Jonathan Anderson is the co-founder and CEO of Candu, a no-code platform that helps people build their own products. They are used by companies likeAdobe, Thought Industries, and Gorgias and have raised over five million dollars.

But his first business wasn’t such a success. In 2011, when Jonathan was a student at Stanford University in a CleanTech programme, he came up with the idea for a smart thermostat controlled by your smartphone with a couple of his fellow students. The problem they’d identified was that programmable thermostats at the time were really hard to use meaning customers just didn’t do it. 

It was early days for the smartphone but also exciting times. They realised they could use the GPS on customer’s smartphones to say when they were coming in and out of their homes, making heating much more efficient. After securing twenty thousand pounds with convertible note financing, they worked with a Chinese supplier to build a prototype. They were pumped to be at the forefront of the revolution in household technology

But they’d made a fundamental mistake.

Listen to find out what. 

If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better?

• hello@secretleaders.com 

Sponsor links:

quickbooks.co.uk/secretleaders