E016 - Kevin Bennett, CEO at Further

We chat with Kevin Bennett, a successful entrepreneur who helped grow Caribou to a billion-dollar company. Now, he's back with Further, a platform focused on helping people afford their first homes. Kevin shares important lessons for early-stage founders and gives practical advice for growing a business.   We Discuss: Product vs. Distribution: Kevin explains why both product development and getting your product to customers are equally important. Experimenting with Marketing: Kevin talks about the need to test different marketing channels and how to do it quickly. Evaluating Marketing Channels: Kevin shares a simple framework to decide if a marketing channel is worth investing in: Does it resonate with your audience? Can it scale as you grow? Are the economics (costs and returns) good? How stable is the channel or partnership? Speed and Cycle Time: Kevin emphasizes the need to test ideas fast and make decisions quickly. Strategic Partnerships: Kevin talks about the value of finding strong partners who can help your business grow. A word from our sponsor, Spinwheel: Streamline your lending application pages with 2-fields. If you’re anything like us, friction on application pages makes you nauseous. It makes your CACs go up. It makes your volumes drop. It causes your CFO and CEO to say mean things. The trouble is, application friction isn’t easy to fix. Your prod/eng is busy. We get it. Spinwheel’s APIs streamline a lending application form with just a phone number and a birthdate - like magic (but it’s really just smart tech)! Then you get a 20-30% lift in your application rate. Additionally, they can give you real-time, verified consumer credit data and seamless payment processing, which can help you serve customers beyond the initial application. To see a demo, click below to connect with their Head of Growth and see this thing in action. https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=jan Subscribe to the Free Toaster Newsletter: www.thefreetoaster.com