"Keep it simple. Often, I see entrepreneurs over-complicate an idea," with Neal Taparia

I founded Imagine Easy Solutions, an educational technology company with popular brands like EasyBib.com which reached 30M students annually. We helped students with citations, grammar, note-taking, and plagiarism. I grew that business to $20M in revenue without investment and sold it to a public company called Chegg, where I was an executive there for three years.

Today, I’m working on a new initiative called Solitaired. While on the outside you might see solitaire games like Spider and Freecell, we’re working on technology that ties in brain training exercises.

What inspired you to start your business?

I started EasyBib, the first product of Imagine Easy Solutions, as a high school student. We really disliked the process of creating bibliographies. It required you to understand all these formatting rules and was very time-consuming. A friend and I thought there had to be a better way to do it. We created software that would find all the bibliographic information and format it for you, and we called it EasyBib.

Where is your business based?

All my businesses have been based in NYC. It’s a great place to find diverse talent and people with different skill sets.

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

With EasyBib, we wanted to solve a problem we had ourselves as students. Once we conceived the idea, my friend and I sketched out what the product would look like. Then we spent the next two months working after school and on the weekends on the first version of EasyBib. 

As a software business, time was really our biggest investment. 

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

We knew little about marketing. We just knew that we wanted to tell as many people as possible about EasyBib. We placed flyers throughout our whole school about EasyBib, and then we would find educator email addresses on the internet, and email them about our service. Anything we could think of to tell people about it, we would do. 

One weekend, I emailed all the newspapers in the Chicago area where we were in high school and told them that we were students building software for other students. Soon after the Chicago Tribune came to our house, took pictures of us, and a few days later we saw ourselves on the front page of the business section. This drove a ton of traffic to our fledgling site, and it continued to grow organically from there. 

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them? 

When we sold our business to Chegg, a much larger public company, many of our employees did not expect this. Shortly after the acquisition, we received our first resignation and more started trickling. 

Those that were leaving, were good people and had friendships with the rest of the team. Needless to say, it was disheartening and made a negative impact on our culture.

We presented our team with a clear plan on how we’d move forward under Chegg, had tough conversations with those who clearly did not want to be on the team anymore, and quickly hired new people employees who were brought into the mission of Chegg. 

Slowly, we turned our workplace around. After a year, through our employee engagement survey, we found that our NYC office was one the happiest and most engaged among Chegg. 

How do you stay focused?

I always ask myself if what I’m working on is big enough to matter. It’s easy to go down a hole that doesn't move the needle on your business. You have to stay disciplined and always focus on what’s most important. That’s how you move a business forward.

On a day to day level, that translates to a prioritized task list that I work through. Every day, I add more tasks and re-prioritize. 

I also like to take small breaks every hour. This keeps me mentally fresh to focus on the next task. 

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

With EasyBib, we built software that was student first. We were trying to solve our own problem and didn’t want to build software meant for educators.

As a result, we really focused on ease of use, which drove a ton of word of mouth growth for us. 

With Solitaired, which is what I’m working on today, we differentiate ourselves from other brain training platforms by connecting them to popular and ubiquitous classic games.

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

With EasyBib, we began to create educational resources around writing that complemented the suite of writing tools we were building. For example, we created infographics on how to properly evaluate credible websites and hosted webinars with notable teachers on relevant topics.

Teachers would learn about EasyBib this way and would tell their classroom to use the product. More importantly, this would drive natural backlinks to our site, helping improve our SEO and free organic traffic acquisition.

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

Keep it simple. Often, I see entrepreneurs over-complicate an idea. Start by building the one feature that solves the problem you’re addressing. It’s easy to overthink and overanalyze, convincing yourself that you need to do more with your initial product. Get a product in your customer’s hands, and start learning from there.

Entrepreneurship is a never-ending learning process. Only your customers can tell you if your idea is worthwhile, so start learning from them ASAP.

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

I like Blinkist. It provides summaries of great business books. It’s hard for me to find time to read a full book, and I’m able to attain so much knowledge by reading their summaries.

I like Andrew Chen’s blogs. He has good insights that help you think about new opportunities often through the lens of business frameworks.

My favorite book is Predictably Irrational. It’s a behavioral economics book that gives you fascinating insights into how consumers think. After reading it, you’ll have a ton of ideas on how to price and position your product. 

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

I can’t live without Boomerang. It’s an email app that reminds me when to follow up on emails I send. It helps me keep track of important conversations.

Who is your business role model? Why? 

My business role model was my cousin Hans, who had also started his own business. He convinced me to take a risk to leave my investment banking job and jump into entrepreneurship.

How do you balance work and life?

I do this by working smart. You can work on so many things that don’t move the needle. Every day, I ask myself what really matters. If you focus on the right things, you have plenty of time for your personal life.

What’s your favorite way to decompress?

I love to play tennis. It’s a great work out, and it’s a good chance of pace in my day.

What do you have planned for the next six months?

We will be layering on brain training exercises onto Solitaired, and expanding games outside of solitaire. 

How can our readers connect with you?

Feel free to connect with me on Linkedin!