In Episode 594, Rob Walling chats with Dan Andrews and Ian Schoen, the founders of Dynamite Jobs and the TropicalMBA podcast. We talk about how they started over. They started a new business, Dynamite Jobs, a couple of years after selling their physical products company back in 2015.

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Dynamite Jobs was born after seeing a need within their community, The Dynamite Circle, a community for location independent entrepreneurs. It’s a need that would be hard for most people to bootstrap because it is a two-sided marketplace, but Dan and Ian had an advantage with their existing business and audience, and were able to capitalize on it.

In fact, after humble beginnings, the business has grown 10x in the last year.

In this episode, we chat about how they are bootstrapping and growing a two-sided marketplace, along with a wide range of other topics.

[2:37] Why Dan and Ian both settled in Austin, Texas and the unexpected benefits that has had for their businesses   

[3:22] Why their digital nomad journey in the early days was born out of necessity   

[4:35] The events that led to the first DCBKK event in 2012 and the impact it had on their business 

[6:16] Embracing the chops index instead of the old school digital marketer “guru” model 

[8:21] The ideas that led Dan and Ian to start Dynamite Jobs in 2017

[14:46] The first key metric for Dynamite Jobs back in the early days

[17:12]  How deciding to hire a CTO was the catalyst that scaled Dynamite Jobs exponentially in late summer 2020 

[20:34] The critical mistake they made that cost them months of development time 

[22:51] The concept of CEO bombing vs. diving deeper into the core features that matter

[24:53] The 1000 day principle 

[28:14] Where Dynamite Jobs is in relation to the 1000 day principle

[29:00] How they 10x’ed the revenue for Dynamite Jobs in 2021 

[30:26] The value of hiring senior people who are better than you 

[35:59] Actionable tips for recruiting and hiring great people 

[38:44] The lowest cost, highest leverage hiring advantage for founders 

[41:21] The rip, pivot and jam framework 

[43:14] Why some of their “best ideas” turned out to be the biggest failures 

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

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