Liam Gerada: From Malta to a No-Code E-Commerce Platform - Krepling Growing 4x Year Over Year
As the co-founder and CEO of Krepling, a composable, no-code e-commerce platform, Liam Gerada shares his entrepreneurial journey, revealing the ups and downs of building a successful startup in a world where 'a lot of stuff is glamorized'.
- 1. The speaker, Liam Gerada, is the co-founder and CEO of Krepling, a composable, no-code e-commerce platform.
- 2. Krepling is growing at a rate of 4x year over year and has merchants in all continents.
- 3. The target audience for Krepling is business owners and entrepreneurs who need help building out their e-commerce infrastructure.
- 4. Gerada is 24 years old and grew up on the island of Malta, which he describes as a great place to experiment and find oneself.
- 5. He moved to the US when he was around 16 or 17 and became interested in starting a business after discovering a gap in the market for sneaker enthusiasts and resellers.
- 6. Gerada's first business venture with his brother Travis was a consignment marketplace for shoes, which they launched when they were both still in high school.
- 7. The biggest problem with their target audience for this business was that many customers didn't want to pay for the shoes up front and would instead sell them to make a profit.
- 8. Gerada eventually sold this business and used the leverage from it to get a scholarship for college, where he studied accounting and economics.
- 9. After seeing the success of Shopify and its app marketplace, Gerada and his team decided to focus on creating a no-code e-commerce platform with a select number of high-quality integrations.
- 10. They surveyed their target audience and found that most merchants were not developers and wanted a simple, user-friendly platform.
- 11. Gerada's team launched Krepling with a basic product to prove the concept and then reached out to potential customers for feedback.
- 12. The first five merchants they approached were given the product for free and were asked to ignore its appearance in favor of seeing the vision behind it.
- 13. Customers helped build the first product by providing feedback on what they found beneficial and what they would like to see improved.
- 14. Gerada stresses the importance of maintaining a high level of customer obsession, even as the number of customers grows.
- 15. Krepling is not based on any existing infrastructure platform and had to be built from scratch, requiring a significant amount of funding.
- 16. Gerada's team was introduced to Jason Calacanis through YouTube videos and was able to secure a $100,000 investment from him after an intense pitch call.
- 17. Gerada focused solely on fundraising when it came time to raise capital, which led to a high churn rate among customers when the product became paid.
- 18. The team decided to start over with a baseline $15 per month price point and gather feedback from customers who were willing to pay for the product.
- 19. Gerada remains involved with many of Krepling's customers as an account manager and spends time understanding their needs and keeping a connection between the company and its users.
- 20. Gerada advises others to be cautious when starting a business and to focus on building something that can benefit people, rather than just making money or pleasing customers.
Source: EO via YouTube
❓ What do you think? What sacrifices are you willing to make in order to bring your vision to life, even if it means challenging conventional norms or expectations? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!