Latest / The Founder's Journey with Fexingo: First-Time Entrepreneurs, Failures, and Lessons Learned / How a Founder Used a Free Public Library to Build a SaaS Company
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this founder I've been following — let's call her Priya — who built a B2B SaaS tool for small property managers, and she did it without spending a single dollar on office space, co-working, or even coffee shop Wi-Fi. Luna: Wait, she built a SaaS company without an internet connection at home? Lucas: No, she had internet at home. What she didn't have was a dedicated workspace. She lived in a tiny studio in Brooklyn with roommates, and she found that she couldn't focus there. So she started going to the New York Public Library — the main branch on 5th Avenue — every single day. Luna: Okay, that's charming, but a lot of us have tried working from a library. The hours are limited, you can't take calls, and the Wi-Fi can be spotty. Lucas: Right, but she turned those constraints into advantages. She used the library's database subscriptions — which are free with a library card — to research her target market. Instead of paying for Crunchbase or Statista, she accessed market reports through the business section. She even used the library's online resources to pull SEC filings for competitors. Luna: So she basically replaced a thousand-dollar data budget with a free library card. Lucas: Exactly. And for customer interviews, she couldn't take phone calls inside the reading room, but she realized she could schedule calls during the lunch hour on the library steps. She'd sit on the steps with her laptop and talk to property managers she'd found on LinkedIn. It forced her to be incredibly efficient with her time. Luna: But what about the product itself? Writing code in a library seems like a recipe for distraction. Lucas: She actually found it easier to focus there than at home. She'd arrive when the doors opened at 10 a.m., claim a spot at one of those long oak tables, and put on noise-canceling headphones. She said the ambient silence of the library helped her get into flow state faster than any coffee shop ever did. Luna: I guess there's something about the institutional quiet that signals to your brain it's time to work. Lucas: That's exactly what she said. And here's the thing — she got her first ten paying customers before she ever spent a dime on a co-working membership. By the time she needed to take sales calls, she'd already validated the product and had enough revenue to rent a small office for two hundred dollars a month in a shared space. Luna: So she used the library as her incubator, and only upgraded when the business could afford it. Lucas: Exactly. She told me that the library was also where she found her first mentor. There's a program at NYPL where retired executives volunteer to give free business advice. She booked a one-hour session with a woman who had run a property management software company in the 90s, and that conversation completely changed her pricing model. Luna: Wait, so she got free mentorship from the library too? That's almost unfair. Lucas: Right? It's part of their Small Business Resource Center, which most people don't even know exists. Priya spent her first six months as a founder at that library, and her total operating cost was basically the subway fare and the occasional vending machine snack. Luna: I think there's a broader lesson here about how we romanticize the 'startup grind' — the idea that you need a WeWork membership and a MacBook and a matcha latte to be a real founder. Lucas: The cultural script says you need to look the part, but Priya's story is a reminder that the actual work — the research, the coding, the customer conversations — can happen anywhere. The library gave her structure, free resources, and a community of other self-directed learners. Luna: And it forced her to be disciplined about her time. If the library closes at 6, you can't just 'work through the evening' — you have to be done. That's a healthy constraint for a founder who might otherwise burn out. Lucas: Exactly. She also mentioned that the library had a dedicated business librarian — a person whose job is to help patrons find data on industries and competitors. She said that librarian saved her weeks of research time. Luna: So how much did she actually spend on her business in the first year? Lucas: She tracked every expense. The total was under three thousand dollars. That included the domain name, hosting, a basic email marketing tool, and a few cheap logos from a freelance site. The rest — research, development, customer discovery — was essentially free, anchored by her library card. Luna: That's less than what some founders spend on a single conference ticket. Lucas: Or on noise-canceling headphones, frankly. But here's the twist — after she launched and started growing, she kept going back to the library once a month, not to work, but to volunteer at the same business resource center that helped her. She now mentors other first-time founders. Luna: That's a nice full-circle moment. It also makes me think about how many underutilized public resources exist that we just don't think of as 'startup infrastructure.' Lucas: Right. And we should say — this isn't just a New York story. Most major public library systems have business databases, online courses, and sometimes even recording studios or 3D printers. If you're bootstrapping, it's worth spending an afternoon seeing what your local branch offers. Luna: You know, it's funny — we spend so much time on this show talking about creative low-budget tactics, and this one might be the simplest. Get a library card. Lucas: And it ties into something I've been thinking about more broadly. A lot of what we cover here is about making do with what's available, and that's a philosophy we try to follow with the podcast itself. We deliberately don't run ads on these episodes, because we want the information to come through without any noise. Luna: Yeah, and that's a choice we're able to make because some listeners have decided to support the show directly. If these conversations have moved your work forward in any small way, you can find the link at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: No pressure, no perks — just a way to keep this ad-free experiment running. Back to Priya's story, because I think the final detail is the most telling. Luna: What's that? Lucas: Her company's first logo was actually a sketch she drew on the back of a library receipt. She scanned it with the library's free scanner and used it for months before she paid for a proper design. That scrappy mindset never really left her, even after the company grew to seven figures in revenue. Luna: So the library was literally in her brand DNA. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's the real lesson — constraints don't have to be limiting. They can be identity-forming. When you start with nothing but a library card, every decision you make has to be intentional. Luna: Makes me wonder what other free infrastructure we're all ignoring. Lucas: That's a good question for next time. For now, maybe the takeaway is simple: before you spend money on a tool or a space, check what your public library already offers. You might be surprised.