Ep. 8: Tyler Henke - The Community Around a Product
People always bang on about disruption, and usually it's meaningless. Some very rare founders should bang on about disruption because they're actually doing it, but don't. I like to think it's humility, but more importantly, it's because they decided to go and solve a real, deeply felt problem in the market, usually in an overlooked sector, and happened upon a deeply powerful pathway of company building. Tyler Henke, CEO of Ziptility, is one of those founders. He and his team noticed that the market, and especially the software market, didn't build, excuse my French, anything useful for the people who make the small communities of America function - the utility operators. They were forced to run these systems according to whatever needed fixing that morning with post-it notes, bits of paper, and if they were lucky, a 1997 Dell PC. Tyler correctly saw the potential for an excellently designed, mobile-first, user-generated operating system that could help these amazing professionals do their jobs easier, better, cheaper, more collaboratively, and reliably. He's an amazing guy, and it's an amazing platform.
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Full show notes and links to mentioned content below.
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Tom is joined by Tyler Henke, Co-Founder and CEO of Ziptility, and together they explore Ziptility's groundbreaking journey in disrupting the water technology sector, addressing the challenges faced by small water and wastewater utilities across the United States. Tyler shares insights into the vast market potential within the US, highlighting Ziptility's focus on smaller to mid-sized utilities and their approach to trust-based sales, emphasizing genuine relationships and tailored solutions. He also unravels the layers of Ziptility's mission, focusing on such themes as understanding the utilities' world, building better tools for change, and fostering customer engagement and innovation.
Episode Highlights:
0:00 Start
0:49 Introduction
1:59 Tyler’s journey to, and with, Ziptility
4:48 Small water and wastewater systems
7:06 Developing Ziptility
11:41 Customer contact
14:40 Ziptility’s function, benefits, and market
20:37 Acquisition, and lifetime value, of customers
23:15 The stickiness of Ziptility’s customer relationships
25:51 Ziptility’s customer loyalty
29:45 Customer success now and for the future
31:58 Lessons learned about assembling a team
35:27 The future of software and other products for utilities
37:33 Tyler’s lesson for the next generations of water founders
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