In this month’s Founder Spotlight, we’re putting the spotlight on Lindsey Redd, CEO and Co-Founder of Onu!
How did you come up with the idea for Onu? Has it changed along the way?
My co-founder and I started our company with a totally different idea in the wellness space, and we were trying to quickly spin up internal tooling to onboard new customers. The existing tools were not dev friendly and were missing basic features like version control.
We knew there was a better way because we used a homegrown internal tool at Stripe that let you convert scripts into internal apps by just deploying your code, so you could share it with the rest of your team in minutes. When we eventually moved away from wellness and pivoted to developer tools, we knew we wanted to build Onu because we saw first-hand how powerful a tool like this could be, and it’s exactly what we needed when we started our company.
So now Onu is a developer-first platform for quickly turning scripts into internal tools. The tools are completely backed by backend code that lives in your normal code base. There’s basically no learning curve and instead of it taking 5 days to spin up an internal tool, it takes 5 minutes.
How did you meet your Co-Founder(s)?
Chine and I met over 5 years ago when we worked at Lyft as software engineers! We started 1 week apart and were both in the NYC office, which was tiny at the time. We became really good friends really quickly and have worked at the same companies ever since! We were even next door neighbors for a few years and shared a backyard patio :)
Where did you find your first 5 customers?
The 1st 5 customers were companies that came from our networks and the Y Combinator Winter 23 batch. About half of our pilot companies were from inbound interest and half from outbound outreach.
What is the one piece of advice you ignored back then but wish you’d taken now?
Launch early and often!
Early — don’t wait for your product to be “finished” to get it out into the world. You’ll learn more faster when you define a scoped down MVP that you build on a tight timeline and launch quickly. We launched pretty early on, but I wish we had launched in more places even earlier. This is how we drove a lot of traffic to our product and learned that engineers would like to define their Onu tasks completely in code instead of with YAML config. This is what led us to building our first SDK.
Often — we’re still trying to get better at this. We should be “launching” all of our product updates, even the small ones. This keeps your product in front of people and shows them that you’re building a lot quickly. That new feature that you put out into the world might be just what a customer needs to decide to buy your product, but they won’t know about it unless you tell them!
Why did you decide to apply to Y-Combinator, and what was the application process like for you?
We originally weren’t going to apply! We were mostly nervous about the structure. We were told it’s a lot like school, which didn’t excite us at all. However, a friend of ours works at Y Combinator and she really encouraged us to apply — we didn’t have anything to lose by at least throwing our hats in the ring. We ended up quickly filling out the application (which was probably for the best) and submitting hours before the deadline in September.
We got an email at the end of October that we got an interview, but this was tricky because we had just decided to pivot away from wellness. The interview was really unexpected! Instead of pitching our original idea, the interview turned into a brainstorming session. At the end of it, the partners told us to fill out the application again with a new idea and to come back for a second interview in a week. This was incredibly stressful, but we did it! We reapplied with a devtool idea that’s a bit different from what we’re building now, but we were accepted with this idea after our second interview.
We were really happy to be accepted. After running our company for 3 months we realized there was a lot we didn’t know and that the journey can be really lonely without a community of other founders around you. We were excited about the opportunity to learn from the best and build alongside other like-minded founders.
Can you tell us about your experience during Y-Combinator? What was the most valuable part of the 3 month program and how did it help your startup?
Y Combinator was a really enriching and challenging experience. I can see why some compare the program to school, but it wasn’t like that at all. There are office hours each week, but really they just provide some structure to help hold you accountable to the ambitious goals you set during the program. We ended up moving a lot faster and working way more intensely than we were expecting which was great for the company. Those 3 months set the pace for Onu moving forward. The most valuable part is undoubtedly the other founders in the batch. They provide an incredible amount of accountability, support, motivation, and community.
What was the most challenging aspect of going through Y-Combinator, and how did you respond?
For me, I really struggled with YC’s lack of diversity in the cohort. Like I mentioned before, we met incredible founders who became really great friends, but there weren’t many other women of color in the cohort. At times, I was definitely missing the sense of belonging I was looking for. I gave YC this feedback, and I hope that they do more moving forward to cultivate diverse cohorts.
Learn more about Onu at www.JoinOnu.com.
Thanks again to Lindsey Redd for sharing your story!
Sterling Road invests in idea stage and pre-seed B2B startups based in the US, Canada and UK.
