003 Andrew Amann - Inventing, Designing & Growing Digital Ventures

Andrew Amann is an experienced intrapreneur and entrepreneur who has successfully launched twelve startups. Since co-founding NineTwoThree Venture Studio in 2012, Andrew has helped launch countless ventures for clients and emerging companies and turned his business into one of the fastest growing companies in America on the Inc. 5000 list.

In this episode, Jeff and Andrew discuss what makes apps successful, trends in 5G and the web app industry, and Andrew’s ‘Notion Board.’ Andrew talks about bootstrapping startups without venture capital and his definition of what success looks like.

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Key Takeaways

01:29 – Jeff Mains introduces today’s guest, Andrew Amann who joins the show to discuss launching multiple startups and working with the same consistent team of engineers 

07:34 – The secret to successfully working remote and cultivating a team culture 

12:21 – The synergistic relationship between Andrew and his co-founder, Pavel 

14:26 – The origin story of NineTwoThree

16:30 – Sales, Marketing, and the power of SEO 

19:09 – Settling on a fair market price and understanding your competitors 

24:46 – What makes apps successful and innovative trends in the industry 

29:51 – The future of web apps 

32:47 – Lessons Andrew learned from launching multiple startups 

34:57 – Why it’s not just about money and growth for Andrew 

37:56 – How to know when you have product-market fit and how to keep it 

40:36 – The ‘Notion Board’ 

43:32 – Defining a startup studio 

48:14 – Jeff thanks Andrew for joining the show and lets listeners know where to follow him and learn more about NineTwoThree 

49:59 – Jeff takes a moment to shout out the incredible work that Nova Ukraine is doing and encourages listeners to donate to organizations like these 

Tweetable Quotes

“What we realized is the fun that we had was with the team we had built in that last year or two. And that team was able to build client projects. We were able to build new ideas, and we started resourcing people from all around the world.” (07:05) (Andrew)

“We are all becoming aware of how strong Ukrainians are, how resilient they are, how powerful they are, and how outspoken they are. And I think that culture has formulated our company even before the war started.” (11:54) (Andrew) 

“When you reverse engineer SEO, you really are creating a long-term business that has no way of failing. If you're gathering a hundred thousand clicks one your website every day, that form of marketing is never going to go away.” (17:12) (Andrew)

“I think the trend that we’re seeing recently is the focus on community. We’ve gotten a lot of interest in creating community apps.” (25:26) (Andrew)

“Finding a product-market fit is never easy. You always think you have a few customers in mind, and if you can just solve for those customers, another hundred will come. But it is a constant grind to not only go from zero to one, but from one to two, and from two to three.” (33:05) (Andrew)

“My favorite story is the local guy that has figured out how to power wash everybody’s houses in town. You keep seeing his signs everywhere. Those are the successful stories where he hustled and he figured it out, but he’s not gloating on the newspapers or TechCrunch. But he’s more successful, he’s happy, he goes home every day at five o’clock, he hangs out with his kids. That is success to me of freedom as opposed to getting your face on a TechCrunch.” (37:16) (Andrew)

“The ideation phase is a muscle. You constantly have to practice the concept of thinking of how something will work in a marketplace and figuring out the risks that that product will have if it was released. Then determining, is it still a good idea and, if not, how can I modify or adjust the original offering to make it work for a different subset of people.” (41:18) (Andrew)

Guest Resources

Learn More & Donate to Nova Ukraine Here – https://novaukraine.org/ 

Andrew’s Twitter – https://twitter.com/andrewamann

Andrew’s Website – https://www.ninetwothree.co/ 

Andrew’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewamann/  

NineTwoThree LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/ninetwothree/ 

NineTwoThree Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/NineTwoThreeDigitalVentures/ 

SaaS Fuel Resources

Website - https://championleadership.com/

Jeff Mains on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkmains/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/jeffkmains

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thesaasguy/

Instagram - https://instagram.com/jeffkmains

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