My guest on Infinite Loops this week knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur from the time he was buying and selling things on eBay. Jay Reno claims he didn’t know what the word ‘arbitrage’ meant back then, but if you tug on the colourful threads of his career, you’d reveal the kind of tenacity and resourcefulness that allows special founders like him to repeatedly find value in places that have long been deserted by everybody else. If you listen in on today’s episode, it will become apparent why O’Shaughnessy Ventures invested in Jay and his current venture. Jay is the CEO and Founder of Pointhound, which helps people find amazing deals on flights and travel using their credit card points and miles. He’s also a partner at 645 ventures. Among other fun pursuits, he’s spent the last ten years building all sorts of cool things; like a same-day grocery delivery service, a craft coffee company, a restaurant and bar reservation app, and a furniture rental service for city dwellers. We spent our conversation talking about his advice for first-time founders; his learnings from building Pointhound; the whimsical world of credit card point programmes; his thoughts on consumer psychology; and much more! For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that’s interesting!”, check out our Substack - https://8ca54796.streaklinks.com/CJPd0z7cXCh07hc4JAiMaKTC/https%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter.osv.llc%2F. Important Links: - Jay’s Twitter - https://x.com/jayjreno - Jay’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjreno/ - 645 Ventures - https://645ventures.com/ - Pointhound HQ - https://www.pointhound.com/ Show Notes: 0:00:00 Intro 0:00:52 Main podcast 0:02:29 How To Bring Your Idea To Life 0:10:27 The Virtues of the Y-Combinator Model 0:13:37 Picking the Right Investor 0:17:47 Pointhound & The Points Game 0:28:18 On Consumer Psychology and Trying New Things 0:35:34 Removing the invisible Barrier 0:48:00 Product Cycles and User Feedback 0:55:47 Slow Down to Speed Up 1:01:30 The Common Pitfalls of Building a Consumer Product 1:04:46 The Credit Card Prestige Factor 1:09:53 The Cashback Conundrum 1:15:22 The Future of Pointhound 1:18:09 Jay The Emperor of The World Books & Articles Mentioned: - My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla - https://www.amazon.in/My-Inventions-Autobiography-Nikola-Tesla/dp/1614270848; by Nikola Tesla - Mistakes were Made. (And, Yes, by Me.) - https://jimoshaughnessy.tumblr.com/post/175118354574/mistakes-were-made-and-yes-by-me; by Jim O’Shaughnessy
Jay Reno is the CEO and founder of Feather. Feather is a furniture subscription service. They were in the Summer 2017 batch of YC. https://twitter.com/jayjreno You can check out their furniture at LiveFeather.com and if you live in LA, SF, or New York you can try out the service. https://www.livefeather.com/ The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. https://www.livefeather.com/ Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year. Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ *** Topics 00:00 - Intro 00:20 - Opting out of owning furniture 6:00 - Feather's prototype 8:50 - How much did he make from his MVP? 9:30 - How many products did they have? 11:45 - Legacy competitors 13:35 - Changing branding from RentFeather.com to LiveFeather.com 15:30 - Customer interviews and learnings 18:00 - Scaling a company with physical products 21:00 - Why expand to other markets vs focus on one? 23:30 - Who to hire and when in a logistics-heavy business 25:40 - Unexpected learnings from scaling Feather 27:25 - Feeling his role change over time 29:15 - Counterintuitive advice 34:50 - Advice for YC founders after Demo Day
"...So I think that's one of the core learnings having built consumer companies over the last 15 years and invested in them too, is how do you build something and/or invest in something that is growing organically or that can grow organically, and how do you put those levers in place to make that happen?" More 🔥 from Jay Reno in this week's episode of Infinite Loops. Watch the entire episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYs0i5GGTw4