The Agile Entrepreneurship Podcast

Ramesh Dontha
  • 5.0 (34)
  • Entrepreneurship

The Agile Entrepreneurship podcast is where the most successful entrepreneurs share their entrepreneurial journey. Ramesh Dontha interviews these successful business owners on why they started their businesses, what helped them succeed and what mistakes they made that they don’t want you to make.Ramesh Dontha is an entrepreneur, author and a blogger. He also shares his experiences of starting and building 4 successful companies.

  1. 10/29/2020

    Building a digital marketing agency with Brian Meert

    Subscribe & Download Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Play Follow us on SoundCloud Listen on Spotify Guest: Brian Meert https://youtu.be/yp0GkOS8Wus Episode Transcript 00:09 Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to one more episode of the agile entrepreneurial video cast and podcast. And today I’m really excited to introduce a gentleman who is a CEO and founder of www. AdvertiseMint.com and it’s a clever play of the word advertisement. So he took the E out and they put an AdvertiseMint. So the cleverness and then the creativity is, as you can see, it’s coming right with starting with the name itself. And his name is Brian Meert and I happen to run into him in Los Angeles. And this gentleman, so Brian, welcome. So I’ll introduce you in a much more personal way in a second. 00:48 Brian: Oh, I love it. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to talk about business and marketing today. 00:56 Ramesh: Great. So Brian is the founder of AdvertiseMint. and AdvertiseMint. is an advertising agency for digital media, right? So they focus extensively on Facebook, but of course they also have other platforms and Amazon tik tok you know, Pinterest and all of them of course, which is really, really hot right now. So, and then secondly, I found out that Brian comes from the same town that where I live in Sacramento. Fantastic. Yes. Yes. Okay, so tell us a little bit about your company AdvertiseMint., 01:28 Brian: Man. So, I mean, we’re an advertising agency. We specialize in digital. We worked a lot with Facebook advertising is what we’re really known for. A lot of people come to approach us because of that. And we’re very robust. But we work with other platforms like tik tok, which is really hot right now. YouTube ads, Google ads, Facebook ads, or Amazon ads. So there’s a lot of other platforms that we work within. Basically, you know, companies that need help either they’re growing and they’re like, we need someone to help us in this area. Or we’ve worked with big teams like Viacom that have 20 people in their marketing department, and they’re like, we need an expert to handle this one aspect for certain events or shows. So we need you guys to take care of it. So, you know, we work with a range of different clients, but basically, we’re helping businesses grow every single day. 02:20 Ramesh: Okay. So is it fair to say that your focus is much more on the paid advertisement space or do you also in the broad social media presence, you look at the entire picture for the companies, Hey, you know, what do you need to do from a social media presence and then advertisement is one piece of it. 02:38 Brian: Oh, it’s great. It’s a great question. We work a lot on the paid side. So, you know, companies come, goes with ad dollars and they’re like, we need to have this objective met, you know, a certain number of people come to an event, certain number of sales and we work with them and say, here are the best platforms and outlets to be able to reach your goals. So we very much work on that. We have partners that we work with on the social side. But there’s so much changing within the ecosystem of just digital ads. It keeps us very busy with just that. 03:10 Ramesh: Okay, fantastic. So then, how did you get into this space? And actually first let me start, when did you start your company? 03:17 Brian: Man this was about 2013, 2014 when Facebook launched ads manager. I’d been a digital marketing manager and I was a vice president of a financial company overseeing all their digital media spends. When Facebook’s ad platform came out when they launched ad manager. And you know, back then it was very quiet. No one was really paying attention to it. And I was managing millions of dollars a month for this company. And so we, I just like, Oh, let’s try this out. And once I started to see the targeting capabilities that they had, the results that we were getting in terms of cost per click or reaching new people, you know back in the early days, we could just target any competitor, any fan page and go right after your direct competitors and show your ads only to them. So it was like shooting fish in a barrel. It was incredible. And it was kind of a wild, wild West day. But I saw how much potential there was and I actually, you know, ended up talking to the boss, telling him I wanted to start a company that specialized in this and they became my first client. So that was how I was able to make the transition from an employee to a business owner. 04:29 Ramesh: Oh, okay. So yours is an interesting story. So you’ve been working somewhere, but you talked to your manager saying that I’m going to go and start this company and so this is a particular thing that you guys are not doing, but I can do this for you and then they became your customer, is that what it is? 04:44 Brian: And very much so. I mean, so to some extent I was overseeing and managing all their ad span and I said, I think this area is going to be really, really big. I want to make sure that you’re taking care of and that nothing falls through. But I want to go after this area. You know, if you’re my first client you know, I’ll lock in a good deal with you, I will make sure you’re taking care of, this is what I want to do. I want to make sure there’s enough time that you have the ability to hire someone else. I can help with that process. You know, I didn’t want to create any headaches for my boss. Which I always say is good advice for anyone out there. And you know, ultimately you know, the CEO of the company came back and he was like, I’m fine with this. Thank you for being upfront. We would love to continue work with them and we still work with them today. You know, six years later. 05:31 Ramesh: This is a very creative way of starting a business Brian. Actually it’s good angle that he brought in. Because many times people are worried about what if I start a side business, would it conflict with what I’m working for? But what you said is very collaborative fashion, there is an angle that the company is not addressing, but you said, Hey, you know, I can address it and then, but I would like to be an entrepreneur and then you be my customer. 05:58 Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. I mean, and it was, I’ll be honest, when I went in for that conversation, I was still nervous. Because you know, you’re, it’s like swinging from vines and your kind of letting go of one vine before you have the next vine in your hand. So it takes a little bit of courage to do. The worst that he could have said is no. You know, in that scenario he’s got an employee that is looking for another option. But I think when I approached it, I was just like, here is how I’m going to take care of you and create, as you know, less headaches for your world. Meaning ultimately, this can be good for you because I’m focusing on this one area and I can do it just for you starting out. And that was it. I mean, when I started the company, it was just me. And now we’ve got 40, 50 employees. So it’s growing quite a bit. But it was, I mean, that was it. That was the first kind of step for me being able to branch out, start on my own and be able to get, you know, revenue for the business. That was my first customer. 06:58 Ramesh: Excellent. So then how was the first year? Then you got your first customer. So it’s a less risky way of starting a business then how did the first year go? 07:08 Brian: So the first year was good. I mean, I think within a couple of months, the business actually went through a downturn. The one that was my client and they had to pull back their budgets and their spend. So, you know, I was expecting this much to be able to make it through the mud and all of a sudden that number dropped to that. So, you know, it got me moving and I was hustling to try to find a second client, a third client, a fourth client. And I think once I had that first little bit of revenue, that was enough that allowed me to begin to grow in certain areas, hire people part-time to help. And from there it was just, you know, it wasn’t a huge blast of a curve where, you know, I’m trying to hire a hundred people, you know, a day as we accelerate. It was, you know, slow and steady in every job we did. And a client who was happy meant we could hire someone else and get another client and keep accelerating. And that was really it. It was very much steppingstones. You know, I have a lot of friends, they will be like, Whoa, look at what you built. And I’m like, it was slow and steady, you know, I wish it was, you know, this huge expansion or like a mega company, but it really was just step by step by step. 08:18 Ramesh: You don’t want some time you know that hyperbolic growth because he can’t, I mean many companies that just died you know, managed that kind of significant growth. 08:29 Brian: For sure. Yeah, it’s very, very hard to sustain. Very hard. I mean, it’s like being strap

  2. 10/15/2020

    Building an online boutique business with Becky Beach

    Subscribe & Download Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Play Follow us on SoundCloud Listen on Spotify Guest: Becky Beach https://youtu.be/XPXcXJe6uWw Episode Transcript 00:03 Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to one more episode of the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. Today we’ll be talking to an entrepreneur who has weathered through tough times before she made a very successful business by herself. Her name is Becky Beach, and by the way, I love the name Becky Beach, Becky Beach is a mompreneur who was in debt up to $150,000 before she started her online boutique. She was actually living from month to month and was barely making ends meet before her business. After the online boutique though she was debt free. So Becky nowadays helps other moms start their own businesses, save money, and live from home through her blog www.mombeach.com That’s another interesting name there. So Becky, welcome. 00:59 Becky: Oh, thank you. I’m really excited to be here. 01:03 Ramesh: Fantastic. So Becky, so let’s get straight to it. What were you, what was the work that you were doing when you were in that much of a debt around $150,000 if you could explain how you, not necessarily how you got into it, but essentially what were you doing? And what was the transformation? 01:23 Becky: Well, I was working for a small pain and injury clinic as a web developer. Like that’s what I was doing, and they weren’t paying very much. Like I was probably making like $20 an hour or less, you know, those weren’t paying that much, you know, so I was like scraping by and I’ll work like 60-hour week. Sometimes it was just a lot of stress. Then I got pregnant with my little child, you know, when I just couldn’t, it just was really so much stress, you know, and hard to deal with, you know. They just weren’t paying very much at all, you know. 01:51 Ramesh: So then what happens? You are in debt and then the work, you’re not enjoying it. It’s stressful. Then how did that switch come on that Hey, no, I need to start something else. I need to do something else. 02:04 Becky: Well, I got pregnant with like, we had a child, my husband, and I just said, I just can’t go back to work. I don’t think I could work 60-hour days you know in this condition, you know, when I was, I had a little child that I was taking a daycare. It was after three months he has already gone to daycare, you know, that’s just too short, you know, and I was just worried about him all day. I couldn’t focus on my work, you know, because I just had a little baby that I wanted to be with. So I said, cause I got to do something. So like one day I went in, I was watching YouTube and I was like saying, oh gosh, I heard this, trying to unwind. And then this video came on for how to drop ship. And it was really interesting. So then I started watching it and I was like, you know what, I could do that, you know, there’s no money up front, because I had no money, you know. Yeah. So I thought I could do this, you know, and it seems pretty easy. 02:56 Ramesh: And then what happened? Did you take any training course or how did you start your business? If you could just go through a step by step. 03:05 Becky: Oh, sure. The gentleman advertising was Kevin David and he had a course, so I decided to buy the course. It was like $997 and I used a credit card and it was probably almost maxed out. So I decided to go through his course, and I learned all I could, you know, he had so many videos. Like nowadays he talks mostly about how to make money other ways, but back then he was like all about drop shipping. So I got reallyinto his videos and other influencers on YouTube. They were talking about drop shipping as well. And I learned all I could. And then I started my own drop shipping website on Shopify. 03:43 Ramesh: So Becky, if I could ask you, how long ago was this? Which year was this? 03:47 Becky: Oh, this was like back in 2015 when my son was born. 03:52 Ramesh: Okay. So 2015 a drop shipping I think is still popular, a lot of people are doing. And then so your first business was drop shipping. And then how did that go? So within a month, were you able to make money? So if you could tell us a timeline of after you build your website and how did it go? 04:12 Becky: Well, after a month I was making like a $1,000. I was like really excited and you know, I said this is great. And then like a couple months later, I was making more than I was making at that job, you know. So I was thinking, you know, I think I’m going to resign, you know, because I just can’t work at this job anymore. It was hurting my mental health, you know, and my physical health, I just couldn’t stand working there anymore. I was just really toxic, toxic environment. The guy that ran the company, he was the child of the owner of the company. So he was just, got a big power trip, you know, and he’s wasn’t fun to work with. And so, you know, I stopped putting my resignation and then I just started doing it full time. And that’s when I skyrocketed my income. I just started getting so much every month doing it, you know, and I was able to start paying off debt, you know, and it was just amazing. It was so simple to do. Like anybody could do this, you know. 05:03 Ramesh: Yeah so this is an online boutique and then you are like, what kind of products were you selling? 05:10 Becky: I was selling women’s handbags. And that’s the perfect product. Cause I did lots of research and I barely get any returns because like women just love handbags and they don’t return them that often. You know, because they just have so many. So they’re not like clothes because you know, if it doesn’t fit right, they’ll return it and shoes are even worse. So this was like a perfect product. And I love handbags myself. Like I know what women like, you know, what kind of handbags they are interested in and these are low costs. Cause women want trendy handbags. You know, like the designers make but low cost. So these resemble the trendy ones that are like costing like hundreds or hundreds of dollars like, and they’re all under like 50 bucks, you know. 05:50 Becky: Okay. So Becky for people who don’t know what drop shipping business is. If you could explain what is it? 05:56 Becky: Oh sure. It’s when you, you paid this $29 a month with Shopify and then you go on AliExpress or another drop shipping company and you just go there and import the product using this free up called Oberlo and it’s all, you don’t have to pay for any inventory up front. You just put the products in your store and then you start selling them. You don’t have to have the inventory. You’re selling somebody else’s inventory. 06:23 Ramesh: So Becky, then I could start a drop shipping business. You could start and then 10 other people start. So then why would people come to Becky beaches drop shipping shop as opposed to Ramesh Dontha somebody else’s shop. How are you able to attract customers? 06:40 Becky: Well, I have like very good customer service. You know, I just go above and beyond for my customers. And plus I have a graphic design background. You know, I make my store very user friendly and I’ve also been certified to UX design. So I know how to convert customers better, you know, where to put the buttons, you know, and how to move them through the shopping process, you know, so they’re easily converted in what colors to use. You know, I use like blues and greens, that’s a very soothing colors that for shoppers. 07:11 Ramesh: So that’s great. So Becky, so what you did was you really first figured out what you’re good at, which is your graphic design and I know the UX user design, so how people, you know, surf the website and those kinds of things. And then you build on your strengths and then again, so it’s women’s handbags, you know quite well about the product and then you match and then you put a Shopify. So it’s a fantastic way to start a business by the way. Because first you want to figure out what you’re good at. 07:42 Becky: Yeah. You’re right. Yeah. 07:44 Ramesh: So, and then let’s say had you not had the skills of the graphic design, probably you would have relied on somebody else to do that for you? 07:53 Becky: Oh yes. Like I was able to make my own logo and my own store graphics because I have the design background. Like I spent like five years in school, you know, getting a BFA. So I knew all about how to do it, you know. But somebody could easily hire someone on Upwork or Fiverr to do it for them, you know, and it doesn’t cost very much to get your logo made or a graphics made. You don’t need to have graphic design experience. 08:17 Ramesh: So Becky that’s fine. So then how did you price the products? Between, let’s say probably the cost to you is already there, but did you have to make decisions on pricing? How much margin you want to get? 08:31 Becky: Oh

  3. 10/15/2020

    Helping small businesses build and scale with Erin Shea

    Subscribe & Download Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Play Follow us on SoundCloud Listen on Spotify Guest: Erin Shea https://youtu.be/41RN0ehSwPU Episode Transcript 00:00 Ramesh: Excited about you know, talking to Vistaprinting and of course you. 00:04 Erin: You too, I think it’ll be great. 00:06 Ramesh: Yeah. So I think Adam and Erin, I would like to introduce Vistaprint as a leading online provider of marketing products and services to small businesses. Is that fine or is there anything else you want me to do? 00:20 Erin: No, I think that’s appropriate. 00:22 Ramesh: And then Erin, I think you as a marketing director for North America for Vistaprint. 00:28 Erin: Correct. 00:29 Ramesh: Okay. So good. All right, so we’ll get started and then pretty much we will get into you know, the areas that you know, you really drive, which is the marketing for small businesses. And then we’ll get into some of the study findings as well. And we want to take, you’re welcome too. And [00:50 inaudible] you want to mention, okay. Thank you. Alright. 00:59 Hello everyone. Welcome to one more episode of the agile entrepreneur video cast and podcast. And this is your host Ramesh Dontha. Today, I am especially excited to talk to Erin Shea, who is the North America marketing director for Vistaprint. For I think almost all of you know about Vistaprint. Vistaprint is the leading online provider of marketing products and services to small businesses. And in full disclosure, I am a customer of Vistaprint. Every time I do my business cards routinely, I go there and then, so without thinking, so they gave me so much flexibility. So that’s what I do. And then that’s where I start as a customer and then I go into some other areas as well. Erin, welcome. 01:42 Erin: Thank you. Thank you for having me. 01:44 Ramesh: I know I introduced Vistaprint, but in your own words what is Vistaprint do and then especially what you do for Vistaprint? 01:53 Erin: Sure. Vistaprint is a company that’s been around for over 20 years now and we are so proud to say that we’ve helped over 17 million small businesses really live their small business dreams. We started out as a startup, a small business of our own, and then have kind of grown to an international company. But small businesses have always and will always be our full passion. And it’s why we kind of come into workday in and day out. We did start with sort of business cards as our core product. And then as small businesses have evolved, and the customers’ needs have evolved we have expanded our assortment into a number of different printed marketing materials. So everything from so, your flyers and your brochures, your signage, and then of course, into digital. So websites, search engine marketing, and then of course design services. 02:50 Ramesh: Oh, excellent Erin. So how long have you been with Vistaprint? 02:54 Erin: I have been with Vistaprint for a wonderful 10 years. And I find that you know, I’m so passionate about partnering with small businesses day in and day out. 03:08 Ramesh: So in the 10 years, I mean, I can’t imagine, but you must have talked to so many small businesses. So if I could start off with one question in the small business marketing, what are the things as small business like a successful small businesses do versus a small business that don’t do too well? so what different it makes. 03:31 Erin: Sure. So I am a big proponent of really focusing in on where the value is for your small business. And so I think we see this, we find this tendency to juggle all the balls in the air and to do a ton of different things. And what I think is really the difference between success and sort of feeling daunted around your small business is really kind of choosing those top two or three things that you think are most valuable for your business. And that could be anything. I think that could be from expanding your assortment. It could be from you know, reaching a larger network. I think you really have to define what those things are and then do fewer and do them better. And I find that really drives success. 04:20 Ramesh: Oh, okay. So fantastic. Actually, I mean, I like that I myself, I’m a small business owner. While getting started, that was the biggest struggle that I had because I felt that I had to do so many different things and then, and not doing anything well. So you have seen that or the successful business owners, they focus on few things and then they do them well. 04:40 Erin: Yes, absolutely. And I find that if you start with what you are most passionate about, the answer of what will drive the value becomes so much easier to define. So I think a lot of times with small businesses, and I see this every day, you have started your small business for a reason, and you really want to make sure that your customers and the people that you’re getting in front of understand what that reason is. 05:07 Ramesh: So Erin, let me just segue a little bit into the small business, how they get started. So I did mine as a side hustle. I was working full time for a company. In your experience, have you seen people start this small businesses just as a full-time business or more and more people are doing this in a hobby as a side business? Can you talk a little bit about how this is working? 05:34 Erin: Absolutely. So Vistaprint, at Vistaprint we did a recent study of 2000 full time employed people and we found that you know, just over about 25% of people currently have a side hustle business or and then those that don’t over more than half of them feel like in the future they want to do that. And so the side hustle or the part time business is really something, of course it’s been around for a while, but we are seeing this trend emerge more and more over time. And the interesting thing that I think is that we are really seeing it be very prevalent in sort of these younger generations. And so your gen Z and your millennials they are very excited to kind of start with these side hustles. 06:26 Ramesh: That is actually, it’s an astounding number. You’re talking about 25% started a side hustle and 55% or so want to do it. So I’m looking at seven out of 10 or eight out of 10 people really want to get into this space. 06:41 Erin: Yes, absolutely. And I think we found that that was for a number of different reasons. So you know, one reason of course is from a monetary perspective. And so one of the things we found is that the average side hustle does make about $15,000 a year. And so that’s additive income to your full-time employment. And so that’s really one of the drivers that we’re seeing. I think additional ones are back to that passion, that hobby that people have. And so they want to start to think about how I could turn this hobby into, you know, a business for myself. They want to make it part of more of their day to day life and bring that to others as well. 07:23 Ramesh: So Erin, I’m very fascinated now with looking at the numbers. So, but of the 25% who started this as a side hustle, do they tend to keep this as a side business or at some point they become comfortable with the business that they will completely switch over? 07:41 Erin: Yeah, I think you’re hitting on one of the most, you know, interesting things there, which is a side hustle is a really you know, a bit of a lower risk way to start into this small business arena. And so what that allows people to do is to kind of put one foot in and say, can I make this into something bigger? And so we do find that, you know, there’s a huge array. Some people want to keep their business as a side hustle, but there is a huge portion of people who want to grow this over time. And so starting out as a side hustle allows them to figure out how they want to grow their company in the future. 08:24 Ramesh: So actually I had a chance to look at your study. And another number that caught my attention is that some sizable number of people who start the side hustle are making more than what people make as a minimum wage. It’s like other minimum salary or the household income. So I think, I don’t remember exactly, but it’s at 25,000 or whatever. That’s a pretty decent number. 08:49 Erin: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that we in the Vistaprint study we were, you know, really surprise and happy to see that as well. I think, again, it just speaks to the importance of side hustles and starting this journey. 09:04 Ramesh: Okay. So Erin in your job then do you, when you try to market to the small businesses, are you in the distinction, how do I market to people who have the business, small business and are completely, versus people who have this business as a side, like, do you have different marketing strategies that you implement to reach the solopreneurs or a mompreneurs and that kind of force versus people who have the business as their full time business? 09:35 Erin: Sure. It’s a great question. I think what we find is that there are many types of businesses, so as you mentioned, side hustlers, full time,

  4. 10/15/2020

    Building an online timesheet & invoice software business

    Subscribe & Download Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Play Follow us on SoundCloud Listen on Spotify Guest: William Roberts & John Holmes https://youtu.be/TNCO58o7wJI Episode Transcript 00:04 Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to one more episode of the agile entrepreneur video cast and podcast. And this is your host, Ramesh Dontha. Today, with the very first time I’m going to talk to two co-founders, John Holmes and Will Roberts. Both of them are co-founders and executive partners at www.weworked.com. It’s an online timesheet software company. They have bootstrapped it built into a company that serves customers in what, 120 countries. That is phenomenal. All right guys, John and Will welcome. 00:41 Will: Thank you. 00:41 Ramesh: So, John, can you introduce the company please? 00:46 John: Sure. I’m a little bit about weworked, we started, weworked about nine years ago. My time may be off a year or so. It goes back pretty fast, but not years ago. When I started, weworked we both worked for small companies and weworked basically as a time sheet invoicing payroll/ leave tracking software that we developed with the focus of small business clients. And it’s kind of morphed into something much bigger. But from the beginning, that was the initial focus. 01:27 Ramesh: Okay, great. So Will how about you, if you could introduce yourself and then the side of the business that you focus on as well? 01:35 Will: I am Will Roberts; I am a cofounder here at www.weworked.com. I’ve primarily focused on the technical support team, database architecture, database management and some marketing. 01:53 Ramesh: Fantastic. So all right guys, so welcome. And so let’s talk about the nine years ago before, right. So that’s when you guys started. And how did you decide to start a company? What were you guys doing before that? So let me start with Will. So what were you doing before you guys started www.weworked.com? 02:14 Will: I actually was, I had started my own consulting firm, I think back in maybe 2005. And I was, you know, pretty much serving as a contractor to the federal government. 02:32 Ramesh: I see. So John, how about you? What were you doing before that? 02:36 John: I was a software programmer for small businesses. And I did some government contracting work as well. 02:47 Ramesh: Okay. So then how did you guys meet up and then how did the thought of starting a company come, who started and then who followed up? 02:57 Will: Well, firstly we met on the job. 03:02 John: Yes, we both met probably back in 2000, 2001 we were both working for a smaller tech company that created software for the government on the department of transportation. And Will and I kicked it off right away from beginning. So years later after Will started his business and I was probably two jobs moved from where we met. I had reached out to Will regarding weworked. So its kind of, I kind of had the initial brainchild of it. I was out of work for a few months and sat around thinking about what I could do to kind of change the projection of you know, my future with respect to jobs and businesses. So having worked for small businesses most of the time, one thing that I noticed was none of the small businesses had in house Time sheet software. And it was a struggle for a lot of them back in the early two thousands, because a lot of the software was developed for large enterprises. So started working on it, developed a good starting point. And then realized I needed a lot of help to pull this thing off and went through my mental Rolodex who I could call upon and Will was the first guy. And that’s how, that was in short. That’s how it kicked off. 04:50 Ramesh: Fantastic. Okay. So let me ask you this guys. Whenever a software company like this gets formed and you have an idea for a product, the challenge is always you know, we build it, they will come, you know, they may not come. So that’s an issue. So when you had this idea of this online time sheet, did you have a customer in mind that somebody you know was going to use it? Or you guys are okay, we’ll build it and later on we’ll market. How did that go about? 05:21 John: Yes, that’s an interesting question. I had a little bit of experience working with Google ads prior to starting weworked, and I had a good experience with using it. So I kind of felt like if I build a product, knowing what I know about small businesses, that if I could leverage the internet where it was going around the early two thousands, that was actually very scary area, timeframe. That we would be able to find a customer. We did not have a particular customer that once we built it, we could say, Hey, we have it. We would like for you to start using it. Primarily because the customer that we focused on was what I call strangely small business. So at the time the initial focus was for companies with fewer than 10, maybe 20 employees max. So we already knew we weren’t going to get a lot of money out of them just due to their size. So there was really no value we felt initially with going out what I call the old school way and soliciting work. So we had to try to figure out a way to leverage and scale our marketing in a way that we could request a small fee but still be able to make some money. 06:57 Ramesh: Okay, great. So then how long did you guys take to build the product or maybe a prototype or proof of concept? I’m assuming that you did not build the entire thing in one go, you must have done some prototyping or proof of concept. Can you talk about the timelines and what were the things that you worked on during that time? 07:17 John: Well, I would say initially it was about six months. A lot of the work was done in the evenings after work, you know, so after I got off my nine to five, a lot of the programming was done then. Looking at where we are now, I would say we probably had a prototype for the first two years in my opinion, just looking back at it, you know. So I would say probably a good six months to the point where we were ready for people to use it. 08:00 Will: I’d also like to add at the point when I jumped aboard, I was already running a small business, so I served as a use case as well. So I was able to say, okay, maybe we should do it this way. So I was able to add that the perspective that we needed for a customer that we’ve been trying to go after. 08:21 Ramesh: Hey, that is a very good point you’re making Will there, because especially when you have a partner, right, partners, the main thing is first you want to have a complimentary skills. Otherwise then each of you will go into each other’s space, which was not the case here. That’s good. And then secondly, you want some kind of a beta customer, somebody who’s giving you a feedback and looks like Will, you were the person who was able to give a use case and the actual user perspective into the development. 08:49 Will: Absolutely. I was on the front line. I was using it, I mean, at the same time I was using, we’re building it, I’m using it, seeing what works and what doesn’t work. So yes, absolutely. 08:59 Ramesh: Okay, so good. Now let’s talk about your first paying customer. So six months or so, you’d build some product that you guys thought was useful and usable and then what happened afterwards? 09:11 John: Well, we didn’t get the initial traffic that we had hoped, which I assure is pretty common. And we got a few customers, but one of the first thing when I say customers, we got people interested, so they would contact us, they would call us. But what we realized was the early adopters were not in the US. So that really changed our mindset. So the first few, actually, our very first customer was in Europe, I believe it was a tire company in Europe. Some part of Michelin, some part of Michelin tires. And we had built the system not knowing just sort of, you know, focused on the US not thinking global about time zones, currencies, different things like that. So we had people reach out and say, Hey, we’re interested. We love the software, but in where we are, this is how we do business, you know, so can you accommodate that? So Will and I immediately realized, we actually were thinking too small, you know, so we adjusted everything to be more generic and able to be picked up regardless of where you’re located. So once we did that, I would say once we get that first customer who was willing to work with us, because we made these changes pretty quickly, the first customer willing to work with us to actually pay us, because we did have it online for free for probably about a year. Because we had a lot, we made a lot of assumptions as to how people would use the software and we realized half of them were wrong. So we wanted people who was more important for us to have people use it than for us to actually start trying to turn some money out of it. 11:24 Ramesh: Excellent. This is good. So you took six months and afterwards then you played around and you were not getting enough traction. But you’ve got traction finally from a European customer that got you going. So how long ago, I mean, how long after that you guys felt comfortable and made this a full-time business? Because one of the concepts that I’ve been digging into is like how long people stay in the side hustle kind of stuff before they do it. So how long have you been operating this as a side business? 11:54 John: Will, let me answer this one Will, because Will already is, was an entrepreneur prior when I reached out to him, he already had his own business and was doing his own thing. I was still doing the nine to five. I recently in the last two and a half years, came out of the nine to five. And just focus strictly on weworked. So that probably took, so I would probably be the real use case for that. And I would probably say

  5. 10/15/2020

    Building a hyperspeed Bluetooth-enabled mobile dating app with Lori Cheek

    Subscribe & Download Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Play Follow us on SoundCloud Listen on Spotify Guest: Lori Cheek https://youtu.be/JjGPQkGOm1A Episode Transcript 00:15 Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to one more episode of the agile entrepreneur podcast and video cast. And this is your host Ramesh Dontha. Today I have an exciting guest. Her name is Lori Cheek. She’s a New York city based architect turned entrepreneur and she’s the CEO and founder of Cheeked. It’s a hyper speed Bluetooth enabled mobile dating app. I know what you guys are thinking and I’m also very, very curious to know more about Cheekd and Lori Cheek. Lori, welcome. 00:50 Lori: Hi. 00:52 Ramesh: All right, so now you picked our curiosity. So what is Cheekd hyper speed Bluetooth enabled mobile dating app. Can you please go over what Cheekd is? 01:05 Lori: Well, yes, we are an app that helps people connect in the real world. So we are leveraging technology to try to get people off their phones. So if you walk into a crowded bar, a gym, a cafe, and anyone else with the Cheekd app and their Bluetooth turned on, you’ll get an immediate notification that that person is single and potentially ready to mingle in that moment. So you can either walk up to them and say hello, which is what people used to do back in the olden days and it seemed to work. Instead of swiping through strangers from the comfort of your home online, so you can spark a conversation face to face and hopefully take it from there. 01:50 Ramesh: I see. And do these people need, both of them need to be on the Cheekd app for them to. 01:56 Lori: Yes. I mean, I’d love if there was a way to connect with people that weren’t on the app, but that starts to get a tiny bit creepy. 02:06 Ramesh: Let’s see how we could you know not get creepy, so and then people registered on Cheekd and then you’ll find, it seems pretty, pretty exciting. So, Lori, let’s say go through how could you, I mean, when did you think about this app? And so let’s talk about the journey. 02:27 Lori: I mean, it’s been a pretty long journey and Cheekd has been through several different iterations, but I was an architect in New York for 16 years. Just walking around thinking, how do you find love in a city of 8 million people? I mean, everybody in New York is like crossing each other’s paths, but no one really speaks to each other. Like it was just so difficult for me to understand what was missing here. And one night I was out to dinner with a colleague and he slipped his business card to a woman and he’d written on the back of it, want to have dinner and he left with a date and I left with this idea of sort of handing notes to people. So I started this business soon after called Cheekd and it was dating cards and they had a code on them. And a funny pickup line and the recipient of that card could go to our website and type in the code and find that person’s profile. So we called it online dating and reverse. So you actually saw the person and then you connected online. That’s how it started. 03:26 Ramesh: Okay. So then, I mean how did you actually launch it? How did people come to know about it? You had a website and all that stuff. But then what happened? 03:35 Lori: Yeah. So I mean, I came up with that idea one night and I could not stop thinking about it, you know, just still running around the streets of New York city. I thought, I want these cards. You know, I realized it was something I was missing and really wished I’d had. So I just went around talking to everybody I could possibly talk to about it. I mean hundreds and hundreds of people and then, you know, weeks later some of these people were like, that’s a great idea. There was some woman on the subway, I wish I’d had one of your cards that you told me about. So I decided there’s one shot in life and I’ve always wanted to start my own business. So I took the leap and I found a couple of guys that help startups get started. You know, I did not have a business degree, no technology background at all. I was a designer and got two partners on board one day and we sat down like a week after we met and started building what I own to this day of which is 12 years later. 04:39 Ramesh: Okay. So then very quickly by reading your bio, so you incorporated, so can you just go through that process of, you know, how did you get into the actual business piece of its ones you had the idea and then you found the partners. 04:56 Lori: So, you know, I didn’t know. I didn’t even know I needed to incorporate, I mean, of course you eventually have to do that, but I knew absolutely nothing. Like I just thought, you know, I’m going to build this business. I’m going to have a website and everybody in the world’s going to want my product, but it doesn’t work like that. Then I realized I had an invention that needed to be patented. So with those guys, they were both had business backgrounds and they had started businesses before. So they sort of guided me on the journey. But yes, we immediately applied for an incorporation. We did a C Corp to start out and applied for the patent, which ultimately took over four years to receive the patent. So that took forever. But we did right out of the gate, sort of apply for the patent. Got the URL, changed it a couple of times. I mean, coming up with a business name was sort of challenging. But in the end, I realized that I had a cheeky last name. So Cheek became the name of my business. You’ve been cheeked. Yeah so that was sort of the out of the gate movements that we made to start the business. And it took forever to sort of get a proper website up and working with this code base process. And we had a physical product too, which was the cards. So we had all these, we hired people from all over the world. You know, we didn’t just go to New York city developers because it was so expensive. So we had a UX designer in Bolivia. Our web developer was in Belgium. We had somebody working on it in London. So we’d have these conference calls just at the craziest hours of the day. And I don’t know, people all over the world were trying to put the pieces together to bring my business to life. It took a year, but we launched in May of 2010. 06:47 Ramesh: Fantastic. So now, no tech background, you are able to find the partners and then incorporated trademark, patented. You learned everything about the business and then you got going. And then when you, something happened in the publicity in terms of a lot of people started calling you to come on the TV show. So can you talk a little bit about that. 07:10 Lori: Well, you know, one thing I did do right starting out was I was very creative. As an artist and an architect my brain just thought really creatively. So thinking about marketing, my first marketing tool was to put one of those cheeks cards in a blank envelope and I mailed them to 20 of the top editors that I thought might be interested in my new product. And one of them was this great journalist from the New York times. And seems like a couple months after we launched, we were on the cover of the style section of the New York times and it said www.moveovermatch.com this is the next generation of online dating. I mean I couldn’t believe my little card idea was on the cover of the South section in the New York times and that crashed our website. So you know, there were enough people that had read that article that my website just disappeared off the face of the internet for, I thought it was just gone. We had to get more servers ramped up. 08:09 Ramesh: Yeah. So then there was, was there Oprah as well somewhere in the picture? 08:14 Lori: So the few days after the New York times article, one of Oprah Winfrey’s producers called, emailed me and wanted a phone call interview, wanted a deck of these cards. I mean that’s like the hugest thing you can ever get cause the Oprah effect just takes off and you’re golden. So I had that interview but never ended up on the show. But not everybody gets that phone call from Orpah’s studio. But that was pretty cool. 08:39 Ramesh: Okay, so good. I mean, you had an almost a dream launch of your business, but things did not go as well as the launch went. So can you talk about the journey since then? 08:51 Lori: Yeah, so I mean, I was already designing my jet after the New York times, you know, I thought I was going to become a billionaire within the next year. That was it. That was exciting for the one week that I thought that was going to happen. But I don’t know, we ended up this, the press went viral. We ended up all over the world. So, you know, I rode that wave for I guess six months, maybe two a year. Like news channels were flying from all over the world, coming to New York to video me talking about this business. It was pretty cool. But then, yeah, our website kept breaking, I don’t even know what was going wrong with it, but you know, these people all over the world were working on m

  6. 10/15/2020

    Building a Career Hub business for engineers with Vartika Manasvi

    Subscribe & Download Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Play Follow us on SoundCloud Listen on Spotify Guest: Vartika Manasvi https://youtu.be/o5ZwU1UDrjU Episode Transcript 00:04 Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to one more episode of the agile entrepreneur podcast and of course the video cast. And this is your host Ramesh Dontha. So today we will talk about career. We’re going to talk to a women entrepreneur with a fantastic background and her name is Vartika Manasvi and Vartika is the second time founder of a company called stack raft as a career hub company. And she’s the first woman entrepreneur from the South Asia to be granted a startup visa in Canada and right. So she took a one-way ticket to Canada and to start a company in Canada. So let’s find more about Vartikas’ journey. So Vartika welcome. 00:44 Vartika: Thank you. Thank you, Ramesh, for having me. 00:47 Ramesh: Vartika let’s start with your company stack raft. So what is it? 00:52 Vartika: So Stack Raft is you know, a shorter version of that is like LinkedIn for engineers and, but we’re not LinkedIn where people spamming each other. We are what recruiters and stuff like that. So it’s like a career accelerator for software engineers around the globe. Who are looking for meaningful jobs and better opportunities? So the problem that we found was that the talent is everywhere. There are so many talented people around the world. But getting that job you know, it takes on which country you are in, what time zone are you in. How do you look, how do you speak? So these are the things that comes in between of your skills and talents and that is a problem that we are solving. 01:36 Ramesh: So how do you solve? Is it a marketplace where the software engineers put their resumes up and the skills something like a guru or up work kind of stuff? Or is it different? 01:45 Vartika: No, it’s not like a Upwork or a career guru kind of a thing. Yes, it’s a marketplace where software engineers create a profile. They put their skills, their personality indicators, like what’s important to them and who they are like, what’s their career intent. What as for them they want to be and what kind of stuff they want to build. Now based on that deeply challenges on our platform. And these are skill-based challenges and they get connected to senior mentors and senior developers, we call them as talent coaches, who give them concrete feedback on these challenges so that these engineers can be better engineers. I mean, even if they do not get a job or they do not get selected, they’re getting concrete feedback. Now imagine for one job, like 250 people apply for that particular job. For one seat, right? And 20 people get a call, 10 get invited, and then finally one person is hired and rest of them get a standard emails. Sorry, we couldn’t select your profile. That’s a standard email. But it doesn’t give a reason why. I mean, okay, do not select, but tell me why. So that I can at least improve myself. So this is where we come in, where we give concrete feedback to every single person which helps them self-learn and grow. There’s so much content and information out there on the internet. Our objective is to give them a little guidance and give them a little back towards to how to think about certain things. 03:19 Ramesh: Okay. So this is primarily intended to improve you know, to help improve the software engineers with respect to how they can get a job. So then where is the money coming from? 03:33 Vartika: Well, the money comes in from the companies and you know, so my background is building social networks and communities and I really know how scores the attention of a user is in today’s times. So you know, and recruitment, look, we are in the business of like three decades old problem. And we are completely flipping the whole business model. We are not a dev shop. You’re not a recruitment agency. We’re not a consultant or an advisory firm. We are a pure play tech company where companies come, they put in their jobs and you know, we’ve pay them $100 for their attention, for adding a job on our platform. And then, yes, yes, exactly. I mean, and then you know, as they get more value on the platform, say we make a recommendation of top developers from our list and they find value in it. They pay $20 for that value. They want more people to select from, they pay for more. So more value they get on the platform, the more they pay on the platform. So this is how this works. 04:40 Ramesh: Okay. So now I’m beginning to understand essentially, you’re giving startup incentive to for the recruiters of the companies basically, let’s not call them recruiters. So the companies who need talent to come work for them, right? And then because of that money and then so they will list their company and then they are actually looking at the software engineers, how they’re working, the talents and skills and interest in all that stuff, right? 05:06 Vartika: Yeah, exactly. So it’s kind of reversing the whole job board right. Before, like you used to put up a job ad and people come and apply. So then you put up the job post, these from that job post we make an upfront recommendation, like a zero day value that you know, why waste you will announce they apply, here’s an active list, go, apply for them, send them an interview request. 05:30 Ramesh: Excellent. So, okay. So now I understand the company and then so let me ask you a question. Why Canada? 05:36 Vartika: Why Canada? Okay. So that’s like a little long story. I don’t know. Yeah. So, you know, my initial plan in 2018 when I was validating my product and so I built many products in the past, but I realized that there was something to do with the market and what really people want. And I think I’m from India and I think, you know, users in India, their needs are different, the culture is totally different. And the kind of product and the ideas that I have won’t really work here at least now. Because the fabric of India is totally different, and their needs and requirements are completely different. So my plan was to be in the Bay area, right. And to figure it out. And that’s where everyone goes. But then I was like, okay, everyone is doing that. And if I was to do that, I’ll be just one more entrepreneur you know, around that. It doesn’t work. And so I said, okay, that was a lot of good noise coming in from Toronto and you know, a lot of people talking about the ecosystem there and how companies are moving. Let me just take a leap of faith and flying to Toronto and see and figure what works, and I have no friends and no family in Canada. I was like, okay, let me just go. And I was like. Day one all by myself. 07:03 Ramesh: Wow. So it’s a fascinating story. So you applied for the startup visa and then you’ve been granted, and you don’t know anybody in Canada. 07:12 Vartika: No, I didn’t even know about the startup visa thing. I didn’t even know that something like that exists and I just, I was like you know, I had six months of money left and I was like, okay, I’m investing in myself, I’m going to Canada. And I would figure out stuff. I want to figure it out if my products will work or not because if I’m failing at entrepreneurship, I better fail fast and get away with it and move on. So I went on a visitor visa, like just to meet people and understand the market because I had no clue what Canada is like. I had literally no clue. Like I’ve been to Silicon Valley, I’ve been to the US many times, but I had no idea how Canada is like, so I was in a visitor visa and that’s how I figured stuff and then applied for a startup visa. We got granted, our startup visa, me and my co-founder, both of us. So my co-founder is the youngest entrepreneur to get one. And you know, by December 2018 we got acceptance. So yeah, it has been pretty fast. I got lucky there. 08:26 Ramesh: Okay, fantastic. Hey, it’s a great story. So Vartika, let’s continue with this one. And then you got the startup visa and then you had an idea that you wanted to build the company and then when did you actually start working on the product or the company itself. 08:42 Vartika: Well, so when I was in Toronto in 2018 this time around, I didn’t even want to incorporate the company. I didn’t even want to write a single line of code. My whole idea was validated and see what people want. So when we found our first customer and he was willing to write us a check and take you know, just go with the kind of product that we have and use that for their own selection mechanism to hire better and select the right candidates rather than having pure keyword based bias. And you know, they were willing to write us a check the next day I incorporated the company and that’s how those show started. 09:25 Ramesh: Okay. So then what did you tell? So I’m assuming this first customer is a company looking. How was your pitch? 09:35 Vartika: Well It was not a pitch. It

  7. 10/15/2020

    Building a rental property management software with Nathan Miller

    Subscribe & Download Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Play Follow us on SoundCloud Listen on Spotify Guest: Nathan Miller https://youtu.be/T5I9PK3nE3Y Episode Transcript 00:08 Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to one more episode of the agile entrepreneur podcast and video cast. So today I’m going to talk to a gentleman who is in the real estate industry. Both from a technology side as well as the investor in developer side. So Nathan Miller is the president and CEO of Rentec direct, a popular property management software that helps property managers and landlords with their day to day tasks. Nathan is also a real estate investor and developer and proud husband and father. So I’m very eager to meet Nate. Hey Nathan, do you go by Nate or Nathan? 00:53 Nathan: Nathan is great. Thank you. 00:55 Ramesh: Fantastic. Nathan, welcome to the agile entrepreneurial podcast. 00:59 Nathan: Thanks for having me. 01:01 Ramesh: Great. So I introduce you and Nathan, but if you could tell in your own words what is when tech direct and what do you do with that? 01:10 Nathan: Yeah, well Rentec direct is a, it’s a project that I started as a more or less a hobby because I was a and still am a landlord and needed technology to help me be more efficient. As I started gaining properties and managing properties on my own, I realized there’s a, there’s a lot of stuff that goes into it. You have a lot of things to keep track of. Not just, you know, accounting records or taxes, but you got maintenance and you got, you know, who’s late and you have tenant communication and all this stuff. Once I had five or six rentals, I was managing became a little, a little excessive, but it took a lot of brain power and the time to think about and to maintain. And I also had a full-time job. So part of my background is I’m a software developer and I’m self-taught and I understand how technology can help people be more efficient. So I went out on a journey to make my landlord activities more efficient through software and created an application to help me with all those tasks, anything that could be automated, I automate it. And that was the beginning of Rentec direct. It was not necessarily intended to be a business or what it turned into today, but what that ended up morphing into is a software application that now helps about 15,000 property managers and landlords. And we’ve added a lot of stuff in the last 10 years to make the life of property managers easy and kind of cool. Because you know, being a property manager isn’t sound a that glamorous but we can provide them tools that make things better for their tenants and so your tenants can pay online so they can select the best tenants. So anyways, in a nutshell we provide software to property managers. It’s you can kind of think of it like a we are the QuickBooks for the property management industry, but we add in all the various special stuff that property managers need in order to Excel in their market. 03:28 Ramesh: Excellent. Nathan. So now that we have a very good background about your company, so let’s trace the journey of your company. So you were a landlord first, and then at what point did you actually take the first steps to write the application? 03:47 Nathan: This is, we’re probably about 2007 when I did this and let’s see I had, I believe about five of units I was managing and that’s where it became too much work to do it on the side without help. So I had to at that point make a decision, you know, do I focus less on this or focus more on it? And it was right at that point where I decided that, you know what, I’m going to, I was actually very excited about the prospect of creating an application and I decided, you know, I’m just going to set my alarm early and I’m going to wake up early and I’m going to work on this before work. And I got so excited about the prospects of what this could become and how much it could help me in a few other landlords. I didn’t need the alarm anymore. My mind was racing it, you know, three or four in the morning, I’d wake up wide eyed and would be racing because I was so excited to go do it. 04:42 Ramesh: Yeah. So then you are building the application in the morning then in the evenings, how long did it take for you to feel comfortable with application? 04:50 Nathan: I initially was just building it with myself in mind and so I didn’t have very high expectations of, like what it’s going to look like or how well it’s going to function because I just, you know, I had these, I had a few things that I wanted it to do and so I was really focused on those and my initial idea wasn’t to create a company out of it. But I did want to make the software available to any other landlord that was like me that could also use the help. And my plan was just give it away. Like anyone, anyone can use it. It’s going to take me, you know, a few months to make this and I’m just going to give it away. Let anyone else use it. Just to help. So anyways, let’s see, I think I forgot your question. Where we started with that. 05:34 Ramesh: How long did it take for you to actually start using the application? 05:38 Nathan: Okay, so probably six months before I got a true value out of it and was able to put my properties into it. 05:47 Ramesh: And then, so you are your first customer even though not paying. So then once you got it, then you were wanting to give it away. And then did you give away to other property managers? 06:02 Nathan: Well just landlords at first. So it started out as an application specifically for private landlords. And I did. You know, I bought the domain www.Rentecdirect.com. And I went and found a template. I think it was like a template from some German template creator, which I thought looked neat. In retrospect it was hideous, but I liked it. So I just like to use this template and put a little bit of information about the program up there and created a form so anyone else could sign up and use it right away. They didn’t have to contact me or anything. They can just sign up and use it and get the same value out of it that I did. 06:38 Ramesh: So is this a web application or is it something that they need to download onto the computer? 06:44 Nathan: It’s a fully web based. So cloud hosted service. 06:47 Ramesh: Okay. So now you gave it away. At what point did it become like did you turn that into getting paying customers? 06:57 Nathan: Okay. So I gave it away and for probably almost two years and yeah, and I kept improving it because you know, I needed more stuff and I also was supporting it via email only at that point. You know, and it would have to have to be at night because I had a day job. So and I would take the feedback that I would get from folks that were using it. And if it made sense, it would have, where it helped me and it would help everyone else, you know, using the software. And if I had the time to develop it, then I would go ahead and do it and write it in there. So it was about two years of that time just supporting at, via email, adding little stuff. 07:37 Ramesh: Nathan, if I can ask you a question, how many people are you talking about in the two years’ timeframe? Is it five? 10? Because it’s work supporting these people. 07:48 Nathan: It is, and that’s partly why we ended up creating a company out of it, but in that two-year period we probably had about 300 or 400 people using the software. 07:56 Ramesh: No kidding. 07:57 Nathan: I know, blew me away. 08:00 Ramesh: And then you were not even charging for them. Wow. Good. Please keep going. 08:04 Nathan: Well, so that’s what actually ended up creating a company is that, you know, we had a few hundred people using the software. They were using it completely free and they were wanting support. So even though, you know, you go use the application on the internet, you find people still have questions they need, you know, they want to get training and they want new features maybe that you don’t have in it. And these are, you know, some of these features might’ve been things that would do me or anyone else, you know, no good. So not something I could just jump on and do for free. So at that point, with the demand for support and the demand for additional features decided, Hey, we’ve got a lot of people using the software. Let’s go ahead, let’s go ahead and incorporate it. Let’s make, make a company out of this and I’m going to hire my first person because I still have a full-time job and I need someone to be able to the phone. So it was at that point, it was around 2009 that we hired our first employee. She’s still here today. She’s awesome. And then it was, that got the ball rolling. Now we are an official corporation and we started charging a very small nominal amount for the software at that point. 09:12 Ramesh: Okay. So now we talked about incorporating the business. I mean, you took a long time to

  8. 08/31/2020

    Building a Data Science Training business with Kunal Jain

    Subscribe & Download Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Play Follow us on SoundCloud Listen on Spotify Guest: Kunal Jain https://vimeo.com/450499038 Episode Transcript 00:06 Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to one more episode of the agile entrepreneur podcast and video cast. And this is your host Ramesh Dontha. And today I’m very, very excited to introduce a guest who I’ve been meaning to talk for quite some time. His name is Kunal Jain. Kunal is the founder and CEO of Analytics Vidhya. Analytics Vidhya is one of the largest data science community across the globe and Analytics Vidhya helps millions of people every month in the data science learning and helps its community members find the dream jobs, focuses on education and training and then jobs. And before starting Analytics Vidhya Kunal graduated from the India’s prestigious Indian Institute of technology in Bombay studying aerospace engineering and joined capital one as a business analyst in UK in 2006 and later on he decided to start Analytics Vidhya. So let’s talk to Kunal on his journey, why he did what he did. Kunal Welcome. 01:11 Kunal: Thanks. Thanks, Ramesh, for that lovely introduction and really excited and happy to be here on the show. I’ve been wanting to talk for a long time. But thanks for inviting me and looking forward to the session. 01:30 Ramesh: Definitely no worries at all. So Kunal let’s take it from the beginning. So right now you are the CEO of Analytics Vidhya. So tell the audience and tell me about what is Analytics Vidhya and even though I introduced it in your own words, what does it do? 01:49 Kunal: Sure. The vision behind Analytics Vidhya is to create a platform where every data science professional can come and get their knowledge and career needs addressed in form of the platform in the community, which is there on the platform. So you know, if you think about the career needs data scientists, there are broadly for different needs which they have. So that is learning on a day to day basis. So that happens through various blogs, which we publish a lot of education material along with some free courses and paid courses. Recently we also started a boot camp, so maybe I’ll explain that a bit more, but this is like a physical nine-month program with people in there. Engagement happens through a whole lot of community activities starting from meetups, webinars, podcasts and you know, the biggest run which we do is a conference in India called Data hacks Ramesh. That happens in November every year. Then there is competition. So we organize you know, very short duration competitions or two-day competitions to 15-day competitions where companies give their data sets and problems to our community and the community solves them. So from a community perspective, you get the best data scientists to compete on the problem you want to solve. From a data scientist perspective, you get a whole variety of problems to work upon instead of just being siloed on the industry you are working on. And then finally, the job spirit. So while people are interacting in all these areas. We essentially collect information about them, so we understand what their skills are, what and then use that information to match them with the right job. So in some sense we are actually applying data science to data scientists. 03:55 Ramesh: Okay. That is fantastic. That’s a very good way to describe. So just to get a sense of where Analytics Vidhya is right now Kunal. If you can give us a stats about the number of visits or number of members or whatever you think is relevant to give the scale. 04:12 Kunal: Yeah, so we get about two and half million visits month on month and we have close to half a million registered users on the board. So a registered user would be someone who’s participated in any of the activities. So a lot of users come and read the resources, but if they have to, for example, participate in a competition, or attend any of the meetups they’ll have to register on the portal. So that’s about half a million. And it’s still, you know, growing all organically. So word of mouth and organic search ways in which people know about Analytics Vidhya. So we’re growing about 20 to 30 year on year all organically. 05:03 Ramesh: Fantastic. So I introduced Analytics Vidhya as a global organization. Give a scale of, I mean, I truly believe that you guys have done tremendous job, but I want to hear from you. What is the scale in global presence? 05:18 Kunal: Oh, so we actually get in terms of traffic US and India are almost similar and these are the two biggest markets. So combined they contribute to about 65% of their traffic. And then the remaining is from other countries UK being the biggest one. And then Australia, Southeast Asia, Europe, European countries. So yeah, so in that sense, in fact whatever we have done except for the conference, which we do in November, is global in nature. And the journeys are very similar. So people, when they’re doing searches about data science or when they’re talking to their data science you know, peers, they come to know about Analytics Vidhya and then that’s how they come and discover us. So you know, there is no differentiation between advantage which people in India have versus people outside and hence the traffic is global. 06:22 Ramesh: Fantastic. So now let’s talk a little bit on the business side Kunal. So it obviously you’re not doing it for charity. So there’s a business aspect. I believe you guys are a limited organization. That means you’re not publicly listed. So whatever information can give with respect to profitability and the funding side of the world. What is Analytics Vidhya’s business situation. 06:49 Kunal: Sure. So, I personally believe that, you know we are very uniquely designed in that sense. So a few things that to just set the context. So first of all, we are, you know, bootstrapped organization, so the only finding which I took was from friends and family when I was starting. So we don’t have an institutional investor and we were very clear from day one that we wanted this to be a community first business. So whatever we have done in last six years community has always been at the heart of it, and that’s how it still remains. So you know, if it means as to delay profits or delay revenue streams, just to make sure that the community gets the right exposure and the right knowledge, we’ll do that. So in terms of you know revenue. So we were burning money for the first three years. Now we are profitable sustainable business. In terms of growth this year we would end up 2X the revenue of last years, we are broadly doubling our revenue year on year. With so for example, on the cost side, we have about 25% increase in cost. So because you know, community as a business you have to seed it first, you have to let people build that trust. And once that happens, then the scale changed very drastically. So that’s what has happened in our journey. So the initial years were very difficult. To be very honest, I didn’t have clear revenue streams when I started. All I knew was I was seeding this community and in the last two and half, three years, we have now started putting these revenue streams where we know what are the needs of the community members. And we are providing products which help them do that in a better manner. And that’s truly the, you know, driving the revenue products right now. 08:54 Ramesh: Fantastic. So that’s now we have a very good picture of what Analytics Vidhya is about and its aspect of as well. So now let’s switch gears and talk about Kunal Jain’s journey, right on Analytics Vidhya. So you graduated in 2006, so Kunal, if you could walk us through what happened afterwards. 09:13 Kunal: Sure. So 2006 so I was, I studied aerospace engineering during my bachelor’s and master’s. My specialization was in computational fluid dynamics. So that was the first time when I started using algorithms to solve problems and get solutions. So, and it was really fascinating, that] in one of the most prestigious aerospace journal as well. But that was what you know, kind of gave that first excitement that you could solve these problems using mathematical models and equations. So when I was graduating capital one came to our campus and the role looked very similar to what I written my master’s dissertation that I would be using data and statistical and mathematical models to solve some of the problems which the bank was facing. So that looked exciting. So I joined capital one in 2006 and over a period of 4 years in capital one, I worked in a whole variety of roles starting from risk management to customer management and finally customer acquisition and marketing. But what I really loved about capital one was the ecosystem which it provided. So, you know there were like 2000 analysts as we used to call them. But in today’s world we would call them data scientists sitting in a single organization and you know, everyone was really s

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The Agile Entrepreneurship podcast is where the most successful entrepreneurs share their entrepreneurial journey. Ramesh Dontha interviews these successful business owners on why they started their businesses, what helped them succeed and what mistakes they made that they don’t want you to make.Ramesh Dontha is an entrepreneur, author and a blogger. He also shares his experiences of starting and building 4 successful companies.

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