San Francisco-based Groopt (www.groopt.com) allows its users to create ad-free groups to privately communicate, schedule and share with the people and groups that matter the most to them. I talked with some of the team from Groopt — Patrick Allen, chief; Nick Crossman, chief excelerator; and Erik Bro, creative director — about the company’s growth and future plans:
Q: How did the concept and development of Groopt occur?
PA: Though the idea for Groopt was conceived back in 2007… in Florence, Italy over a bottle of vino… it was baked into what it is today over the course of the last three years as we learned from our customers. At the outset, we wanted to make it easier for fraternities and sororities to manage their operations. After working day in and day out with the market, it became very apparent there was a much deeper demand for simple group management in a variety of related verticals; alumni, professional organizations, schools, sports teams… you name it.
Q: How does Groopt work?
NC: Groopt provides a free, private, online network to connect you with the groups you love. From single groups like your fraternity, study group or honor society to international organizations with hundreds of chapters, Groopt unites your entire membership online with a productive space to get things done. To get started as a single group, just visit Groopt.com and sign up in less than a minute. If you want to onboard your entire organization, e-mail us your member .CSV and we’ll deploy Groopt Community for your entire membership within 24 hours. It’s really that simple — no contracts, no ads, no distractions… just your members.
Q: What have been your biggest obstacles so far?
PA: As first-time entrepreneurs, we wanted to learn the hard way before leveraging outside capital, so we made the decision to remain bootstrapped until profitable. Now that we’ve established ourselves and grown to be an 11-person self-funded company, it was clearly the right decision, but there were certainly moments of doubt… like when we had to cancel our heating and relocate far outside the city.
Q: What has been your biggest success?
PA: Growing from 15,000 to 250,000 members and records in 30 days is pretty hard to beat.
Q: What makes Groopt different than similar competitors in the marketplace, i.e., Google+ Hangouts?
PA: Unlike Google Hangouts, Groopt is not just for ad-hoc communication. We provide organizations with far more management tools to help them run their groups or business, all in a 100 percent ad-free space. Organizations can setup custom permission schemes for an unlimited number of subgroups, accept online payments (i.e. rent, dues, donations, etc.), sell tickets to events and track points for meeting attendance. We also offer an awards platform that digitalizes the submission and judging process for scholarships and awards.
Q: What are your top three goals for Groopt over the next year?
PA: Well, we just opened up our seed round of financing so I’d have to say buttoning that up is first in line. From there, my first and foremost goal is to preserve the culture we’ve worked so hard to develop, regardless of how fast we scale. Last, but not least, we will be moving in to our first real office space.
Q: What misunderstandings do people have about startups?
EB: I think the biggest misunderstanding people have about startups is that it’s like remodeling and flipping a house. A startup mentality should be to build a good, sustainable business that you are deeply invested in, not to build a company you can flip and sell in a year. Starting a business is much more challenging than people think it is. In order to be successful, you must be passionate about the goals you’re working toward, constantly ready to adapt and learn, dedicated to choosing the right team members. Your team members are the ones who will inspire you to grow and build your business. In a startup, you never have enough time or team members to do all the work that needs to be done. You and your team must all be so driven to make the business work that non-designers start sketching, non-techs learn to code, and the introverts are ready to stand up and introduce your company to anyone who will listen… The only way to keep your company together, inspired and moving forward is to focus on building a sustainable business that you all believe in, rather than the big payday.
John A. Lahtinen is a freelance writer/editor based in Farmington. Reach him at lahts@yahoo.com.
