Meet Nadia: the one-woman dev team going up against one of the largest companies in the world
This week on Everyday Empires we chat with Nadia Odunayo, founder of The StoryGraph
Hey folks,
Welcome back to Everyday Empires, your weekly interview series spotlighting everyday founders.
This week, I’m featuring Nadia Odunayo and her venture, The StoryGraph.
I was blown away by Nadia’s story, from how she started to how far she’s come, and the organic word-of-mouth driving The StoryGraph’s growth.
We chatted about:
How she came to build a competitor to the Amazon-owned Goodreads
How she let customer research guide her to product/market fit
How she got to 2 million users as a one-woman dev team
Hi Nadia, thanks for being on Everyday Empires! To kick us off, can you give us an elevator pitch for The StoryGraph? What problem are you solving, and who are you solving it for?
The StoryGraph helps you to track your reading and choose your next book based on your mood and your favourite topics and themes.
We’re helping any reader, whether an avid one or someone who’s trying to get into the hobby, decide what to read next!
Where’d the idea come from and what motivated you to move forward with it?
StoryGraph was born out of a smaller side project I was working on. Goodreads was my favourite app at one point, but there was one thing I couldn’t do: make lists that were private only to me or shared with a small group of friends. I also wanted to be able to track my progress through these lists via a pretty dashboard. So I started working on an app that hooked into Goodreads and provided that very function.
However, after having such a fun time coding up a demo, I knew I wanted to do this full-time if possible, so I started doing customer research, starting with people I knew who read books. While people weren’t excited about my specific product idea I learnt that there were several existing pain points with Goodreads and other reading trackers and so I decided to focus on building a product that solved for those.
Editor’s note: note how Nadia decided to do customer research early-on, realized quickly that people weren’t interested in what she started building, and actually used what she learned to zero in on something that people did want. It’s easy to fall in love with your idea and go heads down building it. Don’t do that. Take a page out of Nadia’s book, and talk to people to see if they actually want what you’re making. Then, actually learn from those conversations and iterate.
How’d you find your initial users? Where has growth come from since?
The initial users were the people that I’d done customer interviews with when I was trying to figure out if there was a product worth building. Some of them introduced me to others. I also had a landing page up which brought in strangers and I cold-DM’d several people who were part of the books corner of Instagram, Bookstagram. This was all at the beginning of 2019. One of the people I reached out to on Instagram, Abbie Walker, started working at StoryGraph later that same year and still works with us to this day!
Then, in June of 2020 we exploded due to some viral tweets, growing from 1k to 20k registered users in three days! Since then we’ve been growing ever since, with spikes now and again due to social media posts or other media mentions.
In December of 2023 we passed 2 million registered users and we have currently have just over 5 million unique monthly visitors.
Editor’s note: If you open the links above to the social posts that helped StoryGraph grow, one thing that stood out to me is each of the tweets that went viral talking about StoryGraph was posted by someone with a low follower count. In other words, it wasn’t like they had some influencers talking about them. This just goes to show how loved their product is, and how it’s clearly resonating with people in an authentic way.
How do you define success for The StoryGraph, and how close are you to that vision?
I recently found the mission statement that I wrote down for the company I wanted to build:
We exist to enhance the lives of avid readers everywhere and to inspire non-readers to discover the joy of reading.
We are already seeing evidence that we’re achieving this every day via customer feedback emails, social media posts, and App and Play Store reviews, which is awesome, but I also see lots of helpful, critical feedback, especially surrounding the UI and UX of the product. I want to get to the point where all of these common pain points are handled and we’ve exceeded expectations when it comes to the design, user experience, and performance of the app. Then I’ll feel like I’m fully realising the vision!
If you could go back to the start of The StoryGraph, what advice might you give yourself?
Not to worry so much during the tough times, or the “dark days” as I called the two week effective standstill we had when that first spike came about. You’ll always find your way out! All of the problems we're facing have been faced by someone else before us. There is a solution out there!
Are there any books that have been particularly helpful in your journey as a founder?
The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. It really helped me start to hone my customer interviewing skills, forcing me to go into interviews with a clear hypothesis and an open mind, and making me stay far away from leading questions. It’s so short. Everyone involved in any sort of product development should read it!
Editor’s note: I second Nadia’s recommendation here. The Mom Test comes up all the time in my circle of startup founders, product people, and designers. I’ve personally read it a few times and applied its lessons in conducting the hundreds of conversations I’ve had with customers at the startups I’ve worked for. If you’re thinking of starting a venture of your own, this is a must-read.
Before we wrap, is there anything about your story we haven’t covered that you’d like readers to know?
Despite our growth, and my wonderful co-founder Rob Frelow, I’m still a one-woman dev team (amongst all the other jobs I do in the running of the company)! I tell the story in a talk I gave at the inaugural Rails SaaS Conference in LA in October 2022 titled “Getting to One Million Users as a One-Woman Dev":
Lastly, where should readers follow you if they want to keep up with you?
To keep up with StoryGraph:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.storygraph/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thestorygraph
Mastodon: https://bookstodon.thestorygraph.com/@thestorygraph
To keep up with me (Nadia), personally:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nodunayo
Instagram (mainly for my dancing): https://www.instagram.com/nodunayo/
That’s a wrap
A massive thank you to Nadia for sharing her time with us!
My big takeaways:
Don’t fall in love with an idea and force it. Be open to the reality that people may not actually want it
Talk to potential customers as early as possible (see #1)
You don’t need a big team to do big things
Organic word-of-mouth is the holy grail
Read The Mom Test
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See y’all next week,
Ken
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