Dejon is the 21-year-old Founder, who put his life savings into starting up Trend Watchers. After reaching over 50 million people through his own social platforms, Dejon now helps thousands of content creators go viral by taking advantage of internet trends.
Read More
Photo Credit: Alexander Nikolov
Iliya Valchanov is a co-founder of 3veta.com, an end-to-end solution for hosting online meetings and getting paid. He is also a co-founder of 365 Data Science and a data science instructor on Udemy with more than 800,000 students.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
My name is Iliya Valchanov and am a co-founder of 3veta. Going a bit back - I was a Mathematics competitor for 10 years. Later on, I graduated with International Management, Economics, and Finance. Despite that, I was always fascinated with teaching so I co-founded 365 Data Science and became a data science instructor on Udemy with more than 900,000 students to date.
What inspired you to start your business?
The first time around, I joined a couple of friends in their efforts to create online courses. I was taking a gap year, so it made sense for me to take a risk and try my luck. It worked quite well, and we scaled the company from 4 people to 30 people.
The second time around, with my current project, 3veta, I was already an experienced business owner. Therefore, it was much easier to make the decision. We just had a very, very good idea and decided to pursue it.
Where is your business based?
Our business is registered and based in Sofia, Bulgaria. However, with the current situation (relating to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020), more than half of our team is not actually there at all. Together with the fact that we are a completely online business, our physical location has become irrelevant – a lifelong dream of mine.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
The very first step was to create a series of sessions in which we could really talk the idea through. We called it a boot camp.
During our first bootcamp, the concept changed a hundred times within the span of a few days. However, by the end of it, we had a very clear idea of what we wanted to achieve.
Every six months, we get together for another boot camp where we can decide the next steps of our business.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
Our business empowers service providers to get online and start providing their consultations online.
As such, LinkedIn has been by far the best place for us to find our target audience and raise awareness.
What have been your biggest challenges, and how did you overcome them?
Being a business owner is an eternal challenge.
Historically, the biggest challenges I’ve faced were due to overly optimistic goals. I believe that anything could be achieved with enough passion and perseverance (grit), but time is not always on our side. Actually, it is always against us.
Therefore, my nemesis has always been time. I want everything to happen today, if not yesterday.
To overcome this challenge, sadly, I have learned to be patient.
How do you stay focused?
Usually, I do all my mental-heavy work in the morning and early afternoon. Once my mind becomes exhausted, I start pulling “mindless” tasks from the backlog (e.g. post an article, schedule a post, format some Excel spreadsheet, etc.). I don’t need to be too focused for those, especially because I have many checklists.
If my mind clears up, I reengage in the demanding tasks.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
3veta is fast, reliable, and extremely easy to use. And this is what our customers want.
Ultimately, we have been striving to achieve the lowest number of clicks from sign-up to getting paid (similar to what Revolut did in the Fintech world). 3veta is simply made for online video consultations in 2021. We haven’t used tech from an older product that was later refurbished – no, we are utilizing state-of-the-art technologies. Moreover, when it comes to video, we haven’t simply added “an option to integrate with Zoom”.
Instead, we have optimized any and all parts of the product – with less choice, there is more actual work done on the provider’s part.
Finally – our team. Given a good product and decent funding, having the right people on that team is the only thing that makes the difference between success and failure. We are the five co-founders with very different skillsets, but with one common goal: to make an extremely successful product.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
We have also automated almost any process that could be automated. Most prominently – email marketing, content dissemination (e.g. you post a new article and it gets promoted on all of your social media or even other places), auto-replying chatbots, etc. I am pretty sure that these will be the most effective strategies long-term.
Certainly, there are some channels that are better than others for each company. With 3veta, we know that all of our providers are professionals, so LinkedIn is our most natural match. So that was our most effective strategy so far.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
You can achieve everything you want, as long as you fully devote yourself to it.
Five years ago, I was a Finance graduate with a Mathematics background. Since then, I have hardly used Math or the Finance that I studied. However, I can code, create machine learning algorithms, edit videos, write compelling articles, manage people and projects, run ads, and much more.
Everything I have accomplished has been possible because I have never assumed that I cannot do something, without trying.
Stay open to learning and never underestimate your abilities!
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
App: The Slack mobile app has really changed the way I work from my phone. Therefore, it is on top of my list.
Blog: The one blog I’m devouring lately is Li Jin’s Substack, focusing on the passion economy and how creators are being empowered to make a living from their passion.
Book: There is no single book that can make this list. However, ‘Winter of the World’ from the Century Trilogy by Ken Follett. Why? It’s just a really good book. Reading Ken Follett helps you understand why some people are great writers and others are just… writers.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
Trello.
I have tried out a dozen different tools to organize my work (Asana, Jira, Monday.com, etc.).
Most of the time, Trello is all that one needs.
So simple, yet so powerful.
If every tool online was like Trello, we would have a perfect world.
Who is your business role model? Why?
I haven’t found a single person that I can call a business role model. I try to internalize as much as possible from different business leaders.
Steve Jobs versus Bill Gates has always been the most intriguing of clashes to me. I like both of them (and dislike both of them). So, the best of these men would be my business role model.
How do you balance work and life?
This one is the easiest. I started working with my sister and wife. Therefore, I no longer have to balance work and life.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
Being in a sensory deprivation capsule (flotation pod) is one of my favorites. It is a capsule that you enter naked, you float on top of the water (with a lot of salt) that is the same temperature as your body; it is completely dark; there is no sound. Being in such a pod for an hour or more helps you really get rid of the noise in your life and focus on your inner self.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
I have decided to start a multi-media approach to both the company brand and my personal brand. As such, I am starting a podcast (audio), a LinkedIn series (video), and a Substack (text). I believe that this approach is not only great for our marketing efforts but also a great way to challenge myself in different formats.
How can our readers connect with you?
The best way to find me is on my LinkedIn account[IV1]. However, if you feel like reading, my newsletter will be more appropriate.[IV2]
If you are interested in providing online services, then 3veta [IV3] is the place to be.
Ying Gong is the President and Co-Founder of TickTalk Tech LLC (www.myticktalk.com), one of the most advanced 4G/LTE children’s smartwatches combining video and voice calling, text messaging, location tracking, 911 emergency response, SOS contacts, reminders, and more in one device. Complete with a custom-designed parental controlled app, TickTalk helps families all over the world connect safely.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
At the beginning of my career, I was a junior high teacher at a private school in Shanghai, China. The parents of our students were highly educated and successful, but I saw the issues myself and other working parents faced with time management, connecting with their children, and balancing their careers. With my background as a teacher and a mother, I developed an understanding of children’s preferences, their psychology, and the expectations of parents.
After marrying my husband, we started a consumer electronics company where I served as the Vice President of Marketing and Sales. In three years, I quadrupled the business serving large Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, QVC, Bacardi, Ford, Chanel, and Walmart in over 50 countries. My husband and I subsequently launched a consumer electronics company, XDREAM, in 2009 before starting TickTalk in 2016.
What inspired you to start your business?
My husband and I were searching for a safe way to communicate with our young daughter as we balanced family and our careers but weren’t ready to get her a cellphone. We quickly found most kid’s products offered limited features, had a ton of distractions, or were missing elements any smartphone would have. With nothing meeting our needs, we decided to develop our own responsible wearable product focusing on connection, safety, and developing good habits. We wanted to create a product that not only helped our family but families around the world who were searching for a way to connect with their children.
Where is your business based?
TickTalk is based in Orange County, California.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
Before I started TickTalk, I was in the consumer electronics industry for 15 years focusing on R&D, supply chains, marketing, and sales. My focus at the time was expanding the product offering and finding new products to be sold to the U.S. market. In China, children’s watch phones are a popular product, but only a few companies were selling to the American market.
When I was exploring starting the business, I noticed the majority of American importers did not have internal R&D or production capability. They also relied heavily on manufacturers for tech and back end support. I decided we would have our own internal team to offer 360-degree development of our products: our R&D, backend, server, hardware, and software are all internally developed to differentiate our product from our competitors. It was important to me that we design every aspect for our customers to have the best data protection without sacrificing their user experience.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
Our customers. We listen to our community, improve our products based on their feedback, and offer the best customer service possible. Our community appreciates that and our word of mouth referrals have been incredibly helpful in raising our brand awareness.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
As a start-up, we don’t have the large corporate teams or budgets that companies like Fitbit or LG have. We are always searching for ways to increase brand awareness, appeal to new customers, and improve our customer experience.
Our support team works with our customers collecting feedback. We relay to our technical team, who regularly update the software to give customers the best user experience. Our third-generation watch, the TickTalk 3, launched at the end of 2018. We have since accumulated over 2,000 reviews with an overall rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars. Our customers had loved having a direct line to us, knowing there is a team of dedicated individuals who prioritize their needs and reflect their feedback in our products.
How do you stay focused?
You have to love your career. If you treat it as just a job or a way of earning money, it's hard to maintain enthusiasm. For me, the best way to focus is to strive for progress in being the leading brand of children's smartwatches. You need to set high goals and values for yourself, your employees, and your company. Seeing how we help solve communication and safety problems every family faces along with our customer's appreciation for our products gives me the motivation to stay focused.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
I wanted to handle our entire operation internally to give our customers the best possible product. The majority of our competitors offer a turnkey backend and app where the developers control the backend, making it easier for hackers and viruses. We have an internal R&D team for the 360-degree development of our products and our backend is protected 24/7 to ensure customer data is secure and encrypted to protect from data leaks. We work diligently to ensure the customer experience doesn't end after their purchase, creating a community of families worldwide, whereas our competitors offer limited customer service.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Overall, our word of mouth referrals has been the most effective marketing strategy. We’ve recently started exploring partnerships and co-branding relationships. For our new generation TickTalk 4, we integrated with iHeartRadio Family for unlimited free streaming of thousands of kid-friendly songs, podcasts, and bedtime stories. We're excited to partner with other brands in the future to increase our brand awareness and improve our customer experience overall.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
If you see a void in the market, create the solution. If you are looking for a product that doesn't exist, other people are as well. Never let anyone tell you something isn't possible and always believe in yourself. Know you are capable of anything you set your mind to.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
My favorite app right now is Headspace. It’s user friendly, simple, and the overall aesthetic makes you calmer.
My favorite book is “Who Moved My Cheese” by Spencer Johnson. So many people fear change instead of the status quo. I love the message that change isn’t terrible and that improving yourself makes your “cheese” more delicious. It encourages you to decide what type of change will maximize your pursuit. The book is short, it only takes about an hour to read, and I’ve read it at least three times. Every time I read it, I gain new insights and heal when I’m facing any setbacks in life.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
Zoom. With the epidemic, everyone is working remotely, and communicating effectively as a team has been crucial. Zoom’s online conference system has been a lifesaver.
Who is your business role model? Why?
Steve Jobs because he made the impossible possible. Apple brought together functions that people had never thought to combine to solve the real needs of customers. Steve Jobs is a talented designer who perfectly combines cutting-edge technology and humanized design, making Apple as unique and successful as they are.
How do you balance work and life?
As a start-up working with overseas teams, my working hours are often in flux. I used to have meetings with my overseas team between 8 AM-10 AM or 6 PM-9 PM and then work in our U.S. office from 10 AM-6 PM, sometimes working until midnight. It was causing my anxiety and the pressure to accumulate. I finally realized the sky wasn't going to fall if there were emails unread or things on my to-do list unchecked.
Now, I’ll spend 1-2 hours per day with my overseas team to leave myself more space and time to enjoy my life. Outside of work, I make sure to give myself time to go hike, meditate, read, listen to music, and catch up with family. I like cooking and I watch YouTube every week to learn new recipes. I think a successful entrepreneur and leader must be a person who loves and enjoys life, with a focus on work-life balance.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
Meditation has helped alleviate stress and anxiety, especially during the epidemic. Meditating has given me a ton of inspiration, especially with the business. I’m exploring adding meditation functions to our products to help children learn these skills early on as we deal with these stressful times.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
We are very excited to be launching our fourth generation TickTalk smartwatch in February/March. We've kept the features our customers loved in our past generations and added new features like unlimited free streaming music powered by iHeartRadio Family, an activity step tracker, more parental controls, two 5MP cameras, and more. We're offering accessories for the first time with a charging dock, Bluetooth headphones, and removable watch charms for kids to personalize their TickTalk 4. It will be available for pre-order in February/March 2021. Find out more information at www.myticktalk.com/pages/ticktalk-4.
How can our readers connect with you?
Readers can connect with us on social @myTickTalk or email our team at support@myticktalk.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
Amanda French is the co-founder and CEO of Emme, a health tech company that is revolutionizing birth control. Emme invented the first smart, connected pill case for birth control pill management.
Prior to founding Emme, Amanda developed breakthrough heart valve technology as an R&D engineer with Edwards Lifesciences, and she went on to develop state-of-the-art hearing aids at Earlens. Amanda was a 2016-2017 Innovation Fellow at the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, a Ferolyn Fellow in 2018-2019 with the Fogarty Institute for Innovation, and she holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Duke University.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
My background is in health technology innovation. I studied mechanical engineering at Duke and then worked in the medical device industry as an R&D engineer. I have had the opportunity to develop cutting edge technology including transcatheter heart valves and the first and only hearing aid that works by vibrating the eardrum, and I apply my prior experience towards driving innovation in women’s health at Emme. Prior to founding Emme, I was an Innovation Fellow at the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, which is where I uncovered the unmet needs that we are addressing at Emme.
What inspired you to start your business?
At Stanford Biodesign, I had the opportunity to observe hundreds of unmet needs at the hospital and clinics, and I was surprised by the lack of innovation in women’s health. I interviewed and surveyed hundreds of women who shared the stress and consequences they experience as the result of missing birth control pills – the most common form of contraception. After realizing that the most common problem for the most popular form of contraception had not been solved, I knew there was a big opportunity to make an impact with technology.
Where is your business based?
Our headquarters are in San Francisco, but we support a remote, distributed work environment and have team members across many cities in the US. We also work with top-tier international partners who supply premium components for our hardware.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
Emme started with an idea, a sketch, and a basic prototype. I had the hypothesis that connected hardware could make a major impact on birth control pill adherence by tracking pill consumption, updating an app with the data, and enabling the app to send relevant reminders when the pill is missed. I built the first prototype with grant funding while I was still at Stanford, and I ran a small pilot where women validated that the product was both effective and empowering. This proof of concept enabled me to close our first round of funding to develop the Emme Smart Case.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
Everybody has a friend who has experienced the missed pill problem, and most women have experienced it themselves. Because of this, word of mouth for Emme is very strong. We have a great community of people who are excited about the innovation we are bringing to women’s health, and many of our customers have heard about Emme through their friends.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
We were scheduled to start our hardware design verification back in March 2020, right around the time when San Francisco established shelter-in-place due to COVID-19. At the time, we had already experienced disruptions to our global supply chain due to the pandemic. Our team got creative and found opportunities to re-write our verification plans and work with our suppliers to mitigate component risk. We ultimately overcame the unexpected impact of the global environment by staying flexible, nimble, and creative, and by being realistic in our plans about what the world was going to look like for the foreseeable future, rather than waiting for things to go back to “normal.”
How do you stay focused?
I am passionate about advancing health technology in women’s health, which makes it easy to stay focused. I know the work we are doing is important and has the potential to have a major impact. In a startup, there are always so many opportunities and limited resources, which makes prioritization key. To determine what is best for the company to focus on, I review all our opportunities, the effort required to achieve them, and their potential impact. There is always an opportunity cost – focusing on a few strategic priorities necessitates de-prioritizing other potential projects. These decisions are much easier when there is a clear understanding of impact versus effort, and we strive to work on initiatives that have the biggest impact on driving the business forward.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
There are many companies focused exclusively on pill delivery, but we know from our market research that the number one challenge people face with the pill is adherence. We also offer a free app, which has advanced features for pill and cycle tracks. Our users love that we offer the ability to customize their reminder profile with multiple reminder times and types, and our reminders auto-update when a user travels to a new time zone. Many apps offer a limited view of the female experience and focus only on pregnancy or periods. We offer a much more comprehensive, integrated view, that considers many of the real symptoms, experiences, and side effects that people want to track every day.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Our community has been incredibly helpful in helping drive awareness about Emme. Like many new brands, we are also building awareness with ads and organic content on digital platforms. Because we are addressing an underserved market, we have found that audiences are very receptive and excited to learn more about the Emme Smart Case.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
One of the biggest keys to success is maintaining the commitment to move forward, and trusting that you will be able to navigate the unknown obstacles when they present themselves. For example, I didn’t know who would lead our investment when we got started, but I knew I would find the right investors if I stayed focused on driving as much business progress as quickly as possible. Some aspiring entrepreneurs get stuck with analysis paralysis, overwhelmed by all the options for how to start a business, and fear of what could go wrong. I like to think of the founder’s journey as a creative process – there is no “right” answer for how to start, and with each decision, you move further along the path of entrepreneurship and get one step closer towards realizing your business vision.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
I think meditation can be such a helpful, grounding practice, and I enjoy using the meditation trainer and companion app from Core, a fellow Bolt portfolio company. I follow a number of blogs to stay up today on women’s health and wellness, and some of my favorites include Blood+Milk, and The Spot. The number one business book I recommend to my peers has Never Split the Difference – it has great tips on win-win negotiation and standing up for your perspective!
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
I find it helpful to follow the journeys of other founders and learn from their experiences – my favorite resource for this is the podcast How I Built This with Guy Raz. It’s fascinating and relatable to hear from leaders of major global businesses and hear the behind the scenes stories from the early days.
Who is your business role model? Why?
My business role model is Deborah Kilpatrick, CEO of Evidation Health, who serves on the Emme Board of Directors. Deb has pioneered the digital health industry through the democratization of patient data and facilitation of distributed, digital, clinical trials at Evidation, and she is also a major advocate for women’s equity as the founder of MedTech Women, an organization which I now volunteer with as well. I met Deb at a MedTech Women conference years ago, which demonstrates the power of putting yourself out there and introducing yourself to your role models – you never know where it could lead.
How do you balance work and life?
I’ll be honest – there are many times as a founder building a company where work and life are one and the same. However, it is so important to take breaks and focus on life outside of work. I like to set my goals for the week and schedule them in advance via time-blocking; this enables me to make sure I have healthy boundaries on my schedule and am leaving enough time in my week to maintain my personal life.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
I love spending quality time with family and friends, though that time has been much more virtual these days. Some of my favorite activities include cooking, reading, and dancing – I have enjoyed dancing since childhood and I think the creative energy it brings helps me be a better innovator.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
We recently launched the Emme Smart Case, so we are focused on scaling that product over the next six months. We also have a few exciting new initiatives coming soon – stay tuned.
How can our readers connect with you?
We love hearing from readers and encourage you to join our Emme community on Instagram (@meetemme), Facebook (@try.emme), Medium (@meetemme), and by subscribing to our mailing list. You can always reach out at hello@emme.com.
Sasha Schriber is CEO and founder of NANOS.AI, a machine learning startup based in Switzerland. Nanos turns the process of creating and placing online advertisements into a simple, automated, and transparent action by using machine learning. A former Walt Disney Imagineering cast member, she also founded and developed an innovation group within Disney Research in collaboration with the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). Background in math, finance, and law; 20+ patents in multimedia, previsualization, machine learning, and online marketing technologies, and publications at ACM IUI, IEEE InfoVis, IAAI, ICIDS.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
I have a wide range of experience and I’ve changed my career multiple times. I went from studying physics and math furiously in high school and dreaming of formulas at bedtime to getting my first paid job as a sixteen-year-old selling kids’ underwear at a retail store. I became a manager of that store within roughly a year.
I’ve built several other companies, from B2B retail to restaurants, to telecom services and hardware equipment, at the same time studying for a Ph.D. At one point, I went full force on the creative as a freelance filmmaker and opera director. I picked up all kinds of filming gigs and worked for free on various film and opera sets. I did everything possible — from stage lights to camera and sound assistance to post-production sound design, from assisting a make-up artist to scriptwriting and editing. After all of that, I started my own production technology company and eventually crossed over to the corporate research side for six long years.
What inspired you to start your business?
One of the main challenges in all of my previous businesses was - how do I find my customers, without paying an arm and a leg for it?
While running an innovation group at a large corporate research laboratory, I came up with the idea of Nanos. Marketing as an industry should be demystified, lowering the entry barrier into online visibility. Many processes related to marketing can be automated using machine learning. These concepts became the foundation for my current company - nanos.ai. I was always driven by this romantic idea that anyone should be able to advertise online at a low cost. The flower shop owner next door should have the same chance to prosper as a big online flower franchise, even with the smallest marketing budgets. An international fashion brand should not block an independent shoemaker’s online visibility just because they have their own internal marketing army. Established companies and brands usually have marketing specialists, sales teams, and all kinds of governmental support. But as a small business owner, you are literally left alone when starting a new venture.
There is a strong need to lower the barriers of entry into online marketing. Small businesses are the economic drivers in most developed countries. But they risk missing the boat when competing with the bigger players in their fields when it comes to marketing. One of the most common issues for small businesses is awareness. As an example, you might have stumbled upon a nice store by chance in the basement floor of your office. You only knew about it because you walked by it every day. Sadly, by the time you finally consider paying them a visit, they may already be out of business, since not enough other people knew about their existence.
Marketing should be demystified. It's really not that complex, but very iterative. One has to experiment a lot to find out what works for each type of business, product, or service. There are so many parameters to keep in mind: the visuals, the story, the website, the timing, the budget, industry trends, competitors’ actions, and much more. If you don't have big budgets to experiment with, you are literally gambling with your money in hopes of reaching the desired results fast. This is why there is a need for a tool that caters to small business owners, making the knowledge that worked for other similar businesses available to them.
I strongly believe that everyone should be empowered to do their own marketing. Technology can make it accessible to anyone. That's why I created Nanos, a do-it-yourself, pay-as-you-go digital advertising tool. At Nanos, we, a dozen computer scientists and technology-generalists, have built a tool where anyone without marketing, design, technical background, or big marketing budgets can very quickly create, place and optimize online ads. We want to help people and businesses who lack technical, marketing, or design skills, and those who cannot learn marketing or simply don't want to. We can make a difference for entrepreneurs without big budgets to spend on marketing, or people who have already tried advertising alone or with agencies and failed. This is why we created Nanos.
Where is your business based?
Nanos is based in Zurich, Switzerland. There are several reasons we chose Switzerland. First, it's about quality. Switzerland has very good tech schools and a pool of tech talent. It leads the Global Innovation Index, with the most patents per capita in the world. Also, Switzerland offers legal services tailored specifically to startups’ needs along with direct access to seed and Series A funding, governmental support, and competitive tax advantages.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
I was working for a big research organization. One day, the language teacher the company employed, Tim, showed me a stack of old-fashioned white business cards. They had imprinted florals and his name on them, and he told me to share them with people that might be interested in language courses. He spoke seven languages and was a highly skilled language teacher. I was slightly taken aback by the business cards and questioned why he didn’t just have a website. We made him a website and a month later he came to me again with the business cards. When I asked him about the website, he shook his phone and said, “yes, but no one has called me!”
This made me think. Tim was not a digital native. I’d dare say that he was born with a remote control in his hands, but not a smartphone. I was convinced that he didn’t have the online advertising skills or knowledge to promote his new site on a regular basis. This idea sparked something in me, so I asked a colleague where she would advertise Tim’s website. She happened to be reading Google Adwords, a 700-page book. Right then and there, I started reading it too. I was inspired by all the opportunities I saw for automation. “Imagine if we could build a technology that automated everything from this book,” I thought. There was no way Tim could ever successfully accomplish placing an ad campaign through this complicated avenue!
I thought the idea was brilliant. I went back to my desk and drew a few low-fidelity frames of what would later become Nanos. I met with a software engineer friend and asked if it was possible to call up Google and Facebook APIs to get this through in the first place. After some testing, he confirmed we could. With a little money, my own free time, and a couple of intrigued friends, we investigated the romantic idea that anyone should be able to advertise online.
After much testing and prototype after prototype, we finally reached our goal. Today, anyone can place an ad about their business or service in less than ten minutes, starting from as little as five dollars, and without any advertising knowledge.
Few years have passed since that day Tim inspired me to create Nanos.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
It’s definitely been a combination of paid media and social media. Paid advertising and social media content are two sides of the same coin. Nowadays, both are equally important in growing a business.
One thing is for sure if your company is not online, it doesn’t exist. If anyone is interested in what your company is doing, they will first go to your website. Then they will check your company’s social media channels. How many followers and how interesting your content is might influence the decision of a prospective client and whether or not they purchase your product or service.
With paid media, you are more or less in control of who will see your ad. As a stand-alone effort, it can become quite expensive if you are to compete with others in your field for that same audience. When it comes to social media, you’ll never fully know who ends up seeing your posts, and you can’t easily influence how many people will see it. This is why both are important.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
At Nanos, we aimed to build technology that automates as many digital marketing processes as possible. But it was not easy from the start. For instance, there was not much tech talent available. Machine learning and AI as sciences were not as established then as they are now. Only in the last 2 years, it has become "sexy" to be a machine learning engineer or a computer scientist. So many students now follow the trend and switch from another science, for instance, physics or biology. We see this a lot because having a machine learning degree means having a much higher salary nowadays.
Another challenge was that there also was not as much data available, and computer power and cloud services were still very expensive when we were just starting out. But what was driving me was the knowledge of how many people could benefit from our AI. So slowly, step by step, we were able to hire the best tech talent from ETH Zurich (The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), as well as find cost-efficient solutions to keep our machine learning models running.
How do you stay focused?
On one hand, I make sure that I live a healthy, balanced life. This includes personal and family time along with work. The ability to stay focused and in control requires balance.
On the other hand, I like to work with a system that I learned working with Pixar animators. It’s the art of “in-betweening”. It’s used internally when they want a smooth transition from one keyframe of an animation sequence to another. If a bunny needs to cross the room, an animator starts by defining several important keyframes for its movement. He draws the first keyframe where the bunny starts, then a second keyframe where the bunny reaches the middle of the room, and then the third keyframe where it stops at the door.
Once the perfect keyframes are found, the rest, or “in-between” frames, can be created faster, or even delegated to others. I look at any business decision, large or small, in a similar way. This system also helps me stay focused on things that need to be done. Instead of making big, bold moves, I set up keyframes along the path and move from one to another consistently. Then I use the process of in-betweening , slowly transitioning from one keyframe to another.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
Nanos is the only do-it-yourself, pay-as-you-go digital advertising tool for non-experts. It’s a powerful tool that gives small business owners and entrepreneurs who don’t have marketing knowledge or resources the ability to profit from digital advertising. You choose your budget according to what you can invest in. There aren’t any hidden fees or contracts.
It’s a tool that gives any business the marketing superpower it needs to grow online.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Recursive Marketing plus social media content is the strategy I decided on when starting Nanos. Recursive marketing means we have been advertising ourselves through our own tool - nanos.ai. We would place ad campaigns about us worldwide and attract visitors to our website. Additionally - we produced a lot of videos and articles about who we are, what we have built, and why are we doing this.
From the very beginning, I had a vision of where I wanted to go with Nanos and how it should look in terms of features and innovation. It was important for me to create an environment where my team could prosper in order to create amazing technology. It was also important that through social media content our customers saw and experienced this innovative culture. It is also about letting our own customers advocate for us.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Surround yourself with the right people. The “right people” are those who share the same principles as you but come from different backgrounds. They have skills, expertise, and personalities different from your own. They also have their own established networks.
If I were to give anyone advice, it would be to spend as much time with these people as you can. Perhaps by making a contribution to someone else’s idea, participating in work-in-progress concept development, or joining a strong team that is about to really take off. With the right people, you gain the right network and expertise in your domain. Once you find your people, give it all you can.
To me, this is important because no one builds anything alone. Working on something with others means integrating different strengths and perspectives.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
My favourite book is “Just Kids” by Patty Smith. It’s a fiction book but could serve as a manual on how to create great commercial art and a personal commercial brand. For apps, I like tracking apps - for monthly expenses, ski runs, periods, and others. For blogs, I like to read the New York Times. They always offer fresh and different perspectives. To me, it’s a great example of true professional journalism.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
Since I work remotely and my team is international and based on different timezones, I value tools that enable me to create a good work system. That’s why my most used tools are Google calendar and Hangouts. They’re also simple and easy to use.
Who is your business role model? Why?
I wouldn’t say I have a business role model. Rather than having a business role model or relying on someone's acceptance and opinion, I think it’s important to listen to your intuition and rely on your own competence. In my life, I’ve heard “no” and “you can’t do it” many times from family members, close friends, colleagues, bosses, mentors and others. But, with time, I learned that we should not rely on others’ acceptance of our business ideas. I value criticism from experts and many people inspire me, but first and foremost, I rely on my intuition and make sure that I use all the inputs to succeed.
How do you balance work and life?
Well, Nanos has been a remote company since its existence. We value flexibility and independent working. In that sense, I have options in planning my day. I always include exercise and personal time in my daily routine.
One thing that helps me balance work and life is a very simple system called the Three-Legged Strategy. These legs are your professional life, your private affairs, and your hobbies. Your professional life is your whole work environment. When I say your private life or family, I’m referring to all the humans that are present in your life outside of work and those with who you interact the most. If you feel perfectly fine without any strong ties to your family or friends, that’s fine too. As long as you’ve found your balance and you’re not subconsciously or consciously seeking to change it. When it comes to your hobbies, here I’m talking about activities that inspire and motivate you personally to take action or learn. As with family and work, your hobbies might also change from time to time, but they should not be directly related to your professional endeavors or family members. A hobby is something that you truly do for yourself.
For me, maintaining a balance between these three well-functioning, supportive legs keeps my life balanced, but also helps me avoid stress or getting caught off guard by surprises.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
For me now, it’s exercising. I’ve had many hobbies over the years. I was into art, meditation, and other things, but going to the gym or exercising outside really works best and helps me let it all out. This year has been very peculiar, and while we couldn’t go on living the routines we had before, I found it even more important to keep exercising at home. Since time outside has been limited, I created my own small home gym so that I can still release that extra energy.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
We are currently working on Nanos Pro and are set to launch it in the next six months. It’s a version of Nanos for marketing professionals that will allow them to launch multi-platform campaigns from one single place. It will also allow marketers to improve campaign performance with a configurable AI that optimises the ads every hour.
How can our readers connect with you?
You can find me on social media or write me an email ask.sasha@nanos.ai
Facebook: Sasha Schriber
Instagram: @sashaschriber
TikTok: sashaschriber
LinkedIn: Sasha Schriber
Twitter: @SashaSchriber
Website: sashaschriber.com
Steve Silberberg is the founder and owner of Fitpacking Weight Loss Backpacking Adventures: https://fitpacking.com. He graduated from M.I.T. in 1984 with both Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Steve was a software contractor for over 20 years serving dozens of notable clients including DuPont, Polaroid, Tektronix, Acadian Asset Management, Ameriprise, Talbots, Data I/O, and companies with names even more obscure than Data I/O.
Steve's Air Sickness Bag collection is the largest in the lower 48 and 10th largest in the world. Steve generally avoids people and prefers to spend his time backpacking in the wilderness. (But he likes writing about himself in the 3rd person like a self-important putz).
Can you tell our readers about your background?
While you are probably used to hearing about wildly successful business leaders who were terrible in school, I excelled in academia but floundered in the real world. I thought for sure that my academic accomplishments would jettison me into great success in the business world. I was wrong. If overcoming adversity isn’t your bag, it’s hard to succeed in the business world.
Wait, what was the question?
What inspired you to start your business?
My father died at 54. As I was rounding 40 and working a stressful desk job (lucrative, but stressful) I wondered when and how I would ever be able to engage in more personally meaningful activities such as backpacking, which is my primary passion. I started thinking that if I only had 14 years to live, how would I want to spend them?
I also noticed that whenever I returned from a weeklong hiking trip, I felt thinner, stress-free, and happy. So in order to experience more of this, I decided that I could take people to beautiful wilderness areas to “get fit and lose fat”? The inspiration was thus born.
Where is your business based?
Fitpacking is based in Hull, MA -- a suburb of Boston -- but we’re decentralized. We have staff in Orlando, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Sioux Falls with guides all over the country.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
I was lucky that the company I worked for kept me on for a year while I started my business – a year-long soft opening if you will. I started by posting online, putting up posters, and meeting with some local people who were curious about the business before running the first test trip.
As a software developer, I also created a website and encouraged people in cyberspace to check it out. It started slowly because a lot of people don’t want to take a chance on a new, unknown entity.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
Although our customers are extremely loyal (over 50% of our participants have been on previous trips) we never push them for referrals. Unlike many corporate overlords, I don’t believe in treating clients like unpaid marketing interns.
I’ve found that the most effective way of raising awareness is media placement. Over time, I have turned into a bit of a media whore who pushes our narrative into most any media source that will feature us.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
One challenge is that our objectives are at odds with each other. On one hand, I want people to love backpacking and inspire them to go out and independently hike on their own. But of course, this isn’t very good for return business.
How do you stay focused?
While it’s become kind of de rigeur to claim you have mild to severe ADD or ADHD, I am the opposite. I am almost completely unable to multi-task. Focus comes naturally to me so staying focused is not anything I ever think about.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
Fitpacking is not that much different from other backpacking outfitters except our focus is on becoming fit, getting healthy, and altering body composition. We’re a good choice for people who are overweight or older as opposed to the super-fit “summit every peak” client that might not find our program challenging enough.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Marketing is a loathsome, never-ending Sisyphian task that not only drains a company’s finances at an unprecedented rate but also drains your spirit and the amount of time you can devote to any and all more important aspects of running your business. Shysters and con artists excel at it, I decidedly do not.
That said, Google AdWords and HARO have been our indispensable mainstays.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Save a lot of money and don’t put yourself in a situation where you absolutely must succeed in order to keep paying your bills. Some people work well with that kind of constant pressure but I think most don’t. And it can put your family at risk unnecessarily. This doesn’t mean you should start a business without the expectation of making money, just that you shouldn’t have to be in a position where you need to turn a profit immediately.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
My favorite app is the one I wrote for Fitpacking to analyze body composition. Well, maybe indispensable is more accurate than a favorite. I guess my favorite app would be the Kindle app (even though I have no love for Amazon) because it allows me to always have a book ready to read for anytime I find myself waiting for someone or something.
My favorite books are “America The Book” and “Cvltvre Made Stvpid”. Although I would also recommend a compelling book called “Duped”.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is consistently the most vital business resource I use because it opens up a world of media opportunity to businesses that are voiceless, undercapitalized, or both.
Who is your business role model? Why?
I wish I had one. I suppose it used to be Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. My impression is that their business was at least nominally socially responsible. Plus, their salaries were not to be more than 6X the amount of their lowest-paid worker. I have little respect for entrepreneurs who exploit their workers in order to pad their “can’t spend in thousands of lifetimes” wealth, no matter how visionary they may be.
How do you balance work and life?
Some people label Fitpacking as a “Lifestyle Business”, meaning that work and life are intertwined. This obviates any need to balance the two.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
I’m an introvert so being alone decompresses and recharges me. But going to the beach is my go-to action. Fortunately, I live in a beach town so I can go for only 1 or 2 hours easily enough.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
I had a myriad of plans and dreams about six months ago. But my current plan is to let COVID drag me around by the hair and do what it will. On the rare occasion when COVID temporarily loses its stranglehold, I do what I can to keep the business afloat.
How can our readers connect with you?
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!
Monica Lent is a founder and software engineer with more than a decade of experience. Most recently, she spent five years as the frontend engineering lead at a high-growth fintech startup as it scaled from 80 to over 1,500 people. She has spoken at leading technical conferences on topics like software architecture and design systems. Today her focus is building and growing her affiliate analytics software company, Affilimate.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
I started coding at a really young age, so it’s no surprise I ended up working as a software engineer.
But it didn’t start out as my passion or the thing I wanted to do as a full-time job.
Instead, I majored in classical languages and philosophy. But after years of learning Latin and Ancient Greek, the idea of going to graduate school (or law school) became less and less appealing.
After graduation, my job as a student developer turned into my full-time job and I began my professional career in software development. I spent the following years working in academia and startups before leaving to start my own company, which is my main focus today.
What inspired you to start your business?
About seven years ago, I moved to Leipzig, Germany without ever having heard of the city before.
Based on my experiences, I created a travel website that eventually grew to over 100,000 monthly sessions and eclipsed the monthly salary I had at my first startup job.
The main way the website makes money is through affiliate marketing.
But as a software engineer, I found it frustrating that most of the tools available to optimize my conversion rate and revenue were tailored for eCommerce sites.
I also realized that a ton of other people was struggling with the same kinds of tracking and analytics I wanted to collect, and trying to solve the issue by hobbling together ill-suited tools and spreadsheets.
So in a way, I built Affilimate to solve that problem for myself and for others.
Where is your business based?
We’re based in Berlin, Germany.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
The first steps were doing customer development interviews and building a prototype. Luckily, since I had my own website, it was easy to test and iterate on early versions of the software before getting outside users on board. The first users of our product discovered us through a waitlist on Facebook.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
Definitely finding people who are passionate about the problem our product is solving who also love sharing recommendations with other people.
Our word-of-mouth is particularly strong in certain communities, and most people who sign up came through a personal recommendation.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Easily the biggest challenge is starting without an existing audience in our target market.
As a tech speaker and someone who blogs about tech, I have a decent network within the software development community. It would’ve been a lot easier to build a product for developers, but that just wasn’t a space I felt passionate about.
I’ve solved this primarily through cold outreach and trying to offer people some kind of value before asking them for anything. Our goal is really to help people earn more money as website owners themselves, so people are pretty receptive to getting help with that.
How do you stay focused?
I use a combination of a color-coded Google Calendar and the app Focus Keeper to break my work into chunks. The calendar helps me visualize how much time I spend on different projects during the week, and the app helps me set a goal for how many “focus sessions” I can complete in a day.
That said, I still struggle sometimes! For example, I recently blocked Twitter on my computer and removed it from my phone so I wouldn’t be tempted to waste time on it. It is really important for me to balance my consumption vs. creation ratio.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
Our most direct competition is targeting enterprise-level media companies, whereas Affilimate is designed to be used by individual affiliate marketers and agencies. We make features accessible to individual website owners that would otherwise cost hundreds of dollars per month and require a business intelligence analyst to operate.
Today there is no 1:1 competitor for both our feature set and target market, but that could certainly change.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
As I mentioned earlier, our best channel is really word-of-mouth which tends to happen in Facebook Groups.
People come to Facebook Groups, ask a question, and someone who uses our product is able to recommend how our product would solve that problem.
It’s more effective than direct advertising because a recommendation from a happy customer is more credible than us talking about how great we are.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Do something today to bring you closer to your goal.
What I’ve realized is that so much of what I’m able to do is the result of a massive accumulation of a small amount of past effort. Those individual efforts all culminate in momentum for something bigger.
As long as you do something today, and then again tomorrow, to begin and continue growing your business, you will see success. The most important thing is being consistent and persistent.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
App: Honestly I try to stay away from my phone most of the day, so the app I use the most is Focus Keeper! I like it because it’s a quantitative way to see how much productive time I’ve actually spent during the week.
Blog: It’s more of a newsletter/case study combo, but one of the few places where I look forward to reading new content is Marketing Examples. What I love is that there’s zero fluff. The presentation of the content is as interesting as the content itself.
Book: These days I read mostly non-fiction books on product development and marketing, so my favorite recent book was probably Obviously Awesome by April Dunford. It’s a really practical step-by-step process for thinking about how to position your product.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
If I’m not writing, coding, or answering emails, I probably spend most of my time in Ahrefs. It’s an SEO tool that helps me do the research I need to grow organic traffic to my businesses. I love it because it strikes a good balance between providing access to a ton of data and being easy to navigate.
Who is your business role model? Why?
I’m not sure I’d use the word “role model” per se, but one book that influenced my thinking on managing both myself, teams, and an organization is High Output Management by Andy Grove. He did incredible things as the CEO at Intel and made the company the world’s leading producer of microprocessors and the 7th largest company. While he was leading Intel, the company’s market cap grew from $4 to $197 billion.
I like his management style because he gives his team credit for success and accepts responsibility for failure. Very few people work that way.
How do you balance work and life?
The main thing I try to do is stop working at a reasonable time. If I’ve put in enough focus sessions during the day, I can feel good about stopping work and not try to cram more in over the course of the evening. I do work pretty much every day, including weekends, but I have enough ongoing projects that I can switch things up when I’m struggling with motivation. The key for me is working sane hours.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
I like to do it the German way: meeting friends in a beer garden and enjoying the Summer weather. Berlin spends about half the year in a state of partial Winter so you have to make the most out of the sunshine.
Besides that, I love doing pilates. Or, I should say, I like the feeling I have after doing pilates. Doing it is actually quite miserable but I get a lot of mental clarity after the fact.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
For Affilimate, we are evolving our understanding of our “ideal customer” and building and refining our features for them. This involves more customer development interviews, design, and UX changes, and continuing to connect with people who are passionate about the problem we’re solving (and want to tell their friends about us).
I’m also committing to publishing one article on our company blog every week, so I’m hoping to look back and be proud of creating a ton of quality content for our customers.
How can our readers connect with you?
If you’re a blogger or affiliate marketer, the best way to connect is contacting me through Affilimate. I talk with people running websites all the time about how to improve the revenue of their sites, regardless of whether they’re current customers.
If you’re in the tech industry or a fellow founder, either get in touch through my personal website (https://monicalent.com) or on Twitter (https://twitter.com/monicalent).
Lastly, I also run a weekly newsletter that teaches developers about blogging and SEO called Blogging for Devs. Replying to one of those emails is a direct line to my inbox.
Bhavneet is co-founder and CEO of GoSkills.com. After completing degrees in Molecular Biotechnology and Entrepreneurship, Bhavneet founded several startups and worked at a range of companies, including the world’s fastest-growing e-commerce marketplace, Groupon. It was during her time at Groupon that Bhavneet saw the opportunity to create online courses for busy working professionals. Bhavneet enjoys hiking, reading, and traveling to exotic locations.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
I am passionate about providing accessible and affordable education for both unemployed adults as well as working professionals. I co-founded GoSkills in 2013, an online education company that provides courses to help people learn practical business skills to get a new job, upskill for their current jobs or to stay relevant in the workplace in the face of changing technologies.
What inspired you to start your business?
I want to see working professionals reskill and upskill more easily given the fact that the roles we take on after a formal education often allows for more flexibility. I also am very interested in alternative education and changes that broadband access is bringing across the globe.
Where is your business based?
The company is incorporated in New Zealand, but since our team is remote and distributed, we have team members all over the world, including North America, Hong Kong, Spain, South Africa, and New Zealand.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
I saw a market opportunity while working at Groupon in Sydney, Australia. I noticed that online courses were selling like hotcakes on Groupon, and Excel courses were the top-selling products.
But I was appalled at the level of quality. When the opportunity presented itself to provide higher quality courses and to use Groupon as a distribution channel, I partnered with some former colleagues in New Zealand, who created the technology behind GoSkills, and together, we embarked on this business.
The money that it took to get GoSkills off the ground was self-funded by myself and my co-founders. We have since reinvested profits from the business to grow. So we are “bootstrapping” rather than taking venture capital.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
When we first started out, we sold our courses on the Groupon platform. This provided great exposure for our business as our courses were advertised to millions of consumers worldwide.
Over time, as the daily deals industry slowed down, we focused more on gaining exposure through search engine rankings. So if you search for our courses on Google or Bing, we should appear at the top of the results page.
Today, we have a dedicated marketing team working on content marketing, search engine optimization and public relations to continually raise awareness of GoSkills.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
The biggest work challenge is simply ensuring our business pulls through the crisis and is not negatively impacted in the long run. We have also hired two new people during the pandemic, and it’s important to us that they feel secure with their new positions.
We have offered free months of learning for those who have canceled their subscriptions due to COVID-19, offered a discount on our yearly subscription, and created free COVID-19 and Work-From-Home courses for businesses to share with their teams. All in a short window of time.
I’m very proud of my team, and I believe that a continued need for our bite-sized business courses, even after some of us have returned to the office and roles have shifted, will continue to help us grow.
How do you stay focused?
I embrace online collaboration, project management, and communication tools. The GoSkills team relies on Slack, Trello, Google Drive, and Zoom to get things done.
I trust in my team, that the work is being done.
I over-communicate. It may seem silly while you’re doing it, but it reduces chances of miscommunication and has the added benefit of making remote work less isolating.
All of these things also maintain our work culture - we remember to have fun and connect with coworkers on a personal level.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
GoSkills focuses on providing practical business skills through a micro-learning format. All our courses are broken down into 3-5 minute video lessons, followed by a short quiz. This approach has been shown to increase retention by 20% and learning speeds by 28%.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Approach every day like continuing education. It’s important to learn from your past mistakes and failures, to help inform your future decisions.
Also, surround yourself with the smartest people you know and bring people along for the ride with you. You will need to motivate others around you, and by listening to their experience and factoring their approach, you will succeed faster. No one does it alone.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
I read “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter as a young adult. It advocates the importance of financial literacy, financial independence, and building wealth, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to start a business.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
The most important and favorite tools are communication tools for us. Right now we are using a combination of Slack, Trello, Google Drive, and Zoom to get things done...but when Slack recently had an outage, we went nuts!
Who is your business role model? Why?
I respect Richard Branson tremendously. His early life story and what he went through to get where he is is inspiring and a great read as well!
How do you balance work and life?
This is really important if you want to succeed. Stick to a typical work day...whether 9-5 or not...just set your hours and get into a regular routine. Then once you are finished, you need to be diligent about switching off. I don’t like to take calls or reply to emails in the evenings -- although these days I need to more often than not!
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
I love to escape by watching movies or getting lost in a book.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
We have a number of product features we will be rolling out to make learning more fun. More games, challenges, and social learning. For our Enterprise and Business users - more features for remote training.
How can our readers connect with you?
Desmond Lim is co-founder and CEO of Workstream, an automated hiring platform for companies hiring hourly workers. He is a graduate of Harvard and MIT Media Lab, former product manager at WeChat, and investor at Dorm Room Fund. He is based in San Francisco and lived in Boston, London, and Singapore.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
I was born and raised in Singapore and both of my parents were hourly workers who only attended school through the fourth grade. I’m a first-generation immigrant who paved my way in the United States after I graduated from Singapore Management University. I’m now the CEO and co-founder of Workstream.
What inspired you to start your business?
My parents were actually the main source of inspiration to start my business because they were working-class citizens. My father, Simon Lim, has been a delivery driver for close to 40 years and my mother helps him with his work. I also founded a restaurant while I was in college and had to hire hundreds of hourly workers. I realized then, through firsthand experience, that there wasn’t any good software to simplify the hiring process and manage hourly workers more efficiently. This is where the idea for Workstream was born.
Where is your business based?
Workstream is based in San Francisco.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
The initial steps that we took before Workstream was officially set into motion involved doing research regarding the need for better hiring software. Once we were clear on what was needed to improve the hiring and onboarding process, we got to work on the software, and then eventually pitched our business to clients.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
Workstream makes it a point to raise awareness about the results that we provide our clients because we’re passionate about saving companies valuable time. We find that our transparency and our focus on delivering a great service has been extremely effective. We’re a company that you can count on, and we make that evident through our outreach, customer service, and results.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
One big challenge that we faced initially was resistance to change. Many businesses are resistant to changing and upgrading their technology, even when their lack of updated technology costs them more time and money in the long run. Once we had a few clients share their results having worked with Workstream, however, it became easier to reach more businesses.
How do you stay focused?
I stay focused by implementing a structured daily routine in my life. I truly believe that consistency is key when it comes to achieving any of your goals. For example, every morning I wake up early and run at the same time. The same goes for all of my other commitments. If I’m trying to learn a new skill, I’ll make a point to schedule it into my calendar at the same time every day.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
We’re very grateful for our client relationships at Workstream, and we make sure that the people we work for are happy with the results we provide them. One thing that differentiates us from the competition is how much we consider client feedback, and take their experiences into consideration.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
It sounds rather simple, but kindness and determination. We market Workstream by showcasing our authentic results, and by being a reliable company that people can trust.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
My best piece of advice for new and aspiring entrepreneurs is to tap into the online space. Especially right now, with the COVID-19 pandemic taking place, it's becoming increasingly evident just how important it is to be able to work online.
What’s your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
One app that has been very helpful to me is an app called “Loom.” It’s a pretty cool software because it allows me to work with my team better, send them video messages, share my screen, and show them what I’m doing, which in turn helps me to save time.
My favorite book that I’ve read recently is called the score takes care of itself by Bill welsh. Bill Welsh used to be the coach for the 49ers and was able to bring the team from last in the NFL to first. In the book, he talks about how he was able to really train the 49ers, put together very strict guidelines on what it is like to coach a team and how to do well.
What’s your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
My favorite business tool is most definitely Workstream for recruiting, but otherwise, I’d say Gusto for payroll.
Who is your business role model? Why?
My friend Eric Yuan, who is also the founder of Zoom, is one of my biggest business inspirations and role models. His approach to business is very respectable and he has offered me invaluable advice over the years.
How do you balance work and life?
Regimen! I create a structure in my day-to-day life that incorporates important life activities such as family time and exercise, as well as all of my work commitments. I think a big key to staying consistent is scheduling the same things at the same time every day.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
My favorite way to decompress is probably by going for a run, exercising, or play basketball. I actually used to play Basketball for the Singapore national team!
How can our readers connect with you?
I’m very active on LinkedIn and the Workstream.us blog, and recently more so on Twitter. I really enjoy writing and I try to provide valuable insight and information to my readers.
FemFounder is a one-stop shop for creative entrepreneurs and small business owners who need PR, Instagram, Pinterest, and email list building help.
