The Marketer's Journey from Side Hustle to Startup: Jay Desai

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Mark Evans: I'm Mark Evans, and welcome to Marketing Spark, a podcast that delivers insight from marketers and entrepreneurs in the trenches in twenty five minutes or less. Everyone seems to have a side hustle. It's not enough to just have a full time job anymore. Most side hustles are, at best, hobbies or micro businesses, but sometimes a side hustle turns into a real business. And today, I'm talking to Jay Desai, a b to b marketer who recently launched new business Swipely that has received an enthusiastic response. Welcome to Marketing Spark.

Jay Desai: Hey, Mark. Great to be here. Great to talk about, you know, Swipely and and everything else in between.

Mark Evans: So let's start at the beginning. It wasn't that long ago that you were a full time b to b marketer, mostly around creating content to drive leads. You were doing what a typical b to b marketer was supposed to do. But in the midst of the pandemic, you're you you developed a side hustle, and the side hustle turned into something else. So maybe we can give a little bit of a backstory about you, your track record as an entrepreneur, and what how that evolution from full time employee to startup founder actually happened.

Jay Desai: Yeah. For sure. I think a lot of it goes back to my parents. So my dad owns his own business. And, you know, just being around in that entrepreneurial environment, it kinda puts that spark into you when you see someone working every day to grow their business. You know, I did some things that some other entrepreneurs might have done in the past. So, you know, in in the fifth grade, I used to even have, like, this little newsletter that we made on Microsoft Publisher. I don't know if it's still a a real platform anymore, but we used print to these out and sell them. And one thing that was super awesome is one day I was able to get up to to five employees and was able to pay them actually a dollar each, which was a really, like, awesome moment for me as someone who is, like, 11 years old, no concept of money. It was a really fun thing to do. And so, you know, that that entrepreneurial spirit continued to manifest. You know, I sold gum in middle school. I go to Costco and get the big gum packs and resell the sticks to people, in middle school to to make a little money. And then, you know, I really knew I wanted to be a founder probably at the age of, like, 15. I knew I wanted to start a business, and it was more so a matter of when, not if. Actually, you know, talking about Swipely, that was another project that I started. And before that, I actually gave my chance at a full run at a business back in March. So I started a a sports newsletter that epically failed, did not do so well. But, you know, I spent way too much money than I probably should have before validating, but I learned a lot of things from that. And so I've been able to kinda translate that into my own business. And in terms of, like, the shift for me, you know, I I spent some time a few years in marketing just really getting my my feet wet, kind of understanding the the environment and, like, learning how to be a better marketer. And, you know, it was kind of like a culmination of having that entrepreneurial fire in me and then also being able to be in a a good financial position to take a business risk. Like, anyone that's going to start their own business, obviously, there's a risk involved because you have to spend money upfront with no guarantee of return. So, that's kind of how I ended up here at Swipely.

Mark Evans: So let's take a step back and talk about what you were doing. What was your full time job? How long had you had you been there? What did you like about it? And how did the entrepreneurial itch start to emerge? At what point did you recognize there was a problem? Maybe you looked for other tools to solve that problem and you couldn't find them, and it suddenly dawned on you that maybe there it was time to shift from a full time job to a start up. Describe that journey last year. So you're hard at work. It's in the middle of a pandemic. You've got a full time job to do, but something's happening in the background. Can you give us the backstory?

Jay Desai: Yeah. For sure. So I've been in my last company, Trend, for about a year and three months, I think. So, you know, like I said, I've I've always had this, like, entrepreneurial spirit. Maybe it's something that's in me. I I like to be in control of my environment. And so, you know, as someone who's working for someone, obviously, you know, you get a a degree of autonomy and stuff like that. But I knew it one day, I kinda wanted to run the ship and and give it a shot and see if, you know, I could fight out there for myself to to see how successful I could make it out there. So that was a big part of me that played into it. And it was really just kind of, you know, I I've wanted to be a founder for a really long time, and it was kinda just figuring out what that idea was. And in terms of Swipely, you know, in a problem I faced as I kind of entered you know, I've entered in LinkedIn, and I've kind of, like, been in that space now and creating content, and now I'm on Twitter and and creating content. So as someone in the b to b creator economy, I kinda face the problem that's Swipely is solving myself. So I I really had a hard time, you know, producing content after I gave away everything that I felt that I had. You know, it was hard to to come up with content ideas and and figure out how to repurpose stuff. And, you know, even as a marketer, at my old job trend, we had a newsletter, we had a podcast, like, constantly looking for ideas for that stuff and and creating content. You really need to to keep your ideas organized and and really have a backlog. And so I think all of those factors together kinda created this this product over here, Swipely. They just all kinda climax together and, helped put me in this position.

Mark Evans: We've talked about Swipely. There's some mystery still among the audience, what Swipely actually is. So what is select Swipely? What problems does it solve, and how does it work, and how much does it cost, and where are you at so far in terms of its launch?

Jay Desai: For the audience, so Swipely is basically the way that I describe it is Pinterest for b to b, and I'll unpack that a little bit more. So it's a tool for you to basically save all sorts of modern content. So I think, you know, we've all seen like a bookmark bar and have probably used like a bunch of bookmark apps. Maybe we're also taking screenshots and and doing like a link dump and things like that. But content has really evolved over the past ever since, you know, the the ever since social media has entered the landscape. And, you know, nowadays, we have, you know, video, podcasts like this one, tweets, LinkedIn posts, all sorts of this modern content. And so when I kinda think about traditional content, it's like your websites and images, and then modern content is kinda everything that's come after that. And there's not really a solution that exists out there to be able to save modern content and really organize it. And that's the piece that's really growing the most. Right? People are writing blogs all the time, but I I think I read this crazy stat. You know, there's like 500,000,000 tweets that are going on in a day and only like maybe 50,000,000 blog posts that are posted a day. So that's a really big discrepancy over there, where you're seeing, like, modern content outpacing maybe traditional content by 10 x. And so just being in that type of environment and figuring out, like, micro content seems to be the play where a lot of people are leaning into shorter pieces of content is kinda why it brought me into an interest for Swipely. I I just faced this problem myself and, you know, I was really looking to to go out and solve it.

Mark Evans: You know, it's interesting because as someone like myself who creates a lot of content, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter, I have a podcast, and I curate a lot of content as as well. I've used Pocket, Evernote, Notion, all kinds of different tools to collect and curate content and never found something that did the trick. And what I find surprising is that there wasn't something like Pinterest for b to b content. It's interesting to me that swiply didn't exist before, and all of a sudden, you came on the scene, had this problem, and discovered that, hey. There's an opening here for something like this tool. Were you surprised that there was a gap in the market that you could just walk into?

Jay Desai: Yeah. Maybe a little bit. You know, I I did some research as someone who was a collector. Like, I was I was looking for that solution myself. Right? I I didn't to go out and build it. I thought there might be something out there that would be helpful for solving that issue, but there really wasn't. And, you know, when you combine that with my with the entrepreneurial fire that I have, you know, it was it was pretty pretty I I really wanted to go out and and go and do this and and create Swipely and create a tool like this. And, you know, it's actually pretty interesting. I think content is constantly evolving, and I think even for Swipely as it exists today, the thing that we're going to have to decide and and look at is, you know, how can we stay up to date with the evolution of content? And that's something that a lot of platforms still struggle with. And so I think there's going to be a lot of openings, not just today, but in the future for tools that have a hard time keeping up with changes that are going on. I mean, you're seeing new apps like Clubhouse come in that are just audio only. So I think there's always gonna be opportunity for people to come in, and and there's always gonna be some sort of market gap that needs to be filled. I think it's a matter of how do you fill that gap, and then how do you continue to keep filling the different gaps that pull up right next to you.

Mark Evans: What I'm curious about is when you have a full time job. These days being a b to b marketer is you're on all the time and you're trying to create content and publish content in social media. How do you go from coming up with this idea to actually developing the product, the vision for it, and the strategy for it when you're when you're spending so much time at work? How did you allocate the time? Who did you collaborate with? What was the process to turn it from an idea into reality?

Jay Desai: Yeah. It was really hard. You know, I I don't think I mentioned that earlier, but the company I was working at, Trend, was also a startup itself. You know, there was five of us. It's a team of five. Obviously, there's a lot of work. I was basically doing a lot, like, most of the marketing for the team and and really managing everything. And building any start up is a is a lot of work. Trying to build two start ups is something I would not recommend to anyone out there. But, you know, it it really started out with me thinking from that experience that I have with the sports newsletter, like, how do I create a more minified version of what I have? And so, you know, I had this grand idea for Pinterest for b to b, and I really had to sit down and kinda unpack that. Like, how do we get to something that that's that big. Right? Pinterest is a, I think they're a publicly traded company. They are I yeah. They are publicly traded company, and they do millions and millions of dollars in revenue. So, yeah, you can't just build that in one day. They've done tons of rounds of funding and and all of that stuff. And so, what I really had to sit down was, okay. How do we get there? Like, what can we do as, like, a first step to move closer to that? And so I really had to work through that and kinda landed on our first version, which is what you see currently going on, which is our Chrome extension linked to our dashboard for content saving. So, you know, I figured, hey. If we can save the content, then we can start continuing to keep adding stuff that are there. We don't have to get anyone to create new things, reinvent the wheel. And so it was really just figuring out what's that minimum step, and then going out and and basically doing as little as I possibly could to get this idea out there. And not in the sense of, you know, I I didn't wanna support the idea or do any of that stuff. It's just that launching a product and the more things that you add to a product take a lot of time. It it's very easy to underestimate that. And so by taking a step backwards and thinking, hey. How do I provide the the most minified, like, experience and still kind of plug in some value there. And so, you know, even for when we started the product, you know, it started out as a as a sketch. I have a sketchbook that's sitting in my cabinet over here. I sketched the idea out the October, put together a a single page website, just grabbed it from a template, changed some things out, you know, put together a text only logo that was pretty easy to build, and then just put it out to the network to to see. And so, you know, the product wasn't even in the getting built, right now. What I saw was we were able to get a lot of market validation. You know, we had a lot of people sign up for the wait list. There was a lot of interest generated over there. And, so I actually had to go back to my, one of my friends who's a developer, and I called him up. I think maybe after we hit a 100 people on the wait list, and I was like, hey. I have this product that I haven't built. I put it out into my network. People kinda validated and said they'd be interested, and now I have a 100 people looking for this product that doesn't exist. And so after that, we kinda got into building the product and and really working backwards. And even our email sequence, like, I think I only had one email that got fired right after you signed up. And, you know, occasionally, we'd we'd send out one email a week. We ran, like, a small giveaway that was really, like, low stakes. And it was a lot of low stakes things that allowed me to keep working on my full time job, and kinda just plug into Swipely where I could. And, obviously, I've taken more responsibility in that sense, but, you know, that's how we're still operating. We always ask ourselves, like, is this something we actually need to do? Like, is there a way to take a step back on this? Is there a simpler way to do this? That'll provide, you know, maybe only 70% of impact is maybe, like, the full blown thing, but it's gonna take us, you know, like, 30% less time. And so those are the kinds of things that I'm thinking through as we're running the business.

Mark Evans: I think it's really interesting because I can remember when you threw that idea out on LinkedIn LinkedIn and the reaction to it. Obviously, there's a lot of marketers on LinkedIn, so it was a it was a great target audience for you, a great way to to throw out the idea and see if it if it had any traction. What are some of the lessons you've learned along the way as you evolve the idea, as you develop the product and it became a reality? Some of the things that went well, some of the things that you would do differently next time.

Jay Desai: I think the biggest advice that I would give to anyone is you your product or whatever you're offering doesn't need to be as complex or perfect as you think it is. And and that's really, like, easier said than done. But the only person who's going to know what the end product is supposed to be is you. You know, you the the people that are viewing your product are only going to see the product as is. And in terms of, like, what I would do different, I honestly would say there would there would be nothing that I would do different. You know, I I I'm thinking about it right now, but, you know, we've made some mistakes in terms of things that we've done and and things that, you know, I, quote, unquote, maybe wish I did different. But I actually probably wouldn't change those because without those failures over there, there wouldn't have been whatever the lesson that's learned. And so, you know, in terms of, like, missteps, and we really haven't done very much. You know, it's it's great that we've been able to to promote the product without sharing that much, you know, even the the website that I put together, the first iteration of it, the single page site that got a 100 people to sign up, there was no pictures of the product on the website at all. There was literally nothing. And so, you know, I just tell everybody to to to take a step back and don't let those false objections, like, don't let yourself disqualify you from launching something because you think something's missing or, you know, something needs to be a little bit better. You'd be surprised at what people would love to jump into. And the only person that knows what that end thing is supposed to look like is you. That's what I would say there, and and the traction has been incredible. I mean, we've seen some great growth, which I'm happy to jump into as well. But it's just been an awesome awesome experience, and I I wouldn't really change anything because it's really just gotten us here today, and I've learned so much from any of the mistakes that I've made.

Mark Evans: So maybe you can talk a little bit about the growth, because, obviously, there's demand for this type of product. There's lots of people creating all kinds of content these days. Content marketing landscape is shifting, as you talked about, with more micro content, being developed. So what are you seeing on the platform so far?

Jay Desai: Right now, the big thing that we're tracking is activations, so user growth. I think I don't know when this episode's gonna air, but for for context right now, we're about ten days over here into our invite only beta launch. And the last user count I checked was at 525, which is absolutely crazy for for ten days. Our big goal is to hit a thousand users in thirty days, which I'm feeling really good about our chances on, but it's just been incredible. I mean, user activation is the main thing and and kind of we're working backwards. We we have a little bit of a product market fit survey as well in the application that we're taking a look at. But right now, it's it's really just getting people in and and getting them to not only get in, but selling them on not what Swipely is today, selling them on what it can be tomorrow. And so that's something that's really big to me too is, you know, every user that comes into Swipely isn't just joining for this modern content saving tool as it is right now. Like, you know, we're saving images, videos, podcasts, tweets, LinkedIn posts, websites. That stuff is all cool, but we still have a lot more to go. And I I really want people to buy into the long term vision because and actually, one of the emails in our onboarding sequence that, Mark, you'll probably get at some point is basically a a list of the next things we're planning on building. I wanna be completely transparent and get people to buy into the vision and say, hey, if you can help us bring one or two people to Swipely, we can build all of this stuff for you. And that's really what I'm I'm trying to sell on. And so that's the stuff that's really important to me.

Mark Evans: The next obvious question would be, how are you gonna make money? Because from what I understand, Swipely is a free product, at least for now. Do you have any thoughts about how you monetize the platform? Is it something that you thought about from the beginning when you had this great idea, or is it still work in progress when it comes to identifying the different avenues to, for revenue?

Jay Desai: Yeah. There's definitely a monetization plan. I think the big one that we're gonna have is probably revenue at some point, and that's when we kinda turn on our social functionality. So that's what's coming next on the Swipely roadmap is, you know, we're gonna offer a full social solution, and we'll probably plug in a little bit of advertising. But one thing that's really important to me is having, like, purposeful purposeful advertising. I think, a lot of advertising nowadays on social media is, like, stuff that might be, like, irrelevant and and stuff that you're just not really interested in. And, you know, I I hate getting bombarded with the same ad, like, a few times, but or more than a few times. But one thing I do think, and this is what I love about ads, is when you get the right ad at the right time, like, let's say, you know, I was on a website with a cool, like, pair of shorts or something or someone sent me this website for a cool new product, that's an ad that I'd wanna see again. And so, you know, that's something that I'm constantly thinking about is how can we create those, like, purposeful experiences. So that's a big part of it. And then another big part is we really wanna empower creators. So with that advertising revenue, I think we're probably gonna be taking a different approach to most companies in the sense of I wanna empower everyone in the b to b creator economy to be able to get a piece of that ad revenue without having to do very much other than just creating your audience. So that's something that's important to me. We've got a couple other plans in terms of, like, APIs that we can offer more content features and more content saving that we can do, maybe even, like, private swipe files. I mean, there's just a whole bunch of different directions. I'm not super concerned on the monetization piece right now because right now, it's it's user growth and you can't have you you can't monetize anything without the users there in the first place. I'm planning on keeping the show free for as long as I can run it. I mean, we have, like, no operating cost. We're spending, like, $15 a month on our website, six months a month on my email. We have our server costs, but they're basically credited because we have AWS credits. So that's basically free. And then I've got, like, a a Zapier integration that I'm paying, like, $25 a month on. So we could realistically run this thing for a really long time for free. For me, it's about how do I create more purposeful experiences for everyone. And then the money part, I think it's gonna happen at at some point. I'm not super concerned about it. But right now, to me, what's most important is just providing an incredible experience for everyone that's on there.

Mark Evans: Well, it's a very exciting proposition, and I'm really fascinated by the transition from full time employee to side hustle to start up. Where can people learn more about you and Swipely?

Jay Desai: Yeah. So you can head over to swipely.com. It's swpely.com. So swipe without the iandthenly.com. Go ahead and jump on there. We'll actually give you a promo code as well so you can skip the wait list. Over here, if you use Mark's name, Mark Evans, you'll actually be able to skip the wait list and go straight into the product. So definitely take advantage of that code and get in there, mess around with it. And we have a lot more things coming. The more users we can bring to the platform, the more I can build for everyone that's listening. So that's what makes me really excited. It is the building piece. But, yeah, check it out. We save a lot of content right now. Lot more to come in the future, and and would love to have you as a user on Swipely.

Mark Evans: Awesome. That's Jay. And anybody who's interested in Jay can go to LinkedIn. He's got a pretty good presence there as well. Well, thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. For show notes of today's conversation and information about Jay, visit marketingspark.co/blog. If you'd like to learn more about how I help b to b SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic adviser, and coach, send an email to Mark@marketingspark.co. I'll talk to you next time.