How this SAAS founder learned to code by building companies himself
Tadas Labudis is a self-taught developer and the maker behind the customer analytics SAAS business Prodsight. Tadas studied Business at university and learned to code in order to be able to make money from his entreprenuerial instincts. Here he tells us about his journey learning to code, making online businesses and his tips for entrepreneurs who want to code but don't know how to.
Hey, so can you give us a short introduction for people who want to know more about you?
Hi, I’m currently the founder and CEO of a startup called Prodsight which I founded about two years ago. In a nutshell, Prodsight helps product managers inform and prioritise the right solutions for their customers by using data instead of gut-feel. We do that by automatically analysing customer feedback from sources like Intercom and Zendesk and surfacing the most important customer issues. I was born in Lithuania and moved to Scotland to study when I was 18. Right now I’m splitting my time between Edinburgh and London.
I see you did a Business Management degree. So what got you interested in coding?
I grew up in a single-parent household with my mom and sister so we didn’t have a lot of money. I saw my mom work really hard across three jobs but still, we could only afford the basics and lived in a rough neighbourhood. I noticed that all the rich people in town were running their own businesses so from the very early age I set myself on that path.
Luckily, I had a natural knack for business - as a teenager I used to buy and sell second-hand computer parts and use the profits to buy and upgrade my own computer. I loved computers and the informatics classes at school but back then it didn’t seem like a lucrative career path so I applied to do a Business degree at the University of Glasgow. However, I maintained an interest in computers as a hobby.