Sam Udotong is one of the scrappiest founders in tech

In 2016, he moved to San Francisco with $100 in his pocket.

Today his startup Fireflies raised $14 million from top investors.

This is the story of his "overnight" success 👇👇👇
Sam's journey has been far from easy

• He moved to San Francisco with $100 in his pocket
• For years his daily diet consisted of a bottle of Soylent and three slices of pizza
• He and his co-founder pivoted the company *7 times*
Sam & co-founder @krish_ramineni started @firefliesai at an MIT hackathon

After graduation many of Sam's classmates took jobs at companies like Facebook and Google.

Sam bet on himself and decided to bootstrap his company.
He moved to San Francisco with $100 in his pocket

@sudotong worked 15 hour days from free coworking spaces.

He asked family members in Nigeria to introduce him to engineers willing to work remotely.

For years his daily diet was a bottle of Soylent and 3 slices of domino's.
Sam didn't give up when the product wasn't resonating with customers.

Fireflies started as an on-campus food delivery app that you could pay for in bitcoin.

Today it's a tool that transcribes video meetings into notes.

It took *seven* company pivots to get there.
Today Sam and Krish raised $14 million from @khoslaventures, @canaanpartners, and an impressive list of angel investors

It's proof of all the hard work they've done to this point
Sam used to not share his story publicly

He told @jonnystartup of @founding that it was too embarrassing.

But now he talks about it openly, and encourages people to share the hard parts of their journeys too.

Enjoyed the thread?

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More from @SamDeBrule

28 Apr
Pipe is a fast growing startup that recently raised more than $50 million

The company is probably the most “traditional” way co-founder and CEO Harry Hurst has ever made money.

This is a story of an immigrant entrepreneur who wasn’t afraid to think big. 👇
.@harryhurst had to hustle for everything he has:

•He grew up on the U.K.’s equivalent of welfare
•He sold clothes, started a magazine, and managed a rapper
•He pitched 50 startup ideas to someone at a random music studio encounter, and convinced him to be his co-founder
Harry's upbringing shaped him

His mother raised him, his brother, and his sister on government benefits that amounted to less than £600/month.

They lived through food, financial, and social insecurity.

This insecurity has driven Harry throughout his career.
Read 14 tweets
14 Apr
Loom is a video messaging startup valued at more than $325 million today.

In 2015 it was a usability testing app with no traction.

This is a story about taking a company through a dark period and teammates sticking together. 👇
Co-founder Vinay Hiremath describes Loom's early days as "simultaneously the greatest source of joy and crushing anxiety" of his life:

• Opentest, their original product, wasn’t working
• The founders maxed out their credit cards
• They pivoted 4-5 times in 7 months
Loom started as a different product

Co-founders Joe Thomas, Vinay Hiremath, and Shahed Khan jumped into the domain of user testing after a 30 minute meeting.

They called it Opentest.

It started as a network of their “expert” friends giving companies product feedback.
Read 11 tweets
12 Apr
Ryan Gilbert works in supply chain management at a 13,000+ person company

He started a newsletter on the side to feature workspaces of creative individuals.

It's now one of the most beautiful newsletters on Substack 👇
.@rjgilbert started "Workspaces" while many of us transitioned to WFH during the pandemic

He needed inspiration to design his workspace.

He realized he wasn't alone.

So he reached out to a few creatives he looks up to.

They responded with pictures:
@mikaelcho, co-founder/CEO @unsplash, works from the couch in his open-concept home.

He uses a pillow or book to prop up his MacBook.

He prefers to put his feet up while working for comfort and ergonomics.
Read 16 tweets
9 Apr
Ryan Gilbert works in supply chain management at a 13,000+ person company

He started a newsletter on the side to feature workspaces of creative individuals.

It's now the most beautiful newsletter on Substack.

His newsletter and a few highlights workspaces.xyz

👇
.@rjgilbert started "Workspaces" while many of us transitioned to WFH during the pandemic

He needed inspiration to design his workspace.

He realized he wasn't alone.

So he reached out to a few creatives he looks up to.

They responded with pictures.
Mikael Cho, co-founder/CEO @unsplash, works from the couch in his open-concept home.

He uses a pillow or book to prop up his MacBook.

He prefers to put his feet up while working for comfort and ergonomics.
Read 16 tweets
8 Apr
Figma is a startup valued at more than $2 billion dollars.

Co-founder and CEO Dylan Field is a Forbes 30 under 30 list alum.

This is a story about the messy reality of building a startup and the myth of overnight success.👇
Building Figma was messy

Dylan is really open about it:
• The company idea was originally around drones
• He questioned dropping out of Brown after "the worst week of Figma"
• John Lilly passed on their seed round, saying "I just don’t think you know what you’re doing yet."
Dylan dropped out of Brown University to become a member of the Thiel Fellowship in 2012

He and co-founder Evan Wallace (Dylan's friend and former TA) began work on what started as a Drone company,

But ultimately became Figma.

From @zoink's Thiel Fellowship application:
Read 13 tweets
26 Mar
1/ We grew the @usejournal blog from 0 pageviews per month in 2017 to 4,100,000 per month in 2020.

Here's what we've learned along the way 👇
2/ Embrace limitations.

we have a small team

we spend our time writing code and talking to users

a contributor-driven strategy was the only way for us to reach a huge audience quickly

now 99% of articles on our blog are written by people with no affiliation to Journal
3/ Understand what writers want.

our biggest challenge was convincing people to submit posts to our Medium publication

most writers have valuable perspectives to share, but no audience to share with

we offer them distribution for their posts
Read 8 tweets

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