This week’s Leanpreneur is Connor Finlayson, a no-code marketplace builder who sits right in the sweet spot of what being a Leanpreneur means.
About Connor
Connor is originally from New Zealand and now based in Canada. He runs Unicorn Factory, New Zealand’s largest freelancer marketplace, and a mastermind community for building online marketplaces using no-code tools.
Scratch your own itch
After an early foray into entrepreneurship straight out of university, Connor started freelancing running Facebook Ads for regional businesses in NZ.
Like most agency owners, he had to find clients consistently.
Rather than build a portfolio site like everyone else, he built a local marketplace in Webflow to connect freelancers with jobs. That was the first version of what became Unicorn Factory.
The plan was to put himself at the top of the listings and solve his own business development problem.
There was no Product Hunt or Hacker News launch. He just told the members of the coworking space he worked from.
He asked friends to sign up first and it grew from there, regionally around Wellington and then nationwide.
Smooth sailing
Connor only needed a handful of new clients to stay busy, and wasn’t reliant on the marketplace for income.
So it was fairly smooth going. He says your stress level is tied to your own expectations.
His costs were less than $100 per month so the risk was low.
When he started to monetise, he did it slowly, dropping clients for every $2k in monthly revenue the marketplace made.
This way he never worked on it for free.
Riding the market
Demand for Unicorn Factory took off during the pandemic. Then it tracked the economic dip that followed.
Connor’s lesson from this was that sometimes the wider economy plays a part, and as a business owner there isn’t much you can do about it.
It’s important to network with others in the niche you operate in to get a feel for what’s happening and always be prepared to weather downturns.
Teach what you know
Connor decided to build courses when he moved to Canada. This was after he took a shot at high ticket consultancy and realised he was replicating the same building process time and again.
Teaching changed things for him, and he has since built a tight-knit mastermind for his course graduates.
He set out to teach what the least competent version of himself would need and what he wished he had when he started.
He now has a community of people he enjoys supporting.
I’m in this community which is how I know Connor. It’s easily one of the best communities I’m part of. He’s involved, helpful and you can tell he finds it fun to run. Staying that close to the community is a big part of its long-term value, and of why people stay.
Running a marketplace, a product and a community
Connor runs Unicorn Factory in as little as 2-3 hours a month.
It’s largely run by AI and automation with zero staff.
When he wants to build or create new courses, he does it in sprints.
When we spoke, his main focus was training for a marathon, updating some of his courses and turning up in his mastermind group.
For lots of people, their lives revolve around their work.
His doesn’t.
He’s detached his self-worth from his work and freed up his time to travel and pursue his hobbies.
How Connor uses Glide and its built-in AI
In his tutorial, Connor showed us how he uses Glide to facilitate interactions between freelancers and businesses on Unicorn Factory.
Glide is a no-code app development platform that lets you create mobile apps from a Google Sheet or an Airtable base without writing any code.
It’s great for building simple apps quickly and affordably.
Before Glide, Connor’s marketplace set up required plugging together multiple tools with more potential points of failure.
His main challenge is making the platform easy to use, and Glide lets him build a smoother experience for both sides.
User management
Connor powers both sides of his marketplace with portals built using Glide. He customises the onboarding flows and users’ access to information.
Glide has a built-in AI integration which he then uses to build micro tools to improve the user experience.
Turning fuzzy job specs into adverts
Connor showed us how he helps advertisers create more effective job adverts.
People tended to write poor ads, either too long or too short.
Within Glide he showed how he uses AI to turn a fuzzy user input into a defined job advert using a format that he knows converts.
This has increased advert conversion and improved the experience for all users.
Because the AI sits inside Glide, you can build small products inside your product, using the data you already hold, without writing code.
What gets built
Connor keeps things simple.
He agrees that people get too academic when talking about the definition of lean startup.
He only builds functionality after repeated requests and puts the decision through the following criteria:
- Will it make him more money?
- Will it save him time?
- Will it enhance the value proposition? (Getting more work for freelancers)
Everything else goes in the bin.
Parting advice
Connor’s advice is to start.
Theories and plans are helpful, but real progress comes from taking action and learning through experience.
Actions are better than the tutorials you watch.
Resources
Connor recommends personal experience as the best resource, though he also mentioned past influences like the Consulting Accelerator by Sam Ovens and books by Derek Sivers.
Derek’s business philosophy mirrors Connor’s.
For no-code tutorials, check out Connor’s YouTube channel.
Where to find Connor
You can find Connor through his personal site at ConnorFinlayson.com, his YouTube channel, or on Unicorn Factory itself at unicornfactory.nz.
If you’re building lean like Connor, the Leanpreneur community is a small room of operators doing the same.
