S5 Bonus: Andrew Childs, Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse.io)

09/15/21 • 31 min

1 Listener

Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Andrew Childs doesn't have a computer science background. He grew up in Philly, and is currently based in NYC with his wife and 6 year old. His first computer experience was in 1984, with a Macintosh plus. He was immediately hooked on this extraordinary machine, that felt like it was made by humans. With no internet, it was just a playground in the beginning, but on it, he was able to explore design and learn pascal. He attended RISD, an arts school in providence, and studied painting. His goal was to go into contemporary art, but he quickly realized he didn't know anything about how to approach the art world. Throughout the program, he did learn a lot about how to think, how to look at things, and how to be creative. Post that, he ran a few web design and development agencies, before being pulled into the startup world.

At a prior startup, the opinionated nature of project tools his team was using started to get in the way of their productivity... not to mention, it was not possible to get a birds eye view of direction, progress, etc. across multiple projects. During a hack day project, Andrew built a way to aggregate their tool into one single view. It was then that it clicked, and he and his co-founder thought maybe they were on to something.

This is the creation story of Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse).

Sponsors

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://shortcut.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-childs-9887552/

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This is the creation story of Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse).

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://shortcut.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-childs-9887552/

Previous Episode

S5 E14: Derrick Reimer, SavvyCal

Derrick Reimer got his first computer in kindergarten. His Dad was a mechanical engineer, but at home, tinkered with code.. and Derrick was always interested in the projects he was working on. In junior high, he learned Dos basics, and started to make games. He found it really fun to write utilities and tools for people, and funny enough, he even tinkered with accounting software - and tried to replicate Quicken.

Even still, he ignored coding as a career path. He majored in math in college, and wasn't sure how he wanted to apply it. He needed more creativity than most math jobs offered at the time. After college, he discovered the Basecamp team and their perspective on building software. It was at that moment that his interest in tech and entrepreneurship merged together.

For fun, he loves to do a lot of things. He lives in Minneapolis, and is outdoors a lot - hiking, road cycling, and playing a bit of tennis here and there. He also enjoys cooking, and coffee - but not just drinking coffee. He has gotten into hobbyist coffee roasting - with a popcorn popper. He likes to play around with the beans, the equipment, and overall, tinkering with making the perfect cup.

After collecting dust in his idea notebook, in the list of markets which he knew well, he decided to venture forward to make a better calendar scheduling work tool... based on his anxiety using this type of product, and his desire to level up the status quo.

This is the creation story of SavvyCal.

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://savvycal.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derrick-reimer-93916020/
https://www.derrickreimer.com/

Next Episode

S5 Bonus: Cody Candee, Bounce

Travel is a huge part of Code Candee's life, even prior to his current venture. He has lived in a dozen different cities, travelled to over 60 countries, and has been to 49 of the 50 US states. Out of all of them, his favorite place to live was India, specifically in Bangalore. While he was there, he tried to experience all the cultures, food and people, and quite enjoyed his time.

He is a minimalist.. to the tune of owning a couple of suitcases. He loves the idea of not being held down by things, and being able to move around at the drop of a hat. He reads a lot of books, his favorite one being the Alchemist, and enjoys rock climbing. But to be honest, he likes the all consuming, work centric lifestyle he leads.

In 2014, he was working in San Francisco and planned to have some drinks with his friends. One of them had to go all the way home to drop off some luggage, before heading to happy hour. He took the ideas he wrote down that night, and in 2017, he set out to solve this complex problem... by just getting started.

This is the creation story of Bounce.

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links