Who are the faces behind a company? How did the company get started? These are common question you may have about startups you see and hear about. If you don't get a chance to personally meet the founders, you're unlikely to ever know their story. That's where we're starting Founder Fridays.
Each week, we'll profile a different startup (with ties to Boston) through a simple interview that highlights some of the simple questions that make all the difference for a startup like, "How did you meet your co-founders?" and "What was the best advice you ever received?"
This week, we have Ashish Kundra from myzamana, who has created a dating site for the South Asian community.
myZamana is building the leading online dating site for the South Asian market. The site is live in the US, UK, Canada and India.
3) When did you know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?
I've always been interested in business. I started thinking about entrepreneurship seriously during college, specifically after working at a mobile dating startup in NYC that had raised VC. At the time, I didn't know how to code, so I was doing mockups and whatever else I could help with. The experience was meaningful because it de-mystified startups. Before then, startups were a very theoretical thing to me. I didn't understand how they worked.
After a brief internship at a second startup in the education space, I decided to give it shot myself. I picked up coding, started reading more about startups, and ended up starting two in college. One was a ticketing service for universities, the other was group chat app built on Twitter. The ticketing startup was my first, so I made a few mistakes. The second startup, buzzable.com (now closed) made it a bit further. We raised a bit of money ($100k), built a pretty interesting product, lauched with pretty good PR. Ultimately, due to a variety of internal and external events, we had a hard time getting traction and building a meaningful case to justify further investment. The biggest lesson I learned was to stay focused and launch as quickly as possible. Getting a beta out should take days, maybe weeks. Definitely not months.
4) How did you meet your co-founder?
I'm actually a single founder :)
5) What was the best advice you ever got?
This is a tough question; there is a lot of great advice out there. If I had to pick one piece of advice, I'd say launch early and iterate often.
6) What Startup(s) are you most excited about today? Why?
Lately, I've been intrigued by this app called Treehouse (http://gotreehouse.com). It enables photosharing for small groups of friends. Since stumbling upon it a few weeks back, I've been using it to keep in touch with a group of friends I went to high school with.
7) What's your favorite part about being an entrepreneur?
You get to learn a lot about a lot. There's always something useful to learn, and I find that really rewarding and exciting.
8) If you could recommend one book for entrepreneur's to read, what would it be and why?
I really liked Founders At Work, by Jessica Livingston. It is an honest look into startups and the experiences and passions of the founders that create them.
Want YOUR company featured on Founder Fridays? Contact us at jason[at]greenhornconnect[dot]com and tell us what your company is about.
Founder Fridays comes up with a new start up company each week for review. To give insight into how a new company comes into being and what all factors are important for starting a venture. The company selected for this week is myzamana. It is an online dating site particularly for South Asians. It has been started by Ashish Kundra. He started this venture alone. This site is available in US, UK, Canada and India. It is popular among the masses. John voip phone systems
Who are the faces behind a company? How did the company get started? These are common question you may have about startups you see and hear about. If you don't get a chance to personally meet the founders, you're unlikely to ever know their story. That's where we're starting Founder Fridays. 
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