Duy Huynh. He’s the founder of Autonomous.ai which builds smart office products to help people work smarter.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Zero to One
What CEO do you follow? – Stewart Butterfield
Favorite online tool? — Google Analytics
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Focus on and build something really helpful to people”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:50 – Nathan introduces Duy to the show
01:20 – Subscribe to Youtube to see Duy using a smart desk
01:32 – Smart desk helps work smart the whole day
01:48 – “We don’t care much about the money”
02:02 – Autonomous’ mission is how they can help companies’ work smarter
02:51 – Autonomous wants to reinvent every single item in an office
03:15 – One of Autonomous’ products is the Cardboard
- 03:30 – It is created for people who want an affordable standing desk
- 04:05 – It sells for $19
- 04:17 – Cardboard is a fairly new product
04:42 – Autonomous was founded in 2014
05:10 – Autonomous has shipped around 100K units
05:16 – The best-seller is the SmartDesk
- 05:38 – It can keep you healthy and stay active in office
05:50 – Some of Nathan’s friends have bought the Smartdesk
06:07 – Autonomous has raised $200K
06:18 – Prior to Autonomous, Duy really liked smart products
06:46 – Duy started Autonomous with his co-founders in a small apartment
08:25 – The seed money has helped Duy make the prototypes
09:00 – Duy has spent $100-200K on the products before raising the seed round
09:09 – Duy traveled to find the best suppliers
09:30 – Team size
- 09:43 – 4 are working in the NY office
- 09:46 – 10 in California and some in Vietnam and China
- 10:10 – Total of 40 people
10:22 – Autonomous is currently cash flow positive
10:35 – Duy isn’t looking at raising another round at the moment
11:00 – Monthly expenses
11:40 – Autonomous is doing over $10M annually
12:18 – Most of the customers are founders
12:37 – Autonomous currently relies on word-of mouth
12:49 – Autonomous had a Kickstarter campaign
13:05 – Autonomous made $250K from their Kickstarter campaign
- 13:20 – It was for a thousand units
13:58 – Duy wanted to maintain a fair margin in the supply chain
14:36 – “They pay for what they get”
15:00 – Competitors’ margin
15:19 – Gross profit
16:04 – The second and third best-selling products are the chair and stool, respectively
16:38 – Duy wouldn’t take a deal from Herman Miller at the moment
16:41 – Autonomous isn’t a furniture company
17:19 – On paper, Duy is the single founder but the co-founders have equity as well
18:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Smart products shouldn’t just offer convenience, but make your life healthy and active too.
Price your product fairly—the value of the product should match the price.
Create something that will be really helpful for people.

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

701: Smart Desk King Sells $10,000,000+

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders