Bangalore Startups’ AMA with Apurv Agrawal from SquadRun
Hi, I’m Apurv Agrawal, co-founder of SquadRun and ngoFuel, founding member in 91springboard, and ex-head of Kairos Society India. SquadRun is a mobile marketplace. It helps businesses crowd-source micro-tasks that require human intelligence & insight. From the user side, SquadRun is a gamified puzzle app. Ask ME Anything.
SquadRun leverages power of mobile crowd to deliver small tasks for startups and individuals
SquadRun is a crowdsourcing platform that connects business to a smartphone enabled workforce. It’s an exciting new app that allows anybody with a smartphone to make money on a per task basis. For instance, if you need something simple done either online or at a physical location, and as long as it’s something almost anyone (with a decent IQ) can do, you can put up a task on SquadRun for its ‘player’ community to pick up.
Q: Do you see SquadRun competing with mTurk? — Kartik Mandaville
Yes, definitely. We feel we are improved version of mTurk. SquadRun can be said to be mobile gamified mTurk that works. Is important as we focus a lot on quality which mTurk misses on.
Q: What’s the most popular use case? — Kartik Mandaville
Data Moderation. Any kind of data — profiles for dating sites, seller uploaded product, user generated content, etc.
Q: Is that the biggest use case for mTurk too? — Kartik Mandaville
mTurk has changed a lot recently. It has been shrinking. Its only US from both sides of the market (demand and supply). Earlier there was a lot of moderation but recently there are mostly random surveys etc. They are used heavily for ML training data as well.
Q: What was your inspiration behind SquadRun? — Nagesh Bansal
Thanks Nagesh. I founded a student startup called ngoFuel which was an elance model for nonprofits. That was the key inspiration behind SquadRun. Also excited about the themes crowd-sourcing, monetizing excess capacity of time and mobile mobile has just been blowing up India
Q: What metrics is important for a B2C startup to validate and get funding? Which was SquadRun’s key metrics? — Syed Harris
Well we’re both B2B and B2C. And we raised an angel round 2 months into the business. ]So just the story. I guess a key metric would be repeat usage.
Q: For SquadRun how you gather first set of paying customers? I saw some campaign examples you did for end users, but what for the customers for whom the app users are playing ? — Ranit Sanyal
Customers — mostly connects from investors, VCs, etc. We target new age enterprises like flipkart and housing.
Q: How important do you think the gamification aspect is? Given theirs already monetary incentive. Or is it because the tasks can be somewhat boring? — Kartik Luke Singh
Gamification is super important for us. In fact interestingly we found that gamification or the ‘fun’ aspect drives majority of our engaged high quality users. Elements like competition/collaboration have been very powerful in getting folks like us to use the app. And they see reward as as secondary motive.
Q. What challenges did you face during your initial days and how did you overcome them? Might help others get some insights. — Bhuvanesh
TEAM! Network over the years
Q: What will be the biggest challenge to open up new Geographies for you lets say Australian/UK Market? — Harsha MV
We have only focussed on India and US till now for businesses. Had one UK startup…
Q: What if a person picks a task and doesn’t complete it? How do you guarantee that a task is completed at-least once? — Viresh
It’s a volume game. If one user doesn’t, another would.
Q: How are you maintaining culture with new hires? — Kartik Mandaville
CULTURE is super important for us. We spend a lot of time in hiring. We follow a strict framework — https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-hiring-framework-why-work-squadrun-apurv-agrawal
Q: How hard was it for you to raise funds? How many Investors did you have to pitch before finding a interested person to lead the investment? What’s your advice to startups who are looking to raise funds? — Harsha MV
That’s a lot of questions. Thankfully it was super easy for us to raise. We were lucky I guess. Our anchor investor was a guy who knew me a couple of years and did 30% of the round. Post that we convinced Snapdeal founders to join in the round. Other top startup founders just came in. I guess we had a unique story. Advice would be to know that practically you’re going to lose 10–20% so raise as much as possible And pitch to all the senior startup founder guys. They are THE best investors we would want.
Q: How would go about hiring a person who is much person experienced than you? — Viresh
You just need to make sure that he/she knows you’re serious and know what you’re doing. Oyo is a great example of that. Having seniors advisors also help a lot.
Q: Do the angels spend a lot of time with you? — Kartik Mandaville
One hour per angel per month average. We know what we need from each one. So ask them about those specifics.
Q: Should we expect anything other than money from investors? — Bhuvanesh R
YES absolutely. Think of it as getting your partners. They can get your customers, further rounds, help you with product, etc.
Q: What’s the best % to dilute at the seed/angel round? I understand its relative. But what’s your advice for the other founders — Harsha MV
If you’re not a serial entrepreneur then you would have to dilute 10 to 20% in my experience. So 15% might be a good no. Some entrepreneurs get hung up on dilution in the first round which isn’t worth it in the long term That said, a messed up cap table can endanger future rounds.
Q: Does Indian investors in seed/angel round invest on Convertible debt? What’s your experience? If yes then how much return they expect? — Ranit Sanyal
Convertible debt is difficult to pull off in India. Its quite preferred for us though.
Q: How much salaries do you guys take or founders should take at the seed stage? Most investors expect us to make the kill through the sweat equity. Being in a place like Delhi is expensive and you need your night out on the town as well. — Harsha MV
Interestingly we have been taking ZERO salaries till now But a lot of our investors have advised us against that. In fact we will start taking 15–20k from next month. But investors hardly have time to check these things.
Q: Relating to exit strategy — 1. What is your payback period / when will you return the whole money to your investor? And, 2. What is the rate of return you are offering, is it over and above the market rate? — Manasa Savnur
No one cares about these things. But seriously angels can expect to exit at a series B for 5–20x in 2–3 yrs. Sometime they go all the way.
Q: is your focus more on work from home or virtual assistants? — Arun Balaji
We don’t do a lot of C2C use cases right like virtual assistants. But we could start doing something like Magic in the future.
Q: Do you follow any philosophy as to how you company is structured, whether an atmosphere which is conducive to innovation and spontaneous meets is created? — Aditya Menon
Yes a lot of philosophy and culture. Check my LinkedIn post on ‘I wonder. I wish. I like.’ a framework we use for transparent culture.
Q: What’s your take Bootstrap vs. Funding? Do you see money as an opportunity cost/time? — Harsha MV
If you can bootstrap it all the way then awesome but as the CEO don’t let anything come between growth.
Q: What did you offer the startup founders who joined you? — Sharad Madiman
Whatever makes them happy. You can’t mess this up.
Q: Tech stack? — Viresh
Django (python) and Android.
Q: When do you begin to scale? — Yuva
When you have the formula ready for scale.
Q: How did SquadRun get its initial traction? — Charan GP
A lot of hustle on seeding both the sides. Customers — connects/relationships. Users — referrals, gorilla campaigns, friends, etc.
Q: Does platform increase/decrease reward points whenever the demand is less/more for a given task? — Viresh
Not at the moment.
Q: Are you guys hiring? If so do put a link or something if someone is interested they would love to apply. — Harsha MV
YES, we are. We’re hiring big time for #android #backend #sales and #marketing. Detailed JDs in this blog — https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-hiring-framework-why-work-squadrun-apurv-agrawal
Final words:
Thanks guys. It was super awesome. Please feel free to Slack me here [at the Bangalore Startups Slack group]. Or send an email at apurv@squadrun.co
Lots of people requested we get this one up on Medium because they couldn’t be on Slack to attend live. We want to thank Apurv Agarwal for taking the time to chat with us.
We've set up a Twitter handle — @blr_startups. We'll start putting updates and such out there in the future.
Join the Slack group if you haven't already. Just fill out this form. If you have already filled the form, you would have received an invite. Contact @kar2905 or @harshamv if you have any issues. This AMA was summarized by @kartikluke.
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