For the Right Reasons — An Interview with Ari Krasner, Co-Founder of Givebutter and pop musician

Photo by Noah Morse

Ari Krasner is the Co-Founder of Givebutter (quite ironic because he doesn’t really eat dairy), a social crowdfunding platform used by thousands of college students around the country. Ari grew up in San Diego where he learned to tap dance at the age of 3, skateboard at the age of 7, and surf at the age of 13. When he’s not at the beach, you can find him on the east coast where he is attending the George Washington University as a senior in Washington D.C. It is in DC that he discovered his passion for singing and writing songs; he is now pursuing a full-fledged music career on the pop circuit while managing all things creative at Givebutter.

We are thrilled to have had the opportunity to interview Ari and learn his (often crazy) story. You can follow his adventures on his Instagram or visit arikrasnermusic.com. To learn more about how you can get involved with Givebutter, visit Givebutter.com or follow @Givebutter on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.

You know the typical college startup story. Three dudes get a crazy idea and lock themselves in their college dorm room, not coming out until they have the next million-dollar company. For Ari Krasner and his two roommates, this actually wasn’t far off.

The difference? Their product, mission, and approach are anything but typical.

4 days

In January 2016, Jonas ravaged the east coast of the United States, bringing with it over 3 feet of snow and causing states of emergency in 11 states and Washington D.C. While most college students took the time off from class to do absolutely nothing, Ari, Max Friedman, and Liran Cohen, students at George Washington University, had other ideas.

“My roommates at the time, Liran, Max, and I, all knew that we were going to have school off on Monday because of the snow. So we packed up our fridge with 4 days worth of groceries and we essentially didn’t leave our room at all for the next 4 days. While all of our friends were binge-watching Netflix or partying, we took advantage of the time that we had and set out to build something really cool.”

They had no idea what would come of it but knew they had the right team in place.

“It wasn’t like, ‘We’re going to create a startup,’ or, ‘We’re going to create something and make a lot of money.’ We literally just said we want to create something cool and different, so let’s do that in 4 days.”

Photo by Noah Morse

4 Weeks

At the time, the Powerball jackpot was really high and the guys were also entranced by the concept behind The Million Dollar Homepage.

“We created this viral growth hack sweepstakes idea where people would literally go to the page and buy ad space in boxes. All the money that we made off of these ad sales went into a pie that was visible in the middle of the site. All you needed to do was enter your email for a chance to win the money. It was called thebigcashgame.com. The catch was that the more you refer people with your link, the more entries you got.”

People went crazy over the idea and soon it was spreading and spreading fast. The team saw a chance to make more of an impact and decided to incorporate a charity component to the site, rebranding it as We Give Two. They gave coveted ad space to a new nonprofit every day of the sweepstakes with the understanding the winner would give 18% of their earnings to the charity of their choosing.

Soon, some of the largest nonprofits in the country were interested and working with the team. Halfway through the 4-week sweepstakes, The Washington Post picked up the story and things went really crazy.

“We ran the sweepstakes for 4 weeks; halfway in between the Washington Post published the story, and all of our friends and family said, ‘Oh, so that’s what you’ve been doing! We had no idea!’’ I wish I was joking but I’m not. It was an absurd time.”

Creating this viral concept from nothing was thrilling for the team, but it also took its toll — they had to make sacrifices.

“A lot of the days we were literally like walking zombies, sleeping less than 4 hours or so most nights. We dropped a lot of our other commitments in order to really give the project our full commitment. Almost everything else in our lives, including school, came second to what we were doing.”

Photo by Ezra Beletskiy

Just the beginning

After the month was over, Ari and the team were happy to be done. Except they weren’t.

“When we were done with the 4 weeks we said, ‘Okay, we’re done. We’re going to go back to class and live our lives like normal people.’ Then all of these nonprofits that we featured came back and asked what was next. And we said, ‘What do you mean what is next? We’re going back to class.’”

The nonprofits were blown away by the virality of what Ari, Max, and Liran had done and by their ability to reach young people. They wanted to continue to work with them to fundraise. At first, the team didn’t understand. They knew platforms like Crowdrise, Indiegogo, and GoFundMe were already fulfilling the crowdfunding need.

But the nonprofits were adamant. They told the team, “We’ve tried those platforms. We’re actually already familiar with them. We even have fundraisers running on them at the moment, but none of them work for us in terms of mobilizing young donors and getting people excited as your campaign was able to do.”

For the first time, the guys realized they may be on to solving a problem they didn’t know existed. That’s when Givebutter was born.

Creating a better way to give

“We started playing around with the idea of creating a better way to fundraise so that young people and the people around us would give back more. The whole concept was to create a website where people can donate, but it doesn’t end at the donation like other websites; the experience begins there.

We were now aware of all these problems fundraisers face in this space, and we saw our friends, at our age in school, not really making giving part of their lives, truly. How can we get everyone around us to give and how can we help all these nonprofits?”

The team launched a basic version of the platform and had their first project right away — a friend of theirs wanted to raise money for a kosher food truck to better serve GW’s large Jewish population.

“We looked at each other and said, ‘Oh, God.’ They wanted to use us over Kickstarter or a platform that was already established because we focused on the experience and the impact instead of just a ‘you give and you get’ model like on other platforms.”

That campaign raised more than $16.5k in three days… during finals week. It was go time.

“This is real”

“That’s when we said, ‘Okay, this is real. This is big. This could make huge changes for the better in the fundraising space. Let’s pursue this.’ We dropped everything we had planned for that summer.”

All three of the team canceled their plans to focus on doing the proper research and building out Givebutter.

“We got a small apartment in Rockville, MD. We spent the entire summer building out Givebutter. We built the platform and did our research and worked super hard.”

The team spoke to executives at the 100 largest nonprofits in the world — organizations like The United Way, Make-A-Wish, and The World Wildlife Fund.

In that time, they crafted what they wanted their platform to be.

“We didn’t want to just have another crowdfunding platform. We established ourselves and founded Givebutter on the premise of, ‘We’re going to make giving a part of everyone’s lives,’ and that’s what our platform stands for.

The mission of our company is ‘Eat. Sleep. Give.’ and the whole idea behind that is that giving becomes the third aspect of everyone’s lives.”

Growing the platform… and the impact

Heading into the fall of 2016, Givebutter set out to find the “movers and shakers” looking to make a difference on their campuses as a part of their college ambassador program. They gained attention by becoming the first company to interview applicants over Snapchat, racking up more than 1,400 applicants, finding 250 ambassadors across 150 campuses.

Givebutter partnered with national organizations such as It’s On Us, Americares, and Umttr. Now, they have expanded their platform to offer customer relationship management capabilities at no charge.

This year, they had over 4,000 applicants and now have over 500 ambassadors on over 300 college campuses.

“It’s all about impact. Impact has helped us scale, has inspired us, and has pushed us. And it’s also helped us think outside of the box.”

For students, by students

Part of what separates Givebutter from other for-profit companies is that its success is directly tied to how many people they can help.

“At the end of the day, we’re only successful when people are successful raising money. That’s how we define success — if a campaign reaches their goal, we’re happy.

When somebody calls and says, ‘Thank you so much. You saved my life. You saved my family’s life. It’s because of you that we were able to provide all of this clothing to people in need. We’ve brought so many people out of homelessness because of you,’ whatever the metric is — that is a huge motivator and is truly something special.”

Success doesn’t happen overnight

Ari wants other young entrepreneurs to realize that the seemingly common “overnight success” stories we frequently hear of don’t paint the whole picture.

“Many of the examples of successful startup founders you hear of have actually started and failed several companies and worked for several, sometimes dozens, of years before they found that success.

Because that is often the reality, you need to be willing to give it your all. It needs to be something that you’re really passionate about.

One of my favorite quotes is, ‘What you do in the dark is what puts you in the light.’ In entrepreneurship, 99% of your day is in the dark. Most of the startup life is in the dark. And you have to be okay with that.”

Photo by Noah Morse

Focus on making a product that resonates

Ari’s other piece of advice is something that applies both to Givebutter and to his growing music career — focus, above all else, on producing a great product.

“We’re not focused on raising investor money. We’re focused on building a great product and a great company. We fell into this space because people obviously needed what we were doing, contrary to what we thought. Focusing on fulfilling that need has helped us tremendously to stay focused.”

Ari is happy to be able to say that Givebutter resonates with its users, particularly with college students.

“College students love using us to fundraise because it was built by college students. We built it with them in mind… there is no fluff with us.”

Producing something that resonates is a focus that Ari carries with him into his music career.

“Do people resonate with the music? With the artist? Are they listening to their songs? Can they relate to it? The artist only gets big if they have a song that people can relate to or music that people can relate to. It’s the same thing with a product. We were really pleased to find that our market research was correct because a lot of people resonated with what we were trying to do. That’s how we got our start.”

No matter if it is Givebutter or his music, Ari remains laser-focused on making a great product and doing so for the right reasons. He knows that is ultimately what will drive success.

“I’ve been able to take a lot of what I’ve learned growing Givebutter into the music space… The first thing is making music for the right reasons and making sure that, instead of trying to focus on deals and record labels and views and clicks and hits, I’m trying to focus first on the product and making sure that it’s the best that it can be.”

We are incredibly thankful to Ari and the Givebutter team for working with us. Be sure to check out their site, fundraise with them, and maybe even become an ambassador.