Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Maksym Ryndia, Co-Founder and CTO of Clueby, located in New York, NY, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
We are making a tool that helps people to monetize their knowledge and expertise. At Clueby, we are sure that everybody has a unique skill set, experience, and knowledge gained throughout their lifetime. At some point, people become too busy or undermotivated to reply to every message on their social media and messengers, and their inboxes become an endless flow of unread messages. But what if in their inbox, there are questions that could bring them an opportunity to earn money if they just spend 5 minutes answering them? And 400 hours of interviews assured us that there are people who are ready to pay from $1 to $250 just to get an answer from a particular person, despite the fact they are famous influencers or little-known experts in some particular field (like brewery owner).
So, we decided to create a simple product that allows users to create a simple profile, connect payment methods and get their unique link to paste into their bio on any social media. By clicking this link, their connections can directly ask a question for money. Users just have to notify their network that there is always an opportunity to get in touch by opening their Clueby link. Payouts, thanks to Stripe partnership, are almost instant and are available in 110+ countries. It only takes from 24h to a couple of days (depending on the country of residence).
Our users are mostly from North America and Europe; however, there is a growing user base in India as well. Use cases are infinite; they are limited to the imagination only. Some use Clueby to reply to comments for YouTube videos, monetize their expertise on out-of-office hours, as a micro-consulting tool and stable source of income, or as a simple tool to provide professional services (like fitness/diet coaches). With Clueby, you can monetize almost every piece of information you have.
Tell us about yourself
A year ago, my friend (and now a business partner) Pavlo called me and asked whether I could help him reach out to a guy on LinkedIn, let's name him John. Pavlo needed a short answer in a field of John's expertise, but John did not accept new connections on LinkedIn and did not answer our emails. John did paid online coaching sessions, but the nearest slot was available in 3 weeks, and it was a 45 minutes Zoom call, while Pavlo needed an answer to one small question.
So we wrote a message like: "Hi John! I have a question that will only take 5 minutes of your time. I will pay you $100 for an answer" and sent him an Amazon gift card. Suddenly we received a reply in 2 hours. We decided to investigate this case and conducted about 400 hours of user interviews, asking them questions about their problems in outreaching people outside of their network for various reasons. We saw an opportunity.
Within a month, we were fully in love with this idea and started to work full-time. We quit our jobs and minimized our living expenses to a minimum. After the first positive feedback, we realized that we were solving people's problems, and this warmed me up like nothing before. I felt that I'd been making people happy with a product that we were building.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
For this time, we have managed to build a team of 10 people from all around the world who love our product and our customers. Sometimes on team calls, I feel the same way as when I called my family in Ukraine from Cyprus, where I used to live for eight years.
What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?
In the beginning, the hardest thing was to explain to people why they needed our product and how they could use it. Now, the hardest thing is to realize what our users want to be delivered and focus on that instead of our own vision of the product.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Start right now. The worst thing you can do is just do nothing. As a software engineer, a long time ago, I started to follow the simple rule: "at least one commit per day." Soon this rule becomes a habit: if I have a project in mind or some goal, I do my best to complete at least one small task related to it.
- Do not be afraid to lose. Often people do not start because they are scared to lose or to fail. But hey, if you want to do something and have not even started - you have already failed. Just imagine that your neighbor or your friend decided to start a business you were scared to start, and they succeeded. Will you forgive yourself?
- Learn. One must learn a lot to succeed. Read books, watch videos on YouTube, listen to podcasts, anything, just become a better version of yourself every day. There are lots of people who started businesses; you can discover their failures and read their recommendations, analyze them, and evolve. Many things that gonna be new for you have been discovered and tested by others, so do not waste your time and resources on discovering a bicycle.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://clueby.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maksym_ryndia/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mausicmax
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausic/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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