After graduating college, co-founders Amar Shah and Sonia Nigam were bored with at their first ”real jobs” so through trial and error they came up with the idea to develop an API that processes donations called Change. They talk with Darrell and Jordan about getting their first customers by literally knocking on shop doors, growing the company while maintaining the close-knit culture, and why incorporating crypto payments was a key part of their growth.
After graduating college, co-founders Amar Shah and Sonia Nigam were bored with at their first ”real jobs” so through trial and error they came up with the idea to develop an API that processes donations called Change. They talk with Darrell and Jordan about getting their first customers by literally knocking on shop doors, growing the company while maintaining the close-knit culture, and why incorporating crypto payments was a key part of their growth.
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Darrell Etherington 0:02
Hello and welcome to found TechCrunch podcast where we bring you the stories behind the startups. I'm your host, Darrell Etherington, and I'm here with the co host and the donation to my egregious spend.
Jordan Crook 0:14
Jordan crook. That's right. Always giving Google good part
Darrell Etherington 0:17
on the selfish thing that I do.
Jordan Crook 0:19
I don't know about that approval. You're a bit of a spendthrift. But
Darrell Etherington 0:26
so that relates to what we're going to be talking about later. But first of all, Oh, got exciting news. It's that time of year again. TechCrunch Disrupt TechCrunch Disrupt.
Jordan Crook 0:38
I wonder if we'll have that music again this year.
Darrell Etherington 0:41
I hope so. But you can find out listener by attending, and that is happening October 18. Through the 20th. In San Francisco. You can get tickets now. And there's a secret that we can tell you see Exactly, yeah. Don't tell anybody else this actually you can. You can tell other people this, it would probably help us. But there's a promo code for this for listeners of the show that gets you 15% off passes, except for the online and expo type passes, but all their past types, you can get 15% off if you use promo code found. So the name of this podcast found for 15% off, go get your tickets now. And we'll see you in October. So today we're talking to, um, Russia and Sonia Nigam from change, which is an online donation platform that allows people to donate to charitable causes using the blockchain or regular money Fiat as they call it.
Jordan Crook 1:32
Yeah, yeah. I think they're so cool. Calling
Darrell Etherington 1:34
that car. Yeah, that's right, just real regular money. But if you've ever tried to buy something online, and it says round up to donate, you know, the extra amount, up to the next dollar to charity, they power, that kind of interaction. And they're available, wherever, basically, commerce is available. So let's hear more from Omer and Sonia about their business. Hi, Sonia. Hi, Mr. How's it going?
Unknown Speaker 2:02
Doing well, doing well, thanks for having us.
Unknown Speaker 2:05
Great. Thank you so much for having us on here.
Darrell Etherington 2:08
Awesome. Okay, well, we're really excited to have you here. And we'd love to start off by just getting a breakdown of what it is your company does. So Sonia, do you want to give a kind of the elevator pitch of change
Unknown Speaker 2:20
happy to. So change is an all in one donation processing platform, with the goal of allowing any modern brand anywhere in the world to give back to their product. So that's just really fancy talk for you know, when you go to the grocery store, and you see roundups at checkout, that technology under the hood, democratizing it and letting the individual creator anywhere in the world to be able to use it. So that can look like roundups a checkout online that can look like NFT creators setting it so that a percentage of their sales go to a charity of their choice that can look like a loyalty program, allowing you to donate points, we really believe that giving should be every single part of your commerce story. And so we're that platform under the hood, you might not see change, you won't see you know, Power BI change everywhere you go. But our goal is for us to be everywhere you go. And so every action online is giving back.
Darrell Etherington 3:08
Nice. Okay, so you have a white labeled option. I'm guessing from that so that people can be just be like, I don't know what's happening. It's us. We're doing it, we're gonna, you're doing all the hard work.
Unknown Speaker 3:19
That's what we'd like to thank Yeah, we're doing all the payments, we're doing the regulations, you know, we give back stories and analytics. So our premise is that the rising generation gives differently than our parents. did. You know, my parents, at least they gave to their alma mater, once a year, it was like a secret check. We didn't even talk about it at dinner. I was just like, okay, cool. Thanks for donating No, Wisconsin. But now if I look at my Instagram, right, I'm like, all my friends are going to SoulCycle for a cause Venmo them $10. And all of a sudden, we're giving back it's really part of your identity. So that's how we position giving. So part of our platform is yeah, the logistics to send the dollars. But then it's the second half of the story is you as a brand. How do you make your customers feel really good about what they did? And also, you know, build a community around it. We together planted 1000 trees, we funded X, you know, mental health therapy sessions for folks in need. And so we do the end to end logistics on the platform.
Darrell Etherington 4:11
Jordan, do you feel like we're part of the falling generation? I've never heard it described as the rising generation, but not like there must be a fight and that's us.
Jordan Crook 4:21
Yeah, we've must be. I tried to explain to my step kid and her friend, why it was really important that Serena Williams was playing in her final tournament. I felt like a million. Like, I've never felt like that. So yeah, we gotta be false. I feel like I'm okay. So off the top questions. Why is web three a part of this at all?
Unknown Speaker 4:51
That's really your question. So one of the things that we're seeing specifically with the crypto community is these are people who inherently want to give back They've either made a lot of money in cryptocurrency, they're rallying your community around the cause. But they ultimately are looking for ways to give back. And what we saw was there wasn't a way to do that. There wasn't even a way for people to just give cryptocurrency to their favorite nonprofits. There was a variety of different tax benefits. And you know, they're ultimately less fun to just go to the nonprofit. So that's where change kind of fits in. And we help nonprofits accept cryptocurrency, so then I have to deal with all the accounting logistics, converting that cryptocurrency into USD and different things like that.
Darrell Etherington 5:32
So is that on your roadmap from day one? Or is that something that was added later?
Unknown Speaker 5:35
Very, very good question. Yeah, that's definitely something that was added later, what we saw was, you know, in 2021, especially a lot of you know, the crypto boom was happening, everybody's jumping into web three. And that's when you know, these committees made a lot of money. You know, a lot of these cryptocurrencies were at the all time high, and they want to get back, they want to do good and give to their favorite causes.
Unknown Speaker 5:57
Yeah, you know, when we did found change in 2020, the, like, high level vision goal was any modern brand, anywhere. And so in our heads that was like, Oh, we're being really, really creative. That can be an influencer, that can be a retailer. And then by 2021, Somers point, you know, that modern brand had changed, that image had really, really evolved to also include NFT projects, PFPs Dows. And so for us, it was like, Okay, this is a really natural extension of what our original goal was. And it really was just a tech decision to extend all the infrastructure, we have to now accept new types of currencies. We accepted virtual currencies before, right, we already accepted loyalty points in different platforms. And so Solana Ethereum, whatever it is, that's just a really natural extension of what we're doing. We're just trying to help brands give back.
Darrell Etherington 6:43
I feel like you're really minimizing it, but it wasn't a huge technical lift. It's like, just wanted to do but it's a lot different under the hood, isn't it?
Unknown Speaker 6:53
Yeah, I mean, you know, so both of us come from engineering backgrounds. And so like a really classic trait of engineers is it is just this like, Oh, it'll take. And so you might see that come out every so often. But yeah, I mean, to your point, it was definitely parallel payment rails. I mean, that's honestly one of the most difficult parts of working with crypto is okay, we have Solana, now we want Aetherium. Unfortunately, that means that we need to do a lot of new duplicate of work, because it's not cross chain very naturally. So every new chain, unless you're piggybacking off of Coinbase, or whatever it be, is a lot of extra work. But it was definitely worth it. Because to Amber's point, we were seeing demand, we didn't jump into the space thinking we were going to shake things up, we were getting people like, hey, knocking on our door, can we give this back. And unfortunately, we're turning away options. So at that point, it just
Unknown Speaker 7:38
made sense to expand into it. I just want to add a little bit to that where it was these brands that we were already working with, you know, talking with, and they're the ones who want to get back. So when we would talk about different ways to activate their most loyal community members, they were actually coming to us and saying, Hey, we want to do NFT drop, where the proceeds are going to an Ocean Conservancy nonprofit, can you do that? So that's when we just started exploring what that technical infrastructure look look like, you know how to actually make that really easy for the company and that
Jordan Crook 8:07
I was just wondering how much the on switch for crypto blockchain whatever web three affected your fundraising, if at all? Did you fundraise after that? Or before that? And how much did that like, oh, we also do like that make a difference? Change
Darrell Etherington 8:25
the available pool, or anything? Yeah, no. So
Unknown Speaker 8:28
we definitely fundraise after we turned crypto on. And after we saw traction with crypto, which I think is the more important component of that, right, totally. And yes, I would say quite honestly, it definitely did boost appetite for venture capital at the time, maybe not even because of what that means today. But I think it signals that we're willing to innovate, and that we're willing to always be at the frontier of tech. And that's kind of what our vision is, is our promises. We are bringing nonprofits to the frontier of technology to always be fundraising through the most modern brand. So for us to say that and then not be engaging with what was a massive wave in 2021 I think would have been a miss. So I think it was showing that we executed on our vision and you know, whatever web 3456 is, we will be there too.
Jordan Crook 9:10
Right? Oh my god, don't talk to me. This is my last lap. I'm not doing more webs. Well, that makes a lot of sense though. Because I do think that there's like, what is the guy call it from Sequoia I think he called it tempo. Like the ability to change paths or to continue building or to stop build. Yeah. Or you know, to listen and adapt is like one of the top three team tam is was quite always so that's a good point. I don't have a question just validating you.
Darrell Etherington 9:52
Just another thing on the crypto. Probably my last thing on the crypto but I'm curious about like now that it's sort of like You know that we have the crypto winter and everything else. And I know a lot of people are very, like still very bullish about the technology and the underlying technology. But has that impacted that demand for that? Or did it make you rethink? Like, oh, should we have spent all those cycles doing that? Or do you still see a lot of demand? And do you still think that it was definitely the time and tactic to take?
Unknown Speaker 10:19
Yeah, at that time, there were a lot of different things going on in cryptocurrency. So, you know, for us, since we were working with these companies, it actually helped push us to build the right infrastructure for other companies as well. So right now, what we're seeing is, you know, obviously, a lot of that noise is gone. Now, there's less people in it. But what's interesting is that there's more loyal people in it. And now companies are just taking a longer and more thoughtful approach on what to do with their web three strategy. So you know, we have use cases that we can point to and say, Hey, here's actually how to rally your community behind the cars. And here's exactly how to do it. So that honestly, it works out better for change, because we can point to some of these really cool things that other people have done. Yeah, yeah, I would say
Unknown Speaker 11:04
I mean, for our size, and our phase, crypto winter might have been a good thing. It was really getting kind of outrageous, sometimes asked opportunities. And so you know, one big challenge from what we've seen is like, how do you hone opportunity from distraction. And it's really difficult when you see these distractions are still going to be sending, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars. And so for us, because that noise is lessened. It's like, okay, we're really building value props are really being strategic with every move. And there's also less external people kind of pinging us being like, Oh, my God, did you see this opportunity? Are you there yet? And so honestly, it might be a little beneficial in the long run.
Darrell Etherington 11:38
Yeah, with focus. I mean, so it's great that you bring up because I think that's a really great point with crypto specifically, but tons of other things have had this same feature over the years, right? It's like, yeah, there's a lot of hype. But that hype is still very lucrative, especially in the moment, especially if you can capture it, like while it lasts, right? It's like, Yeah, this is maybe a distraction. But like you said, it's like $100,000 distraction. Right? So it's like, maybe it's worth.
Unknown Speaker 12:05
And as you think about that height from the nonprofit land, that's $100,000 They did not have before. And you know, that's $100,000 They couldn't even accept before. So you know, they just want to jump in, and they just need help getting those funds. Yeah, for sure.
Jordan Crook 12:19
So what attracted you guys to like, giving in the first place? Like, why is this a thing that you want to do?
Unknown Speaker 12:26
Yeah, I mean, so I'll turn it back a little bit into our founding story, because that's part of it. So um, when I met back at Northwestern, we were both computer science majors day in and day out grinding on different projects. And so after graduating, it was a big, like, flipping the switch, because I came out to San Francisco, working in software engineering, um, or stayed in Chicago and private equity. And those are just very different, right than like building all these projects every week and school. And so pretty much a month into it. We were texting each other like, we are so bored. What are you up to? Seven onboard. And so we started this tradition, where every Sunday, we would jump on a call for like an hour. And we would just throw ideas at each other. And it was supposed to be like really relentless. Like, yeah, there was no stupid idea per se. And we had some pretty bad ideas. And we were just
Jordan Crook 13:13
yeah, what's the worst one? Let's just pause. Here the worst.
Unknown Speaker 13:19
You and I may have different words.
Unknown Speaker 13:23
That's fine. Or you go versus yours idea.
Unknown Speaker 13:26
The one that always sticks out to me is that we were I mean, we just graduated college. You know, like our friends are like going to bars,
Jordan Crook 13:32
no excuses.
Unknown Speaker 13:36
We're all gonna bars that. We were just thinking like, hey, what if we put ads in bars? Like what if we allowed Patagonia to put a commercial in a bar? And like those are Patagonia's most target customers? So then we literally would go like at like 6pm We just dropped Patagonia bars and be like, Oh, hey, you know you should put ads on it and turns out no, they did not want to put ads they want to play that music video to get people you know, drinking that vibe. And yeah, I mean, that one kind of failed pretty quick. After we got got a ton of nose but that one still sticks
Unknown Speaker 14:13
and what honestly what was really relevant to me about Chicago was like you have this moment where like just one person own every bar in Chicago. I swear we got to know from one bar and that meant like the whole city was blocked off it was like I don't understand how Chicago works maybe it was just a really
Unknown Speaker 14:32
on their internal message to people
Jordan Crook 14:37
is kids are coming for you they want to go Patagonia and your
Darrell Etherington 14:41
people are missing with their drinking is watching advertise.
Unknown Speaker 14:47
Like we said, it's a bad one, I think was like maybe this idea isn't horrible, but like there was no reason me and Omer should be doing this. Like there was no expertise we had and this was where like every single price tag and Walgreens should be like a screen. And because you know, we see people changing prices every day. And what if it was just a screen that digitally updated. We have no hardware background, we have no inventory. The idea, I think one day might happen, but we were walking in there and people were like, okay, cool. Like, you know, show me a demo, we're like, oh, we don't know how to get at all,
Unknown Speaker 15:27
we don't have this screen that can fit on your one inch thick price tag over here.
Jordan Crook 15:32
Not to mention, you'd be the folks who build the I'm doing a motion listeners that can't see me. And it's not even clear if you're doing but this is a it's not like sticker roller, where they're like, price tag, things like that mafia of that Oh, yeah. That'd be like, we've been here for 200 years. That's the video people not to mention the folks in the labor that are using the standard. No,
Unknown Speaker 16:02
we actually talked to those folks. And they thought we were like magic. They were like, yeah, get me one of those. I don't want to wake up at 4am
Jordan Crook 16:08
Did they realize that they would have? I don't know, I don't know, I guess we can get?
Unknown Speaker 16:12
I think for them, they were just excited that they could just update it from a computer screen really quickly. Because they I still remember we used to talk these folks. And they used to have to get in and like five, six in the morning. Because every single day, they would hear from corporate and say, you know, this product needs to be this price. And this is the sale.
Jordan Crook 16:30
Like explore these things. You went to bars? And you like, yeah, they're like, let's go do some user testing. So this was once a month. So it's been a month just exploring ideas,
Unknown Speaker 16:40
or once a week.
Jordan Crook 16:43
Oh my god. So that was a week of user testing, basically? Or did you spend more on that
Unknown Speaker 16:49
we wouldn't get like basically, once a week, we would come up with like a bunch of different ideas that we had been gathering ourselves. And then every so often, we would get obsessed over an idea. And then we would take it further. And then maybe we would be talking about the same idea for a month and we come up with game plans. But you know, I think one thing that hopefully we continue to do well is like we admit when things are failing. And so at some point, you just sit there be like, Okay, this was kind of fun. But also, I am like sprinting from work at you know, 6pm. And I don't think there's any legs to this, let's reset. So honestly, that's kind of partially what led us to change is, you know, we kept resetting and one of the prevailing things was, okay, what value are we really bringing, right? Like, this isn't meaningful if even if we were able to make a business out of ads and bars, like, would we feel really proud of that work? Honestly, not really. And so then we had this whole philosophical change where we were like, Okay, let's only talk about meaningful ideas for a little bit. And what we just really gravitated towards was this idea that everyone on our socials was talking about giving in a very different way. You know, it was part of their identity. They were really proud when they bought a mad happy sweatshirt, you know, I'm wearing one for all the listeners, because it represented positive mental health. They were really excited when their SoulCycle class was a fundraiser. And the difference is, once again, the Republic about it, they were posting it on socials. And so when we realized that we're like, okay, brands must be noticing that recognizing that how are they engaging their communities, knowing people care, and that it's becoming table stakes to be a relevant brand today to have a mission? And so we took that same thing, where were you started to get in front of as many people as we could. And that's when we realized there was a breakdown. We were like, Oh, wow, the best tech companies in the world based out of San Francisco at the time we were getting in front of and they were saying we're too resource constrained to add Roundups to a ride sharing app. And we're like, that's really not that big of a tech lift, there must be more. And then we realized it was regulations, then we realized there was licensing. You know, I came from an API first background. So I think that was also a really natural gravitation where it's like, Okay, what if we made an API and AMR had worked with a bunch of different companies have been doing so much research? And he was like, Yeah, every company wants something slightly different. We can't just give someone a widget and put it in their app on their website. Let's create a platform. And so that's kind of how we came to change. It wasn't like we had a eureka moment. We were doing a lot of trials and testing. And at some point, we just became so into that concept. Then march of 2020 hit we were like this is now we're never like brands are trying to respond to the pandemic, there was a variety of different movements going on in 2020. Like, let's give them some help. So that's when we quit our jobs. Our parents were like, You must be joking like March 20. Um, were moved from Chicago to San Francisco second weekend. He was in SF. I was like, this is the best city ever shelter in place immediately.
Unknown Speaker 19:32
That was day two, we were in northwestern EIR like entrepreneur residence program. And the second day of this program we get in and oh, yeah, shelter in place to that program shut down. And I was like, dope, alright.
Unknown Speaker 19:48
Wow. Yeah. The one piece of advice we had gotten before doing this was just like, okay, whatever you do, don't work from home. Like it's really important to work in an office or working at Starbucks. And so that's why We're super excited about the CIR program. It gave free office space. And then, you know, obviously what a joke that became because we pretty much built change in an apartment.
Unknown Speaker 20:07
Yeah,
Jordan Crook 20:08
they're all and I have both very
Darrell Etherington 20:10
Yeah, well, we've been doing it for a decade or more now forever.
Jordan Crook 20:14
Free COVID We were working from home. Thus, my.
Darrell Etherington 20:19
My advice is that it does make you very strange as a person, that's not really advice.
Jordan Crook 20:25
Or, like mean, it makes you a bad person, but it doesn't affect your work quality at all. I am still a fantastic worker, person. So can we talk a little bit more about your relationship? Like, it sounds like you guys have very common interests? You obviously are close friends. If you're like staying in contact from long distances and all that stuff. Like what roles do you guys kind of take? Like, what strengths does Omar have? What weaknesses? What How are you guys like back and forth? And is there one that's kind of like calling the shots and the other one provide the feedback? Like how does that work? I'm just curious.
Unknown Speaker 21:01
Yeah, I mean, the benefit about working together for so long is we started off just being computer science partners. So we kind of knew how each other built over the years. And we were trying all these ideas we were able to see who kind of liked doing what, especially after we started changing, it was just the two of us. So you know, at that point, obviously, both people are wearing multiple hats. But as the company has matured, we really found our own lane. For example, Sonia is the CEO, she did a great job with fundraising, like really building that investor network, really knowing how to pitch change. Well, you also learn that from the recruitment side, Sonia has a lot of good contacts. We are hiring engineers. And when you work at a company like Braintree, PayPal, where you know you're working with engineers who are building payments products, those are the types of engineers that we want. And our first hire Steven Traversa, who's our head of engineering at MIT, Estonia were interned together at Braintree during college. And then the first year when Steven was still at Braintree, they were working together. They were ping pong partners. So you can definitely tell us that better than I can play ping pong.
Unknown Speaker 22:01
Oh, yeah, we super into ping pong. Yeah, nice.
Jordan Crook 22:03
Very competitive.
Unknown Speaker 22:08
But yeah, so I mean, that's where we've just kind of like naturally found each other's roles in the business. And I mean, we're continuing to grow.
Unknown Speaker 22:15
Yeah. Okay. Omer spoke a lot about me. So now I'm gonna speak about him. Omer is incredible at sales, and legal management and change. Like, we're not talking a lot about the kind of nitty gritty, regulatory constraints that we're thinking about. But that is a really big part of our business, like product tech, you know, that's like, my background that that's honestly the easiest part, like we understand how to do that. Every single surprise that I think we've hit is like, Oh, my God, there are so many contracts, we need to actually launch that product successfully, like, Oh, my God, how do we get licensing rights from this nonprofit. And so he's very, very good at managing those types of relationships and getting legal, unblocked. So I mean, to this point, like, yeah, we do come from CS background. And if the platform is blowing up one day, like, everyone's still coding, like, everyone can turn that on and start coding. But you know, from day to day, we do have different responsibilities, roles, strengths, and I think that's the fun part. And also, it's evolving, you know, part of it is we're discovering new things that we have to do that I didn't get to do in my last job, I really didn't get to do her last job. And so part of it is doing it and be like, Oh, my God, you like that? Great. Take that. Don't
Jordan Crook 23:18
take that away. Yeah,
Darrell Etherington 23:19
I was gonna ask actually, because like, for me, I mean, a lot of the conversations we have are with founders who come from different backgrounds, but it's rare that we get like, dual technical co founders. Right. But it sounds like yeah, you have that. It's probably so night. Yeah. Well, it sounds it sounds like it's nice. And it sounds like you also have sort of the other skill sets to complement. Is there anything that you found challenging, like nobody mentioned sales? Is that something that?
Jordan Crook 23:46
No, I think that isn't sales and
Unknown Speaker 23:50
lead? Yeah, yes. On the sales front. I mean, sales is a learning curve, especially when you're a young founder, you're you're selling to we're a b2b platform. So we're selling to these, you know, high level marketing folks, high level product, folks. And yeah, at that time, there is a learning curve associated with it. But you know, what we learned is you just talked about the product in the right way, get in from the right people, and it works. But that was definitely one of the things where you have to just kind of pick up and go and thankfully, you know, in the early days of change, we had a lot of good advisors, and you know, we recognize the gaps that we had, we have a great advisor, and she's a serial entrepreneur, you know, 5x, founder type of person, and her main focus, and her bread and butter is sales. And she's just constantly giving us sales coaching and things like that. And yeah, it's so helpful.
Unknown Speaker 24:36
Yeah, I think one thing that, you know, everyone who founded a company has to be selling 24/7 You're either selling too high, you're selling to buy, you're selling internally to make sure everyone's excited. And so that, of course has to come naturally. But one thing you know, for me personally, coming from an engineering background is we are such a technical product, and being able to talk about it, non technically, I think is a skill that we've acquired over time, but it's so easy to start getting in the weeds when you are an API and be like, Oh, no, no, we're the best API because we have this throughput, we are so fast, we have this scale. And then you know, you see someone's eyes gloss over, and you're like, Okay, actually, what we do is connected to 200,000 nonprofits. And so I think that that's a very, very key part of my learning curve, particularly,
Jordan Crook 25:20
but also like to DeRose point like when you're talking to one another, because I think that there's a piece that happens very often with co founders, when you have a non technical co founder and a technical co founder, which is the kind of like standard pairing, a lot of times you end up having to communicate, you have to like, have some sort of key to the conversation of like, this is your threshold for what you can understand and vice versa, right. Like on the non technical side, this is the threshold to what you'll understand because you're stuck in megabits per second over there. And that's, that's me showing how are you impressed? Because I can talk to you about zeros and ones. But yeah, there's like the threshold where you always have this little soft barrier. And so you know, you guys can learn together how to do the non technical stuff. But the hardest stuff, which feels like the technical conversations, you don't have to worry about so much, which I think is rather than having a non technical founder who's like, Hey, can you just build this? You're like, bro. That's not how it works.
Unknown Speaker 26:29
I you when you mentioned, you know, get kinda learning together and interesting stories. Like, we're just learning how to sell together. So when the pandemic hit, we were just working out of an apartment all day working from home and building the product. But yeah, at some point, we just had to get out in front of retailers. And so what we started doing was basically going door to door in Hayes Valley, talking to retailers and saying, Hey, can you add donations at checkout? Yep. Yeah, there's two kids going up to these people and saying, Hey, add an extra step when somebody is checking out? And yeah, I mean, like, that's, we honestly just kind of jumped into the deep end. At that point. We're just, and the first one, the first retailers we ever work with was azalea in Hayes Valley, their clothing boutique, and the manager at that store was an entrepreneur, you know, she had just started some things that turned out, you know, she was just wearing this manager tag, but she was actually the owner. And we're like, oh, wow, this is amazing. And so just like getting in there and talking these people, and then she was actually the one who like really taught us like, hey, you know, instead of like positioning everything right at checkout, you can do it after checkout, you can do it, you know, and all these different applications and create this marketing collateral. And just that was a very interesting learning that we actually had together, because we were going door to door together.
Darrell Etherington 27:42
Yeah, that's, I mean, we hear that all the time, too, is like, stay close to your customer is like, consistently the advice of the people who are doing the best things, right? Because it's gonna give you a lot of the direction of where your product is gonna go. And there's no better barometer for like, when you're going wrong, right? Because someone will just tell you, like, especially if it affects their livelihood, they're gonna tell you right away, like, now, this isn't gonna work.
Jordan Crook 28:06
Oh, yeah, like ads. Okay, I have another question. So, from March 2020, until today, since running the company, what for both of you has been the best moment, like the highest high. And what's been the lowest moment of running the company?
Unknown Speaker 28:27
That's a great question peaks and pics and pets. There probably isn't. This is kind of like a, this is not a cop out. I will give specific examples. I swear.
Jordan Crook 28:36
I can tell you're setting. But I
Unknown Speaker 28:39
feel like because your target is such a moving target. There's like moments every single time there's a peak or a trough. It feels like the macro peak or trough. And then you look back and you're like, Okay, that was micro. So even in our examples in the moment micro and macro. I think that the first customer we ever got the number was talking about Azalia. That was like that high was so so high because we weren't funded. I mean, I'm right now we're taking $0. At that time, we were just like, on the ground for fitting everything going all in on this. And we needed someone to take a bet, right? We were at the point where we're knocking on doors in Hayes Valley. And it's the pandemic like that is that is the level that we are looking for customer and
Darrell Etherington 29:18
physical retail themselves.
Unknown Speaker 29:23
Because we're like, okay, like, We're cold messaging, all of these retailers, like obviously, we want to be on their online store. But there's also a bunch of people that are just down the street that run businesses like let's just get in front of them. They can't ignore our email, like they can ignore us at the door. So when we got that one when and you know, you just need one. That's what everyone always says like, check your ego at the door. There's gonna be so many people that make fun of you that are mad that you even took their time, but you need one person to take that bet. And that was azalea for us that high. We were like taking Polaroid pictures every time we got a new retailer. We were so stoked. So I would say that was a really big one. I think in that same vein ain't like a really obvious low trough was that path getting there the number of nose we got, as people who didn't come from sales backgrounds, that's a very new thing to stomach. And like I'm gonna get as nitty gritty like to give you perspective like we were trying to get dog food brands at one point and so Omer is now fiance has a dog Instagram and we were literally DMing from that dog Instagram in like dog speak like your product is Paul perfect.
Unknown Speaker 30:27
I was actually my low point. I still think about that. My fiance, Naomi's dog, and she had made this dog Instagram account. And at the time, it probably had like 50 followers like her, her, you know, her friends and things like that. And I was like, it wasn't even a big account. No DMing people so not not at all. And one big learning we have we had was like, once you get a customer, you need that customer to succeed, especially if that point because we hadn't even we hadn't raised a pre seed round. We were trying to just build case studies and say, you know, look, this works. So what we did was after Azalia we got that we got another dog food company. Okay, well, we need to go to their target customers. And coincidentally, they were like posting through a lot of dog influencers online. And so I told Naomi, I was like, I need to add that to this account. And she's like, why like this is Milo's account, and she's like posting photos of Milo turning one month into months and three months, I was like, the content just needs to change. And we have a vision. So we literally took her account. Now, I mean, that account, it's like 1200 followers, because we built that account. Just hit Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow, and the DM every single one saying hey, you should buy this dog company, they are sustainable, and you get to donate. So like, you know, and obviously as soon as it's kind of talking like talking as like a dog parent. And at that time, I didn't have a dog growing up. So I didn't know how to talk like a dog parent. So it was like what am I doing right now?
Darrell Etherington 32:03
You got it pretty much that's basically what we do. Are what I love about that is that is a perfect example of
Unknown Speaker 32:12
like, that's a perfect
Darrell Etherington 32:15
example of do stuff that doesn't scale because that definitely doesn't.
Unknown Speaker 32:21
I love that our low is the same low like clearly that haunts her like yo actually
Jordan Crook 32:25
yeah, you guys are you're gonna be like, you're gonna be like in retire, like your golden years falling asleep napping on the couch just like oh, my lose
Unknown Speaker 32:43
my life, Milo, if anyone wants to follow Milo
Jordan Crook 32:46
Oh, wow, you're plugging it?
Unknown Speaker 32:50
Um, or do you have a high? You want to combat that?
Unknown Speaker 32:52
Yeah, so one of the highs, like I'm gonna fast forward a little bit, we launched that API first platform. And we had some retailers on there. But yeah, it wasn't the volume that we really wanted at the time. And our head of engineering, Steven and Sonia actually came out with you know, all the one of the things that we're most proud of is our documentation and our developer experience with us, you know, really, really nice looking documentation. And, you know, we always look at stripe as the leader in this. So, you know, it's certainly inspired by that. So we were talking to these enterprise companies and enterprise volume is way different than the classic like Mom and Pop retailer. And you know, when the first enterprise company integrated, and I saw these donations coming in, like every single minute, Stephen at the time and actually built this like bot that said, Sonia, you may remember it was like DJ Khaled, I vote what was the was the phrase again, another another one. Another one, and it basically had this thing that just kept saying another one another one, and like one day just kept got another one. Another one, another one. And I was like, Yeah, this is amazing. I've been blessed that day that
Jordan Crook 34:03
we're gonna turn it off. That was like the actually annoying now. That's awesome. Yeah. Those are, those are good highs and lows. Yeah, for sure. You guys are clearly getting better at sales, because that's good storytelling. Oh.
Darrell Etherington 34:20
Just naturally good storytelling, again,
Jordan Crook 34:21
validate.
Unknown Speaker 34:23
Best broadcast, we
Jordan Crook 34:24
don't care about your opinion, Jordan, but whatever.
Darrell Etherington 34:28
I just wanted to ask about because you two clearly are great collaborators. You've you've worked super well together for quite a long time. And as you mentioned, like it was just you for a long time. So how did it feel when you expanded that and started bringing people on? And was it difficult because you probably had developed your own sort of like secret language at this point, right? And like, what was it like when you started getting employees and then had to transition to like, Oh, right. It's the team isn't just us now. It's all kinds of people.
Unknown Speaker 34:56
Yeah, I mean, speaking of highs, like first hire, that was a really big big deal for us. Because you know, having someone else take a bet on your vision is such a different ballgame. And so that felt really, really great. I'm talking about validation, very validating, I think it was interesting. You know, we were ready at that point, we had been working on change for about a year. And so we were really proud of the traction that we had gotten. And so we were super excited to actually just move fast. At some point, you know, it's less about your relationship and more about like, Okay, we don't have the resources, like we need to go. But you know, like, leading up to it, you know, and we're not friends, like, we were very, very casual and chill with each other. And so we were joking, we're like, next tire, like, we can't do that anymore. Now, we get to that. And so I think there was a little bit of like, a learning curve of, okay, you know, what we need to go into an office, or we need to figure out what our work from home policy is going to be and just formalizing things that used to be on autopilot was definitely some time upfront. But also, I think it's a really beautiful thing, you get to really kind of create the DNA of the culture that you want. And so with every hire, we have had amazing people come in, and everyone is very light hearted and fun, takes ownership hard working, but we really do like we're constantly laughing like that is like what we want. And that's why we go into office. Like we know, it's really weird that we all go into work every day. But it's it is optional, like you can work from home, we're totally fine with that. But people like it, like we're just having fun all the time. So I think it's a really cool experience. And on a personal journey. It's like it's a very fun thing to watch a team expand with such a really cool culture,
Unknown Speaker 36:26
especially for our first hire. It was it was Steven and I kind of talked about this already. But Stephen and Sonia work together already. And when Steven came in, it was really nice, because they already had a good cadence on how to work together, how to communicate. And you know, we were building an API first platform, Stephen had spent years building that already. So you know, the product wasn't new to him. And he didn't like a glove. He's awesome. Right?
Darrell Etherington 36:49
It's funny, because you a lot of what you're talking about, at least was familiar to me and Jordan, probably to you of like, you know, we're good buds. And then also me and you. Yes, right. Is it surprising? You realize, as you expand and as you like, gain responsibility for other people's like, oh, yeah, you're right. Like, oh, we can't I really loved your example. Right? It sounds like you were very intentional about it, which is cool to like, ahead of time. Whereas you know, me and Jordan are mostly found this out.
Jordan Crook 37:21
We've learned retroactively.
Darrell Etherington 37:26
Yeah, I mean, it's been really great talking to you. I think I had a blast talking to you. And I can tell that it would probably be a blast to work for you. Although I don't know us in the following generation. We might not.
Jordan Crook 37:37
We might not be up to par. And you'd be like, what's your influenza game? I'd be like,
Unknown Speaker 37:42
I love that. The first thing I said is just haunted the entire podcast.
Jordan Crook 37:46
No, it's honestly what is happening. I'll tell you, Sonia, we have these founders on and we feel older. Every single episode, I swear to God. And sometimes they're like, Oh, I'm a practicing cardiologist who's six years younger than you. Like, and so it's not just you, it's a you are just you. Yeah, you're the straw. My bag is broken. And I'm
Darrell Etherington 38:16
no, truly, really been great. And it's super cool to see this. I mean, this is a thing where I would love to see it in more places. So I wish you all the best because you know, whenever these things come up, and I check it experience I'm usually like, yeah, why not? Right. So like, why not have it everywhere? And lift? All boats? Right? Remember? Thank you. Thank you
all right, Jordan. That was our conversation with Omer and Sonia. What did you think about change? And are you pro or against charity?
Jordan Crook 38:57
Wow. Okay, well, I'm just gonna ignore you. I loved this episode. I loved talking to them. I thought it was a little worried when it was like So web three in the intro because I know you and I both are a little bit averse to the third wave. I don't feel like web three people. I think it's less about crypto as a technology and it's more about like the general population of the people who are really into it and how into it they are and the fact that they say Fiat that bugs us and these didn't feel like web three people that are just regular people who are like what through would be a good thing or crypto blockchain whatever would be a good technology for us to accomplish our mission which is that anyone anywhere any retailer of any kind can power donations on their site or in their business, which I think is a cool mission and I kind of had a it all clicked into place moment. I have a friend who is like a this is gonna sound weird, but she's a witch and she's basically Be like a celebrity tarot card reader. It's card Zb. And she's like good name built a business out of it. It's really cool. And I was like, oh, like she could power donations. Like, that was that's such a weird click moment. But I was like yeah big companies could do a small companies could do it. But that was like the Creator moment that I think was a big one for me that I could actually tie it to like a real world thing. So yeah, I really liked them. I thought it was all really interesting. And they told cool stories. And yeah,
Darrell Etherington 40:29
yeah, they were really fun. Something that we don't get that much on this show is their description of the ideation process. And we have talked about how some people are like, entrepreneurs in search of an idea. And then there's the other side, which is like on reluctant entrepreneur, it's like the idea comes and then you're like, I guess I gotta do that, even though it
Jordan Crook 40:46
has a risk averse or whatever remains around your neck. Yeah. You can't let it go. Yeah. And they
Darrell Etherington 40:51
were clearly looking for something and they are actively did and I really liked their story about how they would brainstorm these things, and then go out there and, you know, hit the pavement, test them. And and yeah, give user feedback and realize that these were very dumb, terrible. Sometimes, right? Yeah. But like,
Jordan Crook 41:10
that's such good practice for the moment that they had an idea that did have them by the neck because they had to hit the pavement for change to Yeah, and get out there. And like a terrible time during COVID, retailers are hurting. They weren't answering their emails or calls. And they were like, You know what, let's just go into some of these stores and see who we can talk to. And it's like, the domino effect of that one retailer saying, yes, really snowballs? Yeah, I really liked also their dynamic between the two of them. You could tell there's like a lot of love there.
Darrell Etherington 41:45
And a lot of respect, right?
Jordan Crook 41:47
And yes, yeah, it was cool. It's nice sometimes to see co founders like that, who have this kind of like shared history and are on the same page, really, like respect the interplay of strengths and weaknesses between the two of them. And it was cool. I liked
Darrell Etherington 42:03
Yeah, me too. I think they were great. I think they you're right about their dynamic, like their dynamic was really just seemed on point. Like, it's hard to exactly pinpoint what it is about that. But we've talked to
Jordan Crook 42:15
like something x factory infectious, almost where you're like, Man, you guys got something special between the two of you.
Darrell Etherington 42:22
Yeah. And you can tell they seem to energize each other, which may be as a presumption, but like, it seems like they enhance the energy of the other, which is what you want in a founding duo. Yeah. But yeah, it was cool talking to you about the dynamics of having a two technical founder team, which is also something we don't come across that often. Right? Pretty rare. Yeah. Yeah. I love you know, them talking about like you said their first sales like that, to me. I don't consider our podcasts like entrepreneur inspo content for the most part. It doesn't to me live in the same world as a Gary Vee podcast, for instance, or something. Listeners, if you're also a Gary Vee listener, I don't mean to insult you please stick around, but I hate.
Jordan Crook 43:05
Well, I didn't know he was gonna say that.
Darrell Etherington 43:08
She would have stopped me if she knew. I was really inspired when they were talking about that. It was the first time I think someone has described the founder experience in a way that made me personally actually find it desirable, when they were like, Oh, we went and when we landed our first customer, and it felt great. And they were great. And they were talking about the relationship with them. And I was like, that sounds really good. That sounds like something I would like to experience too.
Jordan Crook 43:33
Yeah, I think so too. And I think I feel like sometimes there are these founders that have this like origin story that is so practiced, and kind of feels like they overcame this big challenge. But it's so practiced. And it's been said so many times that it loses its whatever makes it special. Yeah, it loses the feeling you get and you're like heart about it. And it didn't feel like that with those two. And I don't think that's because they haven't told it a bunch of times I'm sure that they have, I think it comes back to their dynamic between the two of them. And like you'll often hear co founders, one will say something and the other say, well, just to add to that, and I'll say the same thing. Yeah, it really felt like they were passing the torch of a continuous story, and adding new bits to it and maybe maybe reiterating a little bit but in a way that was very like validating and gave you an extra context or color to what they were going through. And it just felt really, really authentic. Like I never felt like oh, this is a story you've told 1000 times.
Darrell Etherington 44:35
Yeah, it never felt like they were I guess reading from a briefing book. Fair point. And like, alright, this is your section armor. And this is your section Sonia and you got to cover this and you got to cover this which is kind of what you will get in those situations like you said, where it's like, to your point blah, blah, blah, right? Like they were actually communicating with each other is one other way of putting it right like they were listening and responding to each other in a very authentic, natural way. She has what you want out of a real dynamic founding team. So totally, I'd put money in them if I had any money. I doubt
Jordan Crook 45:09
we could donate.
Darrell Etherington 45:10
Yeah, I'll just, I'll keep rounding up to them. I guess. I don't think that'll work either. But you know, just put your
Jordan Crook 45:17
change in a little jar. Um, yeah, that's right. Hey, Dell, one day, like,
Darrell Etherington 45:21
Here you go. I have $1.50 and
Jordan Crook 45:24
buy everything online. But somehow I have all these quarters, or loonies or toonies. Or whatever you silly Canadians have.
Darrell Etherington 45:31
Yeah, you're right that we do have quarters, though. Also, we still have those. Oh, you have quarters? Oh, yes. About pennies. No, we don't have those. Come on. Do you have dimes? 21st century? Well, yeah, we have dimes. And nickels. Uh huh. That's right.
Jordan Crook 45:44
Cool, covered the game and something.
Darrell Etherington 45:48
That's a great place to end. Round is hosted by myself. TechCrunch news editor Darrell Etherington and TechCrunch Managing Editor Jordan crook shot Kulkarni is our executive producer. We are produced by Maggie Stamets and edited by Cal Keller TechCrunch. His audio products are managed by Henry pick of it. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and on twitter@twitter.com slash fan. You can also email us at found@techcrunch.com and you can call us and leave a voicemail at 510-936-1618. Also, we'd love if you could spare a few minutes to fill out our listener survey at bit.li/found listener survey. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai