How The Founder Of buzzd Turned Failure Into Triumph At His First Startup – with Nihal Mehta
In 1999, life seemed great for Nihal Mehta. He raised money for an internet-based city guide after doing little more than scribbling an idea for a dotcom on a napkin. Those were heady days in the business. Then the dotcom bubble burst and his ad-based business suddenly found itself without advertisers. When I asked why he didn’t give up, he said, “I definitely thought about it a lot. I was probably just being stubborn.”
But his persistence paid off. Listen to the full interview to hear how he save his business by launching ipsh!, a mobile marketing agency which he later sold to Omnicom. (And be sure to hear what he did with a copy of the wire transfer after the money hit his account.)
Today Nihal is back with a new company, buzzd which is helping businesses and consumers take advantage of the location-based features being added to mobile phones.
Andrew: Before we start, you’ve probably seen posts like this on TechCrunch a lot, right? Where they list all the start-ups that were recently launched at Founder Institute? Well, I want to call your attention to it because Founder Institute is accepting applications right now and I hope you apply. Because if you are accepted, you’ll have access to experienced CEOs as mentors. You’ll get introductions to investors, you’ll have access to the press, and other resources to help you launch your company right.
They’re accepting applications right now at FounderInstitute.com.
And remember Patrick Buckley, who I interviewed? He’s the guy who came up with an idea for an iPad case and he built a store to sell it online. Well, a few months after he did that, he generated about a million dollars in sales. The platform Patrick used is Shopify. If you have an idea to sell anything, set up your store on Shopify.com, because Shopify’s...
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