Dipti Gore is the founder of Fireup Inc and Techstory Media Private Limited. Both her companies help startups and small businesses market their business to customers through effective storytelling. Fireup provides a platform where companies can record their own journey displayed in the form of milestones on a company timeline. Techstory.in is a media platform that publishes interviews and stories of interesting startups, entrepreneurs and technology businesses. A strong belief that brand stories, told in an impactful manner, can significantly help in driving growth is the idea at the heart of both her companies.
Q1) How does FireUp Help Businesses?
The story of how a business is created is very fascinating. The initial days, the hustle, the highs, and the lows all makeup to create a strong business entity. This story forms the DNA of any company and can be highly instrumental in helping businesses bond with their customers, employees, influencers and more. Customers buy from brands they associate with and Fireup is an attempt to help customers get to know the story of their brands better so that they can make informed decisions. This is the idea at the heart of Fireup.
Fireup allows businesses to tell their story to the world in the form of a timeline. Every important milestone in the life of a business can be displayed in this timeline. So if a business wants to tell their story to anyone they can simply share one link and everything about their story can be told in one glance.
Q2) How did you hit upon the idea for your company?
While we were working on Techstory we realized that there were a lot of updates that small businesses were eager to put out-out to the world, updates that were very important from the point of view of the business and formed an essential part of their story. However, these updates were not published by any media house. We, therefore, wanted to create a place where businesses could self-publish their updates and create their own story.
Q3) What are the other software products you use to increase the productivity?
We use Asana, Hootusite, Google Apps.
Q4) How has sales evolved since you first got into the business? What hasn’t changed?
Our aim from Fireup has been to allow businesses to drive maximum ROI from their timeline. This has not changed since day 1. The way we go about achieving our aim has definitely changed and gets refined as we get more and more feedback from our customers and incorporate that feedback into our sales process.
Q5) Think of something you’ve done in the past; what would you have done differently?
I became an entrepreneur after spending time in the corporate world. Coming from that world I was not in a habit of encouraging healthy arguments. In my initial days of being an entrepreneur, I definitely was very uncomfortable in situations that led to disagreements within my team. However today I have come to realize that healthy arguments are a must for a product to evolve and become a top notch product. I realize that the product is the most important asset that we need to guard than guarding people’s egos. Looking back, I would have conducted each meeting very differently.
Q6) What are some of the more important features or traits that many of your customers are looking for? And how do you fulfill them?
Businesses are continuously looking for ways to reach newer customers. At Fireup each day we are working on newer ways to help our businesses reach potential customers.
Q7) As a Co-Founder how have your visions changed from the initial days of your company to the present?
We started Fireup with a vision to allows businesses to self-publish all the important milestones in their journey and tell their own story. Our vision for Fireup remains the same till date. The ways to achieve this vision keep on reviewing as we move forward and gain more feedback.
Q8) What do you know is true that no one else agrees upon?
I don’t think people specifically disagree with this but I believe that people do not understand the power of effective storytelling.
We live our lives in stories. All our thoughts, our beliefs, our relationships, everything around us is the stories we have told ourselves. We need to use storytelling in more effective ways to drive growth for brands.
Q9) What do you expect to see over the next five to ten years In the Marketing and Sales Industry?
A huge influence of AR, AI, VR in the way brands market to their customers.
Q10) What was your journey like to get where you are?
The journey was full of new learnings. Right from creating and managing a team, going out and talking to your customers and integrating that feedback into a product, deciding on how you will grow your company – its all been extremely exciting. The journey of entrepreneurship teaches you a lot about yourself as well – things such as what is the most important thing that drives you, what is your approach as a leader, in what situations do you inspire people the most etc. All in all, it has been a journey of a lot of interesting learnings and some incredible growth.
Q11) What’s the hardest decision you’ve made so far?
Letting go of a well-paying job to pursue your dream is the hardest decision that I have taken till date.
Lastly, We would be glad to have your valuable suggestion for the new age Entrepreneurs thriving in the industry today.
Understand your product and market well before you make a leap. Chart out a plan to the minutest details about how you are going to achieve your targets and then start working on building stuff. You can, of course, revisit the plan at regular intervals but have milestone markers correctly set right at the beginning.
Also, I would advise entrepreneurs to spend some time daily thinking about how they can make positive impacts on lives of people around them – this is what will actually make them a successful entrepreneur.
Chirantan Patel is the Product Manager at Softwaresuggest & Callhippo, an Inc. 275 company that researches and analyzes software to educate, advise, and connect buyers and sellers of business technology.
