"Planning and execution of Digital Marketing efforts is tricky. Joosworks Yogurt is a business software that predicts weekly data with accuracy and transparency.."
Hi Girish, and welcome to InspiredStartups.com! Firstly, tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up becoming an entrepreneur.
I am a Tech grad with a Management degree. Worked majorly in the Content industry for 10 years. I had these good ideas which I wanted to bring to life. I could code, write good content, and talk about technology for hours. But, more than that I saw myself as an Enabler. An “Enabler of Technology”. I talk to people and can sense what help they need to bring their ideas to life. I met my CoFounder and we instantly connected about solving this impossible problem about “Seeing the Future”.
Tell us about Yogurt and how it changes Digital world.
Every week, millions of people blog, post Internet content. Agencies, Digital people, everyone, toiling hard to increase their Internet traffic. With just taking some inputs of data, Yogurt analyses and displays future of your dearest data for the next week. Next week because time spans are shorter, people sensitive, businesses fragile!
How did you build it? What stages did you go through?
We built the Software backwards. It predicted the future of your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). But, to help build faith we built an analysis of past data and predictive percentages. Since we built a Software and targeted a huge and serious business segment, we faced lot of resistance, denial, acceptance, amazement. We are now in Early traction and in talks with Enterprises, mid-size firms, and Startups to close business deals.
Businesses benefit from costs saved and efforts streamlined. How does Yogurt do this?
You can analyze your Digital spends and ace your investments such as PPC spends, campaign inputs, page views and so on . It helps you develop better intent and you end up making better decisions. Even 5-10% of better digital spend can mean the world to your business.
As an entrepreneur, do you think you have a work ethic that's different to other people?
Respect. Respect for other people’s ideas, time, and convictions. There is a lot of talk about the perfect boss, the able team-player, an ideal Co-Founder. But, I believe the respect for time is so less as we are evolving. If someone awaits an email reply, we ought to give a yes or no before delving deep on Twitter or anywhere else. Also, starting work early and punctuality are some ethics I follow and regard highly. with a series of challenges such as identifying opportunity, due-diligence, and validating the concept.
What's the best advice you were given when you were starting out? Do you still apply it today?
Just keep Walking. The advice helped a lot. Success, failures, funding, no-funding, there is only one direction. Forward. You have to keep walking on it. Startups are like journey of crossing a desert. Once you are started you can’t afford to go back.
From working with Joosworks, what have you found makes a successful digital marketing campaign? What digital marketing tips would you give to other entrepreneurs trying to build online presence for their startups?
We built Yogurt observing the absence of benchmarks in the Digital world. A sound campaign is a combination of a well-tailored strategy, gut feel, and business predictions. For Fello-preneurs, my only advice, plan in advance. Don’t wait for the day you will get funding or money to do Digital Marketing. Invest in good freelancers or tools that help you reach to Digital heights.
You said you took feedback on board to improve Joosworks. How important was this feedback and what comments and criticisms stood out to you the most?
We ran tests with the largest ecommerce and analytics firms. It helped us build confidence about our product. Feedback was very important. It told us what we should say, how to pitch, what problems beyond the ones we thought it could solve. Most people told us, it is impossible to predict the future of a Digital campaign with higher accuracy using only single variable. We worked hard to improve and now our software predicts numbers with a high and transparent accuracy.
What has your experience with raising capital been like? Can you share some tips with other startups?
Within a short amount of time we have raised good interest from a number of investors. We are in the Seed Funding stage and hopeful of closing a few conversations very soon. The one tip that I rate highly would be that “never assume, always ask”. Send out an email, call, reach out to know what is happening to your pitch. It’s a busy world and time is of essence. Respect your time and the Investors time.
What is the future like for future tellers?
Tough. We face resistance and awe from different people. Since it does not require any special skills and is so easy to use. We hear from the experts in various fields it cuts down time. It is good and bad in different ways.
Where can we find you online?
Best to connect with me on Linkedin.
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Mark is a current journalism student in DCU and has covered a range of topics across print and radio. Having taken a class on entrepreneurship, he found startups were the most exciting thing happening in Ireland and developed a keen interest in them. Apart from technology, Mark has a love for biographies and Woody Allen films. You can contact him on Twitter or LinkedIn.