It Takes a Village w/ Kristy Ehman from Hyon


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Nov 10 2020 30 mins  

Show Notes

This interview with Kristy Ehman was originally release a few weeks ago, but we had to delay publishing it. If you happen to have already listened to this episode, go ahead and skip this one. See you next time.

Kristy Ehman of Hyon joins Jonathan and Angela to talk about her journey as a tech founder. Kristy and Angela met at Metabridge in June 2019 and have been talking weekly since. Listen in to get a glimpse of what they talk about; product challenges, users, parenthood, and fundraising.

Find Us Online

Angela Hapke - @angelahapke - https://www.clinnect.ca

Jonathan Bowers - @thejonotron - https://www.twostoryrobot.com

Credits


Produced by Jonathan Bowers and Angela Hapke

Music by Andrew Codeman (CC BY 3.0)

Transcript

Jonathan: [00:00:00] I see, I see you've typed up no notes for this.

Angela: [00:00:03] Oh, I sent, I sent a text to Kirsty. Does that count?

Jonathan: [00:00:07] That counts.

Angela: [00:00:08] Wow, Angela. Good work.

Introduction [00:00:12]

You're listening to Fixing Faxes, a podcast on the journey of building a digital health startup with your host, myself, Angela Hapke and Jonathan Bowers.

And today I'm excited to say that we have guest with us. Kirsty Ehman is joining us today. Good morning, Kirsty

Kristy: [00:00:30] Good morning.

Angela: [00:00:31] can you tell everyone just a little bit about you, where you're at right now. And then we're going to talk about how we met and we're going to go into a few other things around why we talk every week.

Kristy: [00:00:43] Well, let's talk about how we met. We actually met at Meta Bridge a conference uh out of Kelowna last year. I think it was the 10th year anniversary when we met, patio overlooking the lake, gorgeous.

Angela: [00:00:53] You spotted me from across the

room?

Kristy: [00:00:56] It was love at first sight, one, one tall female founder, to another tall female founder where I don't feel like I'm overpowering the room and we connected.

And that was it.

Jonathan: [00:01:05] Are you also tall?

Kristy: [00:01:07] Jonathan, are you tall or are you short? And this is intimidating.

Jonathan: [00:01:11] I am a medium height. I'm five foot eight and three quarters

Kristy: [00:01:16] That actually counts

Jonathan: [00:01:17] yeah, the three quarters counts.

Angela: [00:01:19] The three quarters count. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Kirsty, tell me, who, who are you? What are you doing?


Hyon, Connecting Local Sellers with Local Item Owners [00:01:28]

Kristy: [00:01:28] So my name is Kirsty Ehman, founded a tech company two years ago and we've pivoted the company one massive pivot. We believe there are two types of people in the world. You're either someone that would do the work to sell your used items, or you ultimately can't be bothered. And our technology connects those two groups.

Angela: [00:01:45] Cool.

Jonathan: [00:01:45] I like how concise that

was.

Angela: [00:01:47] she's been practicing.

Jonathan: [00:01:49] She has rehearsed

Kristy: [00:01:51] No, I've just, I've said it a million times. It's my only thing. It's the only scripted thing in my life.

Angela: [00:01:57] I honestly thought you were going to go into a 15 minute pitch there for one moment. I was like, Oh, and here we go. We are about to hear the Hyon pitch, everyone. I loved it. how'd you get started how long ago?

Kristy: [00:02:10] a couple of years ago we had a, New baby and a three year old and they have a lot of stuff. And so we had been introduced to consignment events for kids. Thought it was magical, created our own developed software for our event realized we never want to run events. software could be interesting.

Realize the software market for consignment events is not big enough to be interesting. So we pivoted the company to consignment. uncovered that there's these two groups of people. And so if you're someone that can't be bothered, you're pulling up to value village and ringing the doorbell or stuffing your stuff in the bins, in the corner of a, of a parking lot.

Angela: [00:02:45] I am a stuff, your stuff in a bin.

Kristy: [00:02:48] We call you Jordan. And if you're a, if you're someone who's super active on, on marketplaces, you're, you're on Facebook marketplace, Kijiji ,Craigslist, you brag about how much money you make on these platforms.

And we call those people Alison. So our world revolves around

Jordan's and Alison's.

Angela: [00:03:05] I love it. And your software connects Jordans to Alison's because Jordan's like myself do not want to be bothered with going on to Facebook marketplace and taking the time to list products and deals with people. I like humans. I don't like people. And, they connect to somebody like myself to, somebody, an Alison that really likes doing this kind of stuff really loves going on and selling stuff.

And so your, your product, connects those two types of people. Where are you guys at right now? The product is built.

Kristy: [00:03:44] Products built. So we're in a commercialized beta. Primarily in Saskatchewan, but we do find ourselves coast to coast. We're kind of sprinkled all over the place and we are starting our integration to, uh, into accepting payments from the States. So we'll be crossing borders in a

Angela: [00:03:58] Ooh, we haven't talked about that yet. That's fun.

Kristy: [00:04:02] this is my weekly update.

Angela: [00:04:04] Everybody's tuning in now to the conversation that Kirsty and I have each week,

Jonathan: [00:04:09] I'm excited to be along for the ride here a little bit and listen to listen to the conversation that you two are having, but I am curious, the, what you're describing is that sort of classic two sided market. how did you figure out how to put the chicken before the egg in this two sided market?

Kristy: [00:04:26] As far as where we go first, like, who are we trying to attract

Jonathan: [00:04:28] Yeah. Like, how do you get these two sides together when you don't have enough of one to entice the other

Kristy: [00:04:33] So, our focus has primarily been on Alison's. So how can we pull these people out of the weeds who are extremely proficient at selling online and by developing that network of Allison's, we can then start to attract Jordans. So as soon as someone requests a pickup and says, Hey, I have a snowboard.

I needed some help selling, or I have a bunch of kid's stuff or I have some farm equipment. we can go into ou...