The best thing I did for my founding engineers and my Eng team as CEO @referrush was dive in and organize our product management. They now just have tasks in front of them they just need to slash off!

Yep

Literally !

The power law has gone so nuts that a few companies are returning the entire VC industry’s funds lol

India built the world’s best infrastructure for moving money. Now we need better infrastructure for helping people earn it. UPI gives almost every Indian a way to receive money instantly. After working with 200+ brands and hundreds of affiliates @ReferRush thinks we can connect that rail to commerce. Today, e-commerce brands rent distribution from Meta, Google, marketplaces and influencers. They have audiences, but rarely own the networks around them. ReferRush will let every brand build its own community. Customers, creators and fans can join, post, ask questions, share ideas and talk to each other. Brands can then give any member the ability to recommend products and earn commissions, paid through UPI. Imagine a brand with 40,000 people discussing its products, helping customers, creating content and earning money for driving sales. A competitor can copy your product or outbid your ads. It is much harder to copy 40,000 relationships. UPI is the payment rail. ReferRush is the economic network built on top of it. Such a large population all desperate to find ways to make money

This trait is seen as disrespectful in India

This time next year, with our new model, @referrush will generate 1cr a day. We’ve spoken to and worked with hundreds of brands and hundreds of affiliates. Exciting times ahead. If you’d like to help out text me now.

This is the hardest part about being an entrepreneur but very true. Only once the money is in the bank. And even then with some terrible investors they can ask for the money back. All has happened to me with @ReferRush

This is how I know I’m building the right team @referrush I’m excited for our next product launch

A theory I have after working with 200+ D2C brands @referrush: Indian D2C has become extremely good at manufacturing first purchases and surprisingly bad at manufacturing second purchases. Discounts, Meta and influencers can manufacture trial. Only the product can manufacture habit.

A theory I have after working with 200+ D2C brands @referrush: The last mile is part of your brand whether you like it or not. You can spend months perfecting packaging and your website, but if delivery is late, the box arrives damaged or the delivery experience is terrible, the customer attributes that failure to you.

A theory I have after working with 200+ D2C brands @referrush: Creators demanding upfront payments instead of commissions is partly a trust problem, not a greed problem. If creators don’t trust attribution, tracking or whether they’ll actually get paid, ₹10,000 extra guaranteed today is rationally worth more than ₹30,000 of theoretical upside. Thats why you use @referrush

A theory I have after working with 200+ D2C brands @referrush: Indian brands massively underprice their existing customers as a distribution channel. They’ll happily pay Meta ₹500 to acquire a stranger but hesitate to give an existing customer ₹500 for bringing them a friend. One comes with an algorithm. The other comes with trust.

A theory I have after working with 200+ D2C brands @referrush: WhatsApp marketing in India works partly because brands haven’t completely ruined it yet. Email didn’t become ineffective because email stopped working. Consumers learned which messages were worth ignoring. We’re slowly training them to do the same thing on WhatsApp.

A theory I have after working with 200+ D2C brands @referrush: Affiliate marketing gets worse as it becomes more professionalized. The more products a creator promotes, the more money they make in the short term, but the less valuable every subsequent recommendation becomes. Trust is an exhaustible resource.

A theory I have after working with 200+ D2C brands @referrush: A lot of Indian D2C brands have built distribution, not brands. Meta can repeatedly put your product in front of millions of people and make it feel like you have brand recognition. I’d be curious to see if brands turn the ads off for three months and you find out how much of it was actually remembered.

A theory I have after working with 200+ D2C brands @referrush: COD solves a trust problem by creating an adverse-selection problem. The customers who trust you least are allowed to place orders with the least commitment. This is partly why COD can simultaneously increase conversion and destroy margins.

A theory I have after working with 200+ D2C brands @referrush: Indian D2C brands discount too frequently. Once customers learn there will always be another sale, you haven’t lowered your price. You’ve taught your customers that your actual price is the discounted one.