🏅 22. Spencer Fry (Podia.com): A how-to on founders and financial aims

The Usual SaaS-pects with Ch Daniel

Spencer's bio (from their AmA)

Hey everyone 👋

Excited to talk about all things startups and creator economy, and anything else.

A brief bit of bio:

• I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire life, since my early teens. At 37 years old, I’ve never earned a paycheck from anyone other than myself. This is one of my proudest accomplishments.
• Co-founded and exited 3 bootstrapped business between 2003 and 2014. Most notably Carbonmade, which was the first online portfolio company on the Internet. TypeFrag — he first VOIP product for video game players — is the other well-known one. Early Counter-Strike and World of Warcraft players will have heard of us.
• Founded Podia in 2014. This was the first business I ever raised VC for. 7 years later, we’re a 28 person team, profitable since 2019, and the best all-in-one platform for creators today.
• I’m a bootstrapper-turned-fundraiser. I hadn’t anticipated raising any money for Podia, but something very Silicon Valley happened to me: I met a VC for beers at a beer garden in Brooklyn just to say hi. He wrote me a check a couple days later. 🍻
• At the start of this year, I wrote 10 bold predictions for the next 10 years for the creator economy. These are already playing out in the market today. Happy to discuss where this market is heading.
• Just some random things: I love cooking and living by the ocean. My signature dish is an all-day bolognese with fresh pasta. 🍝
• I moved to NYC right after graduating college over 15 yers ago. I grew up in the NYC tech community, having attended the very first NY Tech Meetup with under 20 people there. Been amazing to see NYC flourish over the past 15 years.
• My number one predictor for a company’s success: persistence. Don’t give up too early!
• I’m a solo founder at Podia after previously working with co-founders for my previous startups. Bad co-founder relationships kill more startups than anything else. Find early employees who are awesome instead. Happy to discuss the pros and cons.

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Links

Reddit SaaS: https://www.reddit.com/r/saas

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/chddaniel

My product: https://Simple.ink/