StartUs Presents: Tub Systems

Describe Tub Systems in 50 or less words.

Developed “Beam it Up“, an application connecting people based on common interest and AdX1 (Ad System) which powers Beam It Up with an ad exchange which is non intrusive and engages users across mobile, web and social. Tub Systems is the name of the company.

Why did you decide to pursue your own dreams rather than someone else’s?

When the idea about the product first came to mind, realized it’s a big gap and this was something that I personally needed. Talked to people around me and that validated my observation. Researched across to find something similar but nothing was available. Took the decision to form the team, found excellent talent which was ready to join just to make this idea a success. And now when I look back, I feel excited and thrilled to overcome all the challenges and living those exciting moments of solving things and finding solutions.

In 7 years from now: How did your startup change the world?

In 7 years from now, we expect people to discover other interesting people in their surrounding, get together, collaborate, play and share the joy of togetherness. Beam It Up will be an enabler in this excitement. We want a more active world where people have multiple choices to form disparate teams and groups to experience the larger world and environment.

In what ways do you measure your success and how do you make sure you don’t lose track?

For us success is displacement towards the smaller goals. For us displacement is more important than distance, as its the true indicator of progress.
We keep ourselves on track by

course corrections
using time as a resource
constant feedback from our mentors and
keeping consumers in mind (always).

Correcting the course keeps us direct into the right direction sometimes it comes as a feedback from one of us or in some cases it’s our mentors asking us not to waste time in certain areas. Time is important, we set internal deadlines for implementations and if these deadlines are not met, we have Plan B ready for almost all occasions. There are hundreds of interesting ideas that the team brings but we keep our focus on critical components of the product and rest becomes good to have.

Describe your typical working day from coming to the office to leaving it.

The day starts in the living room with a seating capacity of 10. There are no timings, we live, work and have fun together. We are constantly living the idea, hashing out failure modes and implementation plans to ensure consumers get a flawless product with the best possible UI and UX.

We hang out together at local locations, observes our probable consumers and ask questions, have discussions around various options, likes and dislikes of people around. This gives us lots of insights into how they think, how open they are and what clicks.

Already pivoted? Did customers use app like you imagined it in the beginning?

So far the discussion has been with the closed test group and we are amazed at the various other ways of use they are finding. We are constantly positioning Beam It Up as a product for common interest groups but it was great to know that someone told us that they don’t like to share phone numbers in certain WhatsApp groups like a consulting work group, sharing their numbers with agencies etc.

Bootstrapped or financed: What fuels your startup now and what will in the future?

Completely bootstrapped for now. We want the product to enter market and then look for financing through seed or an angel. The app is free of cost but our revenue generation will happen from a completely new ad concept – a non intrusive ad system that will help people find locations with offers in their surroundings, interact, and with additional content like video, direction, social pages etc.

With ferocious competition and a booming trend to build new companies: How do you make sure you don’t get lost in the shuffle?

Consistency is the key. The team is lean and none of us draw salaries for now. To run the expenses of the office, we are also doing some contract work for others like branding, investor pitches, small programming assignments to make enough to sustain and pay bills of our office space. For the entire year, our out of pocket expense has not even crossed 5.000USD.

What do you look for in team members?

Over time we realized that we need people who can think in 360 degrees, are self motivated and who offer consistent effort. We learned quickly that we needed doers who can get down to the task. Not a single person is an absolute leader in the group, if it’s a task with programming then the programmer takes the lead and everyone follows.

During discussion and brainstorming, we gather and hash out issues in detail, sometimes they get heated up but we ensure that the the discussion ends with a solid conclusion with a list of to-dos. What helps is people with a knack of presenting ideas, accepting others viewpoints, challenging and questioning while keeping ego at bay. Lastly, we all love art in some or the other form. We love music, photography, adventure sports and food. As a team we keep trying new things and places.

Why would a talent join your team?

Talented people are invited to present themselves to us. We are in constant search to get the right fit. We give full responsibility and accountability for the work area that someone wants to take over. The rest of the team is supportive and we are extremely quick in taking decisions.
Other than work, we are the most fun bunch of people in town, we play hard and work harder. We love to break and make things, right from breaking software/hardware components to ideas and processes.

What was your most memorable moment so far?

The most memorable event was when we exchanged messages on the chat system built on XMPP framework. We lost substantial time to develop the most unique chat system developed to let people exchange information in a room based on interest, geo location and anonymous users backed with security. This was almost next to impossible but when we established the first connection for iOS, the moment was ecstatic and the first “hello” was like Graham Bell testing his first communication or establishing the first contact between two separate worlds.

The other moment was when we uploaded an ad first through AdX1 interface, 3 minutes and the new mobile interface, a better version than Yahoo Gemini – we ran out to check the geo local ranges and saw the ads disappear and appear – it was truly amazing.

What advice would you give fellow founders for their startup?

Consistency is the key. A lot of advice is given on getting things faster out to market but sustainability comes through constant and consistent effort. Foundation built on strong interpersonal relationships builds the best teams who can whether any up or down in the market. Building the product is one part of the story, getting it out, constant improvement and acquiring customers are the next chapters.
Remember when Steve Jobs started Next, people followed him out of their existing jobs with pay cuts while knowing the fact that how tough a task master he is.

Have something else you want to tell?

We received a great response from the Arch Grants Start Up competition, a start up initiative by St. Louis, Missouri, USA. We mainly lost points on parameters related to what benefits we could bring to the state and the city by migrating our start up there. Likewise, we have received great responses from our network, industry leaders and others.