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Why this startup said no to the world's biggest mining company (and won)
Manage episode 504119962 series 3679457
David Press was down to his last $7,000 with payroll due when a critical enterprise deal saved Risk Talk from collapse. After years of grinding through COVID lockdowns and cancelled flights, he and co-founder Stuart Farquharson built a voice-first safety reporting tool that now serves three of the world's five largest mining companies.
David is the technical co-founder of Risk Talk, a platform that makes safety reporting accessible for frontline workers through voice technology to solve a problem they heard directly from workers: "Why can't I just talk about it instead of filling out these shit forms?" Risk Talk achieves 97% transcription accuracy even in the loudest industrial environments and has grown to serve companies with 60,000+ employees globally.
He explains:
⬛ Why saying "no" to the world's biggest mining company over a feature request was their smartest product decision
⬛ How their MVP mantra "would Frankie use it?" shaped every design choice
⬛ Why they refuse to add "just one more question" - even if it costs them deals
⬛ How a single TikTok post generated leads from $40B companies
⬛ Being prepared to drive Uber with enterprise deals pending
⬛ Why building i18n from day one enabled their international expansion
Follow David Press
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-press-0020a516/
RiskTalk: https://risktalk.com.au/
More Founders Show
LinkedIn: /more-founders-show
YouTube: @morefoundersshow
Website: https://morefounders.show
Follow Dave
LinkedIn: /daveberner
X: @dave_or_dead
YouTube: @daveordead
Website: https://daveberner.me
Sponsors
Kinde: https://kinde.com
Chapters
1. Intro (00:00:00)
2. How their scrappy MVP made safety reporting accessible (00:01:25)
3. The founder grind and treating the podcast as a startup (00:02:03)
4. Voice technology making construction sites safer (00:02:33)
5. From ideation in 2016 to a real MVP in 2019 (00:03:26)
6. Building with Ionic then React Native (00:04:35)
7. Getting first customers through network and grind (00:05:40)
8. How Frankie shaped their entire product philosophy (00:06:32)
9. Building trust when you're only 6 months old (00:08:17)
10. Creating a market for voice-based safety reporting (00:09:17)
11. Early React Native headaches and building custom voice libraries (00:11:27)
12. Being early on AI and maintaining their moat (00:13:37)
13. 97% accuracy in deafening industrial environments (00:14:39)
14. Standing next to welders doing live demos (00:16:26)
15. Pushing back on customization requests from giants (00:17:33)
16. How voice enables multilingual safety reporting globally (00:22:37)
17. Testing Urdu and Hindi recordings in Saudi Arabia (00:26:27)
18. Meeting your co-founder through first-grade cricket (00:32:54)
19. Finding the right co-founder as a technical founder (00:37:48)
20. Customer-facing hires are "really, really hard" (00:40:07)
21. Engineers growing from juniors to product leaders (00:43:44)
22. AI as opportunity not threat with 9 years of voice data (00:45:14)
23. Personal brand struggles and that viral LinkedIn post (00:51:45)
24. "What's your safe word?" t-shirts at conferences (00:56:11)
25. Founder burnout: grinding teeth and Friday dirt bikes (01:00:34)
26. Down to $7k before the deal that changed everything (01:09:33)
27. One key advice: resilience is everything (01:14:25)
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