Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Isaac Eaves, Co-Founder and CEO of Joon, located in Oakland, CA, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Joon is a subscription app for parents with ADHD kids (aged 6-12). It uses gamification to motivate kids with ADHD to do productive tasks (like morning routines, homework, and chores). Our customers are parents with ADHD kids.
Tell us about yourself
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 6 and was a heavy video game player. I started working on Joon with my co-founders when we found we shared the experience of playing a ton of video games when we were younger but regretted not spending more time on meaningful activities. But -- we loved video games, and know that's what we enjoyed doing as kids.
We got incredibly excited about the prospect of blending what we loved with helping kids with ADHD grow and improve in real life. Being able to build a game while having a positive impact on families in need motivates us every day to create the best experience possible.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Our biggest accomplishment was reaching the milestone of 10,000 subscribers on Joon in 1 year. Being able to already have such an impact on families around the world was incredibly motivating to us, and we know this is just the beginning.
What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?
The hardest thing is to focus. There are so many great things you could be working on, but at the end of the day, you are limited by resources. So, you have to focus down and prioritize what is most important. If you don't focus, you'll end up decreasing your overall impact. This is always a constant battle!
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Focus on the market and the problem versus just a neat solution. Most people think about the "product" part of product-market fit, but finding the right initial market is harder and often more important.
- Build with co-founders. It is, of course, possible (and many do) to build a business as a solo entrepreneur, but at the end of the day, building a business is extremely hard, both operationally and emotionally. Having at least one co-founder helps triangulate decisions, share the heavy workload, and maybe, more importantly, have shared emotional support through the hard times.
- Maximize experiment velocity. Especially when building a consumer-facing business, 80-90% of ideas will fail. Your best way to counter this is to test ideas as quickly as possible, constantly experimenting to uncover the ideas that work. Part of this is making sure you figure out the minimum viable experiment to test an idea versus spending months building on a hypothesis that ultimately fails.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.joonapp.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/IsaacVanEaves
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaaceaves/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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