Please tell us a bit about yourself and your business
My name is John Nichols I am the founder of Stugo, a marketplace that connects studio owners with creatives worldwide. I was born and raised in Homestead FL, I was raised by my mother, she was a single parent with 3 children, my brother Gaspar, sister Suzzy & myself.
Back in the 90's Homestead was a very rugged place to be. High crime rate, gang activity and drug infestation. My mother was not a wealthy lady so we relied on the government for just about everything, food stamps, public housing and donations.
As we got to the age where we can work my brother and I started to take over and we became young men very early. My first job was at the age of 16 working for a party rental which paid very well at the time in my eyes.
I left school my junior year because I realized we needed an education to work and since I was working and making money already I didn't need school. After the party rental I worked at little cesar pizza for 2 weeks and left because the pay was crap.
Then I worked for Subway and that was my last job that taught me how to be an entrepreneur. After that I opened my first business Future Wireless where we repaired broken phones.
At that same time a few friends and I started to work in the development space and built a music app that eventually took over and allowed me to close Future Wireless 2.5 years later.
This app took me all over the world, working in music with tons of artists, dj's, producers, event planners, brands, you name it, I worked with them. That is what laid the foundation for Stugo.
What inspired the idea of your company?
After parting ways with the music app I was a part of, I met a gentleman by the name of Yan and he was the original creator of Stugo.
However his idea for the software was studio vans driving around and coming to you if you needed to record a song.
I knew instantly that it would be very hard to create that for a few reasons. One, the cost of studio vans with actual studio standard equipment was very expensive.
Two, getting a high caliber artist to sit in a van and record was another massive hurdle to get over.
It just so happened that at that time I was opening my first recording studio and I started to understand first hand how Stugo can work for all studio owners.
I asked Yan if he'd let me be an investor and help him develop better software and he said yes. After that we began working together on a similar idea to what he started.
Can you walk us through the process of developing your product?
Once we kicked into overdrive we saw fast that the current designers and developers were not able to deliver the type of product we were looking to create.
Since I spent so many years in the app space I had way more than enough experience to make that assertion. So we had to start from scratch. After hiring 2 people from India and 1 from Atlanta we realized yet again that they were not able to deliver the product we needed.
That made me go back to the drawing board and reach out to my old team of designers and developers. After explaining to them the idea for Stugo, they instantly fell in love.
From that day forward we began to work on what you see in the app store today. After 6 months we had our first version and began testing, we had tons of bugs and behavior fixes but we worked through them all and got it to function exactly how we need it to.
We deployed to the app store in January of 2021 and our journey began.
When you first started building your business, when did you notice traction? That OH S**T moment.
After launching we did small social media advertising campaigns and we started to see a few downloads, nothing major, but it was something for us to work with. As we started to add studios outside of my own our community started to come together.
I personally made the decision to get certified in a few areas to help us improve our apps retention and that when we had our OH S**T moment. We started to see 20+ downloads daily and it grew from there.
What strategies have been most effective in acquiring customers and reducing churn?
I am a firm believer in one strategy that has never failed me and that is getting personal with everyone in the community. That not only helped us acquire them as a guest and a host but it made them believers and motivated them to use our product.
What is your biggest overhead expense?
Marketing because it doesn't have a cap.
What was your childhood like? Were you slinging candy on the playground?
My childhood was nothing short of amazing, I would relive it all over again if I could.
How many attempts at building something did you make before you found what you’re working on now?
I knew from the age of 14 I would be an entrepreneur, I saw my mother struggle because she didn't have money and all the people I saw with money owned a business. I've built so many different businesses I really lost count.
What's a big problem you’ve faced as a business owner and what were the emotions behind it?
Owning a successful business is very glamorous. However building a successful business is far from glamorous. In my experience, it's the financials that push you to give up and make you want to punch a clock.
When you don't know how you'll pay your rent or your next meal, that's when being an entrepreneur gets real. For some it can crumble them, for me it motivated me to work harder, I had something to prove to myself.
What do you spend the majority of your time doing, in a given week?
Majority of my time is dedicated to my team. I do my best to sit with them and meet with them as much as we possibly can. We execute our daily tasks and set new tasks for the next few days.
Your best advice for people that want to start their own business but feel stuck
The best advice I can give people stuck on their business idea is to write, write as many notes as you possibly can.
Put the date, time, location and who you were with when you wrote it down. Therefore your brain can use that space to explore new ideas and possibly give you the one idea you need to keep moving forward on your business.
I know technology makes life easier but never put the pen down, write write write.
Do you recommend any specific books or education that has had a massive impact on your journey?
The most impactful education I have received has been through Y Combinator. It is a platform that gives startups a disproportionate advantage and will teach you the ways to build your business properly.
Anything you'd like to share with the audience? (A shameless plug, new features, ect)
Keep an eye out for the Stugo host mobile app, which is a mobile app for studio owners to control their studio's dashboard from their fingertips.
Also, Y Combinator, trust me. If you have an idea or a product, visit Y Combinator and apply to become apart of their community.
Check out John @
His website, https://www.stugo.com
and on all socials @stugotheapp