As we kicked off 2019, rather than continuing with our standard practice of interviews, we chose to greet the new year through an insightful blog post. Our primary motivation behind this alternative approach was to provide a comprehensive review of the previous year, 2018, and to offer a vision for progress in the new year
2018 – StartupBrite made its first steps
Throughout 2018, there were multiple instances when Donavon Urfalian invited me to be part of the “Shark Tank”-esque events he was organizing at various WeWork venues in LA. His aim was to utilize my knowledge as a technical consultant to help the startups presenting at these events, dealing with any technology-based enquiries or glitches they may encounter. Ultimately, my role at these occasions was to bolster the startups from a technological standpoint, during either their pitch presentations or the subsequent mentoring phase of the initiative.
Donavon and I have forged a relationship spanned over 3 years and we initiated an informal master-mind group with the goal of ensuring mutual responsibility towards our nascent startups.
Involvement in these events highlighted a possibility to extend more significant help. Consequently, I revealed my preliminary idea to Michael, a contemporary at the time who had successfully pitched his concept at one of the events. As a result, we determined to invest energy in the formation of StartupBrite, fine-tuning our original concept as we aimed to integrate video interviews and social media marketing. Additionally, we endeavored to utilize the pre-existing investor network granted by our participation in these events.
The year 2018 saw us interview as many as 13 startups, a feat achieved not without its share of obstacles. We are genuinely grateful for every founder who decided to avail of our services and join the ever-growing StartupBrite family.
The following startups profited from our services in the course of 2018:
Gitential with Zoltan Peresztegi
Paperpinecone with Stacey Grumet
Quadlets App with Julian
Pozbee with Cagdas Ocak
SharedChain with Like Ho-Hyung Lee
In the process of conducting video interviews, we encountered certain roadblocks, a common occurrence for beginners in any discipline. That said, the challenges were surmounted during the post-production period. This early hardship yielded invaluable experience and expertise, leading us to significantly enhance the whole interview process, fine-tune post-production, and equip our interviewees more adequately for the future.
Maintaining an efficient system, we decided to publish fresh content every Tuesday. However, the regularity of this schedule emerged to be a formidable obstacle. The pressing requirement for each video to go through editing, final retouching, and rendering – an endeavor that singly demands a few hours – presented ample difficulty. A crucial component of this posting protocol also includes gathering all the necessary components for the respective company’s profile. Despite meticulous planning, there were instances where securing the requisite details promptly became problematic, compelling us to reorganize the posting sequence. With future posts, we intend to acquire profile specifics in advance to optimize everyone’s time.
The most recent fortnight saw Christmas and New Year’s Eve falling on our designated Tuesdays. In light of this, we decided to skip posts on these specific occasions. We felt it wouldn’t be fair to the companies queued up for profiling to announce their highlights during these holiday seasons.
A Roadmap to Triumph in 2019
StartupBrite is gearing up for an exciting 2019 filled with ambitious plans. Our prime focus will be on elevating the worth of our platform for startups and consistently catering to the evolving demands of the startup ecosystem.
A critical facet of our 2019 initiatives includes strengthening the influx to our website. This requires a balanced use of both paid traffic and SEO-enhanced organic traffic. Our paid traffic will primarily be driven by social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. For SEO traffic, we have already set in motion certain strategies that procure continual monthly increases in traffic from search engines.
Revitalizing our podcast interviews is another focal point. We faced several challenges in launching our podcasts last year. As a result, the plan for this year is to start anew, systematically tackling all the problems beforehand. We aim to relaunch our podcast interviews by February.
Another key aim is to foster our email list expansion. This particular approach is intended at enlarging our database of founders and investors. This not only increases the exposure of founders to potential investors but also provides regular updates to our investors with our most recent posts. Despite our weekly email campaigns rolled out each Tuesday immediately after our interviews, there’s scope for strengthening the efficiency of the process and improving the content of the emails.
Moreover, we plan to diversify our interviews by introducing co-hosts or alternatively rotating our regular interview hosts. We are enthusiastic about the possibility of Novelette Witt joining our team to host a number of interviews throughout the coming year.
While the primary focus of StartupBrite will remain the startups in Los Angeles in 2019, we are contemplating reaching out to wider geographic locations, including San Francisco and other significant startup centers across America.
In the past year, due to certain constraints, we did not effectively tap into the potential of reaching out to currently operating incubators and accelerators in LA to identify and interview startup founders. However, we were taken by surprise with the enthusiastic response from startup founders, which resulted in a packed lineup of potential interview candidates.
Our optimistic outlook is further fueled by the unwavering support from WeWork. A special mention is due to Johnson Joseph from DTLA WeWork at the Fine Arts Building. His invaluable assistance has come to our rescue multiple times, most notably when we faced challenges with office bookings or encountered reservation cancellations. Our heartfelt gratitude to him for his undying support!
In the upcoming year, we look forward to continuing the evolution of the StartupBrite platform, with a pledge towards conducting more interviews with startup founders. Thanks to these interviews, we get the rare opportunity to connect with extraordinary individuals, creating a thrilling experience for all. Let us continue this discourse and cultivate even more innovative ideas.
To our valued readers, we sincerely wish you a year ahead filled with prosperity and good health!
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