Ep. #1009 - Dissecting the Chicken or Egg Dilemma

00:01.20
Andrew Morgans
What’s up Hustlers! Welcome back. This is Andrew Morgans, founder of Marknology, today’s host of Startup Hustle. We’re covering one of Philadelphia’s top startups. And before I make that introduction I want to give a shout-out to our sponsor. Today’s episode of Startup Hustle is sponsored by Equip-Bid Auctions, your midwest online auction marketplace to buy and sell stuff. Equip-Bid provides dedicated support to affiliates in Kansas Missouri Nebraska and Iowa. Join the team and sell everything from heavy machinery to home goods vehicles and boats to restaurant and kitchen equipment. And tractors of patio furniture. Go to equip-bid.me/startup for details or just click the link saved in the show notes.

Today’s guest is a co-founder and CEO of FuzeMee David Graham welcome to the show.

00:51.47
David Graham
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me and I’m really excited to dive into it.

00:56.36
Andrew Morgans
Yeah, I’m super excited. We’ve been doing this series on top startups and you’re one of the top startups coming out of Philadelphia award this year. It’s super cool. I won’t say exactly how old you are but I know you’re young. You guys are crushing. It. I think there are 3 of you as the founders kind of doing this thing and really off to hit the races. But before we go into exactly what FuzeMee is. Today’s title is dissecting the chicken or the egg, deliver what to do first, what to hit first. Let’s just talk about David a little bit. You know we were talking off air before we got started. You said you’re in college.

01:32.71
David Graham
I left it.

01:39.58
Andrew Morgans
Playing lacrosse for a division one school and I won’t tell your whole story. But you’re definitely pursuing Academia and Excellence basically in everything you’re doing. And it made a big switch up to go all in on FuzeMee which I think is absolutely amazing.

01:56.56
Andrew Morgans
In high school, when you’re younger, did you think about being an entrepreneur, being a founder, or having a startup? Is this something that you kind of like manifested, or is it something you kind of just was like, we have to do this? Like you know you didn’t see it coming, and you’re like, well I guess we’re gonna try this. Talk to me about kind of your, you know, who you are and, you know, how you got.

02:15.15
David Graham
Yeah, definitely So I would say ever since I was young I’ve always had that that itch to to start something and ever since I was a young kid I was always bouncing around ideas and and thinking of creative ways to solve problems and so something I kind of always was doing in my life was looking at the pain points of.

02:15.47
Andrew Morgans
Where you are right now.

02:35.10
David Graham
My experience as ah, as ah as a person then also looking at the pain points of the people around me and then trying to build solutions to those pain points and so something and I kind of always had that at the back of my mind and so I had a lot of ideas. Um kind of in the in the notes tab my phone but. Never actually took the leap and acted on any of them. It was really just ah, an idea those were just ideas on paper and then the first idea that I kind of took the leap on is is the idea that we’re currently talking about which is fuse me and the reason why I would say I originally I kind of was motivated to take the take. The leap is because. The pandemic hit right during my soon as I really thought of the idea with my my founding team the pandemic hit and um I would say that if it wasn’t for the pandemic. It would have been really hard to put at the time I was a high school athlete. Also um I was really busy with school but also busy with athletics. And it was my senior year and I don’t know if I would’ve had the time to kind of think through the idea and um, make sure we kind of get it all flushed out and so soon as a pandemic hit. We really use that as an opportunity to go all in on the startup and make sure we have everything thought through and really just ideate the the original concept of fuse me. So.

03:28.35
Andrew Morgans
Um, for.

03:46.19
David Graham
I would say I’ve I’ve kind of always had prior.

03:47.62
Andrew Morgans
Um, and ah I love that David I’m gonna interrupt you just a little bit because I think um, you know what happened to you and your co-founders is really something that I’ve seen a pattern of and it’s like you you took? um.

03:57.73
David Graham
Um, click.

04:00.57
Andrew Morgans
You know, a kind of bad situation and you know real leaders real like entrepreneurs real founders. They they see these like struggles these roadblocks as opportunities and for me it was um, a low point in my life a divorce like in my early 20 s and just like you know. I was like at the bottom and just trying to figure stuff out that pushed me to be able to be like okay would I’ve given all of this stuff up to try my idea to go all in on my business probably not but you know it’s silver lining in that way. That’s like look now I got all this time I can talk to my friends. We’re not all in different sports or all at. Practice at 6 a m or five thirty a m and instead we can take this kind of drive that we have this angst being stuck indoors or so you know without being able to travel or different things like that not being able to party as ah, ah you know in high school or I don’t know you know any of that kind of stuff that you could be doing so many other things and essentially saying like well we’re here.

04:34.97
David Graham
Yeah.

04:49.45
David Graham
Um, the.

04:54.86
Andrew Morgans
Ah, you know, let’s take advantage of this if I you know had all this stuff going on I wouldn’t have taken this chance and you know I’ve told people that plenty of times like I just wouldn’t have sacrificed family I don’t think in the early days to build a business I built because I mean I was spending one hundred plus hours a week really making my business come to life at the beginning. And I just wouldn’t have sacrificed those things but you take what life gives you um and the best of us kind of take those situations and turn them around for good and you know every single time something has come up in the Amazon world which has been my world. Let’s say they’re getting rid of they got rid of like reviews you could do these giveways to launch products or. Margins got slimmer the pandemic happened and you couldn’t send in any practical essential. So these different like just roadblocks I always saw as an opportunity of like wow everyone else is freezing. Everyone else is getting conservative. Everyone else is afraid this is an opportunity as someone from the bottom. Essentially to leapfrog all these people you know and that’s why I say it takes money to make money or like when there’s a slump in the economy like you know, real realtors or investors like you know make so many gains on everyone else and that’s really what I saw and what I think about anytime. There’s like a real challenge is I’m like look some people won’t get past this challenge. And that’s an opportunity for me to Leap Frog and I just think that’s really cool as young guys. You guys saw that opportunity and even talking about it now and aware of it to say we took advantage of this time and went all like you know bet it on ourselves and stayed productive and turned like a lot of negative time for people into something that’s like I mean obviously change your life.

06:26.76
Andrew Morgans
Um, it took a couple of minutes there but I just think you know don’t overplay that it says it’s a huge lesson for any young entrepreneurs or even like you know something we have to learn over and over and over as we go is just like when we hit these walls. We hit these like you know these swaps and slow us down or whatever and like think of it as an opportunity. Okay, so. That being said back to your story. You’re like we took this chance of the pandemic to say like hey let’s build this did you guys have software experience or like you know who who’s on the team and like kind of what experiences you guys have already.

06:54.50
David Graham
Yeah, definitely so that’s that’s a whole and other part of the story at first. So. It’s really just the 3 of us and none of us had any sort of professional business experience or professional technology experience and so all we really had was an idea on paper an idea in our minds at the at the time that we knew had legs. But we honestly didn’t know what the first step was um and I think that’s ah, an issue or a roadblock that a lot of entrepreneurs or people that desire to be an entrepreneur have and you don’t really know what the first step is and if it’s even possible for you to kind of turn this idea into reality. And so what we did is is we kind of just took it 1 step at a time and I always like to tell people that if we would have kind of fast forward into the future and and got too focused on what the next ten steps or maybe like what decision we’re going to have to make in a year or half a year um we probably wouldn’t have been able to kind of push through it. We just kind of kept our heads down and focused on the next step ahead of us and so I think it’s really like we really just learned as we as we went. Um and I’m a huge believer in competitive learning and I think that’s definitely something that my founding team practiced. Ah, very early on and we still practice today and so we really didn’t have any sort of professional experience. We just kind of learned as we went and um, trying to take advantage of online resources ah read as much as possible listen to to as many relevant podcasts as possible. Um, and really just to absorb as much knowledge as we could um and.

08:21.20
David Graham
I would say that really was important to us early on and that’s really how we kind of figured out how to take that first step and I would say there was definitely a few steps that we could have avoided early on but it’s all part of the process. Um, and so yeah and the the first thing we really did is so we had the the idea.

08:32.90
Andrew Morgans
A hundred percent

08:39.34
David Graham
And we did some research and we’re like okay the next logical step is putting together. Basic wire frames for our idea and so that’s exactly what we did We taught ourselves how to wire frame using figma. Um, and and we did exactly that and they were They definitely were not the prettiest of wire frames but it was enough to bring it was enough. It was enough.

08:56.36
Andrew Morgans
Um.

08:58.44
David Graham
Material to bring to a software house and then also get bids from from individual developers as well. So that was kind of what we did um and and ah as I said we relied a lot on ah on the internet and just kind of learning it as as we go. Um, and so yeah, that’s kind of how we we took took the first step but it definitely was something that was a little bit challenging at first.

09:16.18
Andrew Morgans
So here’s the thing like true entrepreneurship is creating something I have nothing you know that’s what I believe like so that is the challenge. That’s why it’s hard, but that’s what you did and it’s like you know you obviously have to make a decision and just go and once you realize that.

09:20.33
David Graham
Right.

09:34.87
Andrew Morgans
It’s action that just has to happen. You just make an action and then you adjust as you go and that has to be done. It’s almost like if there’s 2 paths one could be wrong. One could be right? But either way, you just need to make a decision you hit that? No you hit that like oh this, we chose the wrong wire frame software to use or like you know, whatever the case might be and then. Sooner you get to that the sooner you can be like okay it was pass b I should have went on path b but like might as well hit a get get it wrong as fast as possible so you can go to b or you pick day and it was right and keep moving you know and I think that once you learn that it’s like. That is the skill that is what entrepreneurship is is essentially not knowing how to do something not knowing where to start and then just jumping in and um, figuring that out I think even ah, you know that when I would start I think a lot of people would even be like what’s a wire frame. You know like they don’t understand what that would be like so. You know it’s essentially a mood board is essentially like this is what we’re trying to build a sketch you know and then taking it to a creator and saying hey you make this come to life. Of course you guys had your wire frame. Um, you’ve talked about like your coaches and your parents and everything not really being on board when you guys were starting this like talk a little bit about that.

10:44.74
David Graham
Yeah, definitely so at first I would say that everyone was fairly supportive in terms of because at first it was just a project that we were doing during the pandemic and everyone was like why not spend your time in a productive way and see what you can make to make of this thing. Um I would say when the the pushback really came was when. We had to make the decision to either go to college or pursue the startup full-time and at that moment. Um, we didn’t have enough traction or we we didn’t really have enough I would say we didn’t have ah ah enough idea of where this thing was headed to take that leap right out of high school and not go to college. And so we thought why not pursue it in parallel with college and then if something comes of it and that and we continue to gain traction then make that decision later on in our college journey. Um, and maybe after our freshman year which is exactly what we did and so I would say that right after our freshman I mean we actually tried to to stay in college as long as possible. Um, just because we didn’t want to exit college too early before we had really any serious traction and so the first thing we did is we went to college and we said okay everyone tried to do it in parallel and for me at the time I was playing division one sports which is a huge commitment on top of that I was doing seventeen credit hours for school. And I was also in the under school at to high estate and so it was a crazy crazy schedule for me and at the time I was I was trying to squeeze in 6 to 8 hours a day on fuuse me and so my my roommate at the time could definitely attest to this but it was a lot of late nights and early mornings and and many many coffees.

12:11.97
David Graham
Um, but we got through it and during that period we’re able to prove out market validation. That’s really what we were looking to do that that first year or that my freshman year and my founders freshman year as well. Um, and we were able to prove that market validation through an Mvp or a minimal viable product that we beta tested with. Um, some students at each of our universities and so it was a little bit. It was beneficial to be at school for that period. Um, and then soon we saw enough traction we’re like you know what? let’s let’s take the leap and let’s actually do this thing full time because we know where it can go. We just need to put our full.

12:35.30
Andrew Morgans
Um, yeah.

12:46.97
David Graham
Um, effort and full attention into it. Um, in order for it to get there and and that’s really when some of the pushback came and I had people tell me, you worked your whole life to to get a division one scholarship. Why would you throw it away. Why are you so willing just to go ahead and start this thing or continue to pursue this thing and for me it honestly just came down to.

13:07.33
David Graham
I knew and as you said earlier college can you can always go back to college and I knew that that opportunity could could wait a little bit. Um and I just knew that with with startups timing is a huge thing and I didn’t want to miss the market opportunity and I knew what we had we I knew what we had and. Um, I Just didn’t want to kind of let it go by and and wait until um, I’m graduate college or even pursue it in parallel and just not put as much effort into it as I wanted to um and so I kind of just said you know what I’m going to follow my own path and and not really listen to the people around me at the time. Um, and then eventually everyone kind of came around and and everyone was very Supportive. So I’m very fortunate now to have very supportive parents grandparents friends family um coaches. But at the time it was It was a little bit hard for everyone to see the the path forward.

13:54.38
Andrew Morgans
Yeah, and it’s like if they love you, They’re going to challenge you if you’ve worked your whole life to get to something but I think you know it’s cliche saying but it’s like it’s not the destination. It’s the journey and you know all the work you put in to be a division one athlete to get to school the work ethic. The consistency.

13:58.10
David Graham
Right.

14:03.72
David Graham
Right.

14:12.11
Andrew Morgans
Um, the political moves. You know who knows the the financial commitments. Um, you know all of that was still training like for what’s next right? It’s really the ability to do all those things to get to division 1 but like what’s a national championship. Do what? what is like what does that? Really do for you? um. Not much It’s an accomplishment It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a huge thing. Um, but it’s not It’s not a business It’s not something that supports your family It’s not like you’re still going to have to go to work after that’s done. Ah there’s you know I don’t know if there’s a professional career in lacrosse or not, you’re going to have an education and you’re going to go start a career all over again, you’re going to be doing what you’re doing now.

14:40.95
David Graham
For who.

14:47.68
David Graham
But.

14:51.42
Andrew Morgans
Maybe in four to five years whatever that looks like um and so it’s really just like long game thinking honestly about and you know I’ve hit these different times like I’ve shared this online or or live on the podcast where. Um, one of my biggest regrets I don’t have many but 1 of my biggest regrets or things I would do differently at least would be I always set my ceiling too low and I’m someone that really believes a lot myself. But even just like what I thought was believing in a lot at the time was still just like very low um and in some cases people are there. I’m not putting this against it I’m not calling anyone out personally right? but just this thinking of like you playing lacrosse you competing in lacrosse playing division 1 is like that is the goal and you’re like no I’m shooting so much higher than that and I’ve been doing all of this just to get to this point anyway. And so I’m going to you know I’m going to jump at this I’m playing that longer game thing because at the end of the day whether fuuse me turns into the next Facebook or not um what you will have learned in this process. Um the connections. You’ll have made the interactions will set you up for you know the rest of your life. Ah, you know doing what you’re doing and it’s really about the process of like look I found something new. That’s really pushing me um to grow and learn new things and how to build a pitch deck and how to build a wireframe and how to like sell and network and um, you know, innovate and.

16:19.43
Andrew Morgans
For anyone that’s really driven for anyone that’s like got professional curiosity I think that newness of learning like is just like intoxicating 1 entrepreneur to another is like you know I’m always seeking knowledge and I’ve done a lot of things I’ve done all kinds of things. But when I find something new. Um. Just get so laser focusedcused on that that it’s like you know it’s intoxicating nothing else. Matters. Um, and I think it’s just a little bit of a difference in our generation versus the last which is like the best way is actually as soon as you know you need to change or switch it up. You want to try something different like don’t waste time at all.

16:53.46
David Graham
Right.

16:55.68
Andrew Morgans
And um, you know and jump into that and make that change because time is everything you know and so um I don’t know I just really respect the move and I really understand having that pushback by family and friends and people that love you They’re just afraid for you. You know, but you’re essentially like look this is on me. Um. You know this is my this is my competition. It’s me versus me and I think I can do something like really great and I want to do with my best friends in your case like guys you grew up with and had chemistry with so I also work with my best friends and I love it like I think about it um going to work today and I’m going to hang out with my friends and and get some work done and it’s um. It’s something that’s really really great and something that entrepreneurship ecommerce digital marketing. The digital world has brought to us that we could do in like a matter of a school year like bring stuff to life where that used to take years and years and years in our parents. You know our parents’ childhood. So okay I get caught of up caught up with this emotional stuff. But I just really think that mindset of taking that leap is long game and and ah, especially with your generation gen z like patience and long game is not something that’s a strong suit. So very mature thinking of you in my opinion to say hey I think this is really where. Focus should be and what I want to build you know for the future and already a top Philly startup. Um, okay, so parents are on board. They they start to see the success. They’re like okay, sounds like you made a good idea. Um.

18:20.42
Andrew Morgans
You know when did fuse me like you know, really start taking off or or where did you start feeling like okay we have an Mvp that’s like doable. Did you go start raising funds was this boot shopped like you know what happened there.

18:32.20
David Graham
Yeah, so um, originally I mean the first step was really building out that Mvp and we beta-tested the Mvp with a few universities as I mentioned. And soon as we felt like we had enough traction from that beta period of testing we’re like okay we need to we need capital to actually build out the v one or the real version of this product and so at that point where we took the the data and the traction from beta testing and really just leveraged that into our first round ah of capital. And what we did I mean there was ah it was a long um path to to get to that point where we could even beta test the product I mean we as like kind of to what you spoke to before in terms of the newness of it all. We had no clue what how long the process was going to take to actually get. Get a product to a point where it was marketable and usable by students and at first we’re like hey we have this idea we’re going to knock it out in a month or so and and students are going to be testing it two months later and that just wasn’t it at all and it actually took. Hundreds of iterations of the software for it to finally get to a point where it was usable and students would enjoy their experience and so something that that it was kind of funny to us is just like it’s kind of it’s endless iteration not with the product. Not only with the product but with marketing your pitch everything and that’s something that we’ve.

19:53.41
David Graham
Kind of learn throughout our journey and so soon as we got to a point where we had enough traction from beta testing as I said we took that to the capital markets and we said okay, who can we target to be investors in our platform and. Honestly, it took a ton of cold outreach I would say that I probably sent north of 2000 Linkedin direct messages and on top of that thousands of emails as well because I didn’t really know who at that point I didn’t want to go to I mean we all all the founders put in personal money to really just get. Get the Mvp built um and and family and friends as well and then once we knew that we needed to raise a serious round of capital to take it to the next step and take to the next level and so for us we we targeted we were originally targeting $500000 raise and we.

20:26.50
Andrew Morgans
Yeah, yeah.

20:42.74
David Graham
Really just leaned on our college network. Our high school network our parents network our friends network and we literally just leveraged every single person in our lives network to find a group of investors and um, what ended up happening is we talked I personally probably spoke to north of 200 investors and we got 27 to convert. Um, and so it really just is a numbers game at the end of the day and that’s what I kind of like to tell people it’s it’s a grind capital raising is not fun. Um, but it just just it takes a lot of grit and that’s something that I learned throughout I’d say grit is is definitely something that you you get taught through through athletics. Um, and so I was I was just willing to continue to push as long as it would take in order to raise that capital and so it was ah it was a gritty period of time and and we finally were able to close. We hit the five hundred Thousand Mark and then we actually went um beyond that to to 850000 and so we’re actually able to oversubscribe around. Um, which was incredible and kind of took a step back something I skipped over is at first raising capital for us was extremely extremely difficult and that was really our first huge hurdle that we faced. Um because at the time I was nineteen years old and a 19 year old trying to convince 3040 year olds 50 year olds 60 year olds to give them capital. Is is not ah, it’s not fun to be on my side of that. Um, and they’re like hey I love your idea and I think I think you really you guys really have something here but you are only 19 years old you have no professional business experience and who’s to say that you are responsible enough to manage this money.

22:14.63
David Graham
And so we got a lot of Nos um, at first a ton of them and that was super devastating at the time and and we just had to continue to push through it. Um, but something we did which was again it speaks to the whole idea of constantly iterating as we took a look at our our pitch and like how we’re positioning our startup to these investors. And we thought okay the biggest pushback we’re getting is around our age. Why not flip the narrative and turn our age into our biggest competitive advantage and so right, right? and so we actually like instead of avoiding that in our pitch because we did originally kind of avoid that and say we didn’t necessarily say we’re.

22:40.74
Andrew Morgans
Good advantage. That’s why you’re designed. That’s why you’re perfect to build this.

22:53.48
David Graham
High school students at the time or freshman in college we kind of just said hey my name’s David Graham and this is what I’m doing. We kind of didn’t really touch on where we were in our academic journey. Um, but after that we got a lot of knows and then we said why not just address it head on and say hey we’re 20 years old 19 years old at the time and. That is our biggest competitive advantage. We’re building a product for our fellow students. We know the market better than anyone else does and that’s why we’re going to build an incredible product and that really resonated right? exactly and and that really resonated with our investor group and.

23:21.20
Andrew Morgans
Um, your storytelling got dialed in. Yeah.

23:26.40
David Graham
After that we’re able to raise capital pretty quickly I mean it’s still was was a painful process but we’re able to raise it and and get a few more yeses and then leverage those yeses into more yeses. Um, and so it really um, kind of changed changed the game after we flipped our narrative.

23:40.12
Andrew Morgans
I love it. Thanks for that background on that just really understanding how something comes to life I think is like you know it’s very interesting for me as someone that’s done bootstrapped but I’ve also done like coaching for pitches and you know pitch tax and obviously convince people to. Buy into what we were doing on Amazon when they you know people were very anti-amazon they’re just like website is cannibalism like I was trying to show them the advantages of of getting new customers from amazon like the gen z customers are like so familiar and comfortable with amazon there’s a certain amount of your customers just living on amazon on their phones. Um, to not be. There is like a huge mistake and I was I was early 20 s talking to like you know older white ceo men like in their sixty s you know, late 50 s that are like who are you to tell us about you know the way we’ve been doing things is so different. Let’s do it differently? Um and I leaned into that I was like look I’ve been doing this a long time I’ve been. Hacking satellites since I was a kid I’ve been on computers since they came out even though I’m a young man like I’ve I’ve been in-depth and then um, my team I started saying you know we have crazy chemistry I’m building this with my sisters kind of like you with your your best friends and saying hey we have chemistry and communication that is really hard to buy. And to build in ah in a company but we have it kind of like built in and this is why we’re the best for it. Um I want to get into like what fuse me is doing and and you know what you guys have built with the rest of our time before we do as a reminder today’s episode of startup hustle is brought to you by quip.

25:07.99
Andrew Morgans
Dash bid auctions and online marketplace dedicated to growing small auction businesses. They’re solving problems and providing a fun recommerce or liquidation shopping experience to value bidders. Go check out their incredible offerings and sign up at equip dash bid dot me backslash startups. So you know there’s so. Like I know if fuuse me does but to anyone listening I don’t think they do so we need to give a little background of what fuse me is exactly doing and you know there’s a lot of social media marketplaces startups out there. You know there’s like ah. What made you guys feel like as we get into it like we talked about the what problem you were solving so like 1 what is fuuse me and then like what problem were you guys trying to solve. Um, you were like that you went all in and to the point of giving up a division one you know, scholarship and career and career in lacrosse. Um. What were you guys solving the problem were you guys solving that you felt so passionate about to go all in on I want to hear more about that share that with our listeners.

26:00.60
David Graham
Yeah, so it was a problem that I was experiencing firsthand and so are my cofounders and so we arrived on our college campuses and we noticed that students are disconnected to each other but then also the the campus as a whole and so that was the first pain point we noticed is that there’s a huge there. There’s just. A lack of connectivity on a college campus and there’s a lot of outdated methods of sharing content. I mean there’s even the outdated cork bolt and boards that still exist in dorm rooms and dining halls and academic buildings and so what we wanted to do is make sure that ah wanted to build ap platform that would really combat. That lack of connectivity and loneliness that exist on college campuses and then also we noticed a huge friction point around the buying and selling of items between students and we saw students use um outdated I mean they do Facebook discussion boards or Facebook marketplace or even just buying and selling in large group chats. And we thought that was hugely inefficient. There was an opportunity to really capitalize on that market and so after a lot of ideation what we realized is that if you blend as I said earlier if you blend the addictiveness of social with the utility of a campus marketplace. It really can create for a great experience for students and something that they’re really kind of.

27:02.47
Andrew Morgans
Are.

27:16.96
David Graham
Eager to use on a daily basis and so the way we like to describeuseuse me is we offer. We’re an app that offers a private microcommunity experience to each student that is specifically for their campus and so they can interact with students across other schools. It’s just for their campus and on that in that microcommunity feed. They can socialize connect with their campus and then also buy and sell through our marketplace and so right now Fus me is composed of 4 main Feeds. We have the marketplace where students sell dorm room furniture textbooks football tickets ah clothing really Anything. You can think of. On campus and there’s no shipping you just meet up and it’s changed the item in person. Um, and it’s a very trusted environment to buy and sell because every student is verified and so you’re not dealing with any student or any person who doesn’t go to your school or um, anything like that and so that’s the campus marketplace and then we have a search feed where you can find.

28:02.72
Andrew Morgans
Um, yes.

28:10.83
David Graham
It’s essentially a list of every student who goes to your school that’s signed up for refuse me and this is a really useful feed to find study partners friends roommates or really anyone you’re compatible with or or maybe even not compatible with but it’s a great way to bring and kind of grow your social circle and then the next feed I’ll touch on is our campus home feed and this is. Um, essentially a replacement for those outdated boltin boards I mentioned um and we like to think of our campus home feed as a digitalized boltin board. So this is where student composed pictures polls events um videos to their entire school in just a couple clicks and so it’s really the only platform where students can have that direct. Access and um, kind of an outlet to talk to their entire student body through a centralized feed and so that’s something that’s been very popular as well. Um, and then the last feed I’ll touch on is our cat where students can chat 1 to 1 one to many and then also create and join and based group chats that are public for the entire university.

29:02.92
Andrew Morgans
His.

29:06.71
David Graham
So at the end of the day What we’re really doing is fostering kind of positive online relationships and interactions between students that create a happier healthier and and really more well-connected student body. Um, and so that’s kind of our mission and what what we’re doing here at Fus me.

29:19.51
Andrew Morgans
Um I can tell that you’ve pitched a few times because you just nailed that I feel like you absolutely nailed it breaking it down what it is anyone listening like I don’t even really have them any more questions in regards to like okay, what is it I immediately thought of um, an app I found last year called radiate.

29:23.90
David Graham
Second.

29:38.33
Andrew Morgans
Um, it’s for like music festivals and shows and essentially it’s an app just for that show. Um, no, one’s vetted and there’s not really selling but essentially like people talking about meeting up with new friends going to the show. Maybe someone’s going by themselves. Maybe they’re trying to have someone to hang out with after maybe they’re asking questions about.

29:38.44
David Graham
But.

29:56.64
Andrew Morgans
You know where to get this or how to get in there where Vip is or any number of things which just creates this community around the event that essentially connects people and I think in a world where everyone is so disconnected and isolated and in our own bubbles and um, anything That’s really facilitating that. Especially around Positivity If you’re able to accomplish that and keep it a positive um environment instead of like some of the negative size of social media you know because you can moderate this one? Um I think that gets really cool. It gets really exciting and I can immediately see the opportunity as a founder myself. Um, and as someone that’s ah. You know, excited about these things you know for me, it’s like look a lot of times I go to a show or let’s say you’re at school you’re at school to meet people like let’s be honest, you’re there to get educated but otherwise we’d all choose online schools and we would probably save money and save time and you know, but you’re in the college experience as well to meet people grow your network. Maybe you’re joining a fraternity or sorority so that you can have connections later on in life like that’s a big part of it. Um, and so you’re not really creating needing to create demand. Um, you’re just capturing the demand that’s already out there and saying hey guys this is a trusted place where you guys can share stuff. Um, students that are trying to be influencers or creators. Whatever can share their videos share their events What they’re doing um talk to me about like how many schools like where you guys at right now like kind of as we come up on.

31:21.27
Andrew Morgans
You know the end of the show like talk to me about where you guys are at right now with it like is it is it live is it being used in schools. How many schools? um and then also like something you guys are working on in addition to what you guys have built that you’re excited about something new that you guys are excited about something you’re working on getting better. Um. Anything you’d like to share around that I think would be awesome.

31:39.19
David Graham
Yeah, definitely so just to to pressure your your previous point I think it definitely rings true is like I’m a huge believer in the more connected everyone becomes online the more disconnected you actually are in real life and that’s something that we’re trying to tackle here. It fuuse me is we don’t want students to stay on fuse me all day and not actually go make. Those in-person interactions happen what we’re trying to do is actually get students off for platforms so they meet up they connect vr platform and then they actually go meet up in person or they find an event on our platform and then they actually go attend that event in person. So we’re a huge believer in kind of that online to offline experience and that’s really something we’re focused on. Um, and then in terms of kind of what we’ve been able to achieve so far. So right? when we launched the app store we took we had kind of a unique approach to launch. We didn’t want to launch to every school all at once. So we actually implemented waiting rooms across all of our schools and so every single university in our database was locked and had a waiting room upon launch day. And then we actually decided which schools to launch to based on critical mass buildup in those waiting rooms and so it’s pretty cool because we allowed our users to decide which school we launched to rather than us trying to versus a certain school. Um and we’ve applied I mean we still use that same approach because right we’re we’re not at a point yet where we have the resources to unlock all 3500 schools in the Us.

32:45.10
Andrew Morgans
Okay.

32:56.52
David Graham
Um, what we want to do is make sure that we’re giving each school the proper kind of tender love and care that it deserves and that it needs um in order to really make that community thrive and so we don’t want ah a situation where students logs onto a school and there’s only a couple other students to interact with we want a situation where there’s hundreds or even thousands of students interact with and that’s really what makes our. Platform powerful. Um, and so to touch on where we’re at so far. So um, in total we’ve launched 17 universities and it’s a really diverse group of universities because again we don’t choose them so like um like some some people would think that we chose maybe big 10 launches first and then we go into the Sep or whatever. But it’s really just ah, it’s all spread across um, all different conferences and our most recent launch school was actually my my school um Ohio State and it’s something that I was really excited to launch and honestly it’s it’s just been extremely surreal going back to campus and seeing our product in the hands we actually at this point we have almost 20% of a high state.

33:40.37
Andrew Morgans
8

33:53.37
David Graham
Um, and so to have almost 20% of such a large school. You can walk around on campus and actually see the fusme app in people’s hands and for me, it’s just been such a rewarding um experience traveling back to school and I actually just gave a guest lecture there as well. So it just so rewarding to kind of. See that come to life and and see your your former classmates using your product and so anyways, yeah, we’re at 17 schools the highest state’s the most recent and right now we’re really just hyper focused on growth and increasing our user engagement. We’re not too focused on revenue. Although we have positioned ourselves to kind of monetize at scale. Um, right now we’re just focused on growing that user base making sure that we’re improving the product daily and like for us we’re I mean user feedbacks are highest. The thing that we look at daily because it’s it’s the the best way to iterate your product and it’s the best way to know if students are actually enjoying it and so we’re constantly.

34:28.99
Andrew Morgans
I.

34:44.18
David Graham
It’s iterating the product and learning from users and and making their experience better. Um, and it’s really kind of that practice is really evident through our kpis and like right now we’ve been exceeding all the the milestone or the benchmarks for for user engagement for the industry and. Um, right now we’re kind of just setting the bar high for ourselves in terms of where we want to get. But yeah so and at this point one metric that I I’ll share is we actually just surpassed the 20000 connections made and so that means that we’ve actually 2 wo-way connections. So not just someone sending one but a 2 wo-way mutual connection. We’ve connected over 20000 college students at this point and for us that’s a truly incredible stat because it shows that we’re staying true to our original mission to connect college students and so that’s something we’re really proud of but that obviously we’re looking to grow that daily and um, we’re really excited for kind of what the future will.

35:35.68
Andrew Morgans
I love that I um, just add to that like I met like a top 5 exec of Airbnb randomly at an airport in Tokyo and that sounds crazy but we were like plugging in our phones and we just started chatting for like over an hour and

35:41.41
David Graham
Wow.

35:47.67
David Graham
A tough.

35:50.16
Andrew Morgans
Charging our phones. We had a long layover and she was just like the kindest lady and um, her daughter actually is like what brought up that she was the founder kind of like spilled the beans on her because she was being really humble and her daughter just like spoke up and um, you know what I learned from that conversation I wanted to share here was like you know, essentially listening to um. Like the student demand to choose where to launch instead of like you being like well we want Ohio State or we want you know you m Kc here in Kansas City or we want the zoo or whatever the case might be um, yeah, letting the customer speak to you guys and like letting following that demand because I mean what she shared with me was that um. Thailand is actually the first country that airbnb like had success to basically like fund the rest of it so they were like hitting like walls and New York city and just like issues issues issues trying to push into these cities that that they shouldn’t have or that were like too difficult barrierd as entry so to speak.

36:36.49
David Graham
I do.

36:48.51
Andrew Morgans
Um, and then they launched in Thailand which isn’t what they were thinking as far as like being really the money source. Whatever but it just took off in Thailand and it was um so it was actually Thailand that like you know, got airbnb on its feet and turned it into like the platform that it is today. Um, so you never know like you know getting.

36:54.84
David Graham
Um, um.

37:05.20
Andrew Morgans
Ah, crazy engagement at a local private school private College University Um, you know could be the virality that you need on something like that Essentially like you know to get to the big ones with the big cus. The big student bases and things like that. So I think that’s brilliant as well. Um.

37:16.95
David Graham
Um, but.

37:23.50
Andrew Morgans
And super exciting to just like hear I think you guys are also right like um, really just thinking about quality and growth and being in that growth mode. Um because you can lean out and get profitable and you’ve seen that model for so many different apps and things before is like figure out what’s working innovate continue to be the best listen to your customers. Or your students so to speak and um, especially right now while you are so young and right there in that market like the proximity to who you’re creating for is so so close is something that I you know I’ve been doing this eleven years and I can remember being. 25 versus 35 and it was way easier to create for the younger market at that time and then I spent all this time learning business and how to elevate and and be around thinkers and movers and when it gets more difficult so you know I’m just saying like lean into right now being like let’s continue to innovate and grow and that’s exactly what you guys are doing. Um. You know I think it’s really awesome. Um, where can people interact with you where can people follow along where can people figure out how to sign up if if there are students listening to this. You know we have a couple 100000 tune in each month we have founders entrepreneurs I’m sure there’s like you know students wanting to be entrepreneurs can spread this out maybe to their kids or or say hey have you heard of. Have you heard of this. Um, you know where can people get I guess get the app use me get in the waiting list for their school. Um, follow your journey give us some contact points.

38:49.00
David Graham
Yeah, so um I mean first and foremost you can reach you can download the app on the app store or the Google play store. It’s fus me FUZEME and the first students that their school isn’t open yet. They can join the waiting list as you said.

38:56.27
Andrew Morgans
Um, okay.

39:03.34
David Graham
And if you join the waiting list. It just increases the chances that your school be open, so I really encourage you to join that waiting list. Um, and then on top of that and in terms of just following our overall journey. Um, we have we’re on Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter, um, and pretty much every social platform, and it’s just app fuuse me. Um, and it’s the same ffuzemee. And we pretty much share. We share a lot of updates about our story and and kind of our journey and how we got to where where we are right now. Um, and then if you if you want advice or just kind of want to talk to me about my story and and you you’re kind of wondering how how you take that first step I’m definitely happy to to be there as a resource you can reach me at. My email David at fuseme.com and I’m meeting with with students pretty frequently from Ohio State but also other schools that are just kind of curious about how I got to where I am and and how I had the courage to take that leap as we discussed and so I’m happy to talk to you and yeah I really appreciate you having me.

39:56.97
Andrew Morgans
David has been an absolute pleasure, and once again, this episode of Startup Hustle is sponsored by our friends over Equip-Bid Auction. Join, sell, earn, it’s that easy with Equip-Bid Auction. Become an affiliate and start or grow your independent business by visiting equip-bid.me/startup today. Even easier, head to startuphustle.xyz, click on our partners page. You’ll see Equip-Bid founder Andy. He set up everything to go make some money. So go build your business within a business at Equip-Bid Auction.

David, thank you for your time. We’ll have all of his show notes, all of his links, and contact information for anyone that didn’t get a chance to write that down. I’ll definitely be following you on Tiktok, watch what you guys are doing. It sounds really exciting. Congrats on being considered one of Philly’s top startups. That’s an amazing accomplishment. Super proud of what you guys are doing and will continue to follow along. Thanks again for your time.

40:55.23
David Graham
Definitely, and I really appreciate the selection. And really excited to kind of stay in touch.

40:58.71
Andrew Morgans
Yeah, of course. We’ll see you next time, Hustlers. Thank you.