The road to automating my business Vicky Gu
My new system - tell your freelance friends? The startups for the rest of us episode I was on
In Paul Graham’s essay, do things that don’t scale, he talks about you acting as the software, doing things manually that you plan to automate later. Currently I’m the software. I pr...
Following on from the last episode where I talked about why now is the right time to automate the business, in this episode I go into more detail about what’s required to do that. To...
I've been MIA but this episode will explain why. This is the long, hard road to automating my business—a process that I'm 2.5 years (and counting!) into.
Despite being 4 years into building With Jack I'm not convinced I have product-market fit. Everyone has a different definition of what PMF is, so I go through some of the popular def...
I'm back with a long overdue update! In this episode I document what it was like bootstrapping my business through a pandemic as a solo founder. I share the challenges of the past ye...
We're 55% of the way through 2019! Coupled with the start of summer being quieter for my business, now seems a good time to revisit some of the goals I set myself and do a mid-year r...
Last week With Jack hit a huge milestone. Despite this being something I have been working towards for so long, I didn’t feel anything when it happened. My friends said I was in shoc...
Before starting my business I hadn’t given much thought to what goes into choosing a good market. I love targeting freelancers, but that doesn’t mean I’ve chosen an ideal market to s...
In March I launched a new product. I was excited about this product because it has a myriad of features that solve problems freelancers face regularly. The launch, however, was under...
Another UK insurtech has closed its doors. Insurtech or not, VC-funded or not, building a business in the insurance space is a lot tougher than all us ‘disruptors’ anticipate. We’re ...
In 2005 I inherited an insurance business from my late Dad. Weeks earlier I had been studying music at college. It was big leap to running a business in an industry I knew nothing ab...
A podcast listener emailed me the question, "Would you build a product for a user segment that you're not a part of?". I’ve built a product for an audience I knew nothing about befor...
4 months ago we shipped a major update to With Jack. A brand new look plus instant quotes! Once the post-launch dust had settled there was one niggling fear I had… Will this new webs...
To take investment or not? It's a question I've struggled with since launching With Jack. The answer hinges on what kind of life I want to lead, therefore what kind of company I want...
In 2017 I applied to join an accelerator. Amongst all of the great advice I received from the programme, I kept hearing the same feedback about With Jack; “You aren’t solving a big e...
It's time to look back on 2018! The highs, the lows and notable moments. Two things stand out to me about 2018: the progress I’ve made on With Jack and the trips I’ve taken. However,...
Insurance is one of the least start-up friendly industries in the world. It's a regulated industry, so you can't just have an idea, buy a domain and start making money. You'll need t...
In this episode I revisit some of the problems I faced post-launch. I talk about what I've learned, if I've solved those problems and some of the new challenges I'm facing in my seco...