Nwanyinma Dike
Welcome everyone to the Atlanta Startup Podcast. I’m Nwanyinma Dike, the Managing Director of Startup Runway. And I’m super, super excited to welcome Gera Baano-Stewart, II, founder of SimpNow. Thank you for joining us, Gera.
Gera Baano-Stewart II
Thank you for having me. Of course, it’s nice, especially doing it with people that I’ve known and also, especially the Valor Team. You guys helped me out and see the whole process from Startup Runway to now.
Nwanyinma Dike
Absolutely. And I love that you mentioned that I was particularly excited about the discussion because you are our most recent winner for the audience favorite at last December [Startup] Runway Showcase. And it was very well deserved, you were able to engage the crowd well. You’re able to expertly weave humor and artists audience participation into your pitch. So I just wanted to be able to reach back out to you be able to engage you on the podcast and share with our audience a bit more about what said now is what you’re building and how you found your way to this project and entrepreneurship in general.
Gera Baano-Stewart II
SimpNow essentially started back when I was learning how to program when I was 12 – 13 years old, I’ll try to learn how to make my version of Fruit Ninja Temple Run, soccer pay for my AAU, and travel sports teams like basketball and baseball, football, mainly because I’m joining all these different sports leagues and easily cost two $300. And my dad was like, you want to keep joining these leagues and travel for these teams, to like, you might as well make one of these viral apps to become a millionaire. He told me that when I was like 12, 13 years old, so I used to go to the library, and my mom was a trustee at the local library, and I learned Objective C. Objective C was swift before swift language. And between that progression from 2013 to entering college, I stopped programming until my sophomore year of college, I got back into it. Because I saw this kid on TikTok. He said that he made 9 to 50k with this simple app. I saw that and I got right back into the program at first, my major was aerospace engineering. So I switched from aerospace to software engineer. And that whole timeline from sophomore year college to now is a whole crazy timeline itself. So fast forward to like last year, so now was officially released. And it took us like a year and a half to get it on the App Store. Because the app store, they don’t allow any new dating apps. So that’s that was a whole detour itself. But it was released around this time a year ago. And ironically, when we first released it, within our first two weeks, we went viral on TikTok. It’s a TikTok video of me explaining simply why it made sense what happened between like, from my progression from developing the app and just the whole the whole backstory about how I became cheated on in my love life-sucking how me and my friends are using Hitch, Tinder, Bumble, and all the dating like we’re getting no dates, not It’s not like dates that we’re all matching the same girls and same girls are just not responding just all acting the same. So it was okay, why not make our dating app? And the whole reason was, if I make a dating app net, I told my friends since I’m not a programmer, if I make a dating app what if this sounds crazy, but what if, when they get on the day that they see my profile, your profile and your profile, I’m telling my friend, they see all our profiles first. And then they see everyone else’s, so it forces so so that was a crazy idea. And that was when we always joke around with LC I’m gonna make it so I made sighs we ended up making it. And of course, I didn’t add that feature. But it was funny if I did, but it just worked out in our first two weeks at that Tiktok video, we got a little over 3500 downloads if you went 161 on Apple social networking charts, and that helped us propel to get a lump sum of users in like a 24 or 48 hour period thinks that TikTok. So yeah, that TikTok from last year to now has been a whole progression in terms of just creating and curating a startup, a team, and everything.
Nwanyinma Dike
What I’m noticing and the trend is it’s almost as if you get an idea or you get a dare. Hey, you’re gonna do this thing, if you want this, go, you should go build it. So for example, with your dad, where, hey, if you want your au to be paid for Go, go and do what those folks are doing and build an app that will get you money. And then the flip side, or fast forward a few years, you’re amongst your friends, you’ve noticed this problem. And it’s like, “Oh dare, let’s build an app that makes us be at the top of the list”. And then from those kinds of dare, you’re able to, for lack of a better word, maybe put some sort of pen to paper by hence the keys and able to develop an actual tool and a solution. Would you say at the root of your success, at least to date, or the work that you’ve done to date, Is that can do that, “Okay, I’ll figure it out kind of attitude”?
Gera Baano-Stewart II
No, I’d say everything I have ever succeeded in life is if it’s from the E-commerce side of things, or start, even in school, or even sports, when I was playing college, sports has always been like no, I could do I could do it. It may make no sense why there’s not a solution for this already.
Nwanyinma Dike
And so what would you say is what resonated or is resonating with your customers, all that activity on social media? What’s SimpNow, what’s resonating with your users that hasn’t been with all the other apps that are out there for dating?
Gera Baano-Stewart II
I’ll say number one is the term “Simp”. Second, someone in the genuine community here Simp, basically started dying, laughing. They’re like, “Oh, you call the dating app “Simp” and I say yes”. And it’s just the meaning behind seems kind of a negative term. So what used to call me a “Simp” in high school, and it wasn’t as big as it is now the term, I just learned that, why not flip that negative term, but to some positive, because when you get married, essentially, you can get sick for your spouse, you’re going to be head over heels for your spouse. The only reason why people it’s called “Simp” now is because just simply for the wrong person, you said before a person doesn’t deserve your love, or your attention. So we just see, as let’s make sure that you sent to the right person. So then you’re both it’s okay to “Simp”. And they just love meeting some people, they don’t even like, they don’t even care about buying and loving the app, they just download the app, just to post on the social side, just so they can still be a “Simp”. So it’s following this cultivate around just being a “Simp” and just being a “Simp” proud.
Nwanyinma Dike
I love that it’s like, you catch people with the name, people are curious, like, what is this about? And then you keep people because you have like this ecosystem of folks who are there for them, for the similar reason, they are trying to find love or they’re sincerely, or they’re trying to find a connection right now sincerely and trying to avoid some of the other pitfalls and other apps. So that’s super cool. So one, so that a bit of that energy translated into the showcase in December, where people were drawn into what you were building because of this, this idea of a sense of like the hidden joke or the underlying joke around, the negative term around “Simp” or how you think about since until you got to the moment of hearing your pitch. So I want to hear a bit more about how you prepared for your pitch. And how that ultimately, how you knew that your preparation was going to make you successful in a day?
Gera Baano-Stewart II
I was happy to prepare for my pitch. It sounds crazy to say but in all my pitches, I actually don’t prepare in terms of like what I’m gonna say, I just prepare in terms like making sure that making sure that I put down certain facts and stats behind certain things. I never prepare like okay, let me make sure I do a three-minute to five-minute pitch, I just go over a list of things that I need to say. And I may go over a week ahead of time just so I don’t have to worry about it for a day or two. I think I think anytime we put competitions I think of it as a test when I’m in school I start preparing a week ahead of it just to make sure that I study every two to three hours a day and the day or two before the test, I could just relax and not be panicking that oh I didn’t study for like most students so I just the most part hour or 90 minutes going over certain details of my head. And I know what details I can hit and what stuff that will hit in terms like a crowd because of the comedic value and I learned that comedic stuff from like my pops and my godfather was comedic so really just know certain things to add in and Pisco decisions, people are always kind of serious, because you’re trying to get money for your startup. And a lot of startups having a really serious global solution, some may be in the healthcare, some may be in law, you know, with me being a date, and everyone dates like, well, we all come from date and you know, regardless, and then may not be seen as serious because it’s like, oh, you know, people date and break up every year. So but as long as like a tie in some facts to make it serious, but also make it funny, and get the whole crowd into it. I think it’s, it’s always it’s kind of natural to me.
Nwanyinma Dike
The fact that it is light, and the subject is not as politically serious, does not take away from the fact that this is a business that has a lot of promise and a lot of growth, and you’ve already had great traction that you were able to represent in your pitch. So on that, no, I’m curious as to where since now is now what you’re looking forward to in the next few months of the year. Just essentially, where’s it now is as a business.
Gera Baano-Stewart II
Okay, so right now, we just crossed over 30,000 complete downloads in the full calendar year. And really, we’re just trying to figure out how can we stay consistent in terms of the team scaling, and in terms of hitting certain sprints or hitting certain tasks because we’ll have high months of 5 to 10,000 downloads, but then we have two low months only 15, or just 2000 downloads. So just trying to find that medium and being right there. But right now, we’re just implementing, and trying to get this partnership with OpenTable. So because one of our best features on Simp is you can schedule a date. So we see we call the scheduled date feature kind of like county when you schedule a call or meeting with somebody, it gives you the time and the dates that they’re available, and you click on a time date, and then you see what type of dates they’re interested in, and you pick one of the dates that they’re interested in. Or you pick a new day that you have, like, let’s say a pottery-making class. And that’s already on the app. But now we’re trying to implement OpenTable with this partnership that we’re trying to get, hopefully next six months that not only will it be like, Okay, it’s booked on your calendar or sent, but it will be booked through the restaurant, as well. So you don’t gotta worry about calling the restaurant or booking it to AMC for the movie tickets. So that’s one of the key features that we’re trying to work on right now. And the other one is, we’re waiting on our Simp mascot, which sounds super crazy, super crazy, but we’re getting a Simp mascot. And you’ve been in the process for this for a while, but we’re trying to get the right figure for the mascot. So when you think about mascot, just think of like Duolingo per se Duolingo mascot has that little bird that little bird is doing crazy numbers on TikTok was doing pretty well on TikTok before with videos hitting one to 2 million views easily. We believe getting a mascot into a funny video the mascot will propel TikTok to 10 and 20 million on just one video per se. So that’s two things though back definitely go into more about some other stuff if needed.
Nwanyinma Dike
That’s really cool. I think you guys doubling down on the social success, you’ve had dad attraction, and you have this great idea. And that probably says a lot about where you are as a founder. So for example, you are, you are in my right leg, still a student working on this project. Right. And the majority of your team are also current students as well.
Gera Baano-Stewart II
Yeah, most of our team, and then we got one full-time engineer overseas, but the majority of teams are students or two recent grads, and we got three interns and one full-time.
Nwanyinma Dike
And you guys have been done being able to do incredible things. So can you give a bit about the pros and cons of being a founder while being a full-time student?
Gera Baano-Stewart II
Yes, I’ll say the pros definitely while being a student founder is you just try so much stuff, you only have to worry about failing, per se, because it’s like if I fail, I’m still so young. I don’t have too many. I don’t have a family. I don’t have I don’t have so many responsibilities down just like oh, wow, I need to make sure this works out that I’m panicking. So you have a lot of leeway in terms of, of course, you want to miss a workout but you’re not stressed over a workout. You just know what if I put in these 20 hours sometimes a day, I got that variability, which as if I had a family or something I can’t put in the 20 hours that I’ve made if you only put in eight hours a day, and another pro would just say a lot of people are really open to helping you out. One of my friends has a startup he raised 2 million for. And he was just telling me to connect with as many people as you can why You’re young and in school just because the second that you’re in school, you email people from your school email, they’re more receptive in terms of response that email, which as respond to your business or your company email, because when they see emails contacting them, let’s say you’re trying to get a big mentor, you’re trying to just connect with some other big founders, or whoever it can be a small find out that they’re more receptive to respond those emails from students than from a person that’s responding as email, not from a business email, they’re like, Oh, this is another one this, like, he just said that use your student email and chop and use that student line as long as you can. Because the second day, you could be one month out of school, you’re not saying that you’re not a student, people treat you way differently. And they’re not as helpful as they used to, be because they like, Oh, I’m helping out this young kid, let me let me, let me put this arm around you. And that’s the thing I learned a lot of people, they’re like, Oh, I see a lot of you and me. And they can just be saying that just because they may see a lot of themselves to me. But it’s just funny because this is just, it’s just like, you know, they all say the same thing. But that’s just because they say, Oh, this young kid, he’s doing some dough with this stop at that startup. And, they may see that you’re like if I help him out in the slides, where I could be part of his story. But if I was, let’s say, out of school, when I was a little or like 27, they may not be as helpful like, oh, this grown kid by Yo, he’s so even though 27 is still young. So that’s, that’s the Pro and that’s kind of right there. And not a con I definitely say is just time management. You got to just learn better. By time management, got few assignments, I have a few assignments today, that I have to complete, but it is just time management, just knowing when things need to be said and things need to be done. But that’s just the life. You know, when you get adult. You gotta be better time management guys to be successful, either. If it’s waking up at 11 am, or we’re gonna bet 6 or 5 am, I mean, those different people work at different times.
Nwanyinma Dike
Yeah, I guess it hasn’t changed. But I appreciate you highlighting, like that difference. There is something about being in a state where your students maybe folks, they less likely to see you as competitive or as a competitor, in that freedom.
Gera Baano-Stewart II
My mentor’s name is Jerry, and he sold his company back in 2000. When I was a kid either way, and he asked me straight, he was like, do you see me as competition? I say yeah, yeah, why not? Even though we’re not in the same field. He’s eight years older than me. And then I see his face go from smiling, so amazed, like, how can you see me as competition? Like we’re on two different playing fields, and then I’ll just play him. It doesn’t matter how much bigger you are in terms of your field. I just still see you as calm I feel I could reach where you had two years, I fly to overtake your business. And then and then at first he was offended, but then he was okay. I respect, that you that you actually think that you could compete with me even though I know you can’t. But then he but then it was funny because he then said after he said that he was like what is good? I just didn’t school then because he wasn’t, I would. I would have stopped being your mentor then. Because it was like, oh, even though I will never go to this field, though. It was like, Oh, let me just try to see what I can do hit the industry that.
Nwanyinma Dike
So there you go. You had a direct conversation confirming that thought process. Yeah, I like that idea of competition. But I will say that here at Startup Runway, we’re all about engaging founders making sure that they have an opportunity especially those who are underrepresented and have a chance to meet their first investors. I know it’s still early since the showcase I wanted to still have it and to see how your experience wasn’t the runway but showcase and in any way how was meant for you in moving and making some progress with temp now.
Gera Baano-Stewart II
Yeah, the showcase was awesome. Especially if I’ve been in a few Pitch Competition showcases. I put that on my top showcases man just because not just the companies that were there. That was pitching. I felt that there were some great ones, though. It was one that I was surprised by. I didn’t when I was like, wow, I thought hers was amazing. And if I was an investor, she needed 2 million from me I wouldn’t give her 2 million right then there. We’re definitely with the pedigree of companies and the people that I was there with. Not just the people in VC but people in other industries it was well. And you know, you can’t get better than having the mayor of Atlanta pulled by just from the just freeze a little bit, but it’s still going now. But yeah, and then you can’t get much better than having the mayor of Atlanta pull up. So I feel like that’s one of the top two suitcases that I’ve been at. And what was the second question?
Nwanyinma Dike
I’m sorry, I was just how it might have been helpful in you guys making progress, even though it’s only been since December.
Gera Baano-Stewart II
Made some progress. We’ve been contacted by two VC firms and one VC group from Emory. So I definitely progress in terms of that scope of things with funding but right now, set centers are pretty profitable with our Mars and our other businesses would be my friends got we are our self-lenders. I think that we even tried to get funding for cement, maybe for I just thought that we just created this AI startup, but, I think we will get funding for that one. But for simple, I think I think we can just, you know, just bootstrap since forever, just because also, we’re now releasing merch percent, we got search in the back that says, Stop effing your ex. And how’d you Love life, people are loving that we also got a SIM card and card game coming out. So we feel like we can make way more than the revenue from sent easily to, like, fulfill whatever needs.
Nwanyinma Dike
Absolutely. And I love that for you guys. I’m always keen to give anyone advice or give people thoughts as it relates to funding there is there are multiple ways to fund your path forward as a business as a startup. I know VCs, one is important funding funding mechanism, but there are many others. There’s bootstrapping, and self-funding this grant, there are multiple different ways to fund your your company. And so I love that, ultimately, sip now is funding its own, you’re profitable. That is the goal when you’re building a business being profitable. So being there already is awesome. So one, I think this conversation has been great. I want to make sure that you give a get a chance if there’s anything that you would love to share or our listeners know that these are other folks who are trying to start businesses in the Southeast Atlanta region. These other investors, is there anything from your perspective that you would like to leave as a gym for our audience?
Gera Baano-Stewart II
I would just say, reach for the sky. Because if you reached if you reach for the sky, at least you will land on the clouds. That’s something I always thought about. In terms of businesses, and businesses live, you know, just strive for the highest stuff just because you just never know even if let’s say you don’t hit your goal of raising timber, you may raise 7.5 milk, or even if it’s in school, if you had to go to Harvard Law. Okay, you may just get into Columbia Law yield law. So always try to reach for the highest point, you just never know what happened in the melee. Just, you know, keep trying, you know, keep going just because, you know, with me, we sold a small startup, when that sophomore year, when I switched from aerospace to soccer, I sold a little startup called You Vibe, it was an app and App Store as a whole another crazy story behind that. But that was just a replication app of the person that I was talking about earlier he said he made 950 K in the year for all. So I made the same app. And we sold that within our first two months. So just keep trying and keep, you know, doing different things. But always hone in on one or two skills just because if you try too many skills, you just will never be good at one and you just be always looking back and like dang, I should have just done that. I’ve done that. And you’ll never want to be that person that’s always like, Oh, I could have been so I could have been that. Just starting out doing that because life goes by so fast. Relationships go by so fast. Like you just don’t want to regret that at all.
Nwanyinma Dike
I think that’s excellent. That’s a good piece of advice. at the pace that you’re growing what you’ve already been able to accomplish. You are taking your own advice. Doing it now. No regrets. I appreciate that. So for our audience, how can they keep up with you? Where can they find you? Can you share that bit of info with folks?
Gera Baano-Stewart II
I will say all social media job Donald Graban “Oh, all social media, Twitter, YouTube. We just started a YouTube channel. We had one case, the guy was there going over startups and just building a startup in public. And all it takes on all social media is your job I know. Since sitting now on IG the Simp app on Twitter, and TikTok we had like maybe five to 10 Different SIP accounts, one of our biggest Simp accounts which had 30k followers got banned. But, that’s it public interviews and a lady in Winnipeg interview said some pretty harsh stuff, and TikTok banner her account just because of something that another lady said in our video, but it’s still our video that we’re doing. We’re the ones doing the public interviews, but uh, still like, just look up sitting now Sunday and you see that maybe three or four accounts but we’re adding more accounts just because we call it the Tick Tock the real effect. You make 10 Plus accounts on TikTok tock and you repost the same video, similar videos when the countdown blew up, and it just works like that. And the last thing I’ll say, be on the lookout for the new stuff that me and my friends from Danny just started called Polymath.ai. We’re creating AI virtual workers. So essentially, the same way that you hire a product manager and chief software engineer anything like that, you will hire a virtual worker from us for 30, not $33 $5 a month. And they will do all the similar work that an entry-level worker would do for you. And they can message you on Slack. It could hop on Zoom calls like this, and they can message a comment back to you in a chat. And it’s like a real employee for 1/10 of the price. That’s something we’re working on. That’d be out and about. Beta might be out for months. So just look out for that.
Nwanyinma Dike
I’m excited about it, and probably will, maybe we’ll pull you back in for another pitch for that, that that found that new endeavor, that new startup so I enjoyed this conversation. Dara, we’re all going to keep track of you. And thank you, listeners. Have a great rest of your day.
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