On today’s Tank Talk! We welcome Aaron Upright, co-founder of ZenHub to talk about “From Bootstrapped to Venture Backed.”

Aaron’s Background:

Aaron Upright is the cofounder of ZenHub a Vancouver and SF Based startup that was spun out of the incubator Axiom Zen which is also famous for starting Dapper Labs the creators of CryptoKitties and NBA TopShot. ZenHub is a powerful software platform that injects advanced project management functionality seamlessly into the GitHub interface, making centralized collaboration on GitHub faster, more visual, and less cluttered for engineers and developers. 

In this episode we discuss:

01:45 ZenHub’s origins as a side project

03:57 The aha moment

05:52 The decision to pivot from side project to full time pursuit

06:51 Axiom Zen as an incubator experience

10:05 Getting ten paying customers on their first day

12:16 The decision to focus on GitHub

14:55 Bootstrapping for their first years

16:49 The discipline required when you are self-funded

18:56 How being a part of a larger ecosystem lessens the need for marketing

20:17 Challenges of recruiting while bootstrapped

25:09 Deciding to take VC money

28:18 The size of the opportunity now with VC money

30:21 ZenHub use cases

32:20 Challenge of scaling culture

34:47 The Vancouver startup ecosystem

Book Aaron recommends:

The Fish That Ate The Whale by Rich Cohen

Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!

Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency

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