About Tykr

Sean Tepper (Founder & CEO)

20+ years business leadership. 

• 2003 – 2006 – Worked in hotel security full-time (40 hours per week) while going to school full-time. By working full-time and getting a little help from my parents, I was able to avoid student loan debt. This was my first introduction to leadership where I was able to lead a team of 7 – 10 people. This also provided critical education on business operations. Understanding how a large company generates revenue through multiple channels. I worked at the Pfister Hotel (Owned by the Marcus Corporation) which is the premier hotel in Milwaukee. Most sports teams, celebrities, and business executives that visit Milwaukee, stay in this hotel. They also have great food and an impressive view from the rooftop bar. 😃
• 2006 – Started an agency (Software, Video, Marketing, etc.). Although I wore many hats as most entrepreneurs do (sales, marketing, operations), the common job responsibility was project management.
• 2006 – 2010 – Pitched 400+ businesses and served 100+ businesses. My team and I grew the agency through the Great Recession. This was not a fun ride but I learned a lot about business.
• 2010 – Merger and Acquisition. The agency merged with a larger agency. I had an awesome team of 5 friends, and our hard work paid off (sort of). This was not a major liquidity event but it did wipe all debts and liabilities away. We found that building an agency through the recession was extremely difficult. Although this service business model wasn’t scalable, the experience of analyzing businesses as well as solving problems for those businesses was the investing education I needed. Little did I know, this would lead to an investing software platform over 10 years later.
• 2011 – After the merger, I decided I wanted to focus my efforts on creating a SaaS or a scalable tech company. The problem is, I didn’t have any great SaaS ideas. The path of least resistance was to work for large corporations to understand how they market, sell, and operate. If you’re an entrepreneur and you want to transition to the corporate world, the easiest role is Project Management. It’s not glamorous but it’ll position you on the inside so you know how to correctly build a company.
• 2011 – 2023 – Served large businesses including GE, Kohler, Direct Supply, and Kohl’s. As a PM, I managed projects with budgets ranging between $200K and $2M. ROI on some of the projects exceeded 400% the first year. Largest product launch was $15M on day 1. Working for large public and private businesses for 12 years provided the education and training needed to understand how large business truly market, sell, and operate. This was invaluable experience I’m grateful for.
• 2011 – 2015 – Angel invested in private tech startups. After achieving sub-par returns, I transitioned to the public market (stock market).
• 2015 – 2016 – Read dozens of books on stock investing and came across Rule #1 and Payback Time by Phil Town. Most tactics taught by investors lack rigor but Phil’s teachings provided the necessary rigor to make impressive returns in the market.
• 2016 – Created the first version of Tykr in excel, inspired by Phil’s teachings.
• 2016 – 2019 – Achieved average returns ranging between 15% – 50% per year. I found that Value Investing is the true path to building wealth. Creating a focused portfolio of great companies is the key. 
• 2019 – Provided demos to retail investors, wealth managers, and institutional investors. The common feedback was I should turn this excel sheet into a tool to share with others.
• 2020 – Version 1 of Tykr went live. This was more or less an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to prove product-market fit.
• 2021 – Version 2 of Tykr went live and we were able to bring on 2,000 customers. The issue was, we didn’t have a platform to add more data and features. This motivated us to create a more robust version of Tykr.
• 2022 – Version 3 of Tykr went live and we were able to bring on 8,000 customers.
• 2023 – Left my job at Kohler and went full-time with Tykr.

In summary, out of the hundreds of business models I served, I learned that SaaS is one of, if not, the most scalable business model. It then took me 13 years to come up with an idea, create an MVP, turn that MVP into a company, help build an amazing team, bootstrap the company to cash flow positive, and go full-time. Sometimes dreams take longer than expected. 😁

As for Tykr…

I’ve achieved the following annual returns. The key is to create a focused portfolio of 10 – 15 On Sale Stocks that pass the 4Ms checklist.

	My Returns	S&P 500 Returns
2016	15%	9%
2017	16%	19%
2018	80%	-6%
2019	35%	28%
2020	120%	16%
2021	28%	26%
2022	-60%	-19%
2023	100%	8%

2022 doesn’t look great, right?

When you hold a focused portfolio, you have to be willing to ride your portfolio down but the key is to not sell! As Warren Buffett and Phil Town teach…

• Rule #1: Don’t lose money
• Rule #2: Don’t forget Rule #1

As of February of 2023, my portfolio is already up 100% because I bought stocks while they were down in 2022. This is called stockpiling. Think of stockpiling as a Jedi super power except everyone can have this power. Visit our investing onboarding to begin your Jedi training 😀.