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