Tye Schlegelmilch to the show. Tye is the founder of Hinged following a 16-year career in finance, and most recently as co-CIO for Fortress Investment Group which has about 70B assets in their management. Prior to that, Tye was with a variety of different finance firms including Goldman Sachs.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Snowball
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezo s
Favorite online tool? — Skype and GoToMeeting
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 to 6 hours
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wish I’ve been more measured with certain things in my life”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:08 – Nathan introduces Tye to the show
01:48 – Tye has a lot of friends who entered the entrepreneurial space
01:58 – As an engineer, he’s always been curious about how he can make things work better
02:13 – He moved out to Connecticut and bought a house
02:17 – Tye saw an opportunity in being able to get things done, understanding what needed to be done, and when it needed to be done in a home
02:37 – Diving into entrepreneurship was just a result of his curiosity
02:55 – Hinged is a holistic online platform for homeowners to better understand, manage, and control all aspects of home ownership
03:43 – Hinged’s business model is providing a full software solution for the service providers
04:05 – Hinged is highly selective with who they want (service providers) on their platform
04:20 – They take 5% of the revenue that goes through the platform to the provider that’s providing the maintenance or repair
04:39 – Hinged is a marketplace
05:23 – They have several hundred homeowners on the platform
05:43 – Across Fairfield and Westchester Country, they have a few hundred service providers in 50 different categories
06:57 – On an average user basis, there are 20%-40% who have spent money on the platform
07:31 – Hinged launched in Feb 2017
08:32 – Appliance repairs are the hottest category on their platform
09:40 – The average price of services done on Hinged is about $1500
10:19 – Tye funded everything on Hinged
10:54 – Internally, they just discussed capital-raising
11:13 – The industry Hinged is in is a “land-grab” so they’re looking into raising capital to expand
11:47 – Today there are 5 full-time employees and a development team from Cogniance
12:48 – They started with a sales team for service providers
13:02 – Teams are continuing to ramp on Hinged
13:35 – Hinged was very well thought out before Tye put money into it
14:05 – Tye’s salary in finance ranged from back office administration to major league baseball players
16:06 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

There will always be better ways to do things—keep on brainstorming.
Don’t hold yourself back from your own curiosity.
Be selective with who you work with; this will affect the quality of your product.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

734: Ex Finance Dad of 3 Wants to Own Your Home

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders