Robert Steele, co-founder and CEO of Thumzup, shares his entrepreneurial journey and the concept behind Thumzup. Thumzup is a platform that connects everyday people on social media with advertisers, allowing them to get paid for making posts. The platform aims to bridge the gap between the $200 billion digital advertising industry and the everyday person. Robert discusses the business model of Thumzup, where advertisers pay users to make posts about their products or services. He also highlights the importance of engaging users with small follower counts and the scalability of cash payments. Robert shares his advice for entrepreneurs, emphasizing the importance of perseverance and never giving up. He also discusses Thumzup’s funding strategy and future plans, including an upcoming listing on a senior exchange.
Podcast Takeaways
Thumzup connects everyday people on social media with advertisers, allowing them to get paid for making posts. The platform aims to bridge the gap between the $200 billion digital advertising industry and the everyday person. Engaging users with small follower counts can lead to higher response rates and greater trust in product posts. Robert Steele advises entrepreneurs to never give up and emphasizes the importance of perseverance.
About Anshuman Sinha
Anshuman Sinha is the Co-founder and CEO of Startup Talent and the Co-founder of Startup Steroid. His entrepreneurial journey is marked by founding and co-founding multiple businesses across various sectors, alongside investing in a diverse portfolio of startups. Through his extensive firsthand experiences, Anshuman has navigated the intricate landscapes of raising capital and managing multifold deals. Driven by a passion to guide the next generation of entrepreneurs, Anshuman shares his vast knowledge and experiences, empowering readers, aspiring founders, and entrepreneurs with insightful strategies to scale their businesses and tackle business-related challenges with confidence.
About Robert Steele
Mr. Steele is the Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman. A technologist at heart, Robert learned to program a computer at 8 years old and by the time he was 12 years old, he purchased an Apple II and began his first technology company which game controllers for the brand-new Apple II computers, which were sold through local computer stores
After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science from George Mason University, Robert and his co-founders created one of the first PC-based GIS systems (Graphical Information Systems) for the Fairfax County cable television system. This system was one of the first times that utility maps for an entire county could be edited and maintained on PC-based technology.
In 1999, Robert foresaw that in the future everyone would have a computer in their pocket in the form of a smartphone and founded iBrite, which designed groundbreaking mobile software. The patent application that Robert filed for iBrite has been citied more than 30 times and the iBrite software was used my Mapquest to put maps on a mobile device for the first time that we know of and was also used to put Microsoft Powerpoint on a Palm mobile device (which he believes was the first time this was done).
Robert has been CEO of two publicly traded companies. One provided business process outsourcing services to Fortune 500 clients like Amgen, FedEx, GMAC and Ecolab (NYSE: ECL) and processed more than $1B a year in accounts payable transactions for Ecolab and scanned more than 30 million pages of loan documentation for GMAC. The other developed software that searches the Internet for copyright infringement and to date more than $1B in civil judgements have been awarded to copyright holders based on the case law that resulted from this technology.