The Startup Story

Duncan Hamra, co-founder of Memberstack

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About this episode

My guest this week is Duncan Hamra, founder of Memberstack. For those who might not be aware, Memberstack is a credentialing or user account solution, for those that would much rather leverage a polished solution and then try and code their own user-access flow.

If you have content that you want to put behind a user account, Memberstack can solve that for you. Or if you are building a mobile app and you want to allow user-centric customization, Memberstack can be a key part of that flow with a very simple setup. But what I didn't know about Memberstack until this interview, is how unique their entrepreneurial journey is as compared with the 140 found episodes I’ve had thus far.

This is our first Startup Story episode featuring a product that launched on Product Hunt and Memberstack made it to become a featured product. This is the first episode featuring a technical solution where the vision for growth, is not about exponential growth or chasing a unicorn moniker. And it is definitely the first episode where the founder pushes to ensure that people don't work over 40 hours a week. We discuss all of these topics in great.

In this episode, you'll hear:
  • How Duncan was raised in a very supportive household in Virgina, his family originally came from Lebanon. He shares how growing up he would go to family parties where everyone would talk about their businesses.
  • How he met his co-founder Tyler in kindergarten and from a young age always wanted to build things together and started their first company in high school. He shares how in ninth grade, they would get up every morning at 5 am, and do things before school started to make money. Then later started listening to Pat Flynn’s podcast about creating online business and this sparked their curiosity.
  • Duncan explains what Memberstack is and how it is a credentialing or user account solution, for those that would much rather leverage of polished solution and then try and code their own user access flow.
  • Memberstack was founded in 2018 and he explains that by building Mamberstac by themselves they could constantly develop it.
  • They originally started to build this just for themself but then realized they stumbled on something really big.
  • Duncan shares how he accidentally arrived at a VC fundraising meeting.
  • He shares how he successfully launched his product on Product Hunt and how he reached being the number 1 product. He gives tips on how he uses his friend and clients to help them grow on Product Hunt.
  • He shares how he makes sure that everyone on the team has an even work-life balance and doesn’t push his team to work over 40 hours.
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    The Startup StoryBy James McKinney