Behind the Scenes: A Conversation With Neal Jean About the Birth of Beacons.ai - AHN Media Group
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Awaken* newsletter

April 11, 2024

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If you want to see what the next generation of Asian leaders looks like–look no further than Beacons.ai co-founder and CEO, Neal Jean. Backed by Y Combinator, a16z, and even our former guest Bryant Chou, Beacons is an up-and-coming Operating System for creators. A one-stop shop for creators to do email marketing, make their online store, their link in bio, etc. Despite still being early in his entrepreneurial journey, Neal has already accumulated an incredible amount of insights and experiences, and I hope you enjoy learning about them as much as I did. Without further ado:

BEFORE STARTUPS

Neal’s background before startups is quite unorthodox. A few years after graduating from Duke undergrad, he went back to college and got a second bachelor’s degree, then went on to get a PhD from Stanford. I asked Neal to connect the dots for me:

I grew up in Ohio and when I was 18, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t ready to make big decisions like that. I wasn’t aware of many different career paths. When I got to Duke, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I ended up studying economics and math there. I started my career as an options trader working in finance. I fell into that because I was studying economics and was somewhat good at math. It became clear to me very quickly that I didn’t want to do that my whole life. Around 2010 or 2011, I was living in Chicago working in trading and I’d be sitting at my trading desk reading essays by Paul Graham about startups. At the time, I thought it would be cool to build a company and make a difference, but I wasn’t confident that I could do it myself. I wasn’t technical and I wasn’t very familiar with it. Now I know that it doesn’t really matter if you’re technical, you learn everything by doing it anyway.

I mentioned that as a non-technical person, being unconfident in my ability to start a startup resonated with me.

Definitely. I majored in economics, so maybe you can relate to some of this [I also majored in economics]. One of the only things I remembered from my economics classes at Duke was this idea that advances in technology are the only thing that really moves the world forward over long periods of time. I think that idea really stuck with me. It was one thing that drew me to tech. I started my career in finance. I actually got fired from that first job. I made a bad trade, lost a decent amount of money, and got fired the next day. Looking back, I feel really lucky because it gave me a chance to reset and be more intentional about what I wanted to do with my life. 

So my younger brother, Joel, was Stanford class of 2011. He then went to MIT and did a PhD there, researching solar cells. It just felt like the stuff he was working on, he was trying to save the world since he was working on climate change you know. He was working on developing new types of solar materials. It just felt very meaningful compared to what I was doing. He actually now has a solar startup called Swift Solar. So I decided to go back to school, went to Georgia Tech for two years, did a second bachelor’s in EE, and I thought I also wanted to work in solar, but the summer before I went to Stanford, I took Andrew Ng’s machine learning class on Coursera and found it really interesting. I did a rotation in a machine learning group at Stanford and decided to switch to CS basically. My PhD was mostly on using computer vision and satellite imagery to map out poverty in Africa, which was the kind of meaningful project I wanted to work on coming out of finance. But even coming into Stanford, I had the idea that I wanted to build something eventually. Near the end of my PhD, I started working with a couple of friends on some projects. That led to applying to YC, pivoting a couple of times, and eventually getting to what we’re working on at Beacons today. 

PIVOTING IDEAS

Most startups have co-founders. I asked Neal how he met his and if he had any advice for other people looking for co-founders:

I have three co-founders. Two of them were in my PhD program. We met when we were visiting Stanford, deciding what grad school to go to. I met our fourth co-founder at Georgia Tech when I was doing my second undergrad there, so I’ve known him for over 10 years. I think I got lucky and ended up being able to work with my friends. If you get lucky and you have friends who have similar interests and you work well together, that can be a great path. One of the things that surprised me about startups is that it’s very random. Before you do a startup, you read about startups in TechCrunch and you think they all follow a standard path. It’s like you raise a pre-seed, you raise a seed round, you raise a series A and then whatever. But people do all kinds of crazy things, and the same goes for finding a co-founder. There are lots of ways to do it. If you don’t have friends to do it with, one thing I would suggest is to develop your own interests. Follow things that you’re interested in and try to go deep in those areas. You’ll naturally start doing more interesting things and meet more people. If you’re doing that intentionally, I think you’ll create a lot of luck surface area for yourself.

Earlier in the interview, Neal mentioned that his team pivoted a few times, so I asked him what the original idea for Beacons was:

I used to live in Rains [graduate apartments at Stanford], and the first project that we built was a face recognition smart lock for my apartment. We tried to get it to recognize all of our friends’ faces and unlock my apartment when they showed up. It worked sometimes. We made a portable version of it to bring to our YC interview. That’s what we got into YC with.

We quickly pivoted away from our original idea after our YC interview. We realized that all of our backgrounds were in software, and to build the kind of company we initially envisioned would require more of a consumer hardware focus. So, we started exploring new ideas and different things. We entered YC without a clear idea and spent the first month building productivity software, which I think is a common trap for founders who don’t have any better ideas.  

About a month into YC, I attended a friend’s wedding in Singapore and met a woman who was running an e-commerce company and doing all of her marketing through influencers on Instagram. She heard about my background in machine learning and asked if I could build a system to help her find influencers to work with. She showed me spreadsheets where she was tracking people’s follower counts and the number of likes and comments they were getting on their posts. She would then compute their engagement ratios and try to figure out how much she would be willing to pay them. It seemed like a good problem to automate and potentially improve with machine learning. I returned to SF, discussed it with my co-founders, and we invited her to come from Singapore to SF so we could start building this system for her. She actually came over the next Monday and moved into our apartment. I gave up my bed for her and moved into my co-founder’s bed. We spent the rest of YC building with her, and that was how we got into the creator space. Eventually, we realized that we were more excited to build products for the creator side of the market than the brand side.

We first started building something that’s similar to Cameo. We were trying to build a Cameo for creators. However, we soon realized that Cameo was already doing a good job at catering to creators. But that’s how we started talking to lots of creators. We saw Linktree taking off around that time. Their product looked pretty basic and we weren’t that good at building software at the time. So we thought we could probably compete with them. That’s how we started down the path we’ve been on for the last couple of years.

GETTING CUSTOMERS

I’m always curious how startups get their first customers, and I was especially curious about Beacons since they sell to influencers. Here’s what Neal had to say:

It is harder today because I think there are more people trying to reach out and get in touch with these creators. We just used cold email in the beginning, this was when we were still building the Cameo for creators. 

We put together a list of 50 creators who were based in the Bay Area and I emailed all of them. The email was basically like, “Hey, whatever your name is, your biggest fan, Jesse, who is my co-founder, wants to pay you $20 for this video. So you have $20 waiting for you. Just reply to my email and we’ll tell you how you can get this money.” We thought it could work. We got one reply out of the 50. Her name is Suki. Her Instagram is @sukiluser, if you want to look her up. She had just moved to the Bay Area from Toronto. She didn’t have many friends yet. She asked if Jesse was my co-founder. I confirmed, she was really nice about it. We met up the next day in Hayes Valley. She was our first user. She’s an advisor to the company today and still a friend. 

Although I thought this idea was genius, it sounded like it wasn’t too effective, so I asked Neal if he switched up his tactics to get customers 2-10:

No, we kept doing the cold email. After we pivoted to the link in bio, we started a new cold email strategy. We would find creators who are using Linktree. Then, we would rebuild their website in Beacons. We would send them a screenshot of the website we built for them that was nicer than their existing Linktree website and then ask them to sign up. That’s how we got our first couple hundred users. 

PHD FOUNDERS

Because I know some folks who have or are pursuing a PhD and are looking to get into startups afterwards, I figured I’d ask Neal to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of being a founder with a PhD:

I think we have more challenges than strengths. One challenge was that we didn’t have any experience working. My other co-founders had never worked before. I had only worked in finance. So I had never worked in tech. I had no idea how tech companies actually operate. So we just had to learn a lot of things from scratch and probably made a lot of rookie mistakes along the way. We also weren’t native to our space. None of us were content creators. And I think early on, there were some challenges that came with that. One, we didn’t have the most empathy for our users. So we were trying to build for them, but we didn’t really know what it was like. We’ve worked on that and improved over time. However, we probably made some decisions and mistakes that others wouldn’t have. From investors, there was a perception that we were mercenaries. We were machine learning PhDs, but we were building things for TikTok creators. They wondered if we were just capitalizing on a hot space. In terms of advantages: now that AI is so popular, I think our backgrounds are going to be more helpful. That’s maybe a more obvious one. A less obvious one that I think has been important is that we’re not necessarily smarter than people who don’t have PhDs. But one thing you do learn during your PhD is not to be intimidated by problems that you don’t know the answer to initially. As a founder, you often don’t know how to do anything going into it. You’re constantly figuring out new things. When you do a PhD, one of the challenges is that you have to bring new knowledge into the world. You’re always trying to figure out things that haven’t been figured out before. You’re not sure if you can figure it out, or at least not sure if you can figure it out in this way. So there’s a certain amount of intellectual resilience or courage that you develop. I think that’s actually been pretty helpful for building a company. To clarify, resilience or intellectual courage isn’t exclusive to PhDs, but it was helpful that we had developed that over time.

Naturally, I had to ask Neal how they managed to convince investors to bet on them:

It depends on the investor. Different investors care about different things and respond to different things. We’ve always been honest about who we are and who we’re not. We didn’t misrepresent ourselves as creator experts. We’ve always been earnest and curious, and over time, dedicated to solving problems in this space. For investors who cared more about that than domain expertise, our approach resonated with them. It’s probably a good thing because if you get money from an investor that doesn’t really match with you, it’s likely to cause problems later on.

BEING NON-TECHNICAL

Backtracking, I asked Neal to expand on an earlier point he made about how non-technical people can dive into a startup and pick things up along the way:

It was definitely beneficial for our team to have experience in software. But none of us had built any consumer software before; we were all research people. We knew Python, but we didn’t know JavaScript. I had imagined that to work and contribute to an early-stage startup, you have to be able to code things up yourself and build products yourself. It depends on the type of company you’re building. If you’re building a dev tools startup, maybe that’s more accurate. But there are many companies where it’s very helpful to have a non-technical person who’s willing to do a lot of different things to make the company work. At Beacons, I’ve done very little coding in the five years that we’ve been working together. Even though I have a PhD in CS, most of the work I’ve done at Beacons to help the company is not writing code. 

We’re a product-led company. Our go-to-market motion is mostly people using the product, and then other people seeing them use the product and adopting it for themselves. We haven’t done a lot of sales or even a lot of marketing up to this point. My role was mostly leading product, especially early on. Now we have other people on the product team. But early on, I was the main product person. Doing product is really about understanding your users or customers and then understanding their problems and then trying to figure out how you can solve them. Because we’re building a software product, it was about understanding how to solve them with software for the most part. The hard part is really understanding the problem and being creative in thinking about how you can provide a solution. That cycle of understanding the problem and then figuring out how to solve it actually creates a lot of leverage within the company.

One thing I took away from previous interviews is that you can’t just go and add all the features that your users ask you to. Users will ask you for this and that, but maybe you’ll end up with a really hodgepodge product if you do that. I wanted to get Neal’s thoughts on how to cut through the noise and identify what it is users actually need:

You do your best. If you look at our product, we definitely added a bunch of features that people asked for that didn’t end up being very useful. I definitely can’t claim that we’ve always done a good job of this. Understanding the problem is not a simple thing, there are lots of different problems and ways to think about them. It’s about fitting them together into one cohesive model of who the customer is and which problems are important enough to solve. It’s also about understanding which problems your company is well-positioned to solve or where you have a right to win as a company. It’s a high dimensional thing that requires a complex model of how the world works, how your customer fits into that world, how you fit into that world, and where you think things are going in the future. Then, it’s about trying to align all those things and build for that future while being constrained on the money, time, and people that you have to deliver that stuff. 

I asked Neal if he wrote out his models explicitly:

Yes, I really like to whiteboard stuff out. We have whiteboards in our office. That was a skill I picked up during my PhD. I also do a lot of writing internally. I believe that writing is thinking. There’s this quote, “Writing is nature’s way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is.” I believe that. 

BEING AN ASIAN FOUNDER

As per newsletter tradition, I asked Neal how being Asian has qualified his experience as a founder:

It’s definitely something I’ve thought about, but I wouldn’t say I spend a ton of time thinking about it. I think I’m relatively lucky in a lot of ways. As a founder, I’m a man, and women often have it harder as founders. I’m Asian, but as far as being a minority goes, being an Asian man is not the worst thing as a founder. I think because of other characteristics that I have, like having a PhD in machine learning from Stanford, I don’t not fit the mold that people are expecting. I think Asians are still pretty underrepresented in leadership roles.

I mentioned that although there are some very successful Asian founders, it seemed that Asian founders were especially lacking in terms of CEO representation. 

I share your impression that there aren’t many visible Asian CEOs. Jensen Huang, for example, has recently been in the media a lot. We’re still an early company, so I hope to help change that someday. However, it’s not always top of mind. Most days, I’m focused on what needs to get done at work.  

A fair answer, given that Neal is really in the thick of things having just launched Beacons 2.0 (a big expansion of their product suite featuring AI-powered tools) several months ago. 

SHOUTOUTS

The only thing Neal wanted to shoutout was Beacon’s mission:

For us, we always saw these creators as a new class of online entrepreneurs. They didn’t have a lot of tooling or support for them yet. That’s always been a big part of our mission at Beacons. This is actually related to the research I did at Stanford, where I got really excited about using software to create better economic opportunities for people around the world. I was doing that research on poverty in Africa. That’s a part of our mission at Beacons that I’m still pretty excited about, even though I never would have guessed that I would be working with TikTokers. It’s a cool space to be in. We’re starting to build one of the better, more comprehensive platforms out there to support online entrepreneurs, at least ones where content is pretty important for their business. We’re starting to build in a lot more AI and machine learning stuff to help them run their business more easily and make better decisions across the business. 

Given the rapid and accelerating growth of the creator economy, I suspect that Neal and his team will be in for some very busy and fun years. I’m excited to see how Neal grows during his time leading Beacons, and I hope that he’ll come back and grant us another interview once he’s made it!

Thank you Neal for speaking with us!

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Melody

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Melody Hahm on Shaping a Diverse Venture Capital Landscape for Entrepreneurs

Melody Hahm has held many roles as an acclaimed business journalist for CNBC and Yahoo Finance and a platform and community manager for venture capital firm Harlem Capital. But her Twitter bio begins with “unapologetically Korean.” That’s a good indicator of the kind of person Melody is. 

In her interview with AHN, Melody is unapologetically honest about her experiences as, often, the only Asian in the room. She shares her journey of finding value in her work and, as a result, recognizing her self-worth to advocate for herself in traditionally male-dominated newsrooms. 

Since joining Harlem Capital in July 2021, she has helped female entrepreneurs and people of color make their mark in history. She leads off-site and operator networking events and content strategy for the firm’s portfolio companies. But she’s doing so much more for the BIPOC community of entrepreneurs by giving them the resources and platform to succeed. 

A CHILD OF KOREAN IMMIGRANTS FINDING HER PASSION FOR JOURNALISM

I was born in New York City and raised in the tri-state area in Connecticut and Jersey. I was a lifelong east coaster. My parents are Korean immigrants who met in the States, and I’m their only child. It became my passion early on to become a journalist. 

I had a dream of telling international stories, given my background as a child of Korean immigrants. Starting in elementary school, I took a liking to my Spanish class, and I performed the best in English reading and comprehension. So, pairing those things together, I was like, I’ll think I’ll figure out what this journalism thing is. It was after a journalism and writing summer program that I did after eighth grade that I realized this is the area I want to focus on. 

I started to write for my school newspaper and contributed to my local newspaper, the New Haven Register. There weren’t necessarily Asian bylines I could look to. There was Connie Chung and a few token Asian women on TV. But I could not envision what my career would look like. 

I’ll never forget what my mom said. She said, if you watch TV or go to a Broadway show and see someone that looks like you, it’s probably the stereotypically nerdy character who has a line or two, but you’ll never see someone who looks like you as the main character. She didn’t mean to discourage my dreams, but I think it was a reality check that perhaps it wasn’t the most practical route. 

“There weren’t necessarily Asian bylines I could look to…I could not envision what my career would look like.” 

-Melody hahm

FROM PRE-LAW TO BUSINESS JOURNALISM AND VENTURE CAPITAL

I went into college pursuing pre-law, but all my internship interests were in journalism. Then, I got a grant through school to go to New Delhi, India, for two months on a broadcast journalism internship. That was a turning point for me. Until that point, I didn’t understand what a real career in journalism could look like. When I got back, I tapped into any potential connection I had in the journalism world. It was through an alum of my school, who was the managing editor of Fortune magazine, who connected me to a couple of folks, and one of his contacts at CNBC reached out to me in my senior year. 

They said a news associate position was open and asked if I wanted it. I had no idea what financial and business journalism was, but it seemed like an opportunity I couldn’t pass on. So, I began my career in financial journalism on CNBC’s flagship morning show, Squawk Box. I produced segments and pitched ideas for startups to be featured on the show. At the time, it was very markets-driven, and I carved a niche for myself. 

I recognized that there wasn’t a platform for women and people of color running interesting startups to share their stories in a mainstream way. I took it upon myself to prove that these companies were going to be meaningful one day. I also wanted more experience on-air and I ended up finding an opportunity as an on-air reporter for Yahoo Finance. It was a great transition because Yahoo Finance is all digital. I got the chance to create content in a medium that I consumed. I hosted a show called Breakouts, which focused on entrepreneurship, especially among women and people of color. 

In July 2021, I left traditional media to join an early-stage venture fund called Harlem Capital which invests in diverse and women entrepreneurs. I lead their community and platform, which essentially means working with the portfolio companies and founders. As well as expanding our purview and reach as we think about democratizing venture capital for people who deserve it. It shouldn’t matter what you look like. 

It’s been a wild journey so far. There are a lot of different hats I wear. Some of my media expertise and savviness does play a role at Harlem, but I’m getting to flex my muscles to help entrepreneurs in a different realm and world, which I’m excited about. 

“I recognized that there wasn’t a platform for women and people of color running interesting startups to share their stories in a mainstream way. I took it upon myself to prove that these companies were going to be meaningful one day.” 

-melody hahm

TAKING STEPS TOWARD WHERE SHE IS TODAY

I would love to say it was well-thought-out, squarely defined, and manifested, but it wasn’t and never is. It’s always messy. Oftentimes, there are little signals along the way that remind you maybe this is not where my attention should be. I initially did not pursue a business or financial journalism career, the opportunity found me. I recognized that it was not my passion to report on the market’s daily moves. I can talk about it, but did I feel like I was getting value? Probably not. Making the 1% richer was never part of my mission. I obviously never went into journalism to make money. 

Being in that corner of media made me reconsider and reflect on who my audience was. Both Yahoo Finance and CNBC served the investor class, which tends to be more affluent and privileged. During COVID, I started excavating a bit. I asked myself how I could play a role in helping entrepreneurs, especially people who look like me, succeed. 

If you wanted to cover a startup in mainstream media, it was always about who backed them. That’s when I first started covering venture capitalists. I interviewed a lot of VCs and participated in conferences to interview VCs and the startups they funded. My mind was open to the opportunity to work at a venture capital firm where I could play a role in the process of helping entrepreneurs and equipping them with tools so they can have a fighting chance in making their mark on history. 

RECOGNIZING SELF-WORTH IN TRADITIONALLY MALE-DOMINATED WORK ENVIRONMENTS

I think my experience working in two traditionally male spaces has only fueled my fire to identify opportunities where I can change the narrative. I am very fortunate to have had mentors and direct bosses sticking their necks out for me, including the person who connected me to CNBC. I met him when I was a college student in 2011, and he ended up becoming my boss at Yahoo Finance. I’ll never forget this one conversation we had. It was our mid-year check-in, and I was so nervous. I knew I deserved a raise, but I didn’t want to be disappointed if I didn’t get it. 

I even went to seminars coaching women on negotiations. So, I was like, “Melody, you can do it. He’s always believed in you.” During the conversation, he gave me a 24% raise. I was going to ask for a third of that. My walkaway number was going to be 8%. That illustrated to me: Why was I valuing myself so little? Part of it is systemic, but I was selling myself short. That was an inflection point for me to recognize that even if this macrosystem is stacked against me, I know my worth, I know my strengths, and I know that I work hard. There are very clear and measurable things to show that makes you believe you deserve more. I recognized that even if the landscape is so male-dominated, that will not deter me. 

Tying it back to the venture capital world, so much it is bleak. Very few top-tier firms have BIPOC partners at all levels. Then, I joined Harlem Capital, which is founded by Black men. We have three Black men who are partners, and four of us are women of color, which is unheard of. You don’t see that in venture capital. I’m the only Asian woman, so it empowers me to know that they value and invest in people of color. I have a seat at the table, and I recognize my fight for my community. 

Our tagline is that we want to invest in 1,000 diverse entrepreneurs over the next 20 years. I think the only way you can do that is if the investor class and the people in the firm reflect the type of people you want to empower. We have the upper hand in understanding the problems and queries facing diverse founders. We’re the ones trying to solve the issues and provide the resources to feel the gap. It feels like a unique position to be in the venture landscape. 

“Even if this macrosystem is stacked against me, I know my worth, I know my strengths, and I know that I work hard. There are very clear and measurable things to show that makes you believe you deserve more.”

-melody hahm

NAVIGATING THE NEWSROOM AS AN ASIAN WOMAN

There were so many incidents of micro and clear aggressions from my colleagues, especially at Yahoo Finance, where I was, for a long time, the token Asian. Over the nearly six years I was at Yahoo Finance, our newsroom really blossomed. We had a flurry of people of color and lots of Asian women who joined the team. But the first couple of years were really difficult. If there was news related to ongoing issues in the Asia continent, I was expected to know the answer. I’m like, I was born in New York. I’m connected to my Korean heritage, but I don’t know the ins and outs of the dynamic of Japan and Korea. The assumption that I would have these answers definitely messed me up a little bit. 

In light of the hate crimes facing Asians, it was difficult for me during the work day because we wouldn’t cover that news. It was only when there was a business angle or organizations pledged tens of millions of dollars that it became a story in the business world. I understood that we weren’t working under a general news system, but at the same time, the lack of care felt disappointing to me. I felt I had to advocate for myself and the Asian community. 

In my current role in the venture world, it’s night and day because my colleagues are all people of color. Even when Michelle Go passed, against this influx in hate crimes was happening, they would check in on me, asking how I was doing on a personal level. To be honest, Harlem Capital has grown over the last couple of years, alongside the deaths of Black Americans like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. My colleagues recognize how hard it is to compartmentalize pain and trauma as you experience professional success, trying to reconcile the two. I think there’s empathy in my current role and organization that gives me a little bit more strength and hope. 

THE FUTURE OF VCS

I think 20 years from now, we’ll see a magnificent diaspora of Asian, African, and Latino founders who go on to raise future rounds of capital, take their companies public, maybe start their own VCs, and become angel investors. It’s beyond my wildest dreams to think about what that diaspora looks like. Tier one VCs are already investing in Africa and Latin America. We’re seeing people choose to operate in international landscapes, and they’re all contributing to changing the face of entrepreneurship. 

I have no doubt in my mind that when hopefully my child is growing up that if they were an entrepreneur, they could look at the options and say, ‘There’s a partner who looks like me and understands my story.’ It won’t be tokenization as a poster child of diversity. It will be an integration as the DNA of up-and-coming VCs, VCs that have yet to be created, and existing firms where it won’t be an option anymore to not be diverse. This is a one-way street, and if you don’t buy into it, you will get left behind.

“It will be an integration as the DNA of up-and-coming VCs, VCs that have yet to be created, and existing firms where it won’t be an option anymore to not be diverse.”

-melody hahm

HOW TO REACH OUT

You can reach me on Twitter @melodyhahm, on Instagram @melhahm, and on LinkedIn. If you want to learn more about Harlem Capital, or if you want to learn more about my journey, I’m always excited and happy to chat with folks. If anyone is contemplating a move, career or otherwise, feel free to hit me up because I love to talk about those kinds of transitions. 

Interview credit: Tiff Soga

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Image Source: Chell Diaz Fernandez Facebook

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‘Mompreneur’ Turned Her Hurdles Into Success And On A Mission To Help Other Moms Start Their Businesses

Filipino entrepreneur Chell Diaz Fernandez is on a mission to inspire other mothers to persevere in pursuing their dreams, regardless of how simple those businesses are or how difficult the road lies ahead.

The “mompreneur” has tried over 15 businesses since 2016 — she has sold in bazaars and had “sari-sari store” or a neighborhood sundry store. She’s also created a party supplies store, started selling secondhand clothes on Facebook live, and even vlogged.

Chell is currently a full-time Ultra Green Coffee business consultant, helping other mothers start coffee enterprises. She aspires to show that being a mother doesn’t limit success in business. She encourages stay-at-home moms to contact her for financial opportunities. “I want to inspire my fellow moms out there that if I can do it, you can too.” she said.

She described how difficult it was initially because her husband insisted that she should only take care of their children and would not allow her to work or start a business. She had to stand up for herself and realize that even as a stay-at-home mom, she is capable of more than she currently does.

As Chell expressed on her journey, she was aware of the many hardships she had experienced. Nonetheless, she pushed on, thinking of her loved ones and not giving up, and would forever be grateful for the pain and adversity she had endured.

She was hopeful that this would pave the way for her future development and success. In the end, she hopes that those who are discouraged will be able to find strength and hope in her motivational story about her business.

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Image Source: Dollar Hits Instagram

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Filipino $1 Street Food Restaurant In LA Highlighted On Netflix “Street Food: USA”

Filipino food in the U.S. is heating up with a flurry of news reports, viral videos, and social media posts about a Pinoy-owned street food eatery in Los Angeles after it was featured on the popular Netflix show “Street Food: USA”.

One of LA’s best and most interesting eateries, Dollar Hits, is owned by Elvira Chan from the city of Pampanga, Philippines. Given how fiercely competitive the market is in Los Angeles, this is quite an accomplishment. 

She is drawing a lot of attention due to the eatery’s excellent food, welcoming crew, and affordable prices. In fact, a lot of people, particularly her “kababayans” or fellow countrymen, have backed and really patronized her business. She stated that her food business was called Dollar Hits because all of her 33 different types of street cuisine on a stick cost “one dollar”.

Having a Kapampangan root, Elvira was exposed to the different Kapampangan delicacies and even barbecue specialties. She and her sisters began their business as a food truck that sells Filipino cuisine to a loyal customer base. 

They decided to buy the market space in order to expand their eatery and accommodate more Filipino diners as their patronage grew.

They have been diligently working to expand the business and expanded locations around LA. Their California locations in Temple and West Covina have already been operating. Another expansion will be located in Woodside, New York, and will be highly anticipated in August of 2022. 

Elvira wants to help out other Filipino-owned businesses in the area, so she wants to buy the entire strip mall where Dollar Hits is now renting space.

The mission of Elvira and her Dollar Hits is to provide an exceptional experience through the food nostalgia of barbecue specialties and other Filipino traditional cuisines. This is a major accomplishment, not just for their perseverance and tenacity, but also for the Filipino-American community in Los Angeles. This is something they can all take pride in.

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Image Source Zepto

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Zepto’s Teenager Founders Share How They Built An App With A $900M Valuation

Zepto, an instant grocery delivery startup founded by two teenagers, Kaivalya Vohra and Aadit Palicha, brought their company to a valuation of $900 million in just nine months.

Vohra had “a couple of long conversations” to convince his parents for him to drop out of Stanford for his startup. But pulling them on board wasn’t hard, he added, his parents witnessed how rapidly they grew the business in front of them.

In a recent interview with CNBC Make It, the young founders shared how did they build one of India’s fastest-growing quick commerce apps.

People didn’t take the 19-year-olds seriously due to their age and their “crazy” under-10-minute delivery idea. However, their conviction in their product kept them going and helped them convince investors, senior executives, and government authorities. Zepto’s $200 million in May got it closer to unicorn status.

“If we don’t build it, somebody else will. When you operate with that mentality, everything becomes less intimidating.” Palicha told CNBC. 

During the early stages of Zepto, Palicha and Vohra handled all of the company’s customer service inquiries to determine a clear product-market fit. They even brought goods to customers so that they could have a brief conversation and gain valuable insight from them. Palicha claims that they are still doing it in the present day.

Palicha and Vohra had been friends since they were seven. For Vohra, it’s their ability to “hold each other accountable” that brought them this far. 

“Kaivalya and I really complement each other’s skill set. He has always been more technically sound than I am, so he’s made a great chief technology officer,” said Palicha. 

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