Building A Company On The Back Of The Gig Economy with Keith Ryu of Fountain

The grind of being a startup entrepreneur is riddled with rejection and heartache. It is often thought that you need the money before you can build your company… And that’s just not true!

The truth is there are so many ways to self fund when getting started and today we are dissecting a case study of how one company utilized the gig economy to fuel their company growth. 

Today’s Quote: 

"It's not the lack of resources that cause failure, it's the lack of resourcefulness that causes failure."  - Tony Robbins

I’m Rick Girard and welcome to the Hire Power Radio Show. We help Entrepreneurs and hiring managers to avoid costly hiring mistakes by identifying a specific problem and providing proven solutions to enable you to WIN the right hire. 

We share insights from top-performing rebel entrepreneurs, disruptors & industry experts. 

Like our guest today: Keith Ryu, Founder & CEO of Fountain

Keith is quietly fueling the future of work. As CEO of Fountain, the Series A-backed hiring platform for hourly workers, the Forbes’ 30 under 30 member holds the keys to the secret engine powering the gig economy. Each month, Fountain processes nearly one million applicants and enables companies like Airbnb, Chick-fil-A, Uber, and Safeway to make over 130,000 hires. Keith initially funded fountain by capitalizing on the gig economy. 

Today we are going to discuss

• Why utilizing the gig economy is a great option to get your company started
• How to fund your company through problem solving. 
• Story of Fountain

How do you hire when you have no funding? 

• Found a problem that customers had and started building solutions while funding the work
• Challenges with creative financing
• Creative hiring through upwork

Rick’s Input

• Project based bootstrapping solution
• Take on consulting projects

How were you able to build your company?

• Capitalized in 2 ways 
  • financed the company initially by selling services
  • found backup engineers on upwork
• Found someone to hire. Brought in work through upwork and gave the work to their engineer to pay her
• Emailed people who raised money on techcrunch. Offering to provide solutions for their business.

 Key Takeways

• Be resourceful - upwork, email lists, etc.
• Do the hardwork - be relentless