From Startup to 9000 Customers, Working from Home

The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests

HelloWoofy is a social media marketing platform Arjun Rai founded in his 20’s, from his NYC apartment, serving over 9000 customers now. Some of them became investors, over 2000 micro investors in all. I was curious about both what they do, and how he fueled his entrepreneurial growth story.

If you love the less than obvious answers about growth, you’ll enjoy learning from Arjun.

3:03 – “Our mission is to build the biggest company on the planet helping the smallest… by providing smart marketing for underdogs.” And so he starts explaining what they do – content scheduling, creating content marketing, a smart speaker scheduler for Alexa.

9:41 – “Equity crowdfunding allows you and me to raise capital from the public… anyone can invest in HelloWoofy for as low as $100…. It’s a very spiritual way of running a business which I encourage every founder to look into… we have a little under 2500 investors… it’s a very different way of running a company.”

12:02 – on Arjun’s entrepreneurial story… a painful failure was “giving too much of the company equity, I didn’t realize how that makes the company radioactive for future investors.”

13:12 – “I learned a lot from failure (in prior start-ups), how not to hire a team, how to stagger product introductions, how to launch an MVP (minimum viable product).”

15:55 – …on being an entrepreneur and the notion of “lone ranger” vs. “asking people for feedback and help” – “Books and successful people influenced me… you have to be open-minded to see the lesson and opportunities… on the shoulder of giants.”

17:12 – … “growth mindset is when you continuously push the envelope… (20:35) spend 10-15% of your time on special projects, and the rest on what is driving revenues.”