For our latest edition of ‘start-up stories’ I had a blast talking to Dave Benson, founder of SuperQuickQuestion about their story, brand, and some major lessons from their journey thus far. Here’s a look our conversation:
What’s your origin story?
I used to work at IBM, where there are tons of half hour meetings. I talk fast, and I like to get things done quickly. All the time, I'd say, I have a question about one thing that I'm trying to do to finish this project for you. Then the person would say, great, can we talk next Thursday at 3:00? I’d say but it's Friday right now!?! I’ve got to wait until next Thursday to get an answer on this project that I want to finish for you today? So, what I started doing was Slack people and just say, I'm going to come to your desk right now and we'll be done in one minute. I would literally run with my laptop open, get to their desk and ask the question, e.g., do you want this to be blue? or red? Do you approve this? Or should I edit that part? I would get it done and then tell them by the way, I don't need to meet with you for half an hour anymore. It became something that I did all the time, then my team started adopting it, then other people used this approach, and that’s when I thought, this could be a thing.
At that point I spoke to one person and said, I'm interested in turning this concept into a summer hustle and they said, if you do, I'll invest. Then I talked to a buddy of mine who was at a small tech company who said, if you want to do this, I'll invest. I talked to another guy who's an old school tech millionaire and he said, I'm going to invest in this, and I’ll lend you some of my developers.
What are you looking to disrupt?
“I want to help save good people from bad meetings”
The easy answer is fan engagement. The bigger answer is, I want to help save good people from bad meetings. And right now, it's something people need rescuing from. If we can help people rid themselves of a few blocked off bits of their calendar, save their brains and save their morale, then I think that's awesome.
How would you describe your solution?
A live one-on-one video chat with a 60 second time limit that delivers quick access and genuine engagement. The idea is that most conversations can take place in the span of one minute. Originally it was made for business efficiency, but we’ve since pivoted to become a fan engagement platform which was also in my wheelhouse working for companies like, Bleacher Report and ESPN. We’ve gotten loads of traction in the sports space. The first client we signed was the Cleveland Browns, then Ryan Reynolds soccer team Wrexham, and now a bunch of other teams are using it instead of Cameo or Zoom, or Instagram Live. It’s the perfect solution for fans to meet players, coaches, and celebrities, where they get to ask any one question they want.
Explain your brand experience.
The way it would work is for example, if you're a season ticket holder or a contest winner, the Cleveland Cavs send you a link that takes you to a registration page, which is just your name and your question. When it’s time for the meeting you type in your name and your question, and you enter a queue. Suddenly, it's one-on-one. It's you and Darius Garland from the Cavs and not like Instagram Live where anybody else can see, It's just the two of you. We’ve developed a patented timer bar at the bottom that starts at zero and looks forward to :60-seconds. You ask your question, it pops up on the screen (in case you get starstruck and you forget what you wanted to ask), then at :58 seconds, the screen says “smile”, it snaps a picture that you can post on social. Then on the :59th second, a little jingle starts to play politely, and a curtain rises from the bottom, it thanks you for your question with a CTA button to the team store, etc. It’s 60 seconds, Darius politely said goodbye and doesn't have to be the jerk who says I don't have any more time… because it's very transparent.
The teams love it, we knew the fans were going to like it, we were initially worried about incentivizing the hosts and the players, but the players are totally into it, because it's way less pressure than if they were on an Instagram Live where people are trolling you and dropping comments like “you suck”, “I hope you get traded”, etc. With SQQ if you're staring an athlete in their face, you're not going to be quite so brave as you would be if you were hiding down in the faceless world of social media.
An awesome Story…
Soccer fans are notoriously harsh, and we put up the president of Wrexham Football Club. I was like, are you sure you want to do this? He responded, I want to check it out and vet it, especially if Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhaney are going to be joining later in the season. So, the president went on SQQ and the nastiest thing that people said was “when are you going to get more jerseys in the in the shop?” and “can we get some more midfield help?” Every fan was nice and civil because it's a one-on-one conversation, a real conversation, which doesn't happen as much anymore.
What’s unique about Super Quick Question?
Surprisingly, there's nothing like this. We got patents on everything; every other solution is trying to be everything to everyone. When you've only got one minute, it forces people to focus, that’s funny thing about brevity.
For example:
We sat down and had a meeting in Queens with the NY Mets… they said, we just did a Zoom with Pete Alonso. I said, how was it? and they go, it was terrible. It was a Zoom. And I was like, yeah, don't blame Zoom, that's not what it was designed for. You know, you don't use a fork to eat soup. It's not what cameo is for, it's not what Instagram Live is for, same with Slack and email. All these things have their purposes, but nothing replaces the shoulder tap, or the pop in or the drop by. That's what we're doing, we're filling in these gaps.
What’s one word to describe your brand?
What core values guide you guide your team?
For one we need to be faster than everybody else. The first thing that I say when we're hiring people is you've never worked anywhere as fast as this, I promise you. We're not even two years old and we're on our second round of fundraising, we're already generating revenue and in these conversations with these bigger guys. If there's one thing, I can't be modest about it’s the speed at which we built this company.
Other core values are honesty and radical candor. We have no bullshit to us, we are very happy to show our cards and say we're new, we're a startup. We've given the product away to a couple of clients and said you can have it, but we want feedback from you and as long as your feedback is honest and useful. The same thing goes within our team, we're all really honest with each other, nobody tries to protect anybody's feelings, everybody is smart, listens to each other and we get stuff done.
We've had some mistakes, but nothing disastrous, because all the advice on podcasts and books from all the startup guys is to move fast and break stuff. It’s true, perfect is the enemy of the good. Which has been really useful, I’ve been upfront to my clients that there will be times when it doesn't work, and I will apologize, you just have to tell us what happened, and we'll fix it. You see a lot of start-ups promoting themselves in an unrealistic way, whether it's on social media and LinkedIn. We're never going to post pictures of us in front of an office that doesn't belong to us, or tell someone we're growing by leaps and bounds. We never say we're anything other than we’re a four-person company.
Advice for other startups?
I've been fortunate in the resources that have been available to me. We raised a relatively small amount of money, so we were able to be selective about who we allowed in to invest. We were able to get our investors to also be advisors and have a great bench filled with smart people.
“ I'm never afraid to ask questions that seem stupid and not worrying about not knowing. I just need somebody to teach me...”
Also, I've always been of the mindset where I'm never afraid to ask questions that seem stupid and not worrying about not knowing. I just need somebody to teach me. As a first-time entrepreneur and first-time startup guy without a tech background, that became my motto. “I don't know that yet.” But I would find an expert and talk to them and sometimes I was lucky enough that the experts would be somebody who already invested in the company, or they knew somebody. The great thing about experts, they're usually dying to share their expertise. If you ask anybody about the thing they know the most they are usually more than happy to share.
“If you treat your equity as a nonrenewable resource everybody benefits…”
Finally, be really protective of your equity. I spoke to a couple of people early on and fortunately for me I took their advice, a lot of times people give away a ton of equity early because they're not confident that they can do what they're trying to do, and then it either comes back to bite them or dilute everyone. If you treat your equity as a nonrenewable resource everybody benefits because you don't have to go back to your investors and be like we’ve run out of time.
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