Each week in the New Tech Newsletter we feature a Spotlight Q&A with founders, angels, New Tech alumni presenters, and other people or companies in our community we believe you’d like to learn about. Reach out if you’d like to recommend a startup, founder, angel, accelerator, or New Tech alumni presenter for us to spotlight for the PNW tech community!
In this week’s spotlight we caught up with Ty Giacalone and Alex Rushing, Co-Founders of Lowkey.
Why do you do what you do for a living?
We love using and building tech products that make everyday life easier. We’re both software engineers by trade.
Why did you start your company?
It started as a helpful tool for one of founders, Ty, when he was ordering food and package deliveries during the COVID-19 pandemic. We had a lot of downtime and starting a company was a way to entertain ourselves while also learning how to design, launch and market a product (still very much working on the last one).
What is one of the greatest lessons you’ve learned from being a founder/CEO?
Coming in as engineers, we had a relatively narrow view of what it takes to be successful. Building the product was the natural and easy part of creating Lowkey. Getting people to use the product has been the biggest growth area for us. We’ve tried all sorts of distribution methods, from canvassing on UW to get feedback and early users to building social media content to running ads online. Finding more peers to learn from and getting a basic grasp on the fundamentals of sales and marketing has served us incredibly well thus far.
What is the one piece of advice you would share today with your younger self before you started your company?
Don’t build a product before validating a distribution strategy.
What is something interesting and unexpected that people would be surprised to learn about you?
Our current residences don’t have a buzzer system!
Reach out if you’d like to recommend a startup, founder, angel, accelerator, or New Tech alumni presenter for us to spotlight for the PNW tech community!
