Today we’d like to introduce you to Armin Faraji.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
8 years ago when I was in college, I built my first e-commerce business and grew it to over 7 figures in annual revenue. Then when I graduated I started my own agency, where I spent 4 years building influencer and social media campaigns for direct-to-consumer businesses.
I realized during this time that influencer marketing is complicated— in order to execute influencer campaigns, we’d have to find influencers, negotiate terms, coordinate with clients and then track the data afterward— the entire process was expensive, time-consuming, and simply unscalable as we were acquiring new clients.
This meant that as an agency we could only offer influencer services to larger brands that had the budget for our team to engage in this highly laborious workflow to find and hire influencers.
I experimented with a plethora of influencer marketing tools in an attempt to streamline some of our operations and found that all of the existing solutions were either other agencies or clunky enterprise tools that didn’t small to medium-sized businesses.
I shared my learnings with my friend, Mackenzie, who also operated an e-commerce business and happened to be working at Google as a product designer.
This led to us building Node— an influencer marketing platform for small to medium-sized businesses. In 2019 we started working on Node, and in 2020 we both started working full-time on the venture.
In March 2020, Node launched as a beta, and in May 2021 we officially made Node free to access for all businesses across North America. In November 2021, we were selected by the Minnesota Twins and Techstars to join their 3 months tech accelerator in Minneapolis, which also included an investment of $120,000. Since November we’ve been based in Minneapolis (our office is at the Ford Center across from Target Field)
In the past year, Node has grown 20x, with over 900 businesses and 3000 influencers actively using the platform. As well we’ve raised capital from investors that include the c-suite and early execs at Shopify, Udemy, T-Mobile, Shutterstock, Intuit and Bain & Co.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Transitioning from my previous business into my new venture at Node was challenging because I had clients and staff that I had to leave, and it made sense to downsize that business given the operational overhead that comes with running an agency.
Creating a 2-sided marketplace is always challenging because you’re building two separate products for different user personas. Luckily we have an extremely talented product team that’s able to continuously iterate.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Node is a marketplace that lets SMBs hire local social media micro-influencers, We’re making influencer marketing accessible to the 28 million SMBs across North America that are underserved by existing tools and agencies.
Node lets any business turn their product into content and exposure from verified influencers. It takes 10 minutes to post a campaign and it’s free to use! Unlike other platforms, businesses can find influencers in their city and all of the creators on Node have been vetted in advance.
Influencers can sign-up to join Node by downloading our mobile app and logging in using their Instagram or TikTok account. We verify influencers based on their content quality and engagement before they can access the platform.
Userbase has grown by 20x in the past 8 months (from 30 to 800+ brands), and we currently have 3000+ creators using our platform.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
As an entrepreneur, having the ability to learn quickly is what’s going to make you or break you.
The learning and experimentation never stops. I’m figuring out things about customer development, value propositions, business models, product management, marketing, sales, and execution every day
Hiring and attracting talent is an acquired skill that’s important because you need smart, driven people to fill in for the areas that you’re not an expert in. Even just a few great hires can have a significant impact on growing your startup. Unfortunately, getting great (and also talented) people to work for you is difficult when you’re a startup — or even if you’re an established company.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: node-app.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/node.app/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/node.influencers/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thenodeteam
- Other: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n7ENUQ-gHsdeiSYUnEKlkPw8dybWtwJb/view?usp=sharing
Image Credits
@annasunxo
@pinchofbongs
@foodie.famous
@hey.dua
@adougheats
