
Last week I wrote about growth tactics for B2Bs. This week I am following up with a post on how to build a
Amanda Moskowitz of Stacklist, a directory of business tools for startups, moderated the session, which featured these panelists:
- Erik Akterin, Co-founder & CTO of
Qapital - Matt Harris, founder of Bloom Credit
- Cliff Hazelton, CTO at STASH
- Caroline
Hoffman, Sr. Advisor at Republic
It was a super-interesting group of ventures, plus, it was great to hear from Nekesha Woods, who works for one of the giants and also did a
The brief descriptions are inadequate, as each
Over the course of an hour, the panel discussed some of the unique challenges of launching and growing a
Here are some of the observations and takeaways, regarding marketing, and other aspects of building a fintech:
Qapital got great results with Product Hunt. They also tapped word of mouth and press coverage. App store and Google reviews helped. As ever, it is important for businesses to know what to do with a negative google review, should they ever get one. Clearly the team behind Qapital knew what to do.- Caroline Hoffman said that building a marketplace is not easy. Republic had to get creative, tap
FOMO, and encouraged featured startups to bring in investors. Republic leveraged their partnership withAngelList , and made it easy for new members to invite their networks via LinkedIn. They used Facebook to test their messaging. - STASH used Facebook to get feedback, organic referrals, and employed street teams and growth hacks. There was a need for education, as people are more used to traditional banks.
- Bloom is a B2B, but it helped to frame their messaging from an end-user POV.
- Most eschewed paid advertising