Interview on Product Journey

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: This bonus episode centers on Noah LeBhart’s journey building Variable, a two-sided marketplace for on-demand industrial labor. He explains how the idea came from manufacturing operations pain points, how they approached market validation, what they learned about product-market fit, and how they’re scaling both the business and technology. The conversation also covers execution habits, customer trust-building, and balancing entrepreneurship with family and side projects.

Main Topics: Origin of Variable and founder fit (Priority: 5/5): Noah describes how Variable began through a mutual connection and a strong alignment between Mike Kinder’s manufacturing operations insight and Noah’s execution-focused startup background. Two-sided marketplace launch strategy (Priority: 5/5): The team initially focused on attracting workers first, assuming labor supply would be harder than customer demand, and used prelaunch signups to seed the marketplace. Product-market fit learning loop (Priority: 5/5): Noah explains how they used customer feedback, analytics, and iterative releases to determine whether the product was truly resonating and where the core value lay. Scaling operations and infrastructure (Priority: 4/5): The discussion covers scaling from a small pilot to tens of thousands of workers, adding market teams in key regions, and redesigning backend architecture for future growth. Customer education and trust in manufacturing (Priority: 4/5): Noah emphasizes that manufacturing buyers need relationship-based selling and education, not aggressive marketing, because the product changes labor paradigms. Execution, prioritization, and project management (Priority: 4/5): He frames execution as a discipline built from breaking down work, prioritizing it, and monitoring outcomes, drawing heavily from his PMP/project-management background. Work-life harmony and entrepreneurial sacrifice (Priority: 3/5): Noah discusses managing family, podcasting, and business responsibilities, while acknowledging the difficulty of knowing when to stop pursuing a project.

Key Arguments: Variable’s core idea was validated early because Noah and Mike understood both the shop floor and management-side manufacturing pain points, making the concept immediately credible. In two-sided marketplaces, the team believed worker supply would be hardest, but later learned that enterprise demand and education were actually more difficult. Early product-market fit came not from a single epiphany but from repeated customer interviews, observation sessions, and iterative refinement over roughly six to eight months. For manufacturing customers, trust is built through practical, operation-focused conversations rather than flashy sales pitches. Execution improves when founders define measurable goals, break work into dependencies, prioritize ruthlessly, and monitor progress continuously. Scaling requires both business development in high-density industrial markets and technical architecture changes, including moving from monolith to microservices. Entrepreneurial success depends on harmony across faith, family, and work, not perfect balance; but founders must also learn to kill underperforming projects.

Data Points: Businesses used in initial pilot: 4-5 - Noah says the company began with a small pilot of early customers to prove the concept and shape the product. Initial worker signups/downloads at launch: 200-300 - Before launch, the team recruited workers through outreach to warehouses, schools, food trucks, and manufacturing plants. First payment processed: $160 - Variable’s first work opportunity occurred in mid-February and generated the company’s first payment. Time to core product confidence: About 6 months - Noah says it took roughly six months after launch to feel confident they had a core product the market wanted. Current workers regularly on platform: 30,000 - Noah contrasts the early signups with the number of workers now regularly using Variable. Active people in system: 75,000 - He distinguishes between workers currently active on the platform and those merely looking or previously used it. Team size: 60 - At the time of the conversation, Variable’s team had grown to 60 employees. Projected team size: 80 by end of year - Noah says the company expected to reach 80 employees by year-end. States served: 7 - Variable had expanded into seven states. Backend runway before major redesign: About 9 months - Noah says forecasting showed they had roughly nine months before infrastructure limits would force a redesign. Podcast support amount: $5 to $10 per month - The intro asks listeners to support Code Story via Patreon at this range.

Pivotal Quotes: "We don't love that tagline now, but we still use it because people connect with it." — Noah LeBhart: On describing Variable as the ‘Uber for manufacturing labor,’ while clarifying that the phrase is only a shorthand. "We started out with a hypothesis... the supply side of the equation... were going to be harder to recruit than the businesses." — Noah LeBhart: Explaining the company’s initial marketplace strategy and how that assumption later proved wrong. "There's no such thing as work life balance. It's work life harmony." — One of Variable’s investors (cited by Noah): Noah uses this idea to explain how he manages entrepreneurship, family, and podcasting.

Implications: The episode shows that industrial marketplaces require deep domain knowledge, patience, and relationship-driven sales. For founders, it underscores the value of rapid validation, iterative product design, and disciplined execution in complex B2B markets.