On their first day at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Jennifer Kessler and Chiara McPhee hit it off immediately. They even went out together to buy binders to organize all their classwork, an experience that taught them something important about each other.
“We quickly found out that we were the only two people in the whole school who actually bought binders,” McPhee says with a chuckle.
And although both of them were already working on separate startup ideas, from that first day they knew they wanted to collaborate.
“We got lucky when we met each other in business school,” says McPhee. “It was one of the best things we got out of the experience.”
They ended up letting their other projects fall by the wayside so they could focus their attention on Bizzy, a mobile marketing tool designed with small businesses in mind. The software they designed scans a company’s emails for customers who are most likely to make a purchase and then creates marketing plans tailored to those people.
“We made it our priority to take the busy work out of marketing,” says McPhee, speaking from her office in San Francisco’s WeWork SOMA. “That way, businesses can focus on what’s most important, like launching their brand and focusing on their product.”
And the best part for many young companies? It doesn’t require a huge marketing budget to start out with Bizzy because they don’t pay until they start seeing results.
The idea was ingenious enough that it caught the eye of the Y Combinator, a highly competitive incubator program that accepts less than two percent of the entrepreneurs that apply. They say they were motivated by all the great feedback about their platform.
And, of course, they were both already very familiar with the startup world. Kessler had earned a degree in mathematics and cognitive neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania and had founded a company that focused on math and science toys for young girls. McPhee studied public policy at Duke and had been president of a company that used tech solutions to increase children’s literacy.
Their experience in the startup world taught them a lot about what small businesses needed to succeed.
“We wanted to build a marketing platform that was powerful and very easy to use,” says Kessler. “Basically, we were building the tool that we wished we had in the past.”
Bizzy evolved as they went along. Originally it was intended for brick-and-mortar businesses, but then they noticed the explosion of ecommerce.
The platform has been live for about a year, and Kessler and McPhee have been adding features as they go along.
“Right now, we’re focused on email, but we want to run all your marketing for all your channels,” says Kessler. “That’s something we’ve had in mind since the beginning.”
They’ve also been adding staffers. Their staff has grown to five people, including two “incredibly talented” engineers. McPhee says when you’re still a startup, you have to make all the right hires.
“You still have to be on 24/7, because at the end of the day, there’s nobody to pick up the slack,” she says. “That’s why you put together the best possible team.”
Photos: Sarah Gerber