Lessons From Two Exits + Building Electric to Automate IT Management | Ryan Denehy

The Peel with Turner Novak

Ryan Denehy is the founder and CEO of Electric, software that helps businesses manage their IT and IT support.

We talk through his first two startups from founding to exit, the early days of getting Electric off the ground, and Ryan’s frameworks for fundraising, recruiting, and sales.

Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (03:05) Building an ad network for extreme sports websites (11:07) Why a better pipeline solves all problems (13:24) Ryan’s trick for hiring executives (17:00) Selling the ad network to USA Today (18:11) Moving to SF to start a software company (21:33) Getting rid of his car to extend runway (24:23) Paying rent with credit cards (29:17) Struggling to raise a Series A (31:55) Using channel sales to grow the business (37:05) Almost running out of money before selling to Groupon (43:37) How cloud created the perfect timing to build Electric (48:33) Leveraging software and AI to automate manual human tasks (51:45) Why you should avoid buzzwords in marketing (53:57) Pros and cons of being a solo founder (56:14) Why Electric built a large initial board (01:02:41) Advice for picking lead investors (01:06:35) How VC fund dynamics have inflated Seed rounds (01:09:16) The downsides of high valuations (01:12:45) Almost wiring back the Seed round (01:16:37) Why every fundraise is a Pipeline problem (01:21:04) The reasons VCs actually pass on founders (01:26:42) Cutting the burn rate in 2022

Electric.ai: ⁠https://www.electric.ai/⁠

Where to find Ryan: Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/DenehyXXL⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryandenehy/

Where to find Turner: Twitter: ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/⁠⁠ Newsletter: ⁠⁠https://www.thespl.it/