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Expert

Eran Eyal CEO, Investor and Blockchain Enthusiast and hodlr.

New York

Co-founder // CEO at Shopin, CEO & founder StartupHat, Springleap, co-founder Evly (acquired). Designer of 16 mobile handsets (acquired). Angel investor and advisor at multiple startups. Passionate about startups and working with amazing people to solve big problems in a scalable way, especially crowdsourcing and marketplaces. I advise on raising angel/seed/vc fundraising in the US, EU and African markets, crowdsourcing, community, marketplaces, marketing, strategy, and crowdfunding. Achievements: 1. won Techstars Pitchnite 2. won Alleyboost Investor Pitchnite 3. won the United Nations World Summit Award for most innovative ebusiness, 4. was listed in Fast Company most innovative companies, 5. winner of Mentorcamp Canada and 2nd place…

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9

Calls

17

Reviews

Eran donates to charity: water ($73.26)

Growth Hacking

Raising capital

Fundraising

Marketplaces

Crowdsourcing

Startups

Funding

Venture Funding

Cryptocurrency

blockchain

Member since October 2012

Areas of Expertise

Reviews 17
Answers 21

Growth Hacking

Raising capital

Fundraising

Marketplaces

Crowdsourcing

Startups

Funding

Venture Funding

Cryptocurrency

blockchain

Clarity

Eran Eyal

New York

Co-founder // CEO at Shopin, CEO & founder StartupHat, Springleap, co-founder Evly (acquired). Designer of 16 mobile handsets (acquired). Angel investor and advisor at multiple startups.

Passionate about startups and working with amazing people to solve big problems in a scalable way, especially crowdsourcing and marketplaces.

I advise on raising angel/seed/vc fundraising in the US, EU and African markets, crowdsourcing, community, marketplaces, marketing, strategy, and crowdfunding.

Achievements:
1. won Techstars Pitchnite
2. won Alleyboost Investor Pitchnite
3. won the United Nations World Summit Award for most innovative ebusiness,
4. was listed in Fast Company most innovative companies,
5. winner of Mentorcamp Canada and 2nd place at the Innovation 100 awards in California - beating Apple, Zazzle, eBay, Zappos and all our competitors.

I'm here to help. Looking forward to connecting.

$6.67/min

Eran donates to charity: water ($73.26)

9

9 Calls

17

17 Reviews

43 minutes
Avg. call

Growth Hacking Raising capital Fundraising Marketplaces Crowdsourcing Startups Funding Venture Funding Cryptocurrency blockchain

Call me to talk about

Early Stage Fundraising

Over the past 15 years I have participated in various startups as an angel investor and sourced angel investment and venture capital for startups I have been involved in as a founder or advisor.

Most notably:

1. Springleap: raised $1,5m

2. Evly (Acquired 2013): raised +$2m

3. Passo - (Chairman of the advisory board, angel investor) Helped Passo raise their angel and seed funding round. Raised +$2m

4. iDea - (Acquired 2002, CEO | Founder) raised angel investment and sold the company to one of the largest European handset manufacturers within 6 months

Crowdsourcing and Marketplaces

in the past 6 years I have built 2 crowdsourcing platforms, raised over $3.5m in seed funding and Series A for both. One of them was acquired in 2013.

At both platforms I was product owner and responsible for all functional specifications, hiring teams and strategy. I was also responsible for growth hacking our crowdsourcing communities.

Evly is a drag-and-drop crowdsourcing site builder with tools to embed every challenge into Facebook pages. In 5 minutes anyone can create any type of crowdsourcing site with no experience whatsoever and engage fans in Facebook and across the web.

Springleap is a marketplace of over 180,000 advertising agency experts for the world's best insights and copy-testing.

Each presented challenges ranging from user acquisition strategies through to complex issues such as vetting the crowd and writing complex algorithms to weed out fraudulent voting styles.

http://www.springleap.com

Online Community Building

Grew Springleap's expert marketplace from 22,000 creatives to 180,000 advertising agency experts in 4 months. Created systems for organic growth.

I can show you ways to hack your marketplace growth using tried and tested techniques that have low costs and high returns.

http://www.springleap.com

Serial entrepreneur, angel investor and advisor at several startups.

20 years of experience is product, design, growth hacking, crowdsourcing, raising funding, building teams, founding startups, sales, legal and marketing.

Product Ownership & Design

In the past few years I have served as product owner and designer, leading and advising teams at:
1. Evly.com (acquired)
2. Springleap.com
3. The Loove
4. Passo
5. Brandvertisor
6. Solar Screen
and more.

In 2001 I designed 16 mobile phones and wrote a thesis that changed the way a large European mobile phone manufacturer viewed ergonomics, materials, aesthetics and marketing. In the years since then I have consulted for most of the large manufacturers to help them create products for humans.

Answers 21
Reviews 17

Answers

Eran Eyal answered

What is the best way to network with VC's?

Agree with Chris (Above).

Here's my 1-2-3.

1. A warm intro is brilliant - especially from a company they funded before OR missed out on that did darn well.

2. Keep answers short, but loaded to enlist questioning from them. This creates a discussion rather than a bombardment. Ask them questions and let them discover the answers about your product by leading them in.

3. Don't pitch a VC - pitch a partner who understands the opportunity and has taken a stake in something similar or ancillary.

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Venture Capital

Raising capital

Eran Eyal answered

Every interview with an entrepreneur goes the same. They say there is no money made the first year. What goes on this first year?

When I took over Springleap, we made money from month 1 and that has never changed.

Let's rather start with this:

Revenue vs profits vs Runway. They're all different.

As a startup you figure out your costs for 18 months and that's your runway. That's what you raise. Thereafter, show how you're going to make capital.

Fact is: some startups don't "make" (turn a profit) in the first year. That's why the valuations are significantly lower. It's not the lack of revenue... it the lack of evidence of market fit. It's the data that's missing which makes the investment super risky. Getting market fit, adoption and validation is always best shown in scalable predictable revenue.

So what goes on in this first year?

Assuming you're not dealing with freemium or community models that are "build it, get them through the doors, get the engaged and then figure it out" - you need to figure out the path to revenue, average lifetime value of a customer and cost of acquiring a customer.

First 2-3 months should be MVP. Thereafter a month or 2 of finding the market fit data. Then agile redevelopment based on A/B testing and surveys. By this point you're 6 months in. The next 6 months are all about poking and prodding to find the scalable model. As my VC pal Eliot from Boldstart says: Build, validate, scale.

Investors classical want to get involved in the scale part unless it's your F&F round, where they're betting on the jockey.

We actually got Springleap profitable in month 2 and 3 - I think Lane Becker would agree that serendipity always plays a part, but heck, we worked super hard and were relentless.

We used a variety of techniques. One of the most effective: get clients to pay for us to develop the things they wanted that made sense to dev for the platform. It's a great tactic: go in. Listen to their searing pains, gaping holes and primary goals.

If your product/ service can service these, offer the dev at barebone costs and put a margin on top for the service itself. Show a huge discount and that you're doing something special for them that you were only planning on doing much later.

Nail this technique and you will get:

1. Case Studies
2. Revenue
3. Testimonials
4. Referals
5. Data
6. Product

Hope this helps. Live long, prosper and build stuff people will use. Drop me a call if you want to pick my brain apart on the matter.

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bootstrapping

Sales & Biz Dev

Brand development

Eran Eyal answered

What are some weak habits that young entrepreneurs often do not notice about themselves?

1. Asking for advice early enough - you're bullish when you're young. Often young entrepreneurs don't leverage their advisory board often enough as they feel they have to prove themselves on their own steam.

2. Focus - they get torn this way and that by new opportunities.

3. Emotional maturity - I wrote an article about this: http://startuphat.com/seasoned-entrepreneurs-curb-their-enthusiasm-and-depression/ - mindfully navigating the troughs and crests of one's emotions is a critical trait that needs to be cultivated.

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Business Coaching

Life Coaching

Sales & Biz Dev

Eran Eyal answered

I'm looking for an amazing leadgen page and ad manager. Any suggestions?

Thanks Jeremy - I wouldn't touch Odesk or Elance with a 10 foot barge pole :P

The quality is way too low in general.

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Lead Generation

Online Lead Generation

Marketing

Eran Eyal answered

Should I brand my name even though I already work for a well-recognized brand?

It's my opinion that establishing a clear personal brand position and strengthening it in the marketplace is an asset to your employer and yourself.

As long as it's not distracting you from delivering on your KPIs, and creating greater positive awareness of your relationship to the business and it's products - you're aiding he business.

Many companies can attribute the success of their traction, market positioning and inbound marketing due to the personal brand of its executives.

As their brand develops, they can become a powerful beacon and voice for the company.

It all comes down to execution, market perception, alignment and positioning.

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Career Development

Branding & Identity

Personal Branding

Eran Eyal answered

I am launching a second startup. What type of partnership role should I take within the new venture?

I currently own a small but very successful digital eCommerce agency that design, build, support and market enterprise eCommerce sites.

My idea is to launch a separate eCommerce agency entirely focused on an eCommerce market that is more towards eCommerce SMB's. I have been trying to figure out how I can use my experience and knowledge to find a hungry young co-founder that would like to start up the company. I finally found that person who I've known for some time, he's been freelancing for several years and only making $40k a year. He isn't as experienced as myself, but with guidance and mentoring I believe he can grow into a great leader.

Ultimately, I'm trying to figure out how I can eventually move away from being an active partner and into more of an advisory role once the company is profitable. I'd like this to be a separate company I start-up and is run by our team. I feel like I can set up this agency to grow with the team around it, as I have an idea to find ANOTHER co-founder who will be responsible for business development, this way we have two active partners working in the company who have more of an invested interest in the companies success.

How am I contributing to the company?

I'm bringing all my experience to the table and implementing this into the agency, which is the advantage I bring to the business.

Here are a few details about my experience and INITIAL involvement with this startup agency:

- Business Development (This would eventually be replaced with a full-time employee once the business has positive cash flow)
- Strategic Partnerships
- Process Implementation
- SOPS Setup
- Pricing Strategy
- Marketing Strategy

My co-founders responsibility:

- Sales initially
- Project Management once we have projects rolling in
- Web development initially until we grow to be able to bring on a full-time hire
- Payables & Receivables

Questions:

1.) What type of partnership role should I be considering for myself?

I would think about this: How critical are you to the other founder? If massively so, and you need to work there one day of the week - it's a big distraction to the current business.

I think you should try this calculator out. It can help to keep a clear head: http://foundrs.com/

Also - make sure your partners/ stakeholders at the existing business are happy with you opening another business and diluting your focus. From a founder to another founder: we both know it's ALWAYS more work and stress than you expect.

2.) Should I be getting a salary if I'm not actively involved in the business after year 1/2?

I would say no unless you're materially contributing to the success and growth of the business regularly. Rather look to a dividend structure of some sort. It's not unusual once the company is really doing well that advisors are regularly rewarded in cash or equity. That's normally the case in a VERY mature business.

3.) How should I be setting my schedule to contribute to the company from advisor role?

Depends on how much lift the founder and business needs. Obviously year 1 and 2 will be a lot of work, and you definitely don't want a "waterfall" experience of suddenly walking in one day and seeing everything has veered off track substantially.

Either allocate 1-2 hours each day at the same time everyday or 1 day of the week which is the least intense day at your existing business.

4.) How should the partnership ownership be split, considering my future involvement in the company?

Use the calculator I gave you ;)

5.) Any tips on negotiating the partnership so that its fair?

The calculator! Also - incentives on milestones. If they build a really big pie, every slice, slightly smaller or larger will be sweeter for it. Make sure they're rewarded to build out that pie.

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Partnerships

Startups

Digital Agency

Eran Eyal answered

What is the best way to get new customers for a digital agency?

This is one of the core reasons agencies are a service-centric model vs product-centric: quick to monetize and a function of human labor/ effort to scale (unlike products that are usually slower to monetize, require high initial investment but scale really well).

So the answer is either you need to outsource sales and lead generation to an external firm, use a platform like Clozer or inhouse the sales folk. When inhousing sales: #1 recommendation: don't make the sales people find their own leads. They hate that. You need a lead generator (could be outsourced) and a sales person.

The leadgen should be supplemented with inbound marketing for the best effect. The function of a dedicated "leadgen" person is set up meetings and should be rewarded on successful meetings.

First thing you ask the sales person: WHERE'S YOUR BOOK? ie:who are you going to bring with you today (clients) that we can close quick based on existing relationships.

Good sales teams and systems are costly - so chose a path that monetizes quick.

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New Business Development

Eran Eyal answered

How can I determine my ideal customer for a services marketplace similar to airtasker, thumbtack ,and so on.

Identifying user personas is critical to your agenda.

I originally come from South Africa, where the best "tech" startups are fundamentally copies of successful businesses in the USA or EU.

The advantage, of course, is that they can copy many of the aspects of the original market leader: UX, UI, user acquisition strategies, growth tactics, business models etc. They also have a great use-case for raising capital and a potential exit to a local player, PE firm or the original company they copied when the company expands to their shores.

So the key piece of advice: research who their ideal customer is. Read all the articles interviewing the team and watch videos where they discuss these issues. Want to be really sneaky? Get someone to interview them for you. Stalk them on social.

There are a variety of other tools you could be using to analyze their followers on different social media channels to discover who the ideal persona is as well. EG: Sprout Social.

Another thing to do: join their boards and see if you can get some business for yourself to see if you can get a handle on what the interactions are like.

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Marketplaces

Startups

Customer Development

Eran Eyal answered

What is an API that has inventory data for all apparel retailers regarding their name, description, brand, colors, styles, and prices?

Shopstyle has a ton of this. Millions of skus - however, you need to set up your own key identifiers to really make it rock.

For Passo, we built an engine to normalize the data by working with nearly 30 stylists to set our key identifiers

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eCommerce

Comparison Shopping Engines

E-commerce

Eran Eyal answered

For crowdfunding, how many campaigns should you run on a single product?

With limited information provided here (would need to know more detail truly):

It's actually very common to run a campaign twice if the initial campaign was very successful and demand continues.

More often one repeats because:

1. The first campaign was not successful for a variety of reasons (bad perks/ compensation structures / poor pitch or video assets)

2. The fist campaign was immensely successful and you're releasing a new product based on the success of the first campaign (many for Li's have done this such as Chargetech)

Where I hesitate to say yes, is where the campaign was somewhat successful but not capable of shipping a product (hence you need more capital). You can try, but my sense is that in this scenario you failed to ship/ execute and backers will be wary.

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Crowdfunding

Funding

Eran Eyal answered

I'm in Germany and want to get funding for my successful startup. Which VCs should I get in touch with?

First off: Well done! You're over 1000 paying subscribers. That's not easy and a good metric to reach.

Having said that - everything depends on your vertical, lifetime value of the customer, cost of customer acquisition, network effect etc.

Should this all bear out well - there are a number of amazing funds:

1. Intel
2. Axel Springer
3. Point-Nine Capital
4. BDMI
5. Accel Partners
6. DN Capital
7. Index Ventures
8. Hasso Plattner

There are a bunch more I'm familiar with. It has to do with matching your requirements and stage to their mandate.

Hit me up privately if you would like to discuss.

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Raising Venture Capital

Funding

Angel Investor

Reviews

Eran is able to pinpoint the critical issues fast and provide specific and actionable advice. Great to count on his expertise!

Jorge Inda Meza Source: Clarity

Absolutely fantastic! In a matter of minutes we were on the same page and Eran was sharing relevant experience, guidance, explanations and insights. And to top it all off, he was just so easy to talk to. Super!

Awad Makkawi Source: Clarity

The call with Eran was great. He quickly grasped where my head was at and was able to offer some practical advice based on his own experience. I felt confident after the call about the strategy to move forward with. What more could you ask for!

Julio Rivera Source: Clarity

We had an excellent conversation and came up to a very practical and wise plan. One of teh best calls I have ever heard. Eran understand what it takes to raise funds and how to be successful as a startup,

Kess Eburu Source: Clarity

Amazing advise. I highly recommend Eran!

Fernando De la Torre Source: Clarity

Eran was really helpful! He is giving right answers and open your eyes to think & more important to Fight Next Level which you think you deserve :) He understood my main conception of Transparency into advertising & gave me great idea for my Brandvertisor marketplace on how it will be even more useful to advertisers per industry! Great guy & we would keep communicating :)

Nedko Nedkov - Brandvertisor Source: Clarity

Wow! I am blown away by the quality of feedback received. Eran was very quick in grasping the idea and intricacies of what we are trying to build. Provided targeted guidance on the strategy and course we should pursue. Would definitely get in touch with Eran again! Thanks!

Adeel Khan Source: Clarity

It doesn’t take longer than a few minutes with Eran to understand how he got to where he is today. The energy and intensity he brings to a team is contagious. He operates on the next level.

Eran’s honesty in the workplace is a clear indicator of how he conducts business. You always know where you stand with him and he expects the same in return.

His most admirable quality as a CEO is his openness to change. Besides constantly looking for new opportunities and ways to innovate on his own, he is open to suggestions in a constant effort to be the best.

Zak Barry Source: LinkedIn

Eran is probably one of the most inspiring entrepreneurs I have had the privilege to work and travel with. Eran's passion for business and the energy he puts into his ventures is admirable and contagious. Eran is a true inspiration and amazing example to any budding entrepreneur out there. He gets things done on his own terms and refuses to quit. The quintessential entrepreneur

Ansi Gilfillan Source: LinkedIn

Eran is a driven, ambitious CEO who consistently under promises and over delivers. He is a pleasure to work with and further, his work ethic is such, that when Erin puts his name on a task or project (regardless of how many countries and time zones are between you), the job always gets done, well above par. Great work Eran - keep it up!

private private Source: LinkedIn

super motivated team player who is fanatical about achieving maximum results

Eric Edelstein Source: LinkedIn

Member since October 2012