Giuseppe, please introduce yourself…
My accademic background is in Engineering (Purdue University, Indiana – USA) with an MBA then from INSEAD (Paris and Singapore). I was always passionate about technology and futurology. This passion to picture how the future could evolve allowed me to win a university scholarship several years ago, and from there I started my 13 years travelling around the world.
I am originally from Italy, but I have lived in 6 other countries (mostly in USA, UK and France). Now I divide my time between London and Milan. Professionally, I had two significant work experiences in Google and Manhattan Associates (best-of-breed software solutions for the supply chain).
I tend to have many interests in life: at night I act in theatres (mostly in Milan); I often get involved with schools and universities, as a professor, mentor or trying to help them innovate their methods.
What’s the story behind creating CircleMe and can you explain how it works?
CircleMe was born from the belief that the information and content available on the Internet is absolutely overwhelming and its access could never be solved simply by “pull” systems such as a good search engine like Google.
CircleMe becomes then a way to aggregate content/media/services and bring it to users based on their true interests in life. Today CircleMe has become an ‘interest-based platform’ that can keep users up to date and informed on 1 million different passions, with more than 1200 new stories and value added services per day.
Not only this, CircleMe even pre-populates for every user a “personal calendar” with events just related to their personal passions, and of course based on their current location. Naturally, we put in touch people who share the same interests, to create very vertical communities.
Basically, we do many fancy things, but the point is that all that happens in CircleMe is done around the specific and real interests of the user.
How’s traction working out so far?
Over the past 12 months things have really started to pick up. We now register 10 times more people than one year ago, often reaching the 500-700 new users per day; we will approach the first 100,000 users soon.
Additionally, our users are incredibly engaged, spending an average of 52 minutes per day on the site (ref: Alexa.com). What is even more interesting is the amount of content and data we aggregate: one year ago we used to aggregate about 300-500 new content items per month; last month we aggregated more than 35,000 and we increase this number 10%-15% month over month.
All this, considering we have now mapped on our “interest graph” 1 million different passions in any category you can think of (from music to books, from movies to famous people, products, food&drinks, goods, etc.).
What strategies did you use to get your first 100 users?
First 100 users was easy – it was just friends and family. The next 10,000 were probably the most difficult, as we had to try to explain about a product and its potential, not even having a robust site “live”.
I believe one pragmatic technique that worked well was to create a focus group every two weeks where we would invite 7-12 young and bright fellows to discuss with us the ideas around CircleMe. These guys would usually leave the office totally enthusiastic about the ideas, and they were certainly great advocates for us in the following months to come.
If you were to start over again, what would you do differently, and why?
We certainly started with a very high burn-rate, and this is a real killer for a startup with limited funds. Adding to this, for the first months we had production cycles that were probably too long – we did some amazing things in terms of product and features, but our launches were every few weeks, and this did not allow us to understand well what the market really wanted and how they reacted to our new features.
Finally, I would have involved our “early adopters” more: with time we got much better at this, with conversation groups (live, on Facebook or by email), surveys, and lots of communication on the social media, but earlier in the game we were very much into our own thing, and that is not always a good thing.
You’ve raised a round of funding. What advice can you give to other entrepreneurs who are considering raising some financing for their startup?
Yes, we were lucky to raise close to $3M in funding. There is lots of advice I can give. Starting from the important things: make sure you really like and have a good fit and good trusting relationship with the investor – it will become fundamental in the future, especially in the hard times; then negotiate well the contract and the equity – it should be in both’s interest to leave a good % of equity to the founders as it will facilitate future rounds (if required).
To this high-level advice, I would suggest to work well on a pitch that is 360-degrees robust: this means not only showing that the idea is fantastic, but that behind that idea there is a team that is talented, skilled, well-rounded and committed; furthermore, show the business potential, and while it is obvious that initially you won’t be able to tackle the full “pie” of that market, give at least a hint of how you would grow/progress to gain each year more slices of the pie.
For example, show the vision and strategy long term, but also the opportunistic steps to gain traction immediately, and transform this in early monetization). I have noticed in the last 18 months that investors, rightly so, want to see plans of monetization very early in the game (even if just to bootstrap).
Finally, as always in all things, “keep it real/stay human” – build a personal relationship first of all. Perhaps investors will not invest in your venture, but they certainly can give you excellent advice!
How does being based in London impact the business?
We have a double base. London is key to help us with relationships, partnerships and fundraising. Having though a base in Italy too has been very effective. There is a lot of talent in Italy (especially in the technical roles) and it tends to be more loyal to the company.
If I had to mention a couple of disadvanges of being in London, it would be the costs related to salaries and other operating expenses, and the risk to get distracted by many events, conferences or just parties that tend to make me unfocused.
How do you see the startup and investment ecosystem developing in London?
There has been some great progress especially in the last few years. Now London (and the UK) are showing some impressive numbers. I also like the fact that London is working on establishing strong ties with the USA, and this opens up a lot more opportunities.
At the same time, I feel that many in London still become “startuppers” for the wrong reasons and have this “dreamy” view of being an entrepreneur. I feel that while an investor would support a project for the economic benefits that would derive from it, the ‘startupper’ should have a stronger drive than the one of just becoming rich.
She/he should really be convinced that he could “change the world” with what she/he is creating. The money will (probably) come as a consequence of the impact she/he will make in society.
Once this belief gets more embedded in the startup ecosystem in London, I expect some people to step away from the entrepreneurship scene, leaving though a better group of candidates to become successful. Investors will start seeing better ROI, and the ecosystem will evolve even further.
What’s next for you and CircleMe?
With CircleMe we are at a very important phase: in 2014 we want to reach several hundreds of thousands of users, and reach our first significant revenue target.
The vision long-term though is both fascinating and ambitious at the same time: to become the most valuable interest-based network on the planet so that people more and more will rely on CircleMe to help them stay “connected” to all their true interests in life.
Let’s see if we will make it – we are determined!
The post Collect your passions and discover new ones, with Giuseppe D’Antonio, founder of Europe based CircleMe appeared first on Founders Grid.