#334: Ryan Buick of Canvas, on Democratizing Data for Business Intelligence, Leveraging Unique Market Positioning, and Building an MVP while Fundraising

Just Go Grind

Ryan Buick is the Co-Founder of Canvas, a collaborative data exploration tool for business teams to automate manual reporting, build dashboards, and answer ad-hoc questions without SQL.

Growing up in San Francisco, Ryan watched the technology industry explode in his hometown and always wanted to be a part of it. He started out his career as a Marketplace PM helping SaaS vendors distribute their products through third-party channels at AppDirect. Then he joined Flexport as one of their first PMs to help digitize the world of trade. It was there that he saw how spreadsheets could be used as an interface for anyone, regardless of technical ability, to access data. This led him to start Canvas, a data exploration tool for business teams to make decisions without SQL.

Topics Covered by Ryan Buick in this Episode

• What Canvas does for operators
• The pain point Canvas is solving and their origin story
• Getting the first customers for Canvas
• The early product and the challenges they faced in its evolution
• Simultaneously fundraising and building an MVP
• Implementing feedback from early adopters
• Canvas’ business model and determining pricing
• Leveraging unique market positioning
• Fueling growth and content creation’s value accruement
• How Canvas serves existing data teams and enables early-stage startups to get data-driven
• Transitioning from product management to founding a startup

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