In this vlog Ryan Shank introduces himself and his bootstrapped SaaS venture PhoneWagon, emphasizing that the company is being built from the ground up with no outside funding and that the work happens every day, seven days a week. He recounts a speaking engagement he did with his friend Paul Singh, a co‑founder of 500 Startups, at Fresno State where they addressed a room of 11 local entrepreneurs—about half already generating revenue and the rest trying to pre‑sell their first customers. The core of the talk centered on how Ryan acquired his first 5, 10, and 50 customers for mHelpDesk and PhoneWagon. He stresses a “brute‑force” approach: compile a list of target prospects, call them, uncover their pain points through curious questioning, and then position the product as a pain‑killer solution. He gives concrete examples of probing how businesses currently manage work (pen‑and‑paper, manual ticketing) and then illustrating the value of a cloud‑based, mobile‑accessible system. After the session Ryan mentions his upcoming travel to Sag Harbor, shows a brief on‑the‑road segment, and wraps up the vlog by encouraging viewers to keep working hard as “pioneers” and “wagoners.” The vlog blends informal banter with actionable sales advice and a glimpse into the daily life of a bootstrapped founder.
Chapters
One, everyone's so busy these days that it's like you can get to these guys without having that, you know, it's like they'll take the call. And again, even if you have to kind of intercept them. What up guys, future Ryan coming at you. If you guys are new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey. We're building PhoneWagon from the ground up, no outside funding. We do it every single day, 7 days a week. Kane's somewhere over here. I hope you guys are out there working hard, being pioneers, being wagoners. Welcome to the vlog. To a lot of other people felt were a little bit cumbersome and hard to use. Mike Courtney said it was an 8 GB. Mike said it was an 8 gigabyte. G-A— Sounds like it. Very good. It's good, yeah? Good. Yeah. Jim, what are you doing, man? Dude, I'm leaving. What time is it, bro? I don't know, it's 3:23. When do you gotta get on your train? 4 o'clock. Dude, you know what street we're on? Not really, actually. This is 22nd, you gotta be on 34th. Yeah, I should probably get an Uber. I'm gonna get an Uber. Trying to tell these Wagoneers some stuff, Ryan? Yeah. What are you trying to tell them, man? Um, hold on, let me think. So, I am about to do a speaking engagement for a group of 11 entrepreneurs at Fresno State. They're gonna be like putting me up there, me and my friend Paul Singh. He was a co-founder of 500 Startups, which is like a venture fund that invests in, was it 400? Oh, it's 500, they invest in 500. Now he like basically has this like Airbus and he goes to places throughout the United States that are like not Silicon Valley. It's kind of sort of like the rise of the rest, which a lot of people are doing right now. And he basically just finds startups in areas like Pittsburgh and stuff like that. I actually angel invested and I'm an advisor in one of his companies called Jetpack Workflow. They're killing it. That I originally met through him because he was doing a syndicate into Jetpack. So that's where I originally met them, became an advisor, angel invested, went out there, did some sales stuff with them, then doubled up because I really liked the company so much. So anyway, Paul Singh's the man. He worked alongside of us when I was at M Help Desk. So he was in the same room when we were cooking in the kitchen there, so he was like, saw our— he saw the work, and then we've been friends since. He hit me up the other day, he was like, do you want to do this speaking gig on Friday at 4 PM before Labor Day weekend? And I was like, of course. So we're about to hop on there, and then he just sent me an email. Context: we've got 11 startups in the room, about half have revenue and the other half are trying to figure out how to pre-sell their first customers while they're waiting for their product to be ready. I figured you and I could keep the conversation casual but focus on specifically how you acquired your first 5, 10, and 50 customers for mHelpDesk and PhoneWagon. I love the brute force approach that you've been developing, and I think companies could really learn a lot from it. We're I guess hop on like a screen share video thing. Talk to these 11 startups at Fresno State. Thanks for even having me, this is cool. We started talking to customers and getting a bunch of inbound. We sort of realized that the workflow was very similar across a bunch of different industries. Snapchatting with my kid over here, like it doesn't make sense. It's like they'll take the call, and again, even if you have to kind of intercept them. Yelling? Is that like really loud? Um, there was one point when they were asking a lot of like sales questions and things like that, so I was kind of telling them what we used to do at M Help Desk and what we're doing at PhoneWagon, and that was awesome. It was an hour long, had really cool questions, and they were curious. I love like that stage and just like being able to like tell people what I did that worked and stuff like that. Now I got a call with one of our customers right now, and then I have a bus going out to Sag Harbor in 30 minutes. We're gonna do all that, we're gonna do all that. The vlog's gonna come, we're gonna go out there. It's Labor Day weekend. I gotta bring a sweatshirt though, 'cause I heard it's gonna be cold. It's cold. See you guys. Alright guys, I'm back out here now. I'm in SAG Harbor. I got my sweatshirt on, but it's actually not even that cold, so I'm gonna take the sweatshirt off. I didn't need the sweatshirt. Alright guys, so that was the vlog for today. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Hope you got some value out of it. I'm gonna stop walking so it's not as shaky. Anyway, so what you guys just saw, that was me talking to the group of startups, but one thing, obviously you couldn't hear the audio from the questions that they were asking. One of the things that we were talking about that a lot of those guys were asking questions about was how do you acquire your first 5 or 10 customers, and basically we're not talking about what kind of marketing hacks can we do to get traffic and get leads. My biggest advice for them was basically figure out a list of your target customers and call into those customers and figure out a pain point. Ask a lot of questions, be curious, and figure out how they're currently doing things, then offer your solution as a painkiller or a solution to their problem that they're having. And they might not know that they're even having a problem, so start asking them, about how they operate and then really start digging in and asking a lot of questions and making them, you know, tell you that they do certain things, certain ways, right? And then you can be like, oh wow, you know, that's, that's how you do that. So, you know, for instance, if they have software that helps them operate their business, ask them how they're currently doing things. If they're doing it on pen and paper, really be like, oh wow, so you have to manually, you know, record that with pen and paper. So like, what happens if you need to access something and you don't have that piece of paper there? You're just asking these questions and you're starting to basically show them that there's all these like pain points in the way that they're operating. And then you have the solution. Be like, well, what if I told you that you can access anything from anywhere on any device with an internet connection? What if I told you that with one click at the end of the day, your field techs can, you know, they can turn in their job tickets without having to manually, you know, drive back to the office and I can save you all of that gas money, all of that time, things like that. So the point is you want to just like ask questions. And this is what I was telling them is like basically just call into those people, talk to them, and then have a solution to their problem. And then that's how you're going to do it. So anyway, that was what I was telling them. It was really, really cool. And hope you guys like the vlog today. The vlog that is going to go out from Actually, today is going to go on a couple of days and it's awesome. So I'm super excited to share that with you guys. So I'll see you guys tomorrow. We do this every single day, 7 days a week. If you're new here, my name is Ryan Shank. This is our journey. We're building Phone Wagon from the ground up. There's no outside funding. Okay, we do it every single day. I think I just said that. Where are we at anyway? I hope you guys are out there working hard, being pioneers, being wagonaires. Peace.
