184: Amber Reyngoudt- Doing the Unexpected

03/31/15 • 31 min

Outlier On Air | Founders, Disruptors, & Mavens

"People will tell you you can't do it, but if you want it enough and work hard enough, you can be successful and have what you want." - Amber Reyngoudt

About: Amber Reyngoudt- Co-Founder of Skull Ninja, and former iOS Engineer at Milk

Overview: Amber is a Software Engineer with years of experience in the coding field. Over the past four years, she has taken on her own venture of building iPhone apps with her co-founder at Skull Ninja, and shares with us what it's been like traveling the entrepreneurial road.

Highlights:

Background: Amber attended school at University of Florida, and majored in Computer Science. Although she hadn't planned on becoming a software engineer, Amber's grandmother really encouraged her to go into Computer Science, and as a Junior in college was interning as a coder. When she graduated school, she worked as an application developer for Intel for about four years. She then moved to LA and eventually began working for a consulting firm. Once she left consulting, Amber attempted to start her own company but soon ran out of money and decided to go back to the mainstream work space. In 2005, MySpace was the hot new social media company so Amber decided to apply and started working as a developer there. She ended up becoming a manger and worked there until 2010. At that point, things started dying down with MySpace and Amber was no longer feeling challenged or fulfilled in her position so she slowly left MySpace to develop apps for iPhones on her own. From there, Skull Ninja was born.

Working at Milk: After leaving MySpace, Amber and her co-founder moved to San Francisco and began working on apps. Amber was fortunate to meet Kevin Rose 4 months after moving there and he asked Amber and her co-founder to come work at his new-found company, Milk. For the next year, Amber and her co-founder worked as the iOS Engineers for Milk, which helped build credibility for the two of them. Milk was eventually bought out by Google in 2011, so Amber and her co-founder were back to focusing on their company, Skull Ninja.

Skull Ninja: Amber and her co-founder are doing a mix of consulting and building apps. Recently, they did some webwork for AirB&B, intro for About.me, created another app for North Technologies, they also created an iPhone, and iPad app for a home hair-color company, etc. In 2012, they created their own platform for shopping in a variety of ways, and soft launched an iPhone app called Hit or Miss that focuses on women's fashion, and discovering fashion. Essentially, they publish a daily trend and the consumers select that trend as a hit or miss, and then they tailor what they want to see according to the feedback. So far the app has been well received.

Challenges: For Skull Ninja, bootstrapping was difficult along with balancing their schedules and time. It's been easy to take on too much, and not even work on their own projects to help the company. For the past few years, it's only been Amber and Dave and they were not able to really scale the company until they bring on employees.

Woman in Tech: One thing Amber points out is that she's had to spend some time proving herself, but is becoming less of a problem since she has built credibility. She does feel that because she is a female founder, it can work to her advantage and make her stand out from the crowd. Amber shares that she's happy there are more women in tech, and in different areas, they bring a lot to the tech world. Overall, Amber has had a good experience and feels very fortunate.

Advice for Entrepreneurs: It may seem scary and unattainable, but if you're driven, passionate, and willing to work really hard- almost to the point of crazy- you can be successful and have what you want.

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Connect With Amber:

Website | @AmberRayn | Soundcloud

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"People will tell you you can't do it, but if you want it enough and work hard enough, you can be successful and have what you want." - Amber Reyngoudt

About: Amber Reyngoudt- Co-Founder of Skull Ninja, and former iOS Engineer at Milk

Highlights:

Subscribe to the Outlier Newsletter: Click Here

Connect With Amber:

Website | @AmberRayn | Soundcloud

If you enjoy Outlier On Air, please Subscribe & Review on iTunes or Stitcher

Sponsors:

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NEED DEVELOPERS?

Previous Episode

183: Suzannah Scully - Coaching With a Purpose

"Your purpose is when your natural talents, skills, and interests all align." - Suzannah Scully

About: Suzannah Scully- Executive Coach

Overview: Once a part of the corporate world, Suzannah has taken her experience to start her own practice as an Executive Coach and help large corporations and entrepreneurs. Suzannah provides us with some great insight on how we can improve ourselves and our companies.

Highlights:

Background: (From her website) "Suzannah Scully is a coach, speaker and blogger with a corporate background working for organizations such as Gap, Inc., Williams-Sonoma, Inc and The Wine Group. Her mission is to give leaders the space and tools to break through barriers and reach their potential. She has given presentations for Stanford University (see presentation here), Haas Business School of Berkeley and Vanderbilt University as well as other local bay area companies on the topics of leadership development, effective communication and personal branding. Suzannah received a B.A. from UCLA in Sociology and has received her C.P.C.C. from The Coaches Training Institute. She is married with two children and a dog and lives in Marin County, CA. When not working or with her family, you can usually find her at yoga, in a library or at the movies."

How it all Started: It was during a business trip to France, that she had her "ah-ha" moment, realizing she wasn't fully happy with her career. At that moment, she decided to leave the traditional work path and began training to become a business coach. Suzannah has now run her own practice for 10 years and will soon be starting her own podcast as well.

Role of an Executive Coach: Suzannah is an executive coach who works with entrepreneurs and corporations by providing them with the tools to access new parts of themselves while taking their career and lives to the next level. Her clients include: high profile individuals, large organizations such as Apple, Sony, Eventbrite, and Slalom Consulting as well as Bay Area startups. She usually works with her clients for 6 months, meeting with them twice monthly. The majority of her clients are in the Bay area, but she is more than willing to work with clients all over the country.

What Sets Suzannah Apart: Suzannah has a strong corporate background- she understands how to navigate a big corporate company. By working with well-known companies, like Apple, her clients can trust that she is experienced at what she does. Suzannah really focuses on helping clients excel in the background aspect of the company- how to get people on your side, how to network effectively, how to build a team, etc. Suzannah has found that brilliant minds can be impatient, they want everyone to be at the same pace and it can be easy for them to lose the art of listening. Suzannah addresses this issue by teaching the 3 levels of listening, not asking just yes/no questions, and teaching them to really understand the 'why' of what someone may be sharing.

Measuring Success: At the beginning of each meeting with her clients, Suzannah will analyze what success looks like to them. That is what she then works toward with her clients. She ensures they are accomplishing what they have set out to do by creating milestones. Suzannah is there to push her clients to do what they have hired her for while being supportive along the way.

Purpose vs. Passion: Suzannah shares that you can be passionate about something but that t it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be your purpose. Your passions are the things you enjoy doing in your free time. Your purpose is when your natural talents, skills, and interests all align. When you know what your purpose is, you will enjoy what you do, and knowing your purpose will help you determine what you can be successful in. It may not always work out, but it's always worth a shot.

Importance of Personal Branding: Everybody has a personal brand, and it needs to be managed. Suzannah shares 3 steps on how to create an effective brand. 1: Define your aspirations. 2: Determine your unique value proposition. 3: Communicate your brand.

Advice for Entrepreneurs: The best way to reach out to mentors, or venture capitalists, is to make sure you are giving as well as taking. Find ways to help that other person and give back to them. Always look for opportunities to serve, and it will come back to you. What moves you may not move someone else, but that doesn't make it wrong. Trust yourself, listen to yourself, and follow that wisdom.

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Next Episode

185: Steeve Bois - Creative by Nature

"The best way to get a good idea is to not look for it." - Steeve Bois

About: Steeve Bois - Founder and CEO of Social Symphony App

Overview: Steeve has always had a love for being creative and believes that we are all creative by nature. He saw the need to create an application that would help others find happiness through music. The app is called Social Symphony. Thanks to this project and to the talented people Steeve has worked with, he hopes he will be able to make the planet a better place.

Highlights:

Background: When Steeve was 16, he used to create music on his computer (or with pen and paper) and he would play with his friends at bars in Paris. He's not sure why he has a passion for it, but assumes it is because music has sound and vibration, like emotions have vibrations. Because of this love for music Steeve has had throughout his life, he decided to create an app that would provide others with those same strong emotions he has felt.

What is Social Symphony: The purpose of this app is to help people express their creativity. Steeve believes it's very important to be happy in life and a good way to do that is to express your creativity. Social symphony helps people create amazing music in a few seconds without any knowledge (basically, a music maker app for non musicians).

How it Works: Currently, it is only available in private beta. So, you have to subscribe to download. Once it's downloaded on your iPhone, there is a simple interface that allows you to choose from high quality sounds to mix with, etc. You can select different instruments to mix with and you can also sing along into the app and record everything together to make your own song. Right now, they are working on the legal issues to be able to use what you have created commercially, but it will be possible eventually. The application will be free, but the user will be able to purchase premium music for a small fee if they'd like to expand their options.

How it Started: For Steeve, the best way to get a good idea is to not look for it. He was happy, and living a good life, but he felt like he was missing something. He wanted to find a way to help other people find happiness without doing it for them. He started working on this application the end of August of last year with his mentor. His mentor found a student in India to help them with the development of the app, created some prototypes, and finally in December they had the wow effect to continue actual work on Social Symphony which is still in beta. They have plans to launch the app by August of this year.

Goal for Social Symphony: Once the app launches, Steeve hopes to make money to expand the applicatios. And to make partnerships with musicians around the world to help promote these musicians. He plans to push the application through social media.

Steeve has an hour long commute to work each day, and while traveling on the train he listens to Outlier Podcasts, as well as other informational apps. He also spends that time meditating- it's important for Steeve to have stimulation and silence. He feels that that kind of balance is extremely important for you and for the world.

Advice for Entrepreneurs: Follow your intuition- it's more than thoughts, it's an instinct. But you cannot listen to this inner voice, if you are too busy focusing on other things. If you want to make a business, build a website, make a podcast, you need information, but if you're not able to be effective with that information, it means you cannot hear your intuition. Steeve encourages us to take time to be calm, and then act on our intuitions.

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Connect With Steeve:

Website | @esthete | Instagram | LinkedIn | Google+

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