Introduction to Tyler Leber and Behind the Startup's Purpose

Hey, everyone. Glad you could be here with me today. I'm excited to give you a little introduction to myself. I realized I haven't really introduced myself and you've been listening to all these podcast episodes without really knowing who I am. So I'm excited to tell you a little bit more about what got us started.

And so my co-founder currently is Eric Espinosa. And Eric, back in college days, he started a company, a smaller company actually called Wow Factor Consulting, which was, again, a consulting firm that helped startups figure out if they have product market fit or forecasted product market fit. So before they launch a product, before they launch a service, they would come to Eric and say, you know, hey, do people even want this product before I spend a bunch of money on it?

And so Eric decided to make that a slightly more scalable company and started Venture Validator. And that's when I came on the scene. He actually hired me as an unpaid intern. And I saw job posting and it was for director of operations, but it was as an unpaid intern.

But it was really exciting for me to really get my first exposure to a startup, to entrepreneurship. I knew I always wanted to get into entrepreneurship somehow, but I always figured it would be more on the side, more of a side hustle type thing and have more of a conservative or stable job, primary job. So this was really fun.

It was it was in college. You know, I was excited to take the risk. And we started. Venture Validator. And we got that going and we were somewhat successful, successful enough that we both went full time right after college.

So we both went full time into the startup company right after college. We started building it, growing it. We hired some virtual assistants. We hired some U.S.

based interns and employees. And then about two years after we started that started that after college, we actually sold it for about six figures. So that was super exciting for us. But we we didn't love the business model of Venture Validator.

And that's why we sold it. We could have kept it going. We could have kept growing it, but it wasn't really exciting for us anymore. And it wasn't again, it wasn't really the business model that we that we enjoyed.

And the sales aspect of that business was rough. And it was it was really difficult for us to find new startup clients every single month. And so we wanted to find something a little bit different.

And so that's where Coconut VA came in. Coconut VA is a recurring revenue type model. We have clients on basically a subscription basis where they pay us monthly and then we supply a dedicated virtual assistant to them to work a certain number of hours within their business.

And so, again, I partnered with Eric for the second company. So Coconut VA, we've got co-founders of myself and Eric Espinosa once again. And now about a year after starting Coconut VA, we've grown to almost a million dollars. And that's because we're four years ahead of annual recurring revenue.

So a much. Faster growth curve than a Venture Validator and we're really enjoying this model, this kind of agency model, it's not like a scalable unicorn startup and it's not going to grow to probably a billion dollars ever. But we're really excited to be building this together and it really excited to be successful and helping elevating the lives of our viewers.

virtual assistants out in the Philippines, and then also just enhancing these U.S. businesses that need help but that can't quite afford full-time U.S. help. So we absolutely love the niche that we're in, and that's kind of the introduction to me, to how I got started and how I made it to this point in my entrepreneurial career.

Now, going a little bit into the purpose of Behind the Startup. Now, I'm by no means a startup expert. Like I've said, I've only had two so far. We've had a lot of success with Coconut VA, and I know I've learned a ton, so that's what I'm excited to share with all of you.

But a lot of these episodes will be interviews. I'll be interviewing other people that have expertise that I don't have, and I'm excited to explore that with you and to go into all these things where I am learning alongside you. Now, I hope I can also teach you some things with kind of these solo episodes, but again, I'll be focusing a lot on interviews as well to bring in knowledgeable and experienced people to kind of help me tell the story, to help me demystify startups.

So really, when it gets down to it, that is my main goal, is to demystify startups. I want to go behind the scenes with all these different startups of all different sizes. I want to show you that startups aren't really as intimidating as they sound, and my favorite thing about getting familiar with startups is realizing that you can.

Mitigate risks, so you don't have to just be an adrenaline seeker, adrenaline junkie. You can mitigate risk. You don't have to do something that feels like you're stepping off of a ledge. And then also, you can find a good work-life balance.

There's so much glorification going towards lack of sleep as a startup founder. And yeah, maybe sometimes you need to do that. You need to be willing to do that for sure if you have these deadlines or if you have these client deliverables that you have to have.

In the early days, it's all on you kind of thing. There are definitely stressful moments. But once you've gotten through those growing pains, eventually, and even in the early days, I think you really can find a good work -life balance as well as a successful company.

And then that's kind of my last purpose of starting this behind the startup, is you can be successful as a startup founder. And startup, there's different definitions of that term in itself. Most people think of a startup as somebody that is, or some company that is going to grow at that hockey stick kind of growth where they're just getting tons of funding, they're getting tons of growth, and now they're a household name.

But that doesn't mean success for everybody, right? Success for me is providing for my family, enjoying life, and kind of satisfying my ambition to just to be on my own, to be building things that I love to build. So you can be successful.

It just really depends on how you define success. And I'm excited to go into that. And I'm excited to that more with you as well. So yeah, I'm really glad you're here.

Glad you're listening. Follow me on LinkedIn. Definitely follow the podcast on Spotify, Apple, wherever you listen. And I'll continue to bring a lot of amazing guests on the show.

I've already gotten 10 episodes recorded, and I have 15 more coming up in the very near future. So there's going to be a lot of content coming out. You'll also see me on YouTube, on Instagram, on Twitter. So I'm doing a lot of content and a lot of just, you know, pushing the word out there because I'm really excited to have an audience where people resonate with what I'm saying.

And what I'm trying to say is that I can, you know, demystify startups for you. And I can really get you behind the scenes, show you what it's like, show you how you can be successful, how you can find that good work-life balance, and how you can mitigate risk. So again, thank you for being here.

And I'm excited for our future.