Founder Making $11K+ MRR Building a Marketplace For Local Food Products
In this interview, Tyler Taggart shares the journey of transforming a simple feedback into a SaaS-Enabled marketplace generating over $11K in monthly revenue.
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In this interview, you'll meet Tyler Taggart. He co-founded RekoHub, a Saas enabled marketplace for locally produced food. I discovered Tyler on one of my Reddit threads, and thought to feature his entrepreneurial Journey.
In this interview, Tyler shares;
His backstory and how he started.
How he got his first free and paid customers for his product.
What was effective in attracting customers to his product?
His competitive advantages, what gives him an edge, and insights that have proven beneficial to his operations.
Which books, podcasts, or other resources have had the greatest impact on him.
What advice would he offer to entrepreneurs who are just starting out.
Q. Hello! Who are you and what product are you working on currently?
Hey! I'm Tyler Taggart - CoFounder and CEO of RekoHub. RekoHub is a Saas enabled marketplace for locally produced food. In other words, it's the amazon of buying food directly from local farmers.
Q. What is your backstory and how did you come up with your idea? Do you have any partners?
My co-founder, Tyler Ruff, and I started this business about three years ago under the name "Local Chow." The original idea was a marketplace for people to buy and sell homemade food, similar to Josephine (now out of business) or Shef.com.
However, after launching our alpha with a test group in my city, the feedback was clear: "We love this, but where’s the milk, meat, eggs, and produce direct from farmers?"
We took this feedback seriously and reached out to dozens of farmers to understand their needs and the software they were using for online sales. It quickly became evident that
1) farmers needed better software to sell directly to consumers (D2C)
2) focusing on farmers presented a much bigger market opportunity than homemade food.
We pivoted our approach, conducted more interviews with farmers to ensure our software truly met their needs and officially launched earlier this year (2024).
Q. Take us through the process of building the first version of your product MVP.
After realizing we needed to pivot from home-cooked food to sourcing directly from farmers, we conducted dozens, maybe even hundreds, of interviews. We focused on understanding what software farmers currently use, what they like or don’t like, and what their ideal solution would be. Once we were confident we understood their needs, we got to work.
We shifted our entire business to focus on farmers and redesigned both our backend and frontend based on their feedback. This process took much longer than expected because farmers need a lot of flexibility to sell locally and direct-to-consumer in an easy way.
Some key features we had to develop include pricing by weight, subscription boxes, multiple pickup locations with different inventories, different pickup times, flexible order deadlines that vary by product, deposits for large items (like a whole cow), options for pickup versus local delivery, and group markets.
These needs led to a lot of unique challenges that we had to account for, but we built something that works for all kinds of farmers.
Q. How did you get your first customers for your product (Free or paid users)?
We have two types of customers in our marketplace: buyers and sellers.
SELLERS
We mainly use cold outreach. It’s not the most scalable approach, but it works—it's all about numbers. I’ve done everything from emails, phone calls, and Facebook messages to driving 6 hours to meet farmers face-to-face.
Luckily, we’re now growing mostly through referrals, though I still do a lot of cold calling to bring in new sellers.
BUYERS
Sellers usually bring their own buyers (existing customers) when they join. Once we have a good number of sellers in an area, we use free marketing tactics to raise awareness and attract more buyers for the farmers.
One tactic I like is training my Facebook algorithm to show me posts from people asking things like, “Where can I find farm-fresh eggs?” I then comment and share a link to www.RekoHub.com. Now Facebook serves me up these types of posts regularly, giving me easy leads.
It’s not the most scalable method, but it’s effective. These posts often reach dozens, if not hundreds, of people in the local community where we have farmers selling, so one comment can attract many potential buyers.
Q. Since you launched your product, What has worked to attract customers?
Posting in local Facebook groups where we have a strong user base is a momentum strategy. The more people who start using it, the more others want to join in.
Q. How is your product performing currently, and what are your plans for the future? Can you share your current metrics and revenue figures?
We launched at the beginning of this year (2024) and have been growing an average of 80% month-over-month.
While 80% growth isn’t much when moving from $100 to $200 in revenue, it becomes more significant when going from $6,000 to $11,000.
Last month, we closed just over $11,000 in GMV. This month, we're on track to reach $17,000 to $18,000 in GMV. By early next year, I anticipate we’ll be clearing $100,000 monthly.
For context to other SaaS founders, since $100,000/month sounds impressive, it’s important to note this is GMV (a marketplace metric). Our net is roughly 7.5% of that.
Given the market’s response to our product and plans to launch internationally within the next 18 months, I project that within 10 years, we could be reaching $1 billion GMV monthly.
Q. Since the inception of your business, have you gained any insights that have provided you with a competitive advantage and proven beneficial to your operations?
I’m not ready to share those details just yet. Ask me again in a few years when Reko is a household name, and I’ll gladly tell you what we learned this year that’s driving our explosive growth in a space full of failed startups.
Q. What tools have helped you grow your product?
Our internal tools are pretty basic: Slack, Gmail, and text messages. I once tried an automated email campaign tool, but the results were poor.
The most effective "tool," if you can call it that, is simply getting out there and talking to customers face-to-face or via Zoom or phone if in-person isn’t possible.
That, and putting in 12-14 hour workdays.
Q. Which books, podcasts, or other resources have had the greatest impact on you?
In no particular order, the books that have influenced me include The Courage to Be Disliked, The Four Disciplines of Execution, The Four Agreements, The Cold Start Problem, Awaken the Giant Within, The Challenger Sale, Advanced Selling Strategies by Brian Tracy,and Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth, and Impact the World,the latter of which sparked the idea for Reko while I was running. In addition, The Book of Mormon and The New Testament have also shaped my views.
Q. What advice would you offer to entrepreneurs who are looking to start or have just begun their journey?
This is a tough one. I don’t think I’m far enough along in my journey to offer solid advice.
Here’s what I’ll say: take all advice (including mine) with a grain of salt.
People often filter their advice through their own experiences, which can make something seem like a good idea when it might not be.
There’s a poker term called "resulting" which means judging a decision based on its outcome. This isn’t a good way to make decisions.
For example, buying a Powerball ticket gives you a tiny chance of winning. If you win, it doesn’t mean the decision was smart, just that you got lucky.
Similarly, if you spend time doing market research and building a product, but the business fails, it doesn’t mean the decision was bad.
Too often, people judge their decisions based on the result rather than how well they made the decision.
When people give you advice, remember they’re sharing what worked for them or didn’t. This can be useful, but it’s not always right.
Customers don’t always know what they want, but talking to them helps you understand their needs. It takes many interviews to truly grasp what customers say they want versus what they really need.
And finally, your founder equity is valuable, so treat it that way.
Q. Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We could definitely use the extra man hours (primarily in development), however we do not have the funds to hire right now. That being said, feel free to reach out if you want to work with Reko at some point in the future.
Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions! What is your contact info if people would like to inquire about your services? You can add all your links.
Of course! Here's a link to my website, you can also reach out through my mail. That's probably the best way to get in touch.
Let me know what you learned from this interview and have a productive week!🙏
Indie Tip Of The Week
This week's Indie Tip is shared by Kartikay. It highlights an important message from Sam Altman about thinking independently. Sam also emphasizes the value of learning through repeated failures, as eventually being right once can be enough for success. He says grit is built by repeatedly facing challenges and learning how to overcome setbacks. You can read more of the tweet hereRead more.
How can you build resilience while embracing failure in your entrepreneurial journey? Share in the comments!
Indie Product Of The Week
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Check out the product, and share your thoughts in the comments!
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What is the name of the vampire in the 1976 Anne Rice novel "Interview With a Vampire"?
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Great stuff, Idris! Chanced upon your profile from Reddit
Love the Indie Tip of the Week. Being gritty & resourceful is definitely important.