Insight
Startups with fewer than 10 employees should not hire product managers
“Ultimately decided the small team of like eight or nine people who can't yet have a product manager, like our CEO needs to be the product manager for now.”
Disclosure
Chimney's three co-founders split their equity 40/30/30
“So we're 4030, 30 the CEO, Matt Covey, it was his idea. So he has 40% and then Chase and I reached 30.”
Insight
Founders must know how to build their product before outsourcing development
“Like the joke is that you have to be able to build it yourself in order to have an outdoor outsource dev shop. So I'm giving them literally like the database schema and the relationships And the models and like, okay, here's how we should structure this. Here'…”
Assertion Supported
ICBA ThinkTech requires participating startups to accept program investment
“They do. They required the investment because we were like, you don't have to like, good. Like we raised the seed already. They were like, ah, we need to. And we're like, okay.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chimney serves over 60 bank and financial institution customers
“60 plus.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chimney reached $300,000 in revenue while remaining fully bootstrapped
“And so we made it to like about 300 K in revenues by being fully bootstrapped.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chimney spent $16,000 with an outsourced agency to build its MVP
“Nothing, I actually remember this, because this was the first money that we spent from nothing to MVP was 16,000 dollars. And this was a platform for people to log in, create the calculator, issue it to themselves, and then embed it to their website.”
Disclosure
Chimney raised its seed round on a $7M post-money SAFE cap
“It was a seven million valuation cap on a safe note. And that is, yeah, post money.”
Assertion Partly supported
ICBA ThinkTech accelerator sets up four daily bank meetings for startups
“And so that was great because it's less of an accelerator and more of a rapid fire way to have four meetings per day with banks and credit unions every day for three months.”
Disclosure
Chimney is building an unreleased homeowner equity tool with large banks
“So this is a new product that is not in market yet. And the idea here is to partner with a big bank that had already had millions of users and they also serve up like helox or other types of loans. And then we'll be the tech in the middle that engages the user…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chimney customers pay an average of $7,000 per year
“Per year, it's like 7000 per year for the calculators.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chimney charges an average of $99 per month per calculator
“Pricing is really simple. So it's just a number of calculators. So the average price is 99 dollars per month per calculator.”
Disclosure
ICBA ThinkTech accelerator invested $75,000 into Chimney via a SAFE
“Yeah, they participated in the safe note as well. They, I think they put in 75,000 dollars.”
