Meet The Entrepreneur #27: Robert Steele, Thumzup
Keeping the American Dream Alive
Welcome to the 112th edition of Start-up Society! This blog highlights some of the most exciting start-ups in the country striving to keep the American Dream alive.
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Thumzup
Meet Robert Steele, Founder, CEO & Chairman of Thumzup, a platform that connects people with businesses they love through the power of social media. This start-up is democratizing the multi-billion dollar social media branding and marketing industry. Using the Thumzup app (iOS, Android), anyone can now earn cash for posting about participating advertisers on major social media outlets.
This article provides a summary of the conversation. For the full details, tap into the podcast here!
Tell us about your background.
Robert is a technologist at heart, he learned to program a computer at 8 years old and by the time he was 12 years old, he purchased an Apple II and began his first technology company with game controllers for the brand-new Apple II computers, which were sold through local computer stores.
After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science from George Mason University, Robert and his co-founders created one of the first PC-based GIS systems (Graphical Information Systems) for the Fairfax County cable television system. This system was one of the first times that utility maps for an entire county could be edited and maintained on PC-based technology.
In 1999, Robert foresaw that in the future everyone would have a computer in their pocket in the form of a smartphone and founded iBrite, which designed groundbreaking mobile software. The patent application that Robert filed for iBrite has been cited more than 30 times and the iBrite software was used by Mapquest to put maps on a mobile device for the first time that we know of and was also used to put Microsoft Powerpoint on a Palm mobile device (which he believes was the first time this was done).
Robert has been CEO of two publicly traded companies. One was Quintek, which provided business process outsourcing services to Fortune 500 clients like Amgen, FedEx, GMAC and Ecolab (NYSE: ECL) and processed more than $1B a year in accounts payable transactions for Ecolab and scanned more than 30 million pages of loan documentation for GMAC. The other one (Rightscorp) developed software that searches the Internet for copyright infringement and to date, more than $1B in civil judgments have been awarded to copyright holders based on the case law that resulted from this technology
What brought you to California?
Robert began his career on the East Coast, growing up and going to school in Virginia. Realizing California is where the venture funding and startup community is located, he ultimately moved to L.A. — choosing the City of Angels over Silicon Valley on instinct thinking that he could be a bigger fish in a smaller pond in regards to the technology community in Southern California compared to the San Francisco Bay Area.
When did you get the idea for Thumzup?
Four years ago, Robert noticed he had a lot of friends that were creatives (musicians, aspiring actors, actresses, etc.) and worked in the gig economy (e.g. Uber, Lyft) for additional income. He pondered how to help them. How can he make the gig economy workers more money? With Thumzup! Using the Thumzup app, users can now earn cash for posting on their social media about the products and businesses they love. The idea is to build a two-sided marketplace of advertisers and viewers. The key to building one of these is to be hyper-local. When someone downloads Thumzup, they will see local establishments that they already like. The research dictates that people are more likely to be influenced by their friend’s purchasing decisions rather than random social media influencers. The idea is to target small, local businesses with no bureaucracy from either side.
What are the steps needed to convert an idea into a publicly traded business?
Step 1) Collect feedback from a good group of people who are going to tell you the truth
Step 2) Refine the idea to a point where you can easily explain it
Step 3) Perform market research by explaining the idea to your target market
Step 4) Ask yourself two questions
- Is your target customer willing to use or pay for it?
2. Are businesses or advertisers willing to use or sponsor it?
Step 5) Iteratively hack your way to a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and test it out
The market research is directly correlated to the product design and the ideation process is iterative. Early user adoption of the MVP is a key indicator of when you are ready to involve more outside parties/capital.
What motivates you to continue building companies, why not retire after already accomplishing so much?
Robert is spiritual in nature and feels that he is inspired by religion and faith to build companies. He has been innovating and selling since he was a young child and has no plans to slow down. Being an entrepreneur is about excelling at and loving sales and sales is about helping people. Considering his spirituality and identity traits, building businesses was a natural lifelong journey for Robert.
Tell us about the Thumzup equity crowdfunding offering.
Thumzup is raising a $9M equity crowdfunding round. It is a Reg A+ offering meaning anyone is able to invest. Having spent 20 years in start-ups, Robert knows how many barriers there can be to access equity in high-growth start-ups. It is very rare for retail investors to have the opportunity to invest in the next tech unicorn at such an early stage. If you believe that social media marketing is going to be democratized, Thumzup is the company that will do it. Democratization is a key theme of Thumzup, and that is reflected in the Reg A+ offering. When Robert’s customers told him they want to invest in his company, he knew he was onto something!
Learn more and participate in the equity crowdfunding offering HERE
Last message for the audience?
If you live in the Los Angeles area, download Thumzup (available for iOS and Android) today to get paid to post about businesses in your neighborhood!
Thumzup is a publicly traded company (OTCQB stock ticker: TZUP). For more information and to invest now, please visit https://www.thumzupmedia.com
Go Deeper
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Authored by Arteen Zahiri, Rumeer Keshwani, & Elham Chowdhury
