56. Building Startups with Richard White

Today we’re talking to Richard White. Richard is founder and CEO of Fathom.video, a free app that records, transcribes & highlights your calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. 

Fathom was a part of Y-Combinator’s W21 batch, is one of only 50 Zoom App Launch Partners, and is one of a small handful of companies Zoom has invested in directly via their Zoom Apps Fund.

Prior to Fathom, Richard founded UserVoice, one of the leading platforms that technology companies, from startups to the Fortune 500, use for managing customer feedback and making strategic product decisions. UserVoice was notable for being the company that originally invented the Feedback tabs shown on the side of millions of websites around the world today.

Richard previously worked on Kiko, a company in the first batch of Y-Combinator, with Justin Kan and Emmett Shear who subsequently went on to found Twitch. Richard is passionate about designing intuitive productivity tools with delightful user experiences.

In this episode we dive deep into how to properly cold email, the benefits of working at a startup, when to monetize your startup, how to get and implement product feedback, the benefits of going through Y Combinator, and much much more. 

If you’re looking to build a startup, this episode is a must listen. 

Key Lessons:

1. When you write cold emails, write directly to one person at a time. If it reads like it’s a bulk message, it will likely get deleted. 
2. Make sure you’re solving your customer’s problem end to end and not just one part along the journey. For Fathom this meant that the job wasn’t done until the notes from the zoom meetings were in the CRM. 

Fathom Website: https://fathom.video/