In this informal vlog, Phone Wagon founder Ryan Shank walks viewers through a day of startup life, sharing sales and growth metrics, hiring decisions, and his perspective on the phone‑call industry. He reports that Phone Wagon (formerly PhoneLag) now has 53 paying customers, about $5K in monthly recurring revenue, and is adding roughly ten new customers each week, with a current run‑rate of ~17 sales per week. Ryan repeatedly emphasizes that "phone calls are dead," positioning his product as a modern alternative for agencies shifting away from legacy phone systems. He discusses hiring an in‑house Sales Development Representative (SDR), weighing remote versus on‑site work, and notes the candidate’s strong work ethic. The vlog also includes Ryan’s founder backstory—how a personal frustration finding a ballet class sparked the idea, his belief in real‑life experimentation, and treating customers as partners. He reflects on early vendor relationships, stressing the importance of personal contact and transparency. Ryan announces a new commitment to daily public metric updates, encouraging other founders to document their journeys, maintain consistency, and balance work with health (gym, yoga). The video is framed as a behind‑the‑scenes look at building Phone Wagon through Techstars in New York without outside funding.
Chapters
You're going to get that question.
All right, cool.
Is it a dynamic shoe or not?
Yeah, no, it's dead.
Or are you going to—
What's up, guys?
Got our iced coffee from Roasting Plant in the Uber on the way to the office. We're going to get there. I was running a little late. It's like 8:40 something, so I decided to take an Uber instead of walking. It's going to be a good day. Yesterday we had a massive day of sales. Today we're going to continue that momentum. We could have some massive stuff close today. We're going to try to get some tactical things out, like some cold calling, scripting. See you guys at the office.
[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] nice to have.
So is that happening? Is this happening? This actually could be a big win for you.
Got stuck?
Like, what does that even mean?
Your office got stuck? What do you mean got stuck? It is heavy rain here and our office got stuck sometimes due to water entered the office. It is resolved now.
What?
That's Jack D you're talking to? Jack D. But what'd you ask him that led him to say that?
I said, where's the pic with the t-shirts? Oh, how's that? How's that dig in, John?
Hello, it's Ryan.
It's all good.
I'm gonna have John, one of our account executives, also join us as well. You know, we're getting a ton of businesses, ton of agencies that are switching over from legacy systems. Instead of just looking at like web leads, when you're looking at your calls, do you also include phone calls as well? Currently PhoneLag has 53 paying customers, $5K in MRR, and we're adding like 10 new customers a week.
Cool.
I guess my broader question to you that you might get is just like, how are phone calls, like how is the phone industry doing. Like, I know, like, we as a company, like, we— everything is live chat. Like, we don't even have a phone line.
Yeah.
For customer service. And I've seen a lot of companies go that way.
Yeah, for sure.
So, like, I don't know, you don't need to necessarily answer that in your elevator pitch, but you're going to get that question.
All right, cool.
Is it a dying industry or not?
Yeah, no, it's dead.
Or are you— maybe we have another discussion about that.
And I went out to SF for a friend's birthday, and I remember at the party I met all these folks who were building, like, gadgets and apps, and I was like, what? Like, you do this full-time? Like, it just wasn't something that any of my friends were doing, so it kind of felt strange for me to be like, okay, I'm gonna go build a tech company. And then I was like, I'm gonna go do this. So I gave myself 2 weeks to think of an idea, and luckily enough, like 36 hours later, I was searching for a ballet class to take online, and I was just miserably frustrated. Yep, so I didn't quit my job for another 6 months. So I spent those 6 months sort of like doing research, seeing if I was crazy, you know, like doing a little bit of my own market research with my customers. All of them told me they I believe in like real-life experimentation. I don't believe in like doing something behind a screen because that was a mistake we made. I am like, I know I'm a little bit more customer-centric, like I just know I am a little. That being said, like I think what people also forget is to me the customers are my partners too.
When you were dealing with those early vendors and you were sort of disappointing them more often than you were making them happy, how did you maintain those relationships, you know? So that when your product was ready to give them the volume you were expecting, um, lots of sorrys.
And going— we would have— we would go into people's classes like, we know we messed up many times. And, um, it's really important in the beginning for them to know like you're small and that they're a part of something and they feel like they— you know what I mean? Like, talk to them, like make sure you go meet them in person. Um, we literally like would do— there were days I did like 4 classes just to like make sure people like knew that we cared, you know what I mean? And I think it was like kind of important for them to that you were a customer, like you weren't just trying to make money off of their business. I'd make sure like in all of your companies, right? Like, and you're gonna have, there's gonna come hard moments. I'm sure you're gonna go through them in here. Question that. Just be like, are we building like what I wanna do till my death? Like literally what's going to outlast me in my life? Am I building that? 'Cause life's too short, you know? So like build something that you're really tied to. Or find the next thing to build.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much for coming by.
This is super fun.
I've reached out to like 4 or 5 people on LinkedIn that I know from the 49ers that could be really good insights into how their sales and marketing team operates. I assume they're probably doing something already to track their footballs, but at the same time, what he was saying, and I kind of agree with, is it wouldn't shock me if they're not because in general pro sports is usually pretty far behind in terms of any sort of technical— Yeah, so I reached out to a few people at a couple different teams that I know just to see if they have any insight into how they operate See, I like these a lot where there's like little like, little like stories almost.
Yeah, this is a good one.
Yo, do that as the teaser. Yeah, you want that as the teaser?
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's good, I like it.
Okay, that. So a couple things. One, I really wanted an in-house person, so that was like the one thing that I was like discussing with the team here. This role is really the SDR position, we're the OTE, so basically like all-in salary. That was an SDR candidate that he's actually been following up with me. He's really, really diligent. I kind of like him. The only reason I didn't want to hire him at first was because he's going to be remote. He's like on top of it and I think he's super fucking hungry. So I think he could actually be really, really good. So I told him that I would give him an answer today. He could start on Monday. I'm going to bring him probably to New York for like maybe next week and the week after for like 2 weeks for like training and stuff.
That's so dumb. It's like a fucking phone joke.
Oh man. You over here making phone jokes?
I'm making phone jokes because his name's Mike Horton and we're porting in a lot of numbers. So I say they call him Mike Porton.
Ahh!
Look, look, look, I have our metric dashboard right here. I just need one more sale today to go over $4,800. If you're our guy, I think you're our guy.
You'll be our guy.
I appreciate it. Did you watch our vlog today? Did you watch our vlog?
Uh, if you subscribe to YouTube, you should get a push notification.
Don't worry, I'll send you the link though. Oh, that's why ours does that, so it like stacks.
60 is the total.
The thing in red is on 43, but it's 43.
Guys, I know what you're wondering. You're like, Ryan, how many sales did you get today? And the answer is 3. Okay, we got 3 sales today, we got 4 yesterday, we're at 7 for the week. This is our biggest week so far. It could be the biggest week so far. We have 7 in 2 days. What's the run rate? If we had 5 days, it's at at least 14 plus 3.5, so we're on a run rate of 17 sales. We only have 53 customers, which means we could increase our customer base by like 20% just this week. We have a massive pipeline built. I'm super excited. So you know what I'm gonna do right now? Go to a park rooftop because that makes the most sense. No, but real talk, like, thank you guys for following along because I'm starting to hear like a lot of people that we're in conversations with have actually like watched the vlog and are like wanting to do business with us because they respect what we're doing 7 days a week, every single day, because they're wagging They're pioneers and they like are building businesses as well. So it's working and I want you guys to put out your own content. Just do document— like just document what you're doing. Like I don't really know what we're doing, but we're like doing it consistently. So that's the one thing, consistency. The second thing is just document what you're doing because it's gonna be kind of interesting for other people. Not everyone's not gonna watch it every single day, but they're gonna be able to watch it like some days. They're gonna be able to watch maybe like 2, 3 episodes and be like, oh, those guys are like legit, they're doing their thing. Then they'll pop out, they probably won't follow it, then they'll want to jump back in. By the way, What we're gonna start doing starting tomorrow, we're gonna start sharing our metrics. We're gonna start every single day, we're gonna share our revenue metrics, number of customer metrics, and then we're gonna tell you each day how many new customers we got and how much new revenue we got. We're gonna be really, really transparent with all of that stuff. I'm gonna tell a guy today that I'm gonna hire him for next week. I have another guy coming in the office soon, so a lot of cool things are happening. But that said, you still have to make time. I went to the gym today, so you got to make time for health, gotta make time for yourself. While still hitting it, grinding 7 days a week. Help self. Appreciate you guys. You guys are new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey building Phone Wagon from the ground up, no outside funding. We're out here 7 days a week vlogging our journey through Techstars in New York City. Okay, I hope you guys are out there working hard, being pioneers, being Wagoneers.
Peace!
Wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm like literally in front of the yoga, I'm like by the yoga instructor.
Keep walking, keep walking into the park, keep walking into the park.
And then what?
And then I'm standing literally right here. Hello, no, oh no. With the camera?
