Sam Rudy spent over a decade booking recording studios for major artists worldwide, a job that involved sending 50+ emails just to book a single session. He had zero coding experience, but his co-founder Ricky convinced him that Sam’s deep industry knowledge made him the only person who could solve this problem.

In this episode, Abhinav talks with Sam about how he went from "this feels impossible" to building Pro Studio Time, a marketplace connecting artists with professional recording studios. You'll hear why studios don't advertise rates or availability (and how Sam designed around that), the specific moment he realized people actually wanted what he was building, and his framework for overcoming fear of failure when putting early prototypes in front of industry peers. Sam breaks down why "boring is back" in music tech, how he found early adopters willing to wait through delays, and why nobody cares about your imperfect product as much as you think they do.

Topics covered:

• Why deep industry experience creates an unfair advantage over technical skills
• The 50-email problem: How recording studio bookings actually work
• Meeting your co-founder at the pub: From complaint to company in 24 hours
• Why "this will cost $500K to build" is almost never true anymore
• Overcoming the fear that your industry peers will judge you
• Getting 130+ studios and 75+ profiles without launching publicly
• Why closed beta is often just founder fear disguised as strategy
• Finding early adopters who'll stick with you through delays
• "Boring is back": Why music tech investors want real problem-solving over cool ideas
• The iteration playbook: Most things fail because founders don't stick with it long enough

Find this episode’s full show notes here:

• https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-05-sam-rudy
  

Links:

• Pro Studio Time: prostudiotime.com
• Sam on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/amessagetourudy
• Ricky (Sam’s co-founder) on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricky-foran-238742317/
• Start building: bubble.io