Hey folks, and welcome to this latest episode of the small tech podcast by EC I'm your host Raph And today we're going to be doing something that I've wanted to do for a while, but haven't been able to yet we're doing an interview. We're going to be talking to Sam Chan VP of programs at launch academy. Launch academy is a community here in Vancouver that has helped me out a lot has helped loads of local entrepreneurs.
And people from around the world really, who are coming to Canada to set up their businesses and expand into north America. Sam has done so much work with so many of these people, I thought he would be a great person to talk to about how to launch a small tech product. So without further ado, let's get into it. My interview with Sam Chan. Yeah. Hi, Sam
Awesome, Raph happy to be here.
Yeah. Do you wanna introduce yourself launch and.
My name's Sam. I've been around tech companies basically my whole career. Worked for a lot of names that you've never heard of worked remotely in 2008, long before it was cool and then now back to being not cool. Worked for places like Blackberry. I worked in the mobile developer, scene for a couple years as well. And I think most known for these days. I've spent the last nine years at a nonprofit tech incubator in Vancouver, BC called Launch Academy.
We've helped, grow, raise, fund, not directly fund. We're nonprofit, as I mentioned. But over, I think it's 3000 companies, $3 billion raised, in 35 plus different countries as well, over the last year, 12 years. Now, I said 10 because I don't count the covid years like we, we were busy then too.
Yeah. So yeah, I'm curious if you can, I don't know, talk to what is it that you see um, successful small, small tech companies do what, what are some commonalities, some patterns that, that you see in, in their products
That's a loaded question
very broad question.
many thousands of hours of podcasts is spent time. Trying to derive and go what is the central way,
Yeah. Yeah.
How do you grow something from ideation into reality? And that's even the slogan on a lot of events, programs, et cetera, right?
Yeah.
I think at launch we've spent, again a very early part of the decade working with what we call ideation companies. And I don't know how, startup focused the listeners may be so feel free to just ignore me if I'm like explaining like your five or something like that. But I don't know who you are so I assume that, but But like we spend a lot of our time working with folks that, that want to build something.
Some of them technically know how, like in terms of Skillset to, to build some of them don't. And so like the programming and the courses that we have built for folks like really have to cater to both parties. And of course, like I'm non technical myself, right? Like I've lived my life surrounding around really technical people. And so I always joke like I'm always the dumbest person in any room I'm in. But somehow I'm in the room, right?
So maybe I did something right, but like when someone originally comes to us and they're, we're talking about brand new, we also work with companies that are growing and in growth stages as well, right? So that's not the only thing we do at launch. But in terms of working with ideation companies, It's always around focused around like problems versus solutions.
And the biggest distraction I think is like when we go back to the origin of why someone starts to create something like, and you're digging a little bit deeper, usually it's, there's a pain somewhere, right? Like you either, it's a lot of times for founders, it's their own pain, Maybe I'm working at Microsoft my day-to-day job, and they're like, I have to do this thing over and over and over again. I'm tired of doing this. I could just create blank and I don't have to do this.
Yeah.
And so that, that is the problem that, that you're trying to solve. And immediately you go to how do I fix that problem? I could do this, I could scrape that. I could add in this plugin, so on, so forth. I can push that and then boom it's good
Problem solved.
Problem solved, right? And in many cases I think it does solve that original founder's problem.
Yeah.
but the difference between, and that, that's I think that's great use of your time in terms of keeping your brain fresh, right? Because I think a lot of us, I. Like when we start working and I'm talking more, it could, you could be a developer, you could be, you could be a business analyst, you could be a marketer.
Like stuff starts to get mundane when you're doing like, monotonous work and I think creating new ways to, or more efficient ways to solve your I always joke that lazy people are the best because lazy people are willing to work themselves out of a job in theory.
Yeah. Yeah.
it, and but that means that they have to put that creative juice to work and that keeps you fresh. So I don't look down on lazy people that I think is the takeaway from this but yeah. And a lot of people leave it there, right? Problem solved. And then they go on with it in, and that's cool. Then maybe 5%, 1% of those folks are like, Hey, what if other people have that problem too,
Yeah. Yep.
And I think that's where the creation of a lot of things end up happening. I don't want to say by mistake, But because they recognize there's pain points and there's a market for that pain. And that pain is universal or more than just, it's very specific to my pain.
How have you seen people deal with figuring out whether or not their pain is actually one worth solving for other people? Like whether it's a dollar value or just there's actually an audience there, or, yeah.
I think that's the pivot point and like the first mistake that early founders make
Yeah.
They had a pain point. They solved it with whatever their solution is and going forward, when they start to create what they would consider their company, the focus is all about look at this thing I've made. Look at this solution I've created, Isn't this solution great? And Raph, you're a nice guy, so you'll be like, yeah, it looks pretty good, right? But actually for a founder, looks pretty good and not acting on it. Is like the worst feedback ever. Because
Yeah.
internally, you feel good
I wanna know what's bad.
Yeah. I'm like, I wanna know how to make it something that you would put your hard earned money for.
Yeah. Give me a hundred bucks.
know I'm, yeah I know I'm being very like, and you and I have had many inside conversation about this, but regardless of your focus on capitalism or whatever, Everything needs to be funded in one form or matter,
Yeah.
And that goes into a whole different conversation of customer versus user. And we can dive into that if you want. But just focusing back on, on the solution part is the mistake that people make is when they're solution oriented versus problem obsessed, I think is the fancy startup term that people
I, that's funny. I don't think I'd actually come across that specific phrasing. I like that. what was it?
Obsessed.
Okay. Problem. Obsessed instead of solution. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause you want to be, yeah. You want to be obsessed with what's the pain that, like if someone, if you're not solving someone's pain point then what's the point? Your product can be very shiny and,
I think it's because we all start out with the problem, but once we find a solution, we've put all our focus and all our eggs in the basket on that solution, right? This watch app is gonna change everyone's life. Like this watch app is the best, not realizing that the core demographic of people who have this pain do not have smart watches.
Yeah.
So yeah, in theory it would solve their pain, but now you're not just selling them your watch app, you're also selling them the watch. And you're also selling them the data plan that comes with the watch. And guess what, now it's unaffordable,
yeah.
right? So I think the difficult part is not stopping, being obsessed with the problem after you have an initial solution.
Yeah.
So it might, the solution might work for you and maybe your small group of friends, does it scale, right? Do more people have this problem and enough me people to reach what you consider a critical mass that's worth pursuing as a business, right? And that's the journey that people That's not a very enjoyable part of the journey, especially when you're basically going out asking people to tell you what you think is crap, right? Because that is the most helpful thing, right?
If they're telling if you think of it as if it's a combination lock and everybody's telling you those numbers are good, but the lock is not unlocking all the advice that's been given to you is actually useless. You need people to tell you like that five is, it's wrong. It should be a four. It should be a three. And that's how you get closer to unlocking it. But everybody tells you it's good. It's useless.
Yep. I'm curious with all of that in mind, do you have have you seen companies. I don't know, build out like frameworks or ways of thinking and working around, like gathering that information. Like how do you keep track? How do you make sure, like beyond just like seeing some dollars come in or not how do you stay aware as a company of whether you are focused on the right problem and whether you do actually have the right audience like
So there's a couple of things there. I think To start with, you need to have a little bit of self-awareness,
Yeah.
So you gotta know whether you're the guy or person that loves to build stuff, right? And you and I both know plenty of people that just love to build and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I don't call that a business, I call that playing with Lego.
yeah. Yep.
And it's a great thing to build and create and whatever, right? And I think if you're satisfied with that and that gives you fulfillment, that gives you joy. Keep doing it. Ignore, are we allowed to swear on this? Ignore all the BS of, startup land, raising money, like all that stuff. You don't need it and you can ignore all the advice that comes out, right? Just keep building, right? That's perfectly fine,
Yeah.
But if you think that you have an aspiration to do something larger, to run a business out of it, to maybe have it feed your family to whatever your goals are, right? Then you gotta recognize okay, what are my strengths? What are my limitations? If I'm the builder, that usually means I have a bias towards Hey, I want this thing to work.
Yeah.
but I may be less interested in making sure that it's affordable and it's accessible and it's reachable for the masses. Whatever, however you wanna define masses, right? So I think that's recognizing the first point. And then once you're honest with yourself and of course I'm giving a very stereotypical Hey, I'm a developer. I like building, I don't like selling.
Feel like you're talking about me, Sam
I am definitely not talking about you. But like I, that is a stereotype, right? But if you're a developer that also likes selling, like that's great, right? Don't, I don't wanna dismiss that. And tho those folks are absolutely out there. And the reverse is of course absolutely true too, right? Like people who just want to talk and never actually build anything.
So there's all types of people out there, but I think the first point is like recognizing which one of those you are and then the second point is understanding Hey, if I'm not that other part, let's say I'm the builder, not the seller, am I willing to be the seller until I find a partner that can sell with me? And I don't mean a staff, somebody that's gonna walk alongside you that has the same vision and beliefs that you do.
so if you are a seller and not a builder, then please come to ephemerecreative.ca, where we can be your builder, partner,
I am getting the referral fee for that Right
Yeah that's the plug is there because that is who we like to work with. People who have ideas and don't know how to make them work and who can sell them, but don't know how to materialize them.
I feel like I set you up for that
Yeah. Thank you.
But yeah I think that is the first step and then depending on which role you end up playing keep in mind that if you're starting a business, yes, that is your strength. Doesn't mean you don't work on your weaknesses. At least be in the beginning, right?
Yeah.
if you think that you're just gonna be just the technical guy or just the selling guy, don't think that you're not gonna be involved with product. There's only one person on the team, or two people on the team, right? Like you're gonna, you need to have a breadth of understanding of majority of the company, right? And so with that, once you get there, In terms of talking about like how do you methodically find out if people have the same problem with you? Is you gotta go out and ask, right?
And this is the even people who sell don't really like doing this, to be completely honest with you. Like nobody really likes doing this, I have met some personalities that enjoy going door to door. It's really strange. Like we've all been
me.
had our open our door and like they're selling chocolates, they're selling something, whatever. But there are some people that, that enjoy that. They don't mind just give them something to sell. But the majority of
cold calling.
exactly, the majority of people I've met don't, aren't really fond of that, what I would call like grunt grind work. But it has to be done so, when I talk to more, more successful founders, and success in that, their experience, they've, maybe they've built some products that have had millions of users or they've exited or however you want to define success. Like they've done this a couple times, right? It sounds ridiculously easy from their point of view.
I was talking to the founder, I think it was Matt Smith, who's one of the founders of both later and Thinkific. Later, I think recently both our launch alumni later I think recently got acquired or they merged or something like that. Don't quote me on that. Sorry. Sorry Matt, if I said it wrong. And then Thinkific is a public company so both they, he scaled a few things now and then. And When he said it, I'm like, he's like, how do you find initial users? It's really easy.
You find 10 people who have similar traits to the problem that you're trying to solve. And then you say Hey, do you want this? And do you wanna buy it? And some will, five will say yes, five will say no, that's fine. Go and tell you. Find 10 that say yes.
Yep.
Whatever method that is. Whether it's friends and family, maybe it's your LinkedIn, maybe it's cold calling, that part doesn't really matter. Just get to 10. Once you have those 10 yeses, then you go, great. Do you have 10 friends that you can recommend That can use my stuff? And so the way he describes,
they're willing to recommend, then
have a hundred users. That's more than 90% of startups out there Right? And so when he says it like that, it sounds really easy,
getting those 10 and getting 10, who actually are like
Exactly.
ready to drop dollars. Yeah.
But the secret is there's no secret, right?
Yeah. It's just hard work.
you'll never get to a hundred without 10
Yep. Yep. Yep.
I am a math major
Yeah, I think there's a previous video that I did on on, actually, it might have been on a different podcast, but but about keeping track of both quantitative and qualitative data. Like you want to talk to people, you want to get a sense of how they feel about what you're building and not just keep track of like your Google Analytics, because on some level the numbers can lie. Yeah.
And, I think just be aware of your own biases, right? Like I think that's one of the most difficult things is like
but I like my product.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's oh, only two out of 10 liked it. But the other eight, they're losers, so they don't really count. So really it's two outta two, which is a hundred percent, which is pretty great.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious with the stuff that you're doing at launch do you see any trends in the types of products that people are building? I don't know if that's you could talk about like LLMs and AI driven stuff. Is there more and more of that? What kind of tools and, and products or are people building out there?
Def. So, So we also run something called Launch Builders, which I know you're a fan of. You've been a great attendee for the last couple.
It is so much fun,
Yeah we do them two every two months. So if you're interested I'm sure Raf can get you the details on this podcast, but What we do in those sessions is we do an open call and we ask for, for anybody who's building something cool and then we ask them to tell us why it's cool and why they should present. And then we pick what are the most interesting ones. And then they do the demo. Live once every two months.
Right now we're only doing it in Vancouver, if you want me to come to your city, let's talk I'm super open to that. But yeah, the idea is being in Vancouver specifically we realize there's a lot of people building a lot of cool stuff, but there's not enough spaces for us to talk about it.
There's a lot of space once you're ready to raise money and pitch and go through your projections and all that stuff, but in terms of tinkering with cool toys, beta toys, alpha toys, like I'm using this word very loosely here, right? We're I imagine if you're listening to this you're some degree of a nerd And I'm not even meaning that in a dismissive way like I am huge nerd. And so I like seeing cool toys, cool gadgets that I can get my hands around, right?
And so really like builders is about Hey, if you could see the next five iPhones. Wouldn't you want to? And so at that same idea, it's okay, hey, if you could see the next five coolest products in Vancouver, wouldn't you want to,
yeah.
So that's the base of it. But back to your kind of original question, definitely there's a lot of ais. I'm super happy because I think we're starting to move past what I call the Chat-GPT skin products.
Yeah. Yeah.
Which are like, Hey, we're the Chat-GPT for bankers? We're the Chat-GPT for bankers that spend a lot of time in the washroom. So like it just, it gets more and more specific, but really the core of it is,
This is just
The user is prompting something and then chatGPT spits something out in a more organized manner, right?
Yeah, so I'm just gonna, just because this came up yesterday. I went to Langara Volition Student Showcase, and they were showing their products. They were building real products. One of the things that I think is really interesting with regard to what you're saying right here is I saw this at this student showcase yesterday. This team built a product called Learnium and what they did is they built this system around open AI's APIs.
And so it's using a large language model to do you input a PDF and it breaks it down into a learning plan. So if you're a student and you've got a book that you need to get through and learn it'll pull it apart and create flashcards. And you can ask questions about the book, but it'll also use the LLM to figure out what you should be learning. And basically check your answers as you do these flashcards. Really cool and like, you, I'm so happy that we're We're like moving past the oh yeah.
It's like Chat-GPT. But. With, I don't know a bit of data about like your specific I don't know. Your persona fed into it. It's yeah. Really exciting stuff.
And I mean nothing against it. If you're building something like and, and that's why I go back to what is your intention, right? I think it's a great tool if it inspires you to learn and build something out, even if it's a clone, right? I don't actually think there's anything wrong with skins or clones or how I'm describing them, right?
But I just think like in the long run, if you're trying to build something that's really, truly like, exciting and scalable and sustainable, I think is the most key word. It needs to have its own kind of value proposition.
Yep. I agree. I feel like it, it does kind of go back to like toy versus product. 'cause if it's just the layer on top of something else, then I don't know. Does it really have much value, like
Yeah.
the long run?
are great, which is what I want people to take away is
Yeah.
just because it's not gonna go on the public markets doesn't mean it's not cool.
Yeah, absolutely. Like a toy is fun, but you have to recognize that it's a toy
Yeah..
I'm kind of curious if you could tell me what it's like being on your end of this whole like process. You're supporting so many people who are building products building cool tech companies. What's it like?
So I think most folks who work at incubators, program builders, I don't know what you wanna define, these kind of roles that support services for startups. They're all a little bit crazy. And I mean that in the kindest sense,
Yeah.
but like the emotion emotional kind of quotient, I don't know, EQ that comes with building a product. Like you're building something out from scratch and then for many founders you see the life and death of those things you create. And with support services, and someone in my position. And you and I have gone through this probably a couple times where it's like, we, we see, you get this idea, you're like, Hey, this is a problem. It's really interesting. I'm learning all these cool things.
I plugged in all these cool SaaS's into the, into my product.
Yeah.
And then initial traction even, right? Hey, a couple people are using this, it's great. And then for whatever reason you hit a wall, maybe you have life circumstances that change, oh, I'm getting married, I'm moving to X, Y, Z, Zed for two years. Can't keep working on this. Microsoft gave me an offer. I can't refuse, whatever. And it dies, right? And, but like all of that, that has highs and lows.
There's a lot of peaks, a lot of valleys and support services, if we're being negative on a negative day, I can just be like, I've seen this movie before. But that's not a very nice support service if no, they're not like, you wanna work with people that are as enthused as you are.
Yeah.
But the reality is when on those down and on those lows, you might feel low, right? But you feel low once or twice, or depending on how many products you make, you feel low that many times.
Yeah.
I will be working with a hundred different
Oh man. Yeah, I hadn't
If it's 50 lows every single time,
God. Yeah,
I'm gonna go outta my mind depressed.
Yeah.
And that's if I'm at maximum empathy
yeah.
maximum I really want this to work for you and so the healthy balance that, that my team and I have are forever continuing to try and work on is that how do we have the right amount of excitement for our founders when they find initial success or that moments, but also not let the lows kick us in the nuts. Which they both are bound to happen, right? And so that is the tough part.
And why, honestly when I talk about like having worked at launch for nine years, people are generally surprised now because most folks in my position do not stay that long at one place.
That, yeah, it does sound potentially exhausting. Also, I guess like exciting if got 50 lows, but you also have 50 highs, hopefully.
It just depends on what's your latest thing,
But yeah,
depending on when you ask me like, some, something could be really exciting or something could be really down
yeah,
but I think to some degree, like you have to have a little bit of schizophrenia too, right? Again, I'm using this very loosely. I'm not trying to
Yeah.
Diminish medical conditions and things like that. But one, one end, I'll be talking about tech and talking to a company about, how to help the next generation of children. Next thing I'll be talking to someone who had a product in Medicare and how to have people die honorably and, at peace and there's tech to support them with their last days And so you jump around from place to place really quickly and all have their part in the world and all have their own version of meaning.
Yeah.
but they're no way related to each other.
Yep. Sounds like a wild ride. Okay, so last little thing we're gonna wrap this up with, what is one small tech product, like a, a Google Docs or like a HubSpot, or even at this point I'm gonna call Thinkific a big tech product. Yeah what's a neat small tech product that has significantly impacted your life, the way you do things. I don't know. Something that's been good for you,
So you mean I can't say notion, here's my referral code
Yeah. No.
What if I threw a curve ball and said notion Anyway? You know what's funny is don't use notion
You just want them, those sweet referral dollars from our 12 listeners
yeah. I don't even know the, my referral code at this rate, but the tool that I was gonna mention is as you start out on your products,
Yeah.
Here's a persona that I'm imagining folks like listening to this might be on, right? Some of them will be working part full-time on their product, and so they have their own company like Raf, right? Some of them will, maybe they do some consultants, some services maybe they have some things in the background. They're working on top of their full-time job And then there's gonna be some that are just full-time working. Some they're enthusiasts.
yeah. Yep.
I'd say one of the first things that happens when someone creates a company, it's probably shouldn't be the first thing that happens, but we all know it happens, is they'll go buy a domain name, they'll get their own inbox, they'll go raf@newcompany.com and go Look at this, my shiny new email.
I feel called out
I've done that more than a couple times. So you're not the only guilty one here. And then of course you start to take meetings or you start to have some of those cold calls that we talked about and all that kind of stuff. And so for me, like the tool that I've talked about definitely in, in our launch we have this series called Tool Time, where we share different tools within it. It's called Cron, so that's CRON.
But I'm not actually promoting Cron 'cause I think there's other, it's a calendar app that's owned by Notion. Now they got acquired by Notion, so technically I'm saying notion.
Okay. I see. I see. Yeah.
but I don't care about the notes part at all. I think they're gonna have some integrations in the long run. So if you're already using Notion, I think it's a no brainer to use CRON. But even within CRON, like it to me is just another calendar. So really it's which interface you prefer and all that kind of stuff. The key feature that I wanna highlight is this one little feature that I have no idea what they call it, but now I can't live without it.
And what happens is when you start a new project You'll probably still have a personal email, which is what you do when you go to Safeway and they ask you for your email to, to get the receipt. You'll have your work email at Microsoft or Apple or wherever the heck it is. You work and you have that inbox, and both of those will have calendars. And then now you're gonna have another calendar for this new venture with this new email that, that you just created.
They have this one really nifty feature where if I book a call with RAF on my new company, it blocks off the time on my other calendars.
Oh, that is really practical.
Yeah. And so it's just that one feature, like I use it in CRON. Maybe you have another calendar app that uses it, and that's fine. Don't move to CRON, whatever.
Yeah,
But that has been a life changer.
that's too late. I just signed up.
It's fine. Just use it for that.
Yep.
And like really what it ends up being is like maybe you guys have kids or whatever and it's okay, I have to pick up the kids for 15 minutes from three to 50 15. I don't really wanna put that on my work calendar because that seems like kind of stupid. so what you do is you put pick up kids on your home calendar. On your work calendar. It'll say busy.
Yeah.
And that makes sure, because we all have Calendly and different things out there that, like people can just sign up and book a meeting with me randomly, and I may not even know until I check it later. This allows those block offs to be actually blocked off. That aligns, that allows you to separate your work from your life in a way. But we all live in the same 24 hour like time sphere. So at the end of the day, if I'm doing something at three, I can't be doing something else at three.
Or I shouldn't be
Yeah
so that, that's my key tip. Hopefully it's helpful.
I love it. That's I literally just signed up while you were talking about it. 'cause I was like, that is something that I have run into so often between like my personal and professional emails. That is fantastic.
My wife signed up for CRON, just uses that feature. She never uses CRON
Yeah, I was actually gonna ask, is it just kinda like a set it and forget it sort of thing? Like you set it up once and then you just kinda Yeah,
Yeah.
that is,
breaks
yeah. That is fantastic. Cool. Awesome. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Do you wanna plug, launch or plug something else or?
Sure. Yeah. If you are working on a startup, feel free, we're friendly. Feel free to chat us. Uh, You can email me at sam@launchacademy.ca You can find me on Twitter. I think. I think our company, Twitter's Launch Academy HQ on pretty much every single platform. I think we're on all of them. If we're not on a platform email me and tell me we're not on that platform. and we'll go from there.
Awesome. This has been another episode of The Small Tech Podcast. First one with a guest. Thanks to the amazing Sam Chan for being on board and, and chatting with me, building small tech products and we all want to do something good in the world. So go out there and build something good folks, I will see you in the next episode. See ya.
Bye.