Ryan Shank documents his bootstrapped startup PhoneWagon during Techstars NYC, sharing recent wins like a $400 expansion deal and a $225 competitor win. He outlines plans to hire a remote SDR for 80-100 demos monthly, then sits down with a Spark Capital partner to discuss product-market fit and validation.
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I'm gonna say it, standing out when you're like going after that girl, right? You need to stand out against the competition, against these other dudes. Good morning, Wagoners! Welcome to the vlog. If you guys are new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey building OwnWagon, bootstrap startup from the ground up, no outside funding. Hope you guys are out there working hard. Hope you're out there being pioneers, being Wagoners. Welcome to the vlog. Yo, Cole, call this dude.
Uh, engineering background or product background, I use that as a lens to inform how I think about investing. So like, I don't really care if I can make a business model on a spreadsheet in the early days or not. I really care about talking to target market customers that grab me by the neck and shake me and say, "You don't understand, it's the greatest thing, this is changing my life." And maybe sometimes I'm the target market for a product, then I can use my own lens, which is great and convenient. But for the most part, that's not true. Products that target VCs as customers are pretty rare and really small markets. And so my line between a pivot and a moon validation— now moon validation, if you've been to Like, for example, you know, Odeo becoming Twitter or something, it's just so different. I'm not sure you can really say that the mission of those two companies were the same. They both came out of Evan Williams' brain, you can tell that, but outside of that, there's really very little commonality. But like, the original Slack was a game. Your characterization of it sounds like exactly the right frame to me, in what you build to do or not to, and the mission is a fun one, but everything else should be on the table.
Thank you.
Thank you. So Tate already got demoed, right?
Yeah, my mom's got one.
Hey Tate, this is Ryan Shank over at PhoneWagon. I had a note on my calendar to follow up with you today. I want to see if I can answer any questions that you have. One, I want quality people, so I'm being really picky. And the other thing is, you know, I need people like now. You guys aren't out of the woods yet. I will be back.
I'm out.
Where you going, Nick?
Going back to Delaware. Oh, shit.
You're basically driving traffic to your website, right?
Right.
And then however you're driving it there, you're paying money to drive the traffic there. And once they land on the site, they submit a form.
Well, I guess what I could do is the marketing companies we pay to get inbound leads, I could introduce you to them.
Yeah, that'd be great.
That's what you guys want, right?
It's like literally—
Yeah, 'cause I'm sitting there like, what the hell do these guys want? I'm trying to figure it out.
Oh, that's a company, so it's marketing.
Smallish company, then.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We've been around 3 and a half years. We just pivoted to a wellness company like 8 months ago.
One second, sorry.
Okay.
I'll see you, we'll catch up.
Okay, cool, cool.
All right, see y'all.
Hey, what's up, Jim? Just a couple things.
Um.
All right, that was pretty good. So we just got off the phone with an SDR candidate. I actually really, really liked him. He has a lot of SDR experience. The only thing is he's remote, but I think I can be cool with him working remote. We just need SDRs right now because we like, we need to like set more demos and get John, you know, doing like 80 to 100 demos a month.
All right guys, what I want to talk about today is standing out.
This can be standing out in a crowded market, in a crowded, uh, you know, competitive landscape, just standing out in general. Even if you're like, honestly, I'm going to say it, It's standing out when you're going after that girl, right? You need to stand out against the competition, against these other dudes, and you got to do things that are thoughtful. And I'm actually gonna make this analogy. You might think right now it's kind of weird, but it really applies from your personal life and it also applies into business. So, to stick out in a crowded market, and you're gonna wanna do things that are creative, that go above and beyond your competitors so that you are top of mind, they're wowed by you. That's the whole point, is stick out in a crowded market. Again, if you're trying to get the girl and you're just competing against all these other dudes or whatever, you're gonna wanna maybe go to is like send flowers because it's like you get that personal touch. But if you can think of something even more creative, if you like, you know, create a custom song and you then create a music video and like the lyrics of the song like incorporate things from her past and then you do this like crazy music video and you get it out. [FOREIGN] And you can like win girl deals that way, you know, who knows, you know. So there's just going to be things that you're going to want to do to stick out in business is like how I'm going to apply this, but it could also work in personal life as well. So like do whatever it takes to win and that's what we're doing. So appreciate you joining us. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Oh wait, one more thing. So I didn't update you guys on how the day went. I'm going to, I'm going to turn it this way. I need to get a haircut by the way. It is end of the day. I'm going to show you guys the time just so you know. I know you're curious. 7:39 PM Friday, July 28th. We just closed out the day. By the way, we either had our biggest day in history or we had like second biggest day in history. We've been going outbound, we've been setting demos. Now we've been doing the demos and we did probably like 5 or 6 today. We have a lot of huge deals that are gonna close. I had a guy randomly, I wasn't even expecting this, he's currently paying, or he was paying $250 a month. He just upgraded today to $650 a month. So randomly out of nowhere we got $400 a month in expansion revenue, huge, which was awesome. Then we had, I think we just had one other sale, but then it was a $225 sale that we took from one of our competitors. They were paying like $400 something. With the competitor, they're gonna port in all their numbers into us. So that was like a sale that came at 5:30 today. The fact that you have to like go above and beyond in order to win business. But at the end of the day, we had a great day today. We have a fireside chat with— you guys saw the partner at Spark Capital, which is a pretty good VC firm. Worked out today, had a ton of demos today. I ate at this really cool place called Dig In. If you guys should check it out, it's lit. Kane is actually just ate that place. That's a free plug, Dig In. That is a free plug because we like you. Next time it's gonna be free as well. We're not monetizing this content, we're just delivering. Delivering.
England is my city.
That was cool. Kaine's gonna do an edit to that. Uh, just delivering some, uh, some good content. I forget where we were going. Uh, it's Friday night. Hope you guys have a great night. If you're new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey building Phone Wagon from the ground up. We're bootstrapped, no outside funding. We're going through Techstars in New York City. We do this every single day. We vlog 7 days a week. We don't miss a single day. And I hope you guys are out there working hard, being pioneers, being wagoners.
