Daryl Hatton on Overcoming Growth Obstacles and Building Successful Marketplaces

Posted by Anant January 16, 2023

Daryl Hatton is an international speaker and thought leader in online giving and philanthropy. A serial entrepreneur who loves the challenge of building companies from scratch, he has founded multiple start-ups and helped bring one, Optio Software, to a successful NASDAQ IPO in 1999.

Daryl takes us inside the growth obstacles of starting a marketplace, and he shows us the hacks that work.

TOPIC DARYL HATTON COVERS

→ Fundraiser.com is a fundraising platform that utilizes social media technology to reach more people and raise more money

→ Suitable for a wide range of causes

→ The platform was created to find a way to collect free donations using Facebook

→ Evolved to become a donation platform

→ Success stories of Fundraiser.com and its evolution

→ Importance of being flexible and adapting to changes for success

→ Notable campaigns mentioned: Julian Assange and Edward Snowden for legal defense

→ The fundraiser is a platform for raising money online for any kind of cause

→ It uses social media technology to deliver messages about campaigns deeper into the user’s social network

→ He is the CEO, started the company after creating a Facebook group for his lacrosse team and realizing the potential for using social media to collect donations

→ The company’s initial focus was on free collection and donation processing using Facebook, but it eventually shifted to focus on the donation processing aspect

→ The company has raised over $50 million for 40,000 campaigns since its launch in 2010

→ The company’s growth was slow in the beginning, but it doubled last year and is on track to double this year

→ The company initially had a “fear of missing out” on different sections of the market but eventually narrowed its focus to focus on its strengths

→ And a whole lot more

LINKS & RESOURCES

Daryl’s LinkedIn Profile

His Angel.co Profile

WATCH THE INTERVIEW

READ THE TRANSCRIPTION

Bronson: Welcome to another episode of Growth Hacker TV. I’m Bronson Taylor, and today I have Darryl Hatten here with us. Darryl, thanks for coming on the program.

Daryl: Hey, really excited to be here.

Bronson: Yeah, absolutely. Now, Darryl, I was first introduced to you by Jeff in Meat Lab, and I’m glad we connected because you are currently the CEO of fund raiser dot com and that’s fund raising are dot.com and that’s a site that’s helping a lot of people and it’s making money in the process as far as I can tell. So let’s start with that. Tell us a little about fund raiser. How do you describe it to people? What is fundraiser?

Daryl: Your fundraisers? The fastest, easiest, most effective way to to raise money online for just about any kind of cause. It can be political, personal, charitable, even entrepreneurial. We’ve just got some really optimized social media technology that helps deliver the message about your campaign deeper into your social network so you can reach more people and then you can raise more money.

Bronson: Okay, so it’s crowdfunding, but with maybe a broader focus. Then the indigo goes and the Kickstarters you really allow. It seems like more under the umbrella, right?

Daryl: More almost. You know, it’s a very, very broad platform for sure. Almost any kind of cause can raise money using us.

Bronson: Yeah. Now, what was the reason for actually creating this initially? Was it because, you know, you want to do things that Kickstarter wouldn’t allow or was there some other reason for this?

Daryl: Well, they were barely a blip. At the same time, we got started. I mean, we were back in the 2008 kind of timeframe when I was thinking about what I needed to do for this company. And we actually started on a slightly different path. I was a coach, we were of a lacrosse team, and I was trying to get my guys out to practice. Emailing them wasn’t working. So I made a Facebook group because that was early and hot in those days and invited them out. Everybody showed up. And it begs the question, well, if they pay their bills, if I invited them on Facebook. And so we started the app to figure out if we could do free collection and donation processing using Facebook. Along the way, the fee collection part of it didn’t work quite as well and listen to the customers, but the donation part took off and that’s how fundraiser was born.

Bronson: Yeah, it’s a true example of following the money and just seeing what works and going toward that and not being stuck with your initial idea. Because it’s the initial idea.

Daryl: Well, you know what? If of giving up on that initial idea is really hard, that’s the baby you’re trying to build. And you got to sometimes let it die and go off and do the thing that you should do. Yeah. And hopefully that that makes you feel good, too.

Bronson: No. You know, the way I’ve started to think about it is my baby is a successful business. What happens in that successful business is different. It changes, it grows, it morphs. But my baby is the business itself. And with that kind of outlook, you allow things to be more fluid under that umbrella.

Daryl: Yeah. And you know, and somewhat counter to that is the idea that people go, well, isn’t it wonderful you’ve created a business that’s helping all these people, the stories that we get back from our customers about what they’re doing and why they’re finding it and the triumphs that they’re having. And some of that is really amazing. But we didn’t set out to change the world to create that. We set out to create a company that tell you it’s really addictive. When you get a company that’s doing good work and making money and a good business and that kind of thing. So the cause of it, I would I would be a lot more reluctant to give up on the cause part of it than I would have been when I first started out.

Bronson: Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, tell us about some of the kind of success stories that have come through the fundraiser site, because I was looking on the homepage and there’s some really inspiring stuff on there that’s currently happening. I can only imagine what’s been happening in the last few years. So what are some of your favorite stories there?

Daryl: Well, you’re right. There’s a story every day that’s very, very interesting. But we’ve had a couple of really fun ones. Most people don’t know that we have some celebrity customers. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are raising money for the legal defense using fundraiser.

Bronson: No kidding.

Daryl: And that was a story in itself because in the beginning they were denied payment processing with PayPal. We’re a very big partner with people and we had to get it cleared all the way up to the CEO level to help raise money for them. And, you know, to people’s credit, they looked at this and said, this isn’t about WikiLeaks. This is about somebody trying to help themselves through a court case. Mm hmm. You should be able to raise money for that. And so that’s an example of one. I’m one of the ones that’s really inspiring from an entrepreneurial point of view, is a group that called American Gut. And what they’re doing is they’re using crowdfunding to help them find a research project in what goes on in your tummies of Americans making it scary. And it’s yeah, it is quite frightening. But the research is showing. The data showing is that what’s in your gut is more important than your genomics in determining your health. But they’ve used us to raise about half a million dollars for their project right now and have combined the funding elements of it with the get the product element, with the find the customers to do the research element. Really kind of interesting blend of this kind of technology. Yeah, but it’s a good example that we’re kind. With the Cambrian Explosion level of different use cases for crowdfunding, it’s not just about very simple causes or getting your entrepreneurial project done. Now it’s got a whole bigger impact that we hadn’t anticipated.

Bronson: Yeah, well, I have to respect an answer that throws in Cambrian Explosion as one of the examples is a metaphor. So let’s talk about the growth fundraiser a little bit. What are some of the stats that you can disclose to just give us an idea of kind of where you started and where you are now and what the growth rates really been like for you guys?

Daryl: Yeah, you know, the growth in the beginning was pretty slow. It was a little it was quite challenging. And I think one of the reasons was we weren’t exactly clear what was working for the customers and why. And part of the reason for that, and it’s something we’ve learned along the way, is that the platform is broad. We can raise money for almost any kind of cause. The customers all have very different needs. And we were trying to do what Dan Martel called, you know, we a former afraid of missing out. And so we’re worried that abandoning any one section of that market would be a difficult thing. And it causes us a lot more grief than it should have been. But in the last couple of years, it started really off. We doubled last year and we’re on track to over double this year. You know, we’ve grown over 25% in first quarter. So things are working well there. Give you an idea of scale. We raised about $50 million for 40,000 campaigns so far in not since really when we launched the product in 2010.

Bronson: Yeah, that’s awesome. Give us an example of the FOMO, the fear of missing out. What was it that you guys were running after that? Finally, you said, you know what, maybe we’ll pick it up someday, but not today.

Daryl: Well, along the way, we I mean, we looked at all these different groups. There’s a ton of need in the world to raise money for almost anything. And trying to satisfy that very, very broad thing is a grand vision. But it’s also really hard. And one of the things that we ran up against in doing that was the amount of capital that we were able to raise. We’re friends and family startup funded. We’re not we don’t have any VCs, any real significant angels in, you know. So I’m fighting now in a war against companies that have $50 million of funding with my $750,000 peashooter. It’s not a fair gunfight. And so we have to be creative. We have to be a little more focused. And that’s been a real challenge with that.

Bronson: I think there’s such an insight there for entrepreneurs is that, you know, in business, one of the things that’s going to decide your fate maybe as much as anything else is what are you going to focus on and where are you going to exclude? So I love that you brought that up. Now, let me ask you about the first few customers, because that’s always a huge hurdle because, you know, I think about one of the appeals of going to something like Kickstarter and I keep using them because it’s the common known example of crowdfunding. But if you go to Kickstarter now, they almost have distribution built in. They got so many people coming to their site looking around, they might, you know, happen upon your thing, they might buy your thing or whatever. How do you get started when it’s a two sided market and day one you have zero traffic and you have zero supply like there’s nothing happening. What is the incentive for somebody to come on day one and start trying to raise money with you guys? How did you get over that initial hurdle?

Daryl: Well, you know, that is one of the biggest challenges that a lot of the crowdfunding platforms have. And Kickstarter is one of the very few of all the thousand that are out there, one of the very few that has a community around it that they’ve been able to curate. We had a different tact to get us started. The original version of Fundraiser Know, the one that we’re shipping now was actually co-developed with PayPal. What had happened was they were trying to get their widgets to work on Facebook and they’re having great difficulty with that. They looked at us and said, Well, you guys are nimble and why don’t you help us build this? You know, you can. We’ll help you develop it. We’ll help you market it. You get to keep all the IP and you can take any money that you raise over above our fees. You know, any questions like where’s the hidden camera? That’s the question. And what the basic thing is that. So the first few customers were directed to us by our major partner and it’s a lovely way to get started because we turned the site on and we got a customer in the first few minutes and the way it went and you know, it’s an unnatural advantage. But I think that that’s there’s a lesson in that is that we don’t always have to just do the splash in the world about how to how to bring customers to us. There are people and companies on our networks and partners, our business partners and others that might be able to direct traffic to us in that initial phase to help get the community going. Because one of the things about crowdfunding and so many other apps now is that it can be much more viral distribution. You can get people learning about it by learning from the customers that you already have and how they’re using it.

Bronson: Yeah, you know, I really like that because I think about growth actor TV and early on we had some partnerships that got us really jumpstarted. We did a partnership with Ryan Holiday in Penguin Press, so we ended up in the back of their books and things like that, and that gave us enough kind of initial users that then the momentum starts and then it takes on a life of its own. But those initial first partnerships were really key. And I think it’s a growth hacker. We think build their partnership and then let’s let’s go do something with, you know, more, you know, pay per click, more pure marketing, something different. But sometimes biz dev is an incredible way just to get things off the ground, isn’t it?

Daryl: It is. And the biggest thing is to help. Remember that you need to solve the problem for your business partner. And so the problem for for people was they were having this issue where they couldn’t even get it to work. They needed a solution for their customers. So it was a natural fit where as opposed to trying to take something to a company, it’s already Salesforce that really doesn’t have any pain. And you’re saying, well, be my partner and help me do this. There’s no no interest. But it really gets back down to who’s your customer in that case? Yeah, for the early, early days, our customers were temporarily our partner.

Bronson: Yeah, no, it makes sense. Now, after that initial partnership, you guys have grown a lot since then, over the over the few years after that, what has been kind of the primary strategy to get more people putting their campaigns on there, to get more people finding campaigns? What’s kind of the the thing that you can give up everything else, but you wouldn’t give that up?

Daryl: Well, I think, you know, it’s a little bit it’s been challenging. We’ve had some hard times getting this kind of stuff to work for us or things that we’ve done is our campaigns are our best advertising source for us. If someone uses the campaign, they’re sharing it, you know, to all of their friends. And if you do the math, we’re sometimes getting in front of a thousand people, 2000 people through each campaign. Mm hmm. If the customers are satisfied with what they’re doing and they’re excited about what they’re doing, there’s a natural enrollment comes. So the majority of our customers have actually come through that kind of referral activity. It appears sometimes it’s really hard to track. We get a lot more people searching for fundraisers dot com than ever should be happening. But they come directly to us and we think a lot of it’s come through people noticing the campaign that their friends around. We try and enroll them in the campaign itself, but they just naturally come directly to us. And so that’s probably a function of press, but it’s also a function of of word of mouth and referral.

Bronson: Yeah, it reminds me a lot of what Kevin from Eventbrite said. You know, I interviewed him, he said the same thing, that it’s when somebody has an event, they promote it and instantly now new people know about event parade. And so it kind of you know, it’s the snake eats itself. It you know, it keeps going on and on you know.

Daryl: And there’s a really good he that that comes out of that in terms of social media is that if our our path to greater success led us to one of our technological advantages, the more and deeper we can turn social media and make our campaigns much more visible on Facebook, particularly the more it helps us enroll new customers. So it has the double benefit of helping our customer and helping us find new customers.

Bronson: Yeah. What have you guys learned about really making sure that campaigns show up the right way on social media? Have you found things that get higher click through rates? You know, what are some of the tricks that you guys know that you can share with us there?

Daryl: Well, there’s a few I won’t. But. All right. And because it’s hard and it’s also evolving daily, we said one of our core confidence is that working on social media is learning how to tap dance on quicksand because it’s constantly changing. And Facebook especially, I mean, you getting the stuff showing in the newsfeed is difficult and has become difficult for brands all over the world as Facebook’s trying to optimize their revenue and that kind of thing. One of the big parts about that is that, you know, a share in social media, a share is almost nothing like a like is not worth something unless somebody comments on it. So how do you get people to interact with the content around the crowdfunding campaign? It’s not just about sharing the campaign. It might be sharing the photo updates or might be sharing the video update that somebody makes. Mm hmm. It might be sharing when someone acquires a perk per I mean, putting a photo of the perk out, as in the in the newsfeed and saying that someone has acquired it helps to drive a lot more traffic to that than just a text link share with the campaign. Okay. So one of the few platforms that have photo perks for photo rewards in your campaigns, and it’s because those photos are much more visible in social media and they get shared more frequently. Yeah. So examples like that, I’m trying to use the best of social media content management. Yeah. To drive a campaign.

Bronson: So image over text and then with either of them really going for comments. Now why do comments make it so much more valuable? Does it does the Facebook algorithm see? Oh, there’s comments. Let’s bump that up in the news feeds or what happens there?

Daryl: Well, exactly. It’s the investment that the user has in that in that comment, you make a comment that’s a lot more activity than clicking like. And so they know when they value that higher. And then in the same way, if your friends will interact with that post in any way, it starts bumping up in the ads rank algorithm and they become much more visible. You know, a shirt by itself after the campaign is almost invisible. You have to hope that somebody sees the first one. And if they interact with it, then you get kind of guaranteed distribution. But if you don’t, it dies right away.

Bronson: I think so often we overestimate how valuable social media is. We think that retweets matter. I mean, I’ve gotten hundreds of retweets on something and almost no traffic from it. You know, I mean, that’s the reality of the world we’re in right now because people retweet as just a habit now because anybody is actually reading or caring. And people like as a habit on Facebook now because they care about the campaign or whatever is going on. And so I think you’re right. I think getting a deeper interaction is the equivalent of a like or a retweet. Four years ago, in a few more years, a comment is going to be useless and it’s going be some other thing that’s going to have to happen for Facebook to know in the algorithm that it matters. So we have to, like you said, tap dancing on quicksand. It’s always learning what matters.

Daryl: Yeah, it is. And you know, that just I guess that’s part of a thing for an entrepreneur is to remember that everything you do, if you’re in a fast growing industry because you like the opportunity. The downside of that is it’s a fast growing industry that will grow away from you unless you keep on it. You have to constantly be innovating, constantly being, paying attention to that, all the changing influences in there. And that could influence your strategy because, you know, so many companies have gone off a cliff because they didn’t see the curve. And, you know, that’s happened.

Bronson: A. It makes me think about the the philosopher said the only constant is change. And if you don’t really live that you do not have a chance of competing in the world of technology. I mean, things are moving so fast, it’s unbelievable.

Daryl: Well, it’s a really good point for an entrepreneur, not only to be able to kind of adapt to it, but to revel in it. It’s the opportunity that keeps giving you opportunities to grow and expand over other people. Yeah. So I mean, those, those challenges are exactly why you can be successful if you trust yourself to overcome them.

Bronson: Yeah. And it reminds me what you said about FOMO, because when you get to where you like the change, you see so many opportunities because you’re like, okay, this is lining up and that’s lining up, which means there’s this wide opening for somebody to do X, Y, and Z, but you’re not there, so you have to divert attention or just let somebody else have the opportunity and you have to. That’s a lot of what I do every day is just decide what opportunities I’m going to take and which ones to ignore, even though I know the wide open.

Daryl: Yeah, well, each one of those is pain. That’s a pain that needs to be solved for somebody. And those pains are energy. And you’re essentially fueling your business on the on the constant churn of energy that makes things happen. It’s a little holistic, but it’s very, very practical when you take a look at it in the end.

Bronson: Yeah, you know, I was thinking about this the other day and the thoughts not fully formed yet, but I think there’s something magical about when everyone’s connected and the systems that connect them are chaotic and there’s a lot of inefficiencies. It means there’s just wide openings to make a lot of money, to make a lot of impact, to make a lot of noise. It’s unusual. I mean, you think 500 years ago no one’s connected and there’s not that many inefficiencies. So there’s not these opportunities to go from 0 to 1000000 anything and any realistic, you know, a number of time. So we live in an age right now that is completely unique in what it can do for entrepreneurs, I think.

Daryl: Yeah, absolutely. It has never been a better time to start a company or find ways to express your creativity in helping other people with a problem. And money squeezes out. It’s a beautiful thing.

Bronson: It’s amazing. So you mentioned a few times how hard the road has been. There’s definitely that underlying theme that this has not been easy. It looks like you’ve had a run through a few of the brick walls that are behind you there. What have been some of the obstacles? What are some of the things that you were trying to grow? And this was in the way that you really had to work through or figure out or give up on or something.

Daryl: You know, one of the things early is I’m a multiple entrepreneur. I’ve done it a couple of times. My last company was quite successful and I thought that that would help me raising money this time around. And so in kind of 2000, nine was hitting the road. But here’s the story. We’re in this market that’s going to be amazing. Nobody can spell crowdfunding at the time, and we just could see that it was going to be a huge market. And I threw myself at the problem for over a year and couldn’t raise almost anything from any serious money. Friends and family got a bunch in that way, and that worked out because they’d seen my track record from before. But so we were we got to a point where we had to say, okay, stop trying to raise money with others customers there. We know there’s a revenue model that works. As soon as you turn it on, every customer gives you money almost instantly it just in a little bit, so you just have to get a lot of them going. So we decided that we didn’t stop trying to raise money. We were going to lose the company. Yeah, and that’s a really hard decision because it’s the dream of growing bigger and realizing that if it’s going to happen, we really have to put our nose down and work really, really hard and try not to run out of runway. And and we did that. And funny enough, you know, the day. I stopped raising money within a couple of days. Our sales started because we started to focus again on that and we had a near-death experience, but we got through it. And and so, you know, it’s hard, but it takes the courage to believe in what you’re doing and to believe that even though you don’t know what’s going to go wrong, you can get away with it. You call it gritty the other day. And I think that’s really valuable terms. You know, you got to fight through the dirt. You’re going to fight through the mess. And then the other side, you look like your hero and it looks like it was easy. But, you know, you know how you know where the scars are and you just try to show them too often in public.

Bronson: You know what? I think so much. You know, I think about my own life, the times where I’ve thought about seeking money, in the times I thought, no, no, no, there’s a market and I can achieve whatever the solution. Is there pain? Whenever I thought about raising money, it was always because I didn’t believe in myself quite as much as I would have if I just went after it. The times where I know there’s a wide opening, I just go after it. I don’t wait for my permission. I don’t wait for the go ahead. I don’t need a rubber stamp. I need no bureaucracy. I just go and make money. The times I’m asking permission mean something’s wrong, usually internally with me and the opportunity. So I think was something to kind of reflect on. Not that every time people raise money that it means they don’t believe in it, because that’s not what I’m saying. But for me, there was something there and it’s worth thinking about at least, because if you really believe in it, just do it. And you’ll end up finding a way to make enough money to bankroll yourself and get the cash flow working so you can keep going forward.

Daryl: And the end result is a freedom that’s hard to imagine, right?

Bronson: Right. I love the freedom I have.

Daryl: You’re driving along and, you know, just let’s go here and you can do it because you’re not out to get you don’t have to get the permission again and again and again.

Bronson: You know, one thing that I’ve learned about myself is I value freedom more than anything. And so I’ve started making decisions, you know, as an adult now where I optimize for freedom, not for other things that some entrepreneurs are optimizing for. And so I have so much freedom that I get to do the things I want to do when I want to do them most of the time. And I wouldn’t give it up for anything. So it’s awesome. Now, let me ask you about this. The parent company, a fundraiser is actually connection point systems and connection point system. It seems to be more of kind of a social commerce engine and fundraiser is just an instance of that engine. Is that the right way to kind of view your company right now?

Daryl: That it’s very great analysis of it because we don’t communicate that story very well out there.

Bronson: Unfortunately, while researching to figure that out.

Daryl: Well, you’ve done a great job because the essence of it is that crowdfunding isn’t is an essence of social commerce. It’s a way of moving money around with social media. And that I think and just like I said earlier, that there’s this huge explosion of use cases. We see that use case. So we said a fundraiser was one of our brands and we had connection point is the company so that we could have other brands. An example is being able to go in and turn this into collaborative commerce where people are using crowdfunding technology to buy things together. And so they’ve been frame for that. And we’ve found a way to take crowdfunding and move it from the basics of running a site right now into a platform similar kind of as well, a platform where we can deliver crowdfunding as a service to other types of communities and customers with big enterprises and other big nonprofits and things like that.

Bronson: Plug and play. They take your technology and use it in their world and their systems on their sites, whatever.

Daryl: Yeah, more than even just putting a widget on the site, it’s kind of a little bit like PayPal. You wouldn’t go in white label people to try and put it on your site because it brings a community of users already that they do fraud checking for you. They do all the technical integration, all the bank laws, all that kind of stuff. Gosh, I’ve got a bunch of that complexity under it. So we’re making crowdfunding as a service in the same way you can plug it into your site and deliver that to your community users and focus on what you do well, like every your business is and that the mechanics of crowdfunding would strike.

Bronson: That’s kind of a good analogy for that. I think about Stripe, how they’re kind of, you know, it’s not white labeled, but they’re doing a lot and behind the scenes that you need them to do with fraud and other stuff.

Daryl: Exactly. And that’s the kind of thing that we’re doing as well. And there’s a lot more to that than people might first see. A lot of the kind of looks like crowdfunding is a pretty looking website and it’s a little you know, it’s we use a joke against somebody in in media right now, which I would put on television. But they, you know, you have a pretty face. You actually have to have some intelligence behind there. And there’s a lot of hard work to making that work. And that’s why you see a lot of sites up there that have five campaigns on them, which is about what they can get with the first set of press releases locally and then the die. There’s nothing else to go there. Yeah, there’s a lot of requirement for that. So it’s been an interesting layering on the company and a little harder to pull off as well. But again, it gives us that flexibility of going over a much broader customer base with the same technology. Yeah.

Bronson: How important do you think it is to have? Big picture strategy that really goes beyond the instance of what you’re working on now. Obviously you’re focused, you know the fomite you’ll die if you try to do everything at once, that whole thing. But how important is it to know in the back of your mind that’s where the road is going eventually, if we can get there?

Daryl: You know, I think I’m a little torn on that. I think at the beginning, no one focused on making that successful in the in the smaller focus area that you’re looking for. And when you’ve got that working, look at where it can expand to. I think sometimes the grand visions, you know, we get to see the great sunset but don’t realize the chasm that’s between us and that, you know. And if you’re paying a little more attention on the way, you’ll get there. And but you just have to work out a few things first. So I think the vision is good, but I think start with solve the practical problem in front of you and then that your dream will come out of that.

Bronson: Yeah, it seems like there’s almost, you know, you want to avoid both extremes because you meet some entrepreneurs, they have this huge vision of world changing dominance and they can’t make ten bucks online today with any aspect of it. And it’s like, okay, that that is not going to happen. You’re not going to get from A to B when there’s that much of a chasm. At the same time, you see people that are so focused on the instance, they don’t realize the engine behind it is pretty amazing and can be used in a lot of other verticals for a lot of other reasons. So it seems like there’s a balance there and you have to I’ve thought about this and I’ve heard this said before that entrepreneurs have to think at multiple levels kind of all day long. They’re thinking big picture, then medium picture, then detail oriented. Then they’re back to big picture. And that’s all before lunch time. They, you know, other people get to focus on just big or just small, the startup founder. They’re kind of all over the map in terms of scope and scale and knowing when to think about what and why to make the whole thing actually work long term. Do you agree with that?

Daryl: Yeah. And you have to pull it all together. Like it’s one thing to think about all those things, but they have to relate and the relationship part of it, you know, grand vision for how I’m going to empower changing the way we fund things in the world and getting the practical details of getting that worked out are there’s a lot of a lot of stitching that needs to do to sew those together.

Bronson: So it’s like you’re focused on, you know, this engine that can be social commerce for everything. But now you’ve got to figure out how to make somebody comment on a Facebook post. Yeah. All at the same time, right?

Daryl: Yeah. Or optimize the payment flows so they don’t bail on another mobile device all the time.

Bronson: Yeah. No, that’s awesome. Well, this has been a great interview. We got to cover some really interesting things about a fundraiser and what you’ve done to grow it and just kind of some of your insights there. And I like how transparent you’ve been. You’re honest that it’s been hard and you’ve been at it for a while, but the numbers you have are impressive now. I mean, like you said, that gut thing that’s on there right now, you know what’s going on inside my gut. I mean, what do you say? Half a million dollars have been raised on that.

Daryl: I’m on that. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty tough. It’s incredible.

Bronson: I one campaign.

Daryl: Yeah, one campaign that’s current.

Bronson: So I mean, you’ve gotten some real results, but it’s taken some while. I’m let me ask you one final question here. And it’s the way I end every interview scene, kind of take it any direction you want, but what’s the best advice you have for any startup that’s trying to grow based on maybe past companies, this company, whatever comes to mind?

Daryl: You know, it’s interesting. One of the things I’m starting to learn in this version of the company is how much sharing what I know and not worrying about who I share or how I shared or whatever is one of the most valuable things I’ve been doing. I’m now helping multiple startups who are helping me learn what I need to learn about my business because we share what’s going on and especially the things that aren’t working. There’s the facade that we all know what we’re doing, you know what I mean? We try, we say things like we’re trying to avoid making five major mistakes a day and things like that. And the only way to do that is to have information. So I’ve learned that if I share right from the day I got started. Mm hmm. And richer for it. And my company is more successful for it. And so I’m trying to encourage the community of startups to. To help each other in that way. It sounds kumbaya, but darn it, it works. So, you know, like it. That’s one of the best things I can encourage them to do is is to give back in that way.

Bronson: Well, that’s awesome advice then, Don Darrell, thank you so much for coming on growth. RTV.

Daryl: I have been a pleasure. Thanks so much. Great conversation.

Ready To Grow Your Startup?TVicon

Get the strategies, motivation, and in-depth interview with all the details every week!

Categories

Popular Blog Posts

26 Simple Websites that Prove Innovation Doesn’t Have...
Learn How Dan McKinley, Principal Engineer at Etsy,...
Learn How Justin Winter Created a Viral Physical...
Learn How Christopher Klundt Built StudyBlue’s Empire of...
Maximizing Product Value: Lessons from Clay Collins, CEO...

Share On

Are you an
entrepreneur
who is trying
to grow a
startup?TVicon

Get the strategies, motivation, and in-depth interview with all the details every week!