Sumeet and I competed in an Indian dance competition many years ago back when I was on the Illini Raas Team and he was on Berkeley’s Raas Team. Fortunately, my team won that night – his placed 3rd. Although his dancing may not have been up to par (kidding of course), I can’t say the same about his knack for business. Sumeet has started three start-ups – BrandBacker is his latest. I got in touch with him recently to find out more about it and his other ventures.
What ignited the spark in you to start a new business venture? How did the idea for your business come about?
BrandBacker was initially built to solve challenges that we were running into while launching our previous two start-ups (Nowlr & GoMakeIt). We had a tough time, like many start-ups do, gaining exposure for our products and thought there had to be a better way to get our products in front of our target audience. In particular, we spent a lot of time finding and reaching out to relevant bloggers who were influential in our target market. Of the initial 200 bloggers we had emailed, only 20 replied back to us and eventually 5 of those bloggers wrote a post about us. The entire process took over a month and we had no idea on how the posts performed or the impact they caused. We saw a clear need for this process to be more transparent and managed better. We started recruiting bloggers for BrandBacker and set out to build the best platform for managing brand-blogger interactions.
What advice would you give to college students who want to become entrepreneurs?
1) Get Used to Being Uncomfortable
Whether it’s quitting your job, having to cold call customers, pitching investors or speaking in front of hundreds of people, the amount of time you spend out of your comfort zone as an entrepreneur is incredible. College is the perfect place to step out of your comfort zone because of the huge amount of interesting classes, activities, students and professors around you. Not to mention you have 3 months off every summer to do whatever you want. In college, I earned money waiting tables and was able to backpack through Europe solo for 2 months when most people were doing summer internships. My co-founder, Max, spent afternoons and evenings in college selling his artwork on the streets of New York. The confidence you gain from regularly being out of your comfort zone will help you overcome fears as an entrepreneur.
2) Surround Yourself with Motivated & Optimistic People
The common advice given is to surround yourself with people smarter than you. Don’t get me wrong, I think you should definitely do that. But I think surrounding yourself with optimistic and motivated people might be more beneficial for entrepreneurs. My friends in college may not have been the smartest kids in their classes but they were probably the most ambitious. A good majority of them have gone on to do great things and we constantly are pushing one another to this day. The secret wasn’t that we had high GPA’s or mastered a subject but that we set the bar for success really high and hold each other accountable to reach that level.
3) Gain Some Start-Up Work Experience and Connections
Before you build your first start-up company, actually work at one. Working at a small start-up (less than 20 people) will help you understand the dynamics that happen between founders and employees and the ups and downs that constantly happen. You’ll also be exposed to every side of the business and it will give you a heads up of what to expect when you start your company. I learned more from my co-workers and managers at previous jobs than I ever did in school. Find a couple of start-up veterans at your job and be a sponge. They will share amazing insights and stories and might help you when you start your company.
What have been some of your failures, and what have you learned from them?
BrandBacker is the second pivot after two unsuccessful launches of our previous products, GoMakeIt and Nowlr. With GoMakeIt, we spent 6 months building a complex, fully functional beta product that we had not tested with users. It turns out the product we built was too confusing for users and didn’t solve any of the problems our target audience had.
Our second start-up Nowlr, was built out of popular behavior we had noticed on GoMakeIt. It only took 2 months to build but we ran into issues when we tried to grow our user base. The target audience of Nowlr was fragmented and not easy to define. Without a clearly defined market, it became difficult to grow our user base.
We learned from these two experiences that we needed to learn as much about our potential customers as we could. Before actually building BrandBacker, we talked to hundreds of bloggers via email, skype and phone to see what problems they were having. After speaking with numerous brands about their blogger outreach, we knew we had a product that could be special.
How do you build a successful customer base?
Building a successful customer base really comes from listening to and engaging with your customers. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, especially from technology start-ups, think they can code some magic growth hack and then watch the money roll in. Customer success is a result of not only a great product but also great customer service. I still personally respond to between 30-50 bloggers emails everyday. It helps me stay closer to the user base and learn what improvements will make their experience better. Happy users and customers will be your company’s biggest advocates and lead to more customers.
How did you decide on the location for your business?
We founded the company in San Francisco but eventually made our way to New York via South America. It’s commonly thought that if you’re a start-up, you need to be in Silicon Valley but I would argue against that. When we were accepted into Start-Up Chile we were hesitant to leave San Francisco because we didn’t want to be isolated from the center of everything. Escaping the Silicon Valley bubble in Santiago helped us focus on the real pain points we wanted to solve within our product. When we left Chile, we decided to niche in the Beauty and Fashion industry due to a growing market and my co-founders connections to the space. Moving to New York made the most sense to us since the majority of our potential customers or their marketing teams were located in New York. We’ve seen immediate benefits with the ability to meet clients in person and attending impromptu industry events.
What is your favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur?
The best part of being an entrepreneur is seeing something that was in your head just last week turn into a living, breathing entity that others can interact with. Building products is something I love to do and working through product ideas and concepts every day is one of the most exciting aspects of being an entrepreneur. It’s awesome to see an idea you’ve white boarded, start to come alive and fit into the bigger picture of your start-up.
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Sumeet is the co-founder of BrandBacker, a platform that helps brands engage with their audience through content from bloggers and influencers. BrandBacker’s network contains over 7,000 bloggers and influencers that reach over 200 million followers. Sumeet is the head of Product, Data Science and Operations at BrandBacker. Prior to founding BrandBacker, Sumeet was an early employee at LinkedIn and one of the first members of its renowned Data Science team. He graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.