And so we're making half a 1,000,000 in annual revenue.

Everyone today, I haven't interviewed for you guys with a couple who built their start up while traveling.

We talked about how they started their company, the Strategist.

They used to stay productive while traveling on the text back that they used Thio build their system.

Among other things.

I personally learned a lot from this interview, so hopefully you will, too.

Sort of canny.

And that's ah, looks like candy dot io and user feedback tool.

And so we help other software companies keep track of feature requests and bug reports from their users that they can build a better product.

Right?

So actually, I had seen canny before.

Really?

Yeah.

Yes.

So what I saw was it's like a list of feature requests where people can like up boat.

Maybe don't put to it.

No, don't know their cell phone with you.

And how long have you be running the company?

I think I left my full time job about 3.5 years ago, but I guess we launch canny almost 2.5 years ago.

Okay, so that was your job at Facebook as we're going to react with Facebook.

Nice software, engineer.

And you were designer designer.

I worked on a messenger.

Yeah.

So you left 3.5 years ago.

Did you leave out the same time?

No.

Funny enough.

I started an anti left pretty much right?

Exactly when I started as you left.

Oh, yeah.

So I kind of stayed there for my year and 1/2 while Andrew kind of worked on an earlier version of King, I guess on.

Then eventually, I left to join him.

Yeah, I like to say I recruited, sir.

Okay.

Did you did you leave Facebook to work on this Start up?

Yep.

It's different flavor of the start up, and so back then was called product pains and was a community where people can post vote on future requests for any product publicly.

And so we had a couple companies using it, and eventually the company's wanted more and more features.

And we kind of turned into a sass tool in Reaper.

Ended his canny and so, Yeah, I was similar.

Definitely.

Yeah, I mean, eventually we found that we needed to make money.

Ah, hard business on.

And the earlier product pains the earlier version Waas very consumer focused on.

And so there was not really a business model behind it.

And so we basically flipped it into assess tool.

And so we charge businesses to pay to use the platform.

Yeah, on how were you, like, how could you be so confident that, you know, you left your job just not too comfortable.

It felt like, you know, I want to get into start ups.

And it felt like the things that I was learning at a big company weren't really relevant to start ups like sales and marketing, including and all that.

And so, yeah, I felt like I had had to, you know, take a risk and go do it.

You know, I have an idea that I was excited about and yeah, it's turned out great, E.

I mean, I think when you're going to start ups, there's there's no guarantee on, and this is our first venture together on.

And so there was definitely, like this feeling of you don't know what's gonna happen.

You don't know if you're gonna be successful.

And it definitely felt that way for a long time with product pains.

We just didn't really know where it was going for a long time.

Um, and then we made our first dollar or 1st $20 then we were like, Okay, there's something going on here.

Um, which brings us here today, right.

How long did it take you to, you know, make those first?

Yeah.

It was, like a year and 1/2 since, like, Yeah, but we were really focused on, you know, we're building a community like there wasn't even a way for people to pay us.

And so we're just focused on growing this community with users giving feedback to companies.

And then companies started asking for the features and we said, Hey, would you pay for those?

And then they said, Yeah, kind of happened naturally, that we turned it into a money making business, which is great because we're bootstrapped.

And so we wouldn't be able to really continue doing this the way we want it to without being able to charge those stores and make money off our work.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's really cool.

Uh, so It's being 2.5 years since the launch seas along.

And like, after that, Like after all that?

Because you tell us about how the company's doing.

You know, in terms of maybe the number of employees revenue numbers, you don't much care.

Sure.

Yeah.

Um, so we have 450 customers, and those are paying customers, and, uh, they're paying us an average of about 100 bucks a month, a little bit over that.

And so we're making half a 1,000,000 in annual revenue, which feels great for food shop company.

No, no, outside funding.

Half a 1,000,000 is enough where we can support it.

Like our business and a team.

We've hired three other people on their all remote.

So our team is in UK, Estonia and Seattle, and then we're here in Toronto, and, um, yeah, we're really excited about where we are.

Yeah.

I went to the University of Waterloo, and I studied self fringing, and I I studied in a design program.

It was a joint program between York University and shared in college.

Um, yeah, it was like a regular for your program, but very, very much graphic design focused unless, like, digital tech focus.

Yeah, eventually on my way to doing kind of product is mind you, I design, right?

So how did you get into?

Yeah.

Tons of my friends went to our lead on a sleigh for for engineering and eventually participated in a bunch of hackathons which really opened my eyes to tech and San Francisco in general, on dhe.

I just really gravitated towards that and less of what I was studying at school, which was a lot of, like, editorial design packaging, stuff like that.

That's more traditional.

So I really, really enjoyed that.

The the web aspect.

And so I just pretty much focused on that and did a bunch of internships.

And then eventually, um, yeah, I found my self at Facebook.

Did you learn to do what?

Stuff like digital stuff on your own?

Yeah.

Um, school.

The school curriculum was behind in those aspects s o.

We did have Thio take that on to ourselves.

Just having a website.

It's kind of a must.

So in third year, I think I just kind of said screw it like I'm not really learning how to build a website.

I'm just gonna go do this on my own during some summer.

And so I just build me a website.

And that's kind of how I picked up my front and skills.

Yeah, nice eso.

After graduating from like those programs, you bullets decided to work at Facebook.

I did it.

I tried to do a start up for six months and it didn't go super well.

My co founder felt some pressure to go get a job, and so it was kind of just be working full time.

And I had, like, the Facebook offer.

There is a backup option, and I ended up taking it at one point.

I think it was a good move for both of us, just to get some, like foundation, like early job skills.

But there's nothing really that, like, sets you up for entrepreneurship other than doing it.

So, yeah, I'm glad we both got that taste, but now we're like here doing nothing.

I think it's super worthwhile, like there's the experience you get of, you know, being ableto put together a project on your own, which you might not get until you have some professional experience and also financially like we probably couldn't have worked on it without, you know, funding if we didn't have a little bit of a financial cushion from working in a big company.

Yeah, that's really true.

Right?

So working out Facebook was, like, very different from what you did.

No.

100% different, very different.

I mean, I wouldn't say I didn't like it like I really do.

Like I really I thought I did good work there, and I really enjoyed the people that I worked with.

But it wasn't like I knew from the beginning that I wanted to do my own company someday.

And so I made the jump eventually and yeah, it's it's totally different.

Same thing for you.

Yeah.

I mean, I think at a big company like you're focused on this tiny, tiny thing, that's part of a huge, huge picture.

And like for me, I didn't really even know how my job correlated to growing Facebook's business.

I just was tasked to, like make reaction Native, which was a part of react, a great project used by a lot of companies, and, um yeah, whereas a canny like it's hard to do anything without thinking about the R A y like, how is this gonna grow our business?

And if it's not worthwhile, then we don't do it.

Yeah, well, your impact a lot more directly.

Yeah.

And the breath, like, you know, here we're doing sales were doing marketing.

We're doing recruiting.

We're doing all this stuff that, you know, was totally abstracted away from your job as an engineer at Facebook, which is cool.

It's fun to worry about, right?

A lot of new things.

Yeah.

So let's let's talk about you know, how you've been traveling.

When did you decide to move out of San Francisco?

And why did you decide to move out of it?

Yeah, insane is, this was a great place to live if you're working at a big company or if you're trying to raise money.

But after we were after, we left our big company and we're trying to raise money.

It didn't feel like a great fit for us anymore.

It was really expensive, really, really expensive city.

And we had always kind of wanted to travel.

And, you know, we didn't have an office, wouldn't have employees, would have investors.

There's no reason really keeping us there.

So we thought, Why not go digital nomads for a little bit And we booked a ticket to London was our first destination just to kind of warm up with traveling.

And, uh, yeah, way ended up traveling for about two years after that.

Yeah, we're actually just now kind of slowing down a little bit on.

We decided to stay in Toronto, So that's exciting.

So were you, like, tired of traveling So Hee was sick of it?

I was.

So I think the biggest thing is loneliness is because we would stay in the city for about a month and move around.

And you don't make a lot of friends that way just because even if you do meet people that you like leave immediately after, it's hard to find people who were gonna travel to from city to city with you.

And yeah, I just missed, like, being around friends.

And so that was a big motivator for me.

It was just being coming back and being around friends and having that coon camaraderie that you have, you know, hanging out with people that you know, like, yeah, it's not for everyone, that's for sure.

I would continue doing it.

But honestly, you like.

Andrews made a big compromise for last year's.

So thanks eso when you're traveling, Would you like a book on Airbnb for months?

Something like that.

Yeah.

Book flights.

Yeah, we wouldn't like it's It's a trade off of you if you book it farther in advance, you get cheaper and better places, but you get less flexibility.

If you book a last minute, you get worse places for more money, but you get a little flecks of building.

So we would some end up somewhere in the middle where maybe we book it like a month in advance or we look like a couple of our next stops.

We'd never try to be like crazy planners, but we wouldn't save it for the very last second so that we could slip in a nice place.

And, yeah, we would try to stay in every envies for a month on, you know, usually if you stay for a month, there's a discount.

It could be as much as, like, 30 40% off, so you could get some great deals.

It makes it very livable.

It was definitely way cheaper than living in like San Francisco.

Like, I think our average rent split between the two of us is maybe, like, $700 a month for two years, which is pretty portable computer.

Most cities.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Especially like southeast Asia.

You make it over there is just like meals are a dollar.

Like it's crazy.

So yeah, way travel the world and save money.

Yeah.

What if you ask, How do you How do you afford to travel so much?

It's like we're saving.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think you have the flexibility.

Like I would recommend anybody should, like, try it.

Uh, honestly, if you don't like it, just come back.

It's not a big deal.

And what was he like to try to build a company?

Traveling?

It was challenging.

I mean, we weren't just like, traveling right when we were working full time.