Welcome to the Tough Cookies series where we interview and celebrate the strong and determined individuals who are making waves in the tech industry.
This week we are checking in with Robin from Corrello.
We didn’t think anyone could top “weird cookie flavours” when Helen from Data3 told us about sweet chilli cookies… but it looks like Robin takes the lead in this tough cookies interview!
A developer, solo founder and one-man band, Robin encompasses tenacity and entrepreneurialism. Read on to find out more!
So what is Corrello and how did the idea come about?
Corrello is a dashboard tool for Agile Teams using Trello. I initially built a simple reporting tool for Trello for a friend who runs Future Content (a local content marketing agency). That was initially built over a couple of weeks, then a more solid v1 put together over the next 6 weeks. I launched that, ready to kill it if I couldn’t get some initial traction. The initial launch was good and got a lot of trials but not a lot of customers. A lot of user research interviews later it became apparent there was a strong need for dashboards for Agile Teams (burndown charts, Cycle Time, etc) and a willingness to pay. Corrello grew from there!
What is your main role there and the challenges you have faced?
My main role in the past was probably developer, but as a solo founder and running the business on my own for most of the last (nearly) 5 years I did everything else as well. In the early days, the challenge was building enough, fast enough to reach product-market fit and not run out of cash. Once I was getting closer to PM fit and was converting trials it came down to marketing and managing to get enough leads each week to meet the revenue I needed to be able to continue full time.
“What if we just…?”
What is the tool that has helped you the most?
Trello is key obviously, without them there is no Corrello. But… probably google sheets. I use a lot of really useful tools but that is the one I use daily and have a tonne of data from the app recorded in so I can see trends over time. I would be flying blind without all of that.
What’s your favourite quote?
“What if we just…?”
Not sure who said it, but I think it’s a good quote to remember in startups and product management sometimes. It can be tempting to over complicate things, it is often worth considering what the quick and (not always) dirty option would be. Maybe that can point the way to a better solution or something simpler you can try out with customers.
What excites you in tech at the moment?
Anything which can help me improve my business! I have got a few things to read on UX and User Research at the moment, it’s an area we could improve on.
Where is the place where you go to think about business?
Hennesey’s, or a walk around the harbourside (Bristol).
And finally – your favourite flavoured cookie?
Bacon and Banana.
