The Techstars Experience and Adaptable Marketing & Growth Strategies, with Chelsey Roney of Proxi
In this interview, host Justin Gordon talks with Chelsey Roney, co‑founder of Proxy, a crowdsourced mapping platform. Chelsey explains how the company originated during the 2020 Halloween pandemic when a parent Facebook group needed a safe way to share trick‑or‑treat locations, leading her co‑founder—who had geospatial experience from a US intelligence agency—to build a viral map that attracted 2,000+ users and media attention. The early product was a simple Google‑API map allowing anyone to add points, but business users soon requested additional features, prompting a pivot toward a full‑featured SaaS tool. After a brief pause, they relaunched, applied to Techstars in fall 2021 with under 100 live maps, were accepted, and went full‑time, leveraging the accelerator’s funding, mentorship, and network. Chelsey details the fundraising round that raised $1.2 million, led by Leslie Greyman‑Walker of Greyman Walker, emphasizing the importance of a compelling vision and founder charisma. The conversation covers Proxy’s long‑term vision to become a geospatial powerhouse bridging the internet and the physical world, differentiating from Google Maps and Yelp by centering trusted map creators and enabling personalized, demographic‑aware recommendations. Target customers include hospitality groups, short‑term rental owners, and economic‑development organizations, with secondary ambitions for map‑creator monetization, affiliate‑style revenue, and map sponsorships. Marketing tactics discussed include social media (Meta, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest), in‑person events, SEO (leveraging backlinks from embedded maps), influencer campaigns, and product‑led growth through shareable maps. Feature prioritization is driven by systematic user‑feedback tracking, leading to the recent launch of user accounts and a “backpack” for saved maps. Chelsey also shares personal insights on balancing entrepreneurship with family life, her drive to solve business puzzles, and the disciplined schedule she maintains. Finally, she teases an upcoming Chrome extension that lets users clip locations from articles directly onto maps, aimed at media companies and other content creators. The interview ends with contact information for Proxy.
Chapters
Chelsea, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Yes. Excited to chat about your journey with Proxy, everything you've done. For people who don't know about Proxy yet, what is this company, Chelsea?
Yeah, so it's a technology where any individual or business can head to our site and create a customized map that they can share and embed in their websites or just use for a personal reason too.
So there's so many, when I was doing research for this, thinking about the use cases and everything else with this, I'm like, okay, I want to get into this with her, but we have to go origin story first because people love the origin story. How did this company get started in the first place, Chelsea?
Okay. It started in October of 2020. It was the first Halloween of the pandemic. And my co-founder and I both happened to be parents of small children. And so of course parents go over the top for their kids for holidays, because you want them to be memorable and fun. You know the drill. Um, But anyway, so my co-founder was in a Facebook group in South Seattle, and it's a parent Facebook group. And this woman started a discussion and it said, if your home is doing COVID-safe trick-or-treating, then you should add your address to the comment thread. And hundreds of people were adding their addresses to the thread.
That's crazy.
Now, my co-founder has experience in geospatial tools from her time in one of the US intelligence agencies. And she was like looking at these addresses thinking, this really doesn't make sense. Like, what are you going to do as a parent? Go to the first one, then map out the second one, but the third one might be closer than the second. Like, it just didn't check out. And so with her experience, she went ahead and built a map with all of the addresses included and then made it so she kind of hacked some tools that are out there today to make it so that people could add their homes to the map. Now, over 2,000 people added their homes to this map. It went viral. She was on Good Morning America. Meanwhile, she's calling me. We've been friends for a decade. I've built and sold a couple of businesses. And she was like, Chell, something is going on here. There's a need in the marketplace for crowdsourcable maps. And I was like, no way. We're in 2020. There's got to be a tool out there that does this. But there wasn't. And so that's what we ended up building. We developed this—
I want to go there, the product. Yeah. Tell me about the product early on, the initial version. Yeah.
The initial version was really hinging on the fact that people needed crowdsourced, a crowdsourced mapping tool. So we created this map built on the Google API where people could come in, add any map point, to the map, and that's basically what it did at first. Now, what we discovered was that yes, people do need a crowdsourced mapping tool, and we have a ton of people coming to our site to find that and use our product for that. But what we actually found out was that businesses were landing on our website and they were asking us for other features. And we were like, wait a minute, like other— there are other geo tools, you know, geospatial tools out there. Like, how can this still be an unsolved issue? And so we just kept adding features as people would ask for them. And we were doing this part-time. And all of a sudden, it just became apparent that, you know, this really might be worth our full-time effort. And so we ended up applying to Techstars, which was an awesome experience. My previous businesses, one was bootstrapped and one was debt-backed. And so I had never done the whole venture funding route, and it is a wild world out here. But I was like, I want to try it. And she wanted to too. And we were really aligned on where we want to go and how the scale at which we want to build. And we ended up getting connected to a founder here in Seattle who, you know, it's all about who you know. And she knew someone who would review the application, at least, at least, you know, get a Pairwise on the application. And so we submitted it and we got accepted to Techstars. And I'll tell you whatever you want to know, but bada bing, bada boom, we're at present time.
Perfect. There's a lot to dig into. Okay. So at the time you applied to Techstars, take me through just like what the— briefly what the company was at. Like what kind of traction did you have by that point in time? Like before, as you applied, do you remember that?
We probably had under 100 live maps created by customers at that time. We had taken a pause after that So after holiday 2020, we had used the map for like holiday lights and things. We had taken a brief pause to build out all of these different features that people were asking for. And then we applied in the fall of 2021 to Techstars right after we had relaunched with a new product. And that had under 100 maps, I believe, by the time we applied, but it quickly Has grown since then.
So then was it before Techstars or after Techstars that you went full-time into this? You're like, all right, we're gonna do this. Explain that.
Yeah, so as soon as we got into Techstars, we went full-time. We both have families and something that's really important to us is making sure that women or people I guess, who are supporting their families are actually paid for their entrepreneurial endeavors.
Definitely.
In a way that makes it so that you can feed your kids and, you know, give them a decent life. And so, we knew that we needed that investment in order to go full-time. We were both doing other things. So, she was in a PhD program at the University of Washington focusing on human-centered design. And I owned a landscape installation business that, it's kind of a long story, but that I had grown to be fairly sizable. And I sold that to work on this full-time in Techstars.
Okay. So from that, in the Techstars program, a lot of people, founders are always curious about Techstars. I just had talked to someone in my founder community recently that was considering Techstars. And so take me through just the program itself. The growth of Proxy, the evolution of Proxy during that time period, and then like what happened after you got out of Techstars?
Yeah, so Techstars allowed us to do a couple of things. One, it gave us that financial freedom to concentrate full-time on our business, and obviously that's going to pay dividends. You get out what you put in. So first of all, for us, that was being able to put our full manpower behind it, and we move really quick and we're pretty You know, agile. So for us to be full-time made a really big impact really quickly in terms of not only like trying to figure out our ideal, you know, product market fit, you know, having time to contact different potential user groups, but also having time to refine the product itself. So not— so gave us that full-time, the ability to concentrate on it full-time. It gave us The mentorship in terms of learning how to interact with VCs, learning how to— there was a lot of content on how to build a company. Now, I had done that before, but for many founders in the cohort, that was a new part of their experience. Yeah, absolutely. So for me, it was a little bit of review, but nonetheless super valuable. And then it provided literal mentors to us, which they've been invaluable to our company. You know, people who have done some really amazing things in this world have lent us their ear, and we've been able to ask any question that we want to and get real answers. And that makes a big difference when people are willing to be candid. And then it did give us that connection to investors as well. And, you know, if you're not in that space before, it's about who you know and you really just have to build that network. And the best way to build a network is with warm connections. So Techstars was invaluable for that.
That's awesome. I know people have mentioned Techstars and Mentor Madness you go through to get matched up and everything and that crazy craziness and everything. Yeah.
Yeah.
What is that process like, actually? I'm curious.
Yeah, it's busy. It's crazy. You go through a couple of weeks of intensive meet and greets, if you will, where you go ahead and you give your pitch to all of these different mentors. And then either they ask you questions that help you refine the pitch, or you ask them questions that help you refine the pitch. Now, along the way, you meet some people who take really intense interest in you and your product, and you can continue to follow up with them. At the end of Mentor Madness, however, you are matched up with 1, 2, 3 mentors for your company, and you keep meeting with them throughout your time in the program. Following the program, you can choose to bring them on as an investor, and they may have some equity in your company, or you may decide to end the relationship at that point. But no matter what the case, you know, they give you a lot of great feedback throughout.
Nice. And from that too, so you mentioned obviously connectors, connections through investors, which is a huge part of it. Anyone going through an accelerator, whether it be Techstars, YC, whatever, like you need to get funding for going this venture route. Take me through that, raising $1.2 million. I know you had Leslie, who's from Graham Walker, they led that round. Take me through raising that round because you had gone bootstrapped, you've done debt before, you have that experience. You get that, but venture is a whole different world for people who are not familiar. It's just much different, different expectations, everything. Just take me through your experience with that.
Yeah, I think the biggest difference between venture and the other 2, bootstrapped and debt-backed, is the vision that you have to not only truly believe in yourself, but that vision that you have to give to investors. And it's all about the way that you portray that vision, how big that vision can be, how compelling you are at telling that story. A big part of being C-suite, so to speak, or like a co-founder or an owner at that point in the company, is being able to have the charisma to talk about your story in a way that gets other people excited. And that's gonna be the foundation of a lot of your business growth to come. So I can see why that's a really important skill when you're raising money. So I think that was one of the biggest differences in my experiences. prior to Proxy is that honing in on your story, making it really crisp, being able to be really charismatic about it and represent that gigantic unicorn vision to people and then believe in it.
With that as well, I'm curious as to why Leslie and their team. Obviously, you get to get someone to write you a check, which is a huge part of it. But also as a founder, you do have options in some ways. And obviously you're reaching out to a lot of people. You need that first person to say yes to you. Techstars in that way was the first person. but also then investors on the VC side of it. Just take me through them specifically. You feel comfortable enough to be like, yeah, like we want them. Obviously that's a two-way street there. Just take me through that as well.
Yeah, I mean, Leslie of Greyman Walker is— I don't know how she— she is an amazing individual. She has a big dream for how she wants to change the world. I believe she says something like, She wants to bring more women onto the Fortune 500 list in the next X number of years.
Yeah.
And she wants to make big bets and she wants to make them on good people, if you will. And when you sit down with Leslie, one of the most striking things to me is her, the way that she conducts herself, especially in person. She is so present in the moment. She is truly trying to understand you. She's trying to understand your company. She's trying to understand where you're going. And so she's willing to ask those tough questions and be real with you and challenge you on certain points, but not in a way that makes you feel like she knows more than you. If that makes sense, she's really trying to get to the bottom of of the situation, and that's a little bit rare whenever you're talking to a ton of VCs. And so that was striking. The other thing that was striking was that just how sharp she is when she starts talking about her background and just what she wants out of her future and what she wants for others. The way that she talks about it, the way that she represents it is just—you just know she's really intelligent and it really—I don't know how to describe it other than that. Like I want to be in her orbit.
Yeah, you want to be involved with what she's doing. That actually was her first deal that she led was.
It was. I'm pinching.
No pressure though. I mean, no pressure, but.
We still pinch ourselves all the time. She is just, um, we're really glad to be working with her.
Yeah. One thing that you mentioned that I want to go back to real quick, because there's definitely a big difference people will find out when they get into the world of raising venture capital, is the vision you mentioned. And you have to have, okay, how is this being a multi-hundred million, if not multi-billion dollar company, especially when you're raising venture capital? What was that vision for Proxy in terms of what you were selling, and obviously still are, but to investors, because I know people who haven't gone through this don't always understand how you have to have this massive vision. But like, take me through what that is for Proxy.
Yeah, so we want to be the geospatial powerhouse behind transformative human-centered interactions with the real world. So it's all about, for us, You know, the internet is where everyone gets their information. So, but the real world is where we exist. And there's this really special transition point that we see ourselves like in the middle of those two, the internet and the real world.
Yeah.
And getting information to people so that they can leave their phone or their computer or their device and then navigate to the actual space where they will be in connection with other people is what we're trying to make better, what we're trying to, you know, innovate on. And we, you know, I'll be transparent, while we may not know like the big 10-year vision, Yeah. we know that it starts with making local information more accessible to everyone. And that's where Proxy comes in with our map creators. Anyone can come to our site, add map points, whether it's an address or a lat-long location. They can write information about that spot and they can share it really easily with others.
Yeah.
And that's not exactly something that was easy to do before Proxy existed. And we really view ourselves as exposing that local knowledge to people. Now, as we go into the future, it's all about how to make that searchable, discoverable, integrated with things like AR as you are navigating the real world. And what do those transformative experiences really look like as you navigate the world in the future? You know, I don't know the exact answer, but I know that My co-founder and I are really passionate about this space, and we will be the answer to the— we will innovate until we are, you know, we're gonna be the top of the line for navigating the world. So—
Exciting.
It's a big space to tackle. It's a really big space to tackle. It's about mapping right now, but it's a much deeper passion and Um, for how we help people navigate in the future.
Okay. I do a lot of research on every, every guest for these, so I have a little context from different interviews and stuff you've done. I'm curious, you mentioned, uh, in the interview you're like talking about basically like, yeah, taking on like Yelp and Google Maps. So, which is, I love, as soon as I heard that, I was like, I'm gonna definitely bring that up. I'm gonna bring that up in the interview for sure. How do you look at that in terms of like the diff— just in terms of the differences in that side of things?
Listen, let's talk about this. I think this is. It's so easy to chat about, chat through this. All right, when you go to Yelp, let's say, and when I go to Yelp and we type in— let's say we're standing right next to each other and we type in restaurants near me. We get the same. We get the same list of restaurants returned, and that list of restaurants on Google or Yelp is primarily based on ad revenue. Right? So you see all of these ads kicked to the top. You see really stale reviews. It's this— anyway, well, when you search for that, I mean, when I search for restaurants near me, I mean a restaurant where my 2-year-old can throw a pizza on the floor. When you search restaurants near me, I'm not really sure of your personal circumstances, but you might mean like a bougie date night near me.
You're not wrong. Ciao, Steve.
Hey, so I miss those days. So whenever, um, we're both searching for these restaurants, we both get this same returned list or a really similar return list, but the results don't make sense for either of us. Yeah, what you're really searching for is a totally different thing than what I am. And so what proxy is going to help people discover is places based on their interests, based on their demographic. And the way that we're doing that is by focusing on the map creator, which is so important. Because I know as a mom of really young kids that there are all these mommy bloggers out there that I follow and they provide excellent recommendations for my use case.
Yeah.
So when I see their map pop up, I'm going to say, I trust that one. And when you see some, you know, I don't know who we're, you know, when you see like a, I don't know, like some Michelin list produced by like, I'm not really sure.
Like a government.
Some like media company or whatever, maybe that's what you trust because that's who you're, who you're looking for and what you're searching. So really we're going to turn it on its head, searching for where to go and what to do on its head by focusing on the trusted point of view of the map creator. Now you'll be able to, you know, there's a whole vision baked into this, but you'll be able to save the points off other people's maps. It'll be kind of like a Pinterest experience and that's all in the near term. But as we go, we plan to evolve.
To that exact point, I think it's interesting to hear platforms that are doing it in a verticalized way too. So like if I look at a platform like, um, my friend Sam from Well Traveled, like they're doing, they're doing the like food recs and like restaurants or food. And then also like the hotels and stuff recs for like their like vertical, cause to your exact point, Yelp is like kind of trash in that way. Um, so like to have a platform that can do, like everyone can make their, make their own map. I can see the value of that obviously is clearly there cuz there's so many things to your point. The use cases are tremendous in that way. And also like as soon as I saw Proxy, I was like, all right, we have an angel investing group where I would love to know where the members are in the world. That'd be cool to see the map. I have it listed on my to-do list now. I have a founder community called Just Go Grind, the founder community, um, where I have always founders that are all over the world. I'm like, I would be kind of curious to know where everyone is so they can like connect to each other and stuff. Proxy seems like a very interesting thing for that. Also wrote that down as an option to like, okay, I need to look into actually creating this. So I see that like there's so many use cases, but to that point then for you and like the team and looking at building Proxy, how do you look at customer acquisition in terms of that? Because there's just so many different things.
I'll be honest with you, and I like listening to podcasts where people are a little bit honest, so I try, I, I, uh, err on that side of things. But you know what? That has been a struggle for us because every morning when Melinda and I wake up, we see a world where literally, you just brainstormed a few maps. And we see a world where everyone has multiple maps and every business has multiple maps, like visualizing data internally, externally. So, to answer your question, it's hard to focus. And I think I'll talk about 2 things. One thing is that we struggle most with awareness marketing campaigns when we're trying to message because—
Which message do you use?
Do we message to the map viewer? Do we message to the map creator? Do we message to businesses, individuals? What businesses? What individuals? And we're getting— we have a new version of our site coming in. Hopefully it makes it a little clearer, but it's really difficult. The second thing I want to talk about is finding our product market fit and ideal customer profile. Everyone can use a map, so it's like, how do you determine how you've take those baby steps toward becoming a huge company and what customer profiles get you the farthest, the fastest in terms of building that company. Now, where we are currently is that we're targeting places like hospitality groups, short-term rental owners, And that is going really well. Those groups and those individuals need to use our product as it is today.
Yeah.
So we don't need to add any features. They're excited for what we have now, which is kind of the sweet spot whenever you're developing a product. So we're excited about that. Additionally, our secondary target market is economic development groups, so things like organizations like Chamber of Commerce or nonprofits. They can put together maps for like volunteer days or relocation guides and things like this. And we've had really great success in all 3 of those groups. So, you know, we've identified those groups as being ready to use the product as it is today, and that's why we're going after them. But it's tough. It's really hard.
Okay. Because you're in this now, it's perfect. I can ask these questions, uh, cuz you're in and think of it. Okay. So with this then, to that point you mentioned, like part of it is, okay, with the product as it is today, who are the customers for like today? What are some of those other questions that like you two are pinging back and forth on in terms of the next set of customers slash when that happens, whatever? Cuz I love to geek out about marketing and customer acquisition, obviously. So that's just what I would talk about for sure. But I'm curious about how you're— Think about it, what questions you're asking, or like, how do you even think about for other founders out there, obviously?
So the next set of customers want to monetize their maps. They want to be map influencers, if you will, place influencers. So there are plenty of companies out there that allow influencers, whether that's an individual or a business, to monetize recommendations. Now, primarily companies have solved that for product-based recommendations. So you'll have affiliate links or Amazon Storefront or, you know, whatever, you know, however that's solved on that side. But right now, location-based monetization and conversion is not understood and it's not a solved problem. And so we are, I'm not going to talk about the exact features we're adding there quite yet. But we are adding features that allow people to better understand analytics behind their maps, better partner with, you know, places that they put on their maps and to allow them to monetize some of those partnerships as well.
To that point on monetization, let's just dive right into that. How do you think about business model? How does this thing make money eventually? What do you think about that?
So near term for us, it's a SaaS product. Near term for us, it's a SaaS product. We are on the verge of a couple of really good partnerships with larger organizations. They will pay us by the month to use Proxy, to buy seeds, to buy training. the near-term monetization plan. Now, in the long term, you can guess that part of our monetization plans has to do with monetizing the map content, uh, uh, you know, an affiliate model, but, but, um, maybe more advanced that I don't know how to describe it.
Yeah.
Like affiliate but better. And then also, of course, some advertising or map sponsorships, but never would that result in promoting one map or not over another. It would, it would be like highlighting points on a map that have already been added there.
Yeah, that's interesting. There's obviously so many ways to go around with that business model, innovating the business model.
There's a lot, and there's a lot behind it. And, you know, we suspect that there are other revenue models as well, and we're open to those. And I think part of being a really good entrepreneur is staying open for future developments. That's where I found a lot of my success is like, sometimes you have a big vision, yes. But you go from one step to the next in a really logical and data-driven way. And sometimes, it just shows you the way. And so, we are really big on KPIs and bringing in data and making sure we make every decision with data. So, Yeah, so we're excited about where that will lead us.
Okay, you talked a little bit about the product, some of the growth stuff. The $1.2 million, what was that intended for in terms of use of funds?
Yeah, so hiring. We have 2 engineers right now, which is really great. We've got another couple of part-timers on board and they've made a— having that much engineering talent has been transformational for our product. And, you know, once you get the product right, it starts to kind of sell itself, if you will. I mean, of course, you have to have that fit. But if you do it the right way, it just takes off. And I know that from my other couple businesses. So, we're really big on trying to get it right. And then, a lot of the other— we do have a significant portion of that's been going to marketing every month. So, we run awareness campaigns on You know, social media platforms, email.
Okay. On that note, if you're willing to share even just like an allocation percentages or like roughly some of the things you're using to market, like I just would love to hear it. I'm curious.
Yeah, I'm always very curious about that. I have that same question for everyone. So right now we've chosen, well, We've done a lot of experiments. Social has really been the biggest bang for our buck, and I don't think that's too different for a lot of companies.
Yeah.
In-person events have been surprisingly— have had a surprisingly high ROI for us because when we go and sponsor a convention or something like that, a lot of times we meet other sponsors that will adopt Proxy and embed us in their app. Or something like that. So we view an ideal customer as having a high frequency of maps created and high viewership. And a lot of times, like, meeting other sponsors results in those things. So that has been a really high return for us.
Nice. And when you say social, what are you talking— are we talking Instagram? Are we talking—
We're talking the basics. We're talking Meta, we're talking LinkedIn, we're talking Twitter and Meta, Facebook, and Insta, obviously. You know, we're in our near-term future, we're going to branch into Pinterest and TikTok. You know, we're always testing though, new and different marketing spend tactics and trying to determine what makes the most sense. But I was reading, Just took it out of my bag. Um, a book called Traction. I'm sure there are a few books called Traction.
There's 2, but I have both of them, so I know what you're talking about.
Yes, but really what they— they make a good point, and they say, you know, if something's working, sometimes you go all the way in on that one thing that's working. And for us, when we get, you know, a lead that costs 30 cents or a dollar on Facebook, like, that's working. And so, you know, we're, we're leaning into that until we get a bigger staff, like sometimes that's what we need to lean into.
Oh, I love it. And so I'm always like, yeah, I said I'm curious always how people are approaching it cuz there are so many different ways and like the things you get excited about, like are the ones that, yeah, you find some gem of a channel that's being underutilized and you're just like, yes, look at this lead. Like, this is amazing. Like, I've talked to so many different founders now, so it's like, yeah, someone's leveraging influencer, micro influencers on TikTok, for instance, for a product. I've seen that. Okay. I've seen like Yeah, there's so many different things.
Okay, so we are, we are, we are utilizing influencers. We run influencer campaigns every month. We're also big into working with, um, an SEO firm that has done some good stuff for us. Um, and we're actually— something I'm really excited about that we're doing is making it so that our embedded maps have actual, like, text that Google can read. And so when you look at the number of backlinks you need to really make a dent on ranking on Google, you need a load of them. But the good thing about Proxy is that people are embedding our maps every day. And so when we can get those backlinks from those places that other people are choosing to embed them organically, like that's— it's making a big difference for us. So we're really excited about that strategy as well.
Yeah, that seems like—
And when you look at some of the big hitters like Canva, Oh man, it's on the tip of my tongue. And a couple other organizations, a lot of their growth was based on good SEO and being able to be found online. So we're going to attempt, yeah, to work in a similar way.
You definitely see that with other companies doing like a badge or something on their site to get that link essentially back. And it's just like, I get it. I understand like that growth flywheel right there. You're like, yes, okay. I see what you're doing here. And yeah.
And another way, yeah, another way we're working on growth though is product-led growth. So our maps have potential to be viral. They're really shareable. It's easy to create your own once you've seen someone else's. We've made it easy to save a map, share a map, build your own map, all from a map that you might see out there in the wild. So that's been a really interesting tactic for us is enhancing our product so that other people want to use it when they see it out there.
Yeah. And you've, okay, you've talked about a lot of different features that you had requests from early on from users and everything, and you're building those out. One of the things recently you launched was accounts. I'm curious how that came about and also just more broadly how you're thinking about new features, because you can't listen to everyone's requests because you can't build everything. So, like, how do you prioritize?
Yeah, that's a great question. So, first of all, we write down literally every piece of feedback that we get. We track all of it. We tally against it, you know, the number of times that we hear something, from who do we hear it, you know, what weight does a certain user group hold. All of that goes into the equation. It's one of our company values to listen to our users. That's a huge part of our leadership team discussions. So we always knew we would have to make accounts. We just had kind of delayed doing it because it was a major engineering lift and we wanted to make sure that people would use Proxy in the first place.
Fair point.
And now that we have thousands of people using Proxy and thousands and thousands of viewers every month, we knew that we had to execute on making it easy for people to see all of the maps that they have created in their And also when you bookmark a map, it goes to the same, like your backpack is what we call it. So you put a map in your backpack. But we always knew that accounts were essential for the eventual paying customer in terms of knowing or being able to reference all of your maps in one place.
With—
People have a really high propensity to not only make one map, but come back again and again. to make more maps. So that's something we're tracking as well.
Okay, that's what I was going to ask about too.
Yeah, we suspect that over time— we're really young and we only just implemented some of this tracking stuff, so we don't have the data yet. But what we're initially starting to see is like, you know, X number of people come back in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. Like we can expect a map user who has an active map and we have metrics on, you know, what does active mean too. You know, what's their propensity to create more maps, how many maps and in what timeframes. So we can start to model all of that out as well.
Have you read The Cold Start Problem? Andrew Chen, his book?
Ooh, I think I read it in maybe as part of my MBA a long time ago.
No, this is a new one. This is a new one. This is a new one actually. It's different. Oh, this is a new one. Yeah, this is a different one. So Andrew Chen, I think about, 'cause I was just listening to it today. I have his audiobook version of it. It's all about network effects basically, and the cold startup of that. And he is talking about the growth of You have like Tinder, you have Uber, all these different companies. And the thing you just mentioned around that with having these network, different networks on and figuring out which products and, you know, which features to have for them to kind of fuel that and everything. It's an interesting read that I feel like you probably would benefit, but just came to mind. So I had to say it. But to that point, there's so many things you could be doing as a founder. Obviously you're always trying to prioritize, which is a struggle I hear about in the community all the time. People are like doing 1,000 different things, which is tough. One of the things I'm curious about, cuz I heard this on a different podcast you did as well, in terms of businesses. Like you've done multiple businesses now, obviously, and you talked about like the sacrifices to get to this point, but you're happy that you're at this point in your career, then you've done all these things, but just take me through that. Like what, what keeps you going? What fuels you through? Yeah, you have to make sacrifices to have businesses and be an entrepreneur, but you also have a family and other things. Just like, how has that gone for you, Chelsea?
Uh, What keeps me going is the question I'll tackle first. And that is just this insatiable drive to figure out what will make a business work. I cannot stop. I'm sure to the chagrin of my husband and literally everyone around me. It's wild. But ever since I was, you know, 20-ish years old, and even before that, I had little baby businesses, and I just love it. I love figuring out why someone makes a purchase or uses a product. You know, what offering brings the most value to a customer, how to position it. I mean, all of the little puzzle, it's like putting together a 1,000-piece puzzle. And you know how people are really obsessed with puzzles? That's kind of how I feel about building a business is like, it's just a puzzle. And I really Love putting together the pieces, and then in terms of balancing everything, I live by my calendar. After I had kids, it I'll be straight. Having kids was a really tough transition for me. I'm a workaholic. I would wake up, you know, early and work late and have no love it, like no problem at all with it. But I've had to learn that, you know. Kids, they've readjusted my priorities and they're by far and away my most important priority. And so, when I look in their little eyes and they say, Mommy, don't leave me, in the mornings, I literally have to make the conscious choice to leave them. I mean, we're in a privileged position where I've sold a business or two and I could with my spouse, I know this is all very privileged to say, but I could be at home. And so to look them in their eyes and like say, no, Mommy is going to go do this dream and like go try to make this work. Like I'm tearing up just thinking about it. Like I have to make that conscious choice that this is the most, you know, that this is how I'm spending my time.
It's important.
But on the flip side, right, I have really strict boundaries and that's only come into play in the last year or so. You know, even though they're 4 and 2, like it's taken me a long time to figure it out. Like I'm going to stop working at 5 and I'm going to be with them 110% until they're, until they close their little eyes. And then, you know, when they go to bed, like I've also gotten a lot better about spending time with my husband because he just cannot understand why I would choose this life for myself. So like, you know, half the, half the days, like we'll end up doing something fun, like watch a show or whatever, but the other half the days I do choose to work, you know, after they go to bed. So it's kind of a grind, but, um, I think anyone listening knows, like, when you've got a passion, you just— it doesn't feel that way.
Yeah, sometimes they listen to a show called Just Go Grind, so I think they'll understand. I think they know. They know, Chelsea. Uh, everyone here, they definitely know. Uh, yeah, this is a weird thing. Like, the boundaries is important. I think that's even talking to, uh, like Gail at our firm, uh, at Violize. In terms of our venture firm, like her trying to figure out that piece of it as well. Because if you're a GP at a, uh, emerging manager at a firm, like it's very hard. There's so many things you're doing all the time. Uh, I think about it constantly too, running like Vitaly stuff and just your grind stuff. It's always, there's so much going on. So you're trying to figure out that mix and balance. How did you get to that piece of it? Like 5:00 PM, you're done. Also, what time do you start? I'm just curious. Like structure is great. I love hearing people who have set boundaries because it's like, Trying to figure out how you do it. Yeah.
I mean, I start at about 8:15 when our nanny comes and I work as hard and as fast as I can until I leave and come back at around 5. I have a list of priorities that I do Try to get through every day like a one, two, and a three. And literally, I call my day a success after probably the second one. And and I've mentally had to drill that into my head. Like you are okay. You're success. You made it through those P one and P two things. And I you know it's all about having the mental fortitude to figure out what. does matter, what will move the needle forward, and not working in your business. You have to like work on it, which I'm— I know you're familiar with.
So yeah, no, it's absolutely— that's absolutely true. And I'm glad you share that. I think there's so much to that. It's hard, hard always because you're like, oh, I can just— I can do more. But it never ends. There's never— it's never like—
Of course you can do more.
Yeah, you can always do more. There's never— there's always more stuff to do if you're running a company, right? So it's like you have to set the boundaries.
I could easily work for like 3 business weeks straight without even pausing to determine—
Keep going down that list here. Like, there's another thing I have to do. And then as you're going, you're like, oh, this new fire pops up to solve this issue. And like, I was talking to someone, uh, recently too, who was like, yeah, I just spent the last like 5 hours trying to put out this fire. And it's like 3:00 AM in like Europe and he's doing this. It's a call with me and I'm like, oh man, that's insane. But that's the reality sometimes of like the craziness that can pop up where it's like, yeah, this thing is down and it Like we need the website up, so we have to get it done and it's not done until it's done. It's like, that's just the reality sometimes, which is crazy. But there's obviously ups from that as well, and you enjoy doing it, which is why you are doing it as well. As we kind of wrap things up, I'm just curious, what's next for Proxy?
Okay. What's next? I heard a lot of things, so I was like a little tongue-tied.
No pressure.
What?
So many things are next.
All the things are next. But the biggest thing that's next is something we haven't announced, but why not here?
Why not?
A Chrome extension. Ooh, love that. And yeah, one of the biggest things that we've gotten feedback on— well, we always knew this would be part of the product, but anyway, people still give us feedback. They're like, hey, you know, what if we don't know what we want to add to our map? Like, they need a search function, basically. So the Chrome extension allows people when they're going to research what they want to put on their maps, or they just even came across an article like top 10 things to do this weekend, you can just pull that location off of the article and very much like Pinterest, like put it on one of your maps, whichever one that you choose.
That's so exciting.
Yeah, so we are incredibly excited about that. We think it's going to unlock, quite a bit for us, but one ideal customer profile that has requested this a couple of times is media companies because they already spend the time writing this great content about where to go and what to do, and they want to supplement it with a map. They don't want to replace it with a map, but they want to help their users visualize their info with a map. And since they've already done the work of writing this article, It's going to be so much easier for them to just click, click, click, put it on your map, and then embed your map all in, you know, just a few steps. So we're excited for that.
Well, I feel special that you shared that here. So that's great. Amazing.
Surprise everyone.
Chelsea, where is the best place to learn more about your company as well as connect with you?
Well, we'd love to hear from everybody. Love your feedback. You can find Proxi at proxi.com. I know we're coming after the .com, but not yet. And then across social channels at some variation of proxy.co.
Perfect. Thank you so much for the time today, Chelsea. Really appreciate it.
Yeah, thank you. I had a great time.
