucked. You can't do this. Like you're trying to do too many things. You're trying to think about like the lifestyle of like being single and the experience of being single and you're trying to match people. You've to just do one thing. And so after that conversation, I went home and I was like, down and out and I like drank a bottle of wine and was like, all right.

What should I be thinking about then here to make this compelling and make it mean something?

And you were working your full-time job while you were doing this. So it's the wine drinking and the tech meetups that are happening after work.

Speaker 1 (12:02.06)
Exactly. Yeah. Everything was after one in the evenings. and so then, yeah, I got really drunk and I was like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, one, there's like an industry and space that I know a hell of a lot more about, which is the lesbian and queer side, because I'm spending my social life there. I use this product called gay dog girls, which is horrific. It's something that I care about. It seems crazy to me that like no one's done here and it actually means something. It means something to me. And it will mean something to the space to do this and just do a dating app. That's really focused on that. So, that was my like drunk.

epiphany moment. so kind of like almost in the next week, was like, rethinking everything, was like, I keep the name the same? Like, I change what I'm doing? Like, what do want to do with this whole thing? And so then probably over the next like couple of months, started to like, realign and replan of like, right, this is actually what I, for me, like my drive and my purpose of what I want to look at. So yeah, so then started doing it. And so at that point, what was I doing?

So you decided to focus on that market that you knew, but what were you thinking of doing? Were you already thinking, okay, I want to build an app that does this, or were you thinking I want to do events? Because I'm just curious, you had the idea for a business and were you going to product first or were you going to test other ways of doing it first?

I definitely had in my head that I wanted to make an app on a... Because I was reading so much about startups, I was reading all these books about how to do customer development and how to validate your idea. So I did like a hundred different customer interviews and I pretended to myself that I was looking to see if that was the right solution. Really, I wasn't actually listening to what they were saying properly. I was just like, I'm building an I know that's what I'm going to do. But I think that's also because there were enough market examples to know

that it was validated by other businesses. was like, clearly this works. There are straight ones. There are gay ones. Why the fuck isn't there one for women? And so I didn't care what most people said because I was like, it's so fucking obvious. And it meant that I actually missed a bunch of other signals that I think I could have learned from because I was just so headstrong that that was what I needed to do. So if I talk to other founders now and was like, listen to the problem, try and understand the problem the best way you can.

Speaker 1 (14:16.242)
I assume it would still have ended up in the same place, but there were interesting things that I probably could have learned at the time, but it wasn't.

Do you going into that? by the way, Nassi Hai, he's one of these, hope you won't mind me saying this Nassi, a London Business School student at the moment, and interested in entrepreneurship and doing something himself. And I know we've talked about technology a lot. so I definitely also have the same thing. It's like, you you have an idea, and then you want to make an app. And then, you know, even if you're listening to other people, what they're saying, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah,

I'm also now like, okay, well, was that necessarily the right way to the right order? It's definitely a product that you took this not sure if it was the right order. So what are your learnings here?

think like at number one, is my number one to say as well is that like, although I can now look back and say, I wasn't paying attention to the signals, like ferocious like drive that I had that this was right was way more valuable than like opening up a bit of opportunity for that perspective. Like the fact that I was so headstrong, this was right, gave me so much forcing power. So I think it's like, it's not terrible if you do have that. There are so many upsides that come from that.

But I think the signals that I missed, things of just like understanding the actual like dating patterns of women. wasn't really listening to understand like what makes you say yes to a profile? Like what are you trying to message? What's your emotions when you are sending that? How do you feel? Do you feel empowered? Do you feel insecure? Because I think that would have just helped in thinking about the product experience, understanding those like feelings underneath. And while I was listening to them, I had this belief that like women,

Speaker 1 (16:08.174)
did want to have like empowered casual sex and have the opportunity to have hookups. And if I, when I asked people about it, they were like, fuck yeah, on a Friday night I wanna look at a map, look at a map of like where all the women are and be able to go there to be able to like make out with someone and hook up. And I was like, yes, it's exactly what I thought. But like actually if I've been asking the right questions, the reality was they love the idea of doing that, but rarely to never in their behavior do they actually do that.

And so I wasn't asking just like, so I was like, cool, you love it. And I wasn't like, cool, when was the last time you did it? Cause then it'd been like, like never. And it just would have like explained so much more to me. But I was like, yeah, great. They want that. They want this to happen. And so yeah, the kind of the actual experience and like the emotions and that like very like human research piece of it, I think would have been really helpful.

It's interesting that you say that because I think a lot of the people who come to tech from techies and listen to this kind of thing, they tend to definitely be the way I used to be when I first started. was like, you're so insecure about the fact that you don't know about technology, that you ignore everything else and that you basically over index on the tech and then actually forget the human aspect. I mean, I know that Stephanie put some spokes in my wheels and what you seem to be saying, don't let me.

put words in your mouth, but what you seem to be saying is understand the psychology and focus on that before you actually focus on technology. Is that right?

I think it's a combination of all of it. Even though I wasn't listening, the truth was there was the market validation there. I could see these other products that were succeeding for other demographics. The logic just made sense. The evidence was almost there. To even have an idea in the first place, you've already jumped to an execution. You already see it.

Speaker 1 (18:01.294)
It's really difficult to unwind that, especially if you're a first-time founder. think once you get onto your second or third business, you realize how easy it is to not get attached to it because you see how much it changes. And so there just really isn't any point. And you also realize that you almost are always wrong about what you first think is right. There is a real artistry to being able to talk to customers and really understand how they're feeling. even now, don't think I'm that great at it. I always give the excuse that our space is...

has a lot of psychology play in it because it's around your love emotions, it's around your insecurities. And so it's hard to work. If you're doing an enterprise SaaS software, you can probably ask someone, why did you click on buy? And they can probably tell you there's a little bit of psychology stuff going on there, but it's a much more rational decision. Whereas ours is so driven by emotions, you're really having to get under the psychology there. So that's why I still don't think I'm great at it. I'd much rather running stuff through data experiments now.

I think remembering the humanity and that it is ultimately people. Every time we do like a round of customer development, I'm always like, yes, this is so good. Just like remembering that these are just people and that is real commonality into what they want to get out of the product and what their experiences of using the product right now. So balance, a balance of all of it. It's the people and ideally when you have enough users, the data and being able to see like in bulk numbers, what's working and what's not working and being able to do fast tests.

so now let's go back to the origin story because what I'm wondering is that there you are. You've got your Austrian tech advisor who's made you cry, but he's also really made you focus and essentially made you focus on something that's now become a great success. But you still don't know much about technology and you are going to build this app. So what are the literally the first tech things that you do?

Bye!

Speaker 2 (19:55.054)
I remember that I was reading that you learned code. So could you talk us through literally kind of what do I do that?

Yeah. So at that point, there was a bunch of almost like seeds that are planted in different communities and spaces that was like connecting me with more tech people. I was still very certain that I needed to find a co-founder. So things that I was doing, I was going to all the events and meetups and like meeting people through that and trying to see if they would want to become a co-founder. I had started getting involved with Geek Girl Meetup, which was organized by one of my friends.

She was living, I think she was in Sweden at that point. so me and two other friends decided to set up like the London chapter of it and start operating these like monthly breakfasts. And that was a great way to like build a network and start meeting other women that were working in tech. And then, but they still hadn't found, so also like me more from the stuff before I'd been like saving a bunch of money. So I wasn't going out anymore. Like every weekend I was working on this or thinking about it or doing stuff like going to hackathons and things that again, would connect more people.

So I think by that point, I'd probably saved like 3 grand or 4 grand or something. I'd done some things at my agency. I'd like renegotiated to be on a contract. I think I knew that I wanted to get there but also on a contract, you're at more money. And so that bought my salary a bit. And then...

Yeah, and then I was looking for contractors to work on this. so I was trying to all these meetups, everyone that I met, even if they didn't want to be a co-founder, I was like, how much is this going to cost? And if you talk to agencies, they're like, it's 30 grand or 40 grand. And then I'd like speak to an individual and it like, it doesn't seem like it should be that much money. I don't really understand why this is coming out. And I just hated that I didn't understand what I was asking people to do. In my apartment, the building next door,

Speaker 1 (21:45.134)
I looked down on the ground and there was like a new company that was going into that building. I was like, Oh, wonder what it is. And it ended up being decoded. And so I emailed them and was like, Hey, I'm your neighbor. I looked up the courses and the courses were like, you know, a thousand pounds or something for a day. So I like, there's no way I can afford that. So I emailed them and said, like, I know, I don't know you, you don't know me, but I am your neighbor. If on any day someone drops out sick, I would love, I'll like, I won't go to work that day. I will come in and I would love to do this course.

coding course with you guys. And so I think like two weeks later, I got an email back from them. were like, hey, someone pulled out. Do you want to come? And I was already at the office. I like, I can't. then I think, but then we like chatted a bit and then like 10 days later it happened again. So I got to do a day with them, which was like my very first like learning to code stuff. And then I like definitely enjoyed it was like, felt that I had started to like understand a little bit of this structure, but it was like,

I need to know a lot more. I need to be able to do more of this. So I then set up to general assembly. It was their, I think it was their front end course, probably. Yeah, it was their front end web dev course, which I think was a three, I think it was three months. And so it was like two classes a week and then like a bunch of homework that you do between it. and it was, yeah, GA was much cheaper. So I did that. And so then at the same time, I was still trying to like get like

quotes and find out how much it costs to build this first agent product that I had. The guys that ended up building the very first version, I actually met, I was in the pub with some uni friends and I was like, this is what I'm doing. stay any after. like, I don't have anyone to do it. And someone that I'd gone to uni with was like, do you know I'm an engineer? I was like, no, I genuinely had no idea. Brilliant. Tell me, what do need to do? How much does this cost? Do know anyone? Can you build it?

He couldn't, but he knew he had a couple of friends who, one was a friend and one was a back end. And he was like, they can like tag team and put me together for you.

Speaker 2 (23:46.792)
We've done. We've-

the split between front end and back end. Sorry. have I broken up? I'll come back.

You had a front and a back end and they were from Bristol Uni Connections.

Yes, exactly. so I kind of had, and because of doing the course at the same time, I understood the difference between front end and back end and like what their responsibilities were and how I had to, you know, in that course, they'd talked about like database structure and database schemes and so I was like, okay, I get it. get where I need to think about the profile properties because that relates to like what we're going to put in the table. So it helped me like brief it a little bit better for them. It's still like a,

had a lot of flaws and problems, but yeah, it helped brief it better. And so they started building the first version. I was...

Speaker 2 (24:39.918)
question, did you already have a prototype? Like who made the prototype? Because somebody needs a prototype before you give it.

I just look at as a bunch of flat screens. I think also at the time, yes, this was like seven years ago, eight years ago, and things like InVision were around. No, do you what was using? I was using Balsamic. So used Balsamic wireframes and then I had like designs done for those screens.

So you taught yourself to make the designs.

How did I know? Who did I make those with? So I did the branding with one of the girls who is one of the designers at my agency.

Speaker 2 (25:18.382)
It's a pleasure to your background.

Yeah, she can hold the screens, but it was interesting because she was definitely like a graphic designer. So I think that was, you know, some of the stuff in the first part. And for me having to learn what is the difference between product design versus graphic design and how does that feel different in as an experience.

I had no idea because when I first started out, thought design was like fashion design or graphic. I didn't know that user experience design is actually about the intuition of where you put buttons. I didn't know that that was a thing. mean, nobody comes out of the womb knowing that that's a thing.

Yeah, but also the design language of product is so different. Even on the UI elements, there is a language that works inside touchable technology that is almost polar opposite to graphic design. Graphic design is striking and stark and powerful to get cut through and stand out. And that's the opposite of how you want a product to feel. It needs to feel bubbly, bouncy, touchable, playable. You really want to get it stuck in there. And you can tell there are some apps that are striking and beautiful.

that have had this more graphic input on it, but it's not super nice to use. It doesn't make you happy to get stuck in there. I think our first version was quite like that. I don't know, Material Design is an interesting place that sits in the middle of Google Android language because it's quite graphic to me at times. Anyway.

Speaker 2 (26:43.447)
You literally just described a lot of the e-commerce, like high fashion apps. Yes. Because they tend to be so focused on the editorial beauty that you actually can't use them.

Exactly. exactly.

Anyway, like it's

And media publications are a really good example of that. When you look at them, you're like, this just doesn't make sense digitally because they're to making their whole language is this like...

Yeah, need our help. So then you've got these screens, which are kind of made by graphic designer, but that's all you've got. And that's all you know at the time. And then you've got these two guys who are doing the backend and the frontend and you know how to brief them and you know how to kind of give them product specifications because you've done this GA course. Is that right?

Speaker 1 (27:14.594)
Sorry.

Speaker 1 (27:32.558)
Yeah, a bit. I have to give them a lot of credit as well. They were really great at helping to teach me and ask the right questions in a way that wasn't always like, this is scope creep. It's going above and beyond. think they knew the situation I was in. This was their first independent clients that they were taking on the side. They were up for probably going a bit above and beyond. If it was an agency, and the really challenging thing about any first-time founder going to an agency is that

You really don't know how to spec a product and you are not going to spec it fully. So there is going to be scope creep and an agency is already going to be too expensive for you. And then they're going to ask for like another 20 % on top of it when you will realize all the stuff that hasn't been thought through. So the guys were really flexible. helped, they helped teach me a lot more as well. and so we had this like first version that was being built, was getting ready. And as that was happening, I was doing, so was doing a lot more. I'd like, you know,

get up really early, do stuff before work, go to work on my lunch hour, I would jump out. At this stage, I was applying for pitch competitions. I was really getting very stuck into the startup scene side of it. In evenings, I'd go to the coding school or I'd go to different meetups. My whole life outside of work was consumed by it. Then as it looked like we were getting ready to submit to the App Store and I had prototypes of paying with it, the day that we submitted to the App Store was the day that I handed in my notice at my job.

And I like, great, here we go. So I did that. It went to the app store, it got approved, got published. And there was like, that's kind of like all launch day excitement and like getting it ready and then like no one uses it. I mean, meanwhile, I was like, you know, thinking a lot about the marketing and they had been doing marketing stuff in the background as well, like preparing for launch day and how do I get profiles on there and how do I like make it a good experience.

What we're doing, I remember we talked about you going to events before and I remember there was a story involving vodka shots.

Speaker 1 (29:26.934)
Yeah, so before the app was launched, did things that was all about just building an email list so that when it was live, I could tell people it was published, they should check it out. So I did things like that year at Pride, I went and took photographs of people, I put those photographs on the web. When I took the photograph, I gave them a card that said, here's where you can view the photos from. When they went there, there was like, enter your email to see the photos from Pride. And so they would enter that email. So I probably got like hundred emails from something like that.

I was doing a lot of building relationships with people on Twitter, finding people who had all the blogs. I started doing an email newsletter that was just around the queer nightlife scene in London. Then when it launched and it was out, that's when I started doing the more in-person experiential marketing. I would go to nightclubs. I was mapping all the different spaces of where are the lesbians of London, basically. I was very biased about my own experience.

loved the queer nightlife scene. I would go to different club nights and a bunch of them were warehouse underground parties. Licensing was pretty liberal. I would buy a bottle of vodka at an agreed price from the bar. Then I would walk around the club and I would give them a shot if they downloaded the app then and there and created a profile. I'd see them do the full journey.

And then I'd also get to see like any issues they were having or what didn't make sense or if they were like excited about it. So I did that for like a few months. I was probably starting to get press at starting trying to get press at that point. And I ended up actually so from decoded when I did the day with Katherine Parsons, who's the founder of there.

I met her, got on really well with her. We'd stayed friends since then and she had had so much press about like, decoded about the work that she was doing. I think after probably about like five or six months of doing that, I remember like asking her for an advice session being like, how do I do this? Like I've been trying to pitch journalists and actually I did it at General Assembly. did a PR, a one-off PR class there and I'd been pitching journalists, getting no response. Like no one wanted to write about it. And I had to talk with her and I...

Speaker 1 (31:37.238)
I can't even, like, she was like, look, what you're doing is the right stuff. It makes sense. It sounds like you're doing the right things. She was like, just stick with it. It's going to like come good. And then literally like the next day or something, like one of the ones came through and I was like, okay, whatever. This is just like all the stars aligned and like, it all came together at the right time. And then once I started getting press, press became like a good, like user acquisition channel. and then.

Facebook, right? Deeper than Facebook.

Sorry. Tube and vase back. And you know, at the time I had no money, but I had time. So it was like do anything that like, yeah, worked well for that. By this point, I think I'd run out of money. I was like, and so when I first started, I'd saved up a bootstrap fund of about 10,000, I think. And so that was the money I'd saved before I sold a bunch of things that I had. I'd like moved in with my dad for a little bit to save on a bit of rent. And then I won some money on the lottery.

Yeah, I won like three and a half thousand pounds. But it was like when you're trying to save 10, three and a half, it was loads, made like a really big difference. yeah, I had 10. I think like five of that went to the two guys who were building that first version. And so then I was paying rent, so I didn't have a job and I was like, I'm about to run out of money. So then I started working in a pub. And so I'd work in the pub, like on different shifts just to get enough money to like keep things ticking over.

At that time, you analyzing the usability and building another version? Because you have to pay people to do that. I'm assuming things were a bit difficult.

Speaker 1 (33:16.91)
We were, but what started to get more challenging was more that they didn't have the time to do the stuff that was needed. I, I say also at this point, I think I've been applying for a lot of grants and like doing a lot of pitch competitions to win. And I won various different amounts of like £1,000 or like £2,000. There's little top-ups that will come through that. So I think with the guys what happened, I can't recall this perfectly, but I think like I wanted to do more. And I was like, guys, you need to become co-founders. Let's do this. Let's like do this together. And they were just like, don't want that. Like it's not a...

product or like a space that we're super passionate about and we've kind of got our own thing to do. So I think I was faced with that reality of like, they're not going to become co-founders. They can do little things here and there. So we do little projects. It'd be like a few hundred quid for like a tiny update, something that was broken or a thing that I hadn't thought through of like, for example, I mean, this was actually partially intentional, but when we first built it, you couldn't close your account. So you'd have to just like delete the app, the account will stay active because we needed profiles.

So eventually I was like, have to create a closed account and we have to like... Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:23.513)
I had then started looking for like, who else am I going to get to do this? And I had found there was a guy that I had met at, what's it called? The Google, yeah, Google campus. And he was a Spanish guy who had a team of engineers in Spain, but was doing the like client development and getting clients in London. Cause it was just cheaper to work with a Spanish team. I really liked him. was like, great. You can do it for the price that like makes sense for me.

Google Campus in Shoreditch.

Speaker 1 (34:52.621)
that they took over the development of it. They actually rebuilt the whole thing from scratch in the end because you just any new engineering team, they want to own the code base and they hate working on other people's code. it was ultimately for me, it was still about the money. And I was like, Hey, you can do it to save money. That's fine. I was still doing more like, you know, London C &E staff, but was more confident, actually had something, I had a product. I was like talking about something legit. And then I think the next stage of like,

development stuff for me was I used to go to them. It's called the mobile Academy Mondays. Um, and, I met a girl through there. saw her coding and I was like, Oh my God, it's a woman that's coding. I'm like, she needs to come like work with me. And so I, uh, like made friends with her. Uh, she was a designer and she wanted to do, and she, and she was a designer and did front end development, but she didn't know how to build iOS apps and she wanted to learn how to do it. And I was like, cool, do it with me. That's fine. Great. Just like, come join me and be on my team. Um, she was like, yeah, cool.

How did you manage to pay her?

Um, uh, I just, I did pay her. it was through, like, I was working at the pub, which gave me bits. I probably was paying her like a few hundred quid here and there. So it wasn't full time. I was like, come work with me on like, you know, almost like a project basis. Like this is how much money I have. Um.

punish people and then you had this.

Speaker 1 (36:12.846)
girl. And I also had a girl who had joined, who was doing like community and like social media stuff and she was doing it for free. And so she had just come back from working at Disney to come back to the UK. I think I picked up that email through one of those like things that she knew about the app starting. And she emailed me and was like, Hey, I want to come do this with you. Like, I think it's really interesting. I want to come like, work with you and you don't have to pay me. And I was like, Oh my god, this is bloody godsend.

So was like the three of us. So then when we were at the point where the Spanish guy's product was about to go live, we had to do a data-based migration from the first product into the new one. And the guys on the Spanish team were basically saying they weren't going to do it. They were like, it just needs to be started from scratch because the migration is complicated and you don't have budget for that. And I was like,

Look, it's not much, but I built up like 800 or like maybe it was a thousand profiles or something by then. I was like, that really counts in this product and this experience. Like I need those people in there and they wouldn't do it. so Vez, who was the designer and front end person who was going to be learning iOS, her boyfriend was a backend developer and she was like, ask Rock, he'll help out and he'll help us do this. And so this was all like the night before Pride, like we were due to launch it at Pride.

Rock was doing the database migration that night so that we could publish it and have those profiles in the new product and be able to talk about it. And it got to like 4 a.m. and he was like, this is not going to work. There's problems with the front end. It's not displaying correctly. Like, stuff is wrong. he was like, I don't fucking care. This is going out at Pride. It will be there. And so he always said afterwards, he was like, you are so fucking mental.

about doing this and he was like, it was so crazy. That was exactly the kind of person that I wanted to work with. Like you were so dead set and passionate about doing it. And so in the end, Rock joined the team and he was my CTO for like six years. So it became like a really like long-term relationship and is definitely the closest thing to like co-founder that I had to do the company.

Speaker 2 (38:14.638)
people working with you together. That's interesting.

Yeah, we've been through a lot of ups and downs and I'm still, know, neither of them are in the company anymore. But they're just, you know, such an important part of my life and story and we worked so long together. stayed at company for a bit, but then it didn't work out. Like her and I weren't working well together. So we had to like manage that between the three of us. There was a lot of like, you know, unmentionable walls of stuff where Rock would say like, I'm not talking to Vez about this. I don't know anything about it. And I was like, okay, cool.

So we would kind of navigate it between the three of us, but it was generally fine. They're really cool. They were cool to work with and they managed it really well.

Interesting. So I'm just worried, does anybody have any questions? If you have questions, just write them in the chat box. Otherwise we will continue because I'm having a grand old time. You are so interesting. So then you've got this product and it launches on Pride and you've got a CTO whom you found it through. It's interesting how you were going to all these meetups and you're looking for this person and then they came but in a kind of unexpected way.

The first time I met him even in person, so Bez and I had met at Mobile Mondays and that Rock was part of a different startup team at the time that was in WIRA and in the first cohort that WIRA had ever done. And so they were having drinks one night and Bez was like, you want to come for drinks and you can meet Rock? And I was like, yeah, great. So met him and we chatted and that was kind of the first time I really learned about WIRA. So I then applied to join WIRA and to get into the next batch of people, which I...

Speaker 2 (39:55.032)
think they must have changed it now because they're very telecoms focused now.

Yeah. Yeah. And this, and you know, was like, it was like seven years ago. There was like, and it was very, very like different format. different to how most accelerators run. was definitely like an interesting poke. think they learned what is valuable about what they can offer. And that's what the Telefonica like network has. So it makes sense to do that. but yeah, so once then Rock had done that like project as a favor and then so he ended up leaving that team and then joining our team.

But that only happened once I had got into WIRA. And so I then had the money to be able to actually pay him a salary and pay Beth a salary and pay Emily, who was the community and social person, paid her a salary. when I started WIRA, it was just me. I guess it was all these other teams and it was literally just me on these big tables. And then I think after three weeks, there was then four of us who were working on it. And that's we had the WIRA money in.

Cool. So then you're working on this product and you've got the lady, Wes, doing the front end and you've got a boyfriend who's doing the back end.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:05.134)
She actually didn't end up doing the front end in the end because she started doing iOS and it was just like, it was complicated and actually we needed a lot of design stuff and she was just so fast at doing that because it was her competency. We ended up getting a different iOS dev. I don't know where I even got them from, but we had one guy who was like an intern basically and he was a student who'd been studying engineering and he ended up working with us for like three or four months for free. And then...

We did things like my friend who I said had been at the marketing agency. was like saying to him, I didn't have an iOS and I need someone. And he had someone on his team who was actually a backend dev, but wanted to learn iOS and they didn't have work from it at the time. So he was like, don't you just borrow him for like a month? So he came to work with us for a bit. then like so many just like weird hustling ways of like trying to get people to work on it. And they just always managed to be someone. I met through another girl who I've met who was a designer, her roommate was an iOS dev. So he did a contract with us for a bit.

And then in the end, Emily, who was our community person, when we were looking to hire an iOS person, she was like, I think my new roommate might be an iOS dev. He was, he was also at university, so he was like 18 or 19 when he joined the team. so he joined and he was our iOS eng for like a couple of years, I think.

Awesome. So actually speaking of communities, we've got a question from Emmett who first starts by saying good stuff and actually Nassi told us that this is very useful. So go us, I think go you me. So the question from Emmett is that when you are right at the beginning and you've only got a small number of users, so it's not enough of a community, how do you stop them from disengaging and becoming inactive before the community grows? And I know that identity, we definitely have that problem.

So we ended up, but for us, because it's professional stylists and users, we essentially could just be the stylists for a while. Where I don't know how you managed to do it. Were you just going on lots of dates?

Speaker 1 (43:10.126)
I think with any kind of marketplace interaction, it's always a bit of fake it till you make it as much as you can. think it's always that great case. they always talk about, they made all the fake accounts. I didn't actually do that. The very first day that we launched, I made about 12 different profiles, which was just all my high school friends, people I'd gone to school with. They weren't using the app, but it just looked like it wasn't completely empty.

There's a technical term for it.

Yeah.

Very number.

And then I think after that, like, there's just, there's got to be something to look at to almost engage with, even if they're not going to get the messaging and the chat function, like as quickly as you want them to, as long as there are profiles to look at, it will keep them coming back every now and then. And then I think really for like all businesses, it's just working out what comms channels do you have so that you as a company can keep them engaged in some way that they will give you another chance at a time. But I think also you just come to terms with like your first 5,000 users are not

Speaker 1 (44:14.804)
going to remain users, like they're going to come in and they're going to churn out just because they're not going to have a good experience. It's not a good product. But I think at the time I was just like, I just got to keep pushing this harder and harder and harder. And the more people that come in, the faster I will get over that line to when that is a very baseline of a critical mass of people that can actually create an experience for each other. But I think, one upside of building mobile products is you have push permissions. And so even if you, as long as they haven't deleted the app, like even if they haven't used the app for like one week or two weeks,

If they get a notification, they'll probably check it out and come out and see like what's been happening in the app. And hopefully stuff has changed in that time that they're like, oh, great. There's now loads more people for me to like or engage with or, you know, out a different way to connect.

Cool, thank you. So, Dan, can you tell us when you actually got to Y Combinator? Because I know that might be a jump, but I just want to make sure that we cover that because I people are going to be interested.

Yeah, yeah. So did. So at the end of WIRA, I raised a hundred thousand pounds. That was enough to like tide over the next period of time. We got our first office or worked out of my friend's office for a while, then got an office. And then I was trying to raise a seed round. And so I'd been trying to raise all across London, very little success from like angels from funds from anyone.

Yeah, it's a very conservative market here, especially if you make a consumer product and consumer products for women in London is not the place for you.

Speaker 1 (45:36.782)
Yeah. And so a friend who had like a friend of a friend had raised money from Alexis Ohanian from Reddit. And so I had asked him for an introduction to him. At the same time, I had like started, I'd done a pitch in the US in San Francisco and would have launched the app in San Francisco. And on that trip, like a bunch of people had offered me money, just like offer back from this pitch event. Like Dave McClure from 500 Startups was like, I'll write you a check for 75K.

Like other people were like, I'll cut you a check for 50K. I was just like, what the fuck is happening? Like in England, you're like, integer, everything. And here I'm not even asking, they're just offering it to me.

begging.

Speaker 2 (46:14.464)
event that you went to. Maybe we should all go, because of the flights.

I did one that was called Launch Festival and then I did Lesbians Who Tech and then just met other people, two other British founders that were over here. So I was just having coffees. It was meant to be a research trip, but the momentum started and I was like, right, think if I raise, not only is it not going well in the UK, but like the US people want to give us money and they see the potential. I should focus here. A friend in London had raised money from Alexis. I asked for the intro.

Because I was like Reddit is all about like community and community engagement interaction. It makes a lot of sense. And so in the end, Alexis, his fund initialized, led our seed round. And so we did, I raised a million dollars on that first seed round. A couple of months after we'd closed, Alexis sent me an email saying, hey, have ever thought about applying to Y Combinator? And I was like, why the fuck would I do that? I raised a million dollars. Like, why would I go there? So I was like, no, thanks.

And then a few weeks later I was like, sat on it. was like, wait, number one, like he definitely knows his shit a lot more than I do. And if he's suggesting it, it's probably a good reason why. And so I kind of rethought it and I was like, yeah, that seems like a good idea. I should do that. So I applied to YC, got through the, to the interview stage, but didn't get in the first time applied again for the next batch and then got in the second time. So we did that in the summer of 2015. So.

By this point, all of our other stuff was all on that, the old product. But I'd started to change it after we'd left Wira, we'd started to build what was then going to become her, because we'd learned a lot through the product experience. So we'd rebuilt her, her launched for the first time in February 2015. And then we did YC in the summer of 2015. So we just had her as this like new product that was out. It was a new experience, it had new features. So it was actually a really great time to do my combinator. Like you're much better off going there when you've got something.

Speaker 1 (48:05.45)
You've got a team to be able to execute and move really quickly. And you've got a starting point. It's not ideal if you're planning to build while you're in it because they're all about growth and rapid product iteration to hit product markets there or try and get there. So if you're just doing that first build, it's hard to get there.

How exciting. So I just want to take a question from Nassi who's saying, how much customer service work did you have to manage in the early days of the app being live?

Not too much. think at that point people kind of knew that we were really small and maybe the greater risk was that they just didn't send us anything. They just stopped using it. maybe it would have been better to have found it. And then I think it's almost, it's always like they're bad problems, but it's good problems. Like when it starts to become too much, it's because you are getting more users. And like when you start to get more and more challenging issues to tackle and support, it's because you're a lot.

That's what I found.

Speaker 2 (49:06.104)
So with Y Combinator, how much was heard different from that? Was it the same kind of proposition, but just a different user experience with different branding?

Yeah, was different branding. Things that I'd realized, like DATCH was very, it felt very relevant to young people. And it was all of what I thought was going to be about like casual sex and like hookups. And that just didn't land. There wasn't enough of a market to do that. So then it was understanding like, what is it women do want to do? Like, and then talking to customers again to actually understand that.

So her was much more, it was like the thesis was it was designed a lot more like Pinterest. And so your profiles were like these pin boards where you like added lots of pieces to it to explain who you were. It had the blog that ran in it and more like community of and stuff. So we had this like social component to it.

the groups as well, like interest groups.

Yeah. So it didn't start with those. It's like there was one interest group, which was like, you're all here. Here's your one interest group stuff here. And then we refined it to be the communities after that. So it was definitely, was, was just like an evolution of it. It's like the same thesis of like, queer women don't have a place to meet each other. Let's make that place. But yeah, the execution of it was different. And I think we just understood more what we were looking out for, which was like, how do women want to meet each other?

Speaker 1 (50:27.212)
like what is it is going to make them feel comfortable? How do we help them through this process? Because women just traditionally pretty terrible at doing that.

It's so interesting how you're talking in this version of the product about learning and kind of growing with the customers, which is a big contrast to the beginning, which is like, I want to do that, which I took, you know, the beginning was like, I know what it's going to be. It's going to be amazing. It was going to do that. And then you're like, I don't really know what it's going to be. Maybe it's to become something completely different, but which I think is like, what it takes you some and the business, the money also takes you.

Yeah, that's me. And I think it's just really reflective of like the different mentalities of the two worlds that I've had been in. Like branding and brand consultancy is all about have one idea and execute it ruthlessly at all costs, through all parts of your business. Tech is about like, have one idea and then change it every day after that. Like change every feature, every, like be willing to change your proposition at the drop of a hat because like stuff isn't quite working and like learn as you evolve it. So I think her was almost like once I've gone through that transition and understood.

like the way to approach business now in that field, what was the right way to do that?

Were your investors receptive to that evolution? Did they understand what was happening?

Speaker 1 (51:44.94)
Yeah, at that point, so did I raise? I guess I raised, I raised as part of explaining that her was coming. think it was like, we've got Datch and by Datch we'd got to like 30,000 users, think. So I'd like got to a decent, I'd been validated and it was like, cool, now I'm raising money to like really make her, like her is where it's going to be. I think they got that and like resonated with it. Cool.

So what do you think about actually the tech skills that you needed? Because after all, this is tech for non-techies. And I'm just curious, do you think your coding course was a necessary component? Or what should you have learned? What do you recommend other people who want to go from a non-technical background to founding a tech-enabled business? What should they learn, do you think?

It definitely helped. definitely recommend it. think everyone should learn that just to understand some core components, even if you're speccing a product or asking for a change to understand if it is like a one, sorry, my cat is like going off one. If it's like one line of code that you're changing or if it's like a whole system or architecture structure. I think that.

It would have like a small kind of course rather than let's go and do a full year thing.

I think people should continually be learning more and more about it. And I've definitely stopped learning more. just rely on the people on my team to teach me about it. But actually I know I have it today. Actually, I know every two weeks have a session with my CTO where he I'll just like ask him questions about me trying to understand. Like we use this different like CDN for image serving. And I was like, I actually don't understand what that is. Can you just explain to me what that is? And so I got more back into trying to learn more stuff around our like set up. Cause

Speaker 1 (53:29.332)
One loop that I went through is like when Rock was working on stuff, I was very control freaky at the time, I think, because I'd like thinking everyone was facing me and trying to like work out, we really doing this the most effective way? So I think the mistake that I made was that I didn't give him and like engineering the freedom to like make their own decisions and feel that sense of ownership. I always like stuck myself into that decision-making mode. It meant that Rock had to like educate me about a lot of things because I insisted on having my opinion in stuff.

I think that did end up helping me in the long run because I learned a lot through him and that ended up being the foundation of a lot of our relationship was he was often coaching me and teaching me a lot of tech stuff. So I definitely think that helped and I definitely recommend that people do that.

Yeah, I mean, I had exactly the same experience because I think at the beginning it is maybe you don't know what you don't know. And you also don't know how to work with people who are doing something that's so important, that's taking up so much cash and it feels like a black box. It's it's a, it's a frightening experience. Um, so like I would also put myself into processes where I really had no understanding and

Like the mark of a good CTO or good partner is somebody who actually calmly explains to you why you're wrong and what the situation is.

Yeah. And then over time, like as that like relationship got up to Mokunai, he would start to filter it by like, he would make that filter judgment of like, here's something you do need to know about. Like I need you to make this decision. And like when he, when he, did a like whole rebuild when we did her, so he was choosing what language to build it. And then he was like, I think you need to be part of this decision because ultimately if I'm not here in the future, or it's going to affect our hiring capabilities, like here are the languages that I'm thinking about, here are the differences between them. Like this is the kind of decision you should be involved with.

Speaker 1 (55:19.788)
What you shouldn't be involved with is like how I'm planning to like architect this because you don't understand the difference that it makes or what the different options are. And it would just take too long for you to learn that amount of stuff. So it's this fine balance of like learning what you should let go of and trust people because you trust their decision-making ability that they do make that decision for you. But then hopefully being able to ask questions, to learn about it, learn what they did choose, why that was right.

and then which decisions you should have an active say in because it affects the business and the growth of the business and what will happen in the business down the line.

So are there any particular books or YouTube channels or resources that you found or find useful?

I think all the YC stuff is great. And it's more on like the business side of it, not necessarily for the engineering side. But I think that they like Paul Graham's content, like YC has a startup school, which now has so much content. Yeah. And I used to do Code Academy stuff. Like I didn't know if that's still good. did the Stanford course that was online.

gone now. If we talk about the same one, was CS 101. Yeah. Did you have to change a square from like black to blue? Yeah. That took me ages. Yeah. Yeah. They've taken, maybe it's gone back online. That's interesting. I found that learning product management has been really helpful.

Speaker 2 (56:52.542)
And that's not something that I really needed with a job before I started working in tech, because, you know, why would you? So I found product management and understanding as an experience where I think as a non-technical person, the easiest things to understand and access because I found that, you know, taking a really long coding course, it can be such an investment of time that some, lot of the time you just don't.

You don't have the time. Cool. anything else that you want to add from technical people that are thinking? I think, you know, I'm seeing a lot of people who are going on their side of the point.

I'm seeing a lot of people who are working on their side hustles during isolation and I think they're thinking of starting their web-based businesses. So what advice would you have to them?

think kind of related even just to what you said, which is just like, just keep learning. Like there are so many resources and stuff online. There are so many courses, blog posts, like schools, online schools, one-off courses. There's so much that you can do. Just keep learning. Like don't expect to learn it all in one go. It's incremental. You will build a knowledge base. Everything you learn when you start, you're to have to relearn again in like five or six months, because it will actually have context and will mean something. But it's, everything is available, I believe.

everything is available. It just takes time and commitment to actually, and a lot of hustle to get to a place where you get to turn it into something and it gets to mean something, but it only starts if you're going to invest the time and the effort to make it happen.

Speaker 2 (58:35.47)
Well, you're a great example of proper hustle. So let's wrap up here. Thank you so much for this. This has been really, really awesome. Hugely energizing part of my day. yeah, your cat's looking very energized too. She wants to code little black squares too. Well, thank you so much and have a fantastic day. And thank you for the questions, everybody.

What's the content? She's like somebody's assistant.

Speaker 2 (59:04.814)
That was great chatting to you, frankly. Bye.

Bye!