Bootstrapping to $8 Million in 3 Months During the COVID Crisis: Cuver CEO Ammar Amdani (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You didn’t raise any financing? Is all this based on your personal investment in the advertising?

Ammar Amdani: Yes. 

Sramana Mitra: What is the customer acquisition cost? Could you talk about how much you are putting into advertising? What kind of equation have you been able to achieve?

Bootstrapping to $8 Million in 3 Months During the COVID Crisis: Cuver CEO Ammar Amdani (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How are you acquiring customers?

Ammar Amdani: I can tell you about our brand strategy and how we differentiate ourselves from hundreds of competitors. On the outside, it seems like an overcrowded space because a lot of people are targeting the space.

Bootstrapping to $8 Million in 3 Months During the Covid Crisis: Cuver CEO Ammar Amdani (Part 1)

This is a superb story of COVID-era entrepreneurship. Uplifting and thrilling!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

Hit by Covid in New York: Pulsd CEO Mareza Larizadeh (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: The organic pull really drives the business? 

Mareza Larizadeh: The great majority of our active subscribers have joined organically. They have either heard about us or their friends have invited them to join the platform.

Sramana Mitra: How did the revenue land? It was bootstrapped mode going from 2012 when you started this?

Hit by Covid in New York: Pulsd CEO Mareza Larizadeh (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about the kind of experiences and the kind of people who started gravitating towards your platform, making this a financially viable business. 

Mareza Larizadeh: We started partnering with mom-and-pop shops to drive customers their way. We would structure offers. A dinner offer or a brunch offer for example, which we would then sell on our platform with an added perk which generally was a discount for the price.

Hit by Covid in New York: Pulsd CEO Mareza Larizadeh (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me more about the genesis of the new company. 

Mareza Larizadeh: I’ve been coming to New York for a couple of decades now. When I graduated school, I spent a lot of time here for my job in early 2000’s. I was here a lot in the late 2000’s for my old company. I love the city and I wanted to do something that was based here. It was closer to London as well.

Hit by Covid in New York: Pulsd CEO Mareza Larizadeh (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did that grow?

Mareza Larizadeh: It went surprisingly well. We turned the shift around overnight. We had a lot of opportunities on the platform. We went ahead and built something that had 80% of the job description without giving away which company was recruiting.

Hit by Covid in New York: Pulsd CEO Mareza Larizadeh (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How did you reach those people?

Mareza Larizadeh: Andy and Mark served on my board for a few years. I met them at Stanford business school.

Sramana Mitra: They were teachers?

Mareza Larizadeh: They were lecturers there.