This Side Hustle Q&A features Darpan Munjal, Founder and CEO Atomthe AI-powered startup ecosystem “is on track to become a premier place for naming and branding.”
Image credit: Courtesy of Atom. Darpan Munjal.
When did you begin your side business and where did you discover the inspiration for it?
The inspiration for my side hustle got here back in 2011, when I used to be starting one other business. I had a hard time selecting a name for this company, so in a moment of inspiration or desperation, I posted a comment on an entrepreneur forum. I do not remember the exact content of the post, but it mainly asked for business name ideas and offered a small reward – I think it was $50 – to anyone who submitted the name I had chosen. It worked! Several people got here forward and submitted their ideas. I actually liked one of them and that is how I discovered the name for the company.
At this point I began to notice that my original problem with finding the name wasn’t unique. Friends, entrepreneurs I knew through work or contacts, and other forum participants were familiar with this struggle. I might come up with a basic framework for finding a name through a competition – why not streamline it and offer a solution to a common problem?
What were the first steps you took to interrupt away from the game?
The first vital step in starting my side business was a problem I had to unravel. It’s a classic principle of entrepreneurship and side hustles becoming successful businesses; you begin by finding a problem or unmet need and determining the way to fix it.
Contest-based crowdsourcing is quite common today, but back then it was much less common and I didn’t know of anyone offering crowdsourced naming contests. So I needed to create a place for it to occur!
This meant building the platform itself, which was the next big step after concept. I have a background in technology and marketing, so I used to be in a position to create a easy, minimally viable product on my very own. The platform allowed users to log in, post information about the company they were attempting to launch, and share that information with a community of creative people interested in winning money by entering naming contests.
After launching the platform, we received a significant variety of customer support inquiries. The next step was subsequently to rent an independent customer support specialist. This is how the business began. It was all very bootstrap, and while I definitely had confidence in the utility of the platform, I used to be a little surprised at how quickly interest grew.
What were the biggest challenges you faced in building your side team and how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenge for me was finding time. I used to be running a completely different business, and this project was a passion. I used to be very interested in it, but I didn’t have much time to take a position.
The good thing was that with my technology background, I understood how every little thing worked on the back end. I also had experience in customer support and marketing, which is the backbone of just about every business. All of this helped me cope with the lack of time as there was no learning curve in running a business. So I spread the word on several forums through my friends and it began spreading from there.
How long did it take for you to realize stable monthly income? How much did the side hustle earn?
I remember the excitement of getting my first paying customer on the second day of launching the site. It was a rewarding experience and gave me confidence that we were meeting a real need that customers were willing to pay for. Although revenue was a bit unstable at first, inside three months we were generating roughly $2,000 per 30 days. To provide a little more consistency in revenue, I have acquired resources to assist with the technology side of building the platform.
When did you’re taking over the company full-time? What does growth and revenue appear to be today?
About seven years ago, after about three and a half years of running the company, I began working full time. I left one other business and was looking for my next opportunity. I spotted that Atom (the team’s midfielder at the time) was this probability.
We had a solid community of incredibly talented creators who desired to make money naming businesses, and we had helped 1000’s of clients. There weren’t many people in the space attempting to determine or understand the nomenclature, so there was a lot of opportunity for the company to grow.
Since launch, the development has been truly exciting! We are now one of the fastest growing firms in Chicago, with eight-figure annual revenues. We have helped over 50,000 customers including Pepsi, Dell, Nestlé and Philips. One of our most up-to-date milestones occurred about a year ago when we launched our first round of financing, a $10 million strategic investment.
Earlier in April 2024, we accomplished an exciting rebrand from Squadhelp to Atom.com. It’s type of surreal that this all got here from what was mainly a side hustle. The business is really growing and changing. Of course, we’re still home to a crowdsourced naming platform, but Atom will likely be a full startup ecosystem for ambitious latest firms, offering every little thing startups have to build their brand, starting with the domain. Just as atoms are the basic building blocks of every little thing in the universe, we would like to be the basic building blocks of the startup ecosystem.
I’m confident that an A+ premium domain name like Atom.com will provide us with a solid foundation to speed up our growth. By using this name and brand, as a naming startup, we are really betting on ourselves.
What do you enjoy most about running this business?
Being an entrepreneur is labor, but also very enjoyable. What I like most about it is the constant opportunity to develop and learn. It’s a very fast pace. You all the time solve problems. You’re all the time doing something latest. You work with fascinating people. We push the boundaries when it involves innovation. This is definitely one of my passions – applying technology in latest ways.
For example, we jumped on the AI revolution and applied it in a lot of cool ways, reminiscent of a brand matching tool, training AI individuals who can generate customized names based on patterns and trends, and so on.
What is your advice for others who need to turn their side hustles into successful businesses?
First, keep innovating and do not be afraid of failure. Interestingly, our business began with crowdsourcing, but we continued to grow quickly, which allowed us to evolve into a different space. The biggest a part of our business right now is the branding domain market, which is doing extremely well. The thing about iterating fast and failing early is that it permits you to gain very priceless insights into what works and what doesn’t, which ultimately results in a much stronger foundation.
You just have to take steps based on this quick learning. You have an initial concept that probably won’t be right, but there’s nothing fallacious with trying.
Second, proceed to hearken to your customers and stakeholders and make changes as essential. When you hear something is not working, change it and change it quickly. Certainly, a few entrepreneurs are exceptional geniuses, but most of us are successful in part because of who we surround ourselves with and who we hearken to!
Finally, it’s essential understand the basics of running a business. This is what allowed me to get Atom off the ground when I had little or no time. You need knowledge of promoting and operations, product development and technology. They is probably not the most glamorous, but they involve entrepreneurship, so you have to have all these points and be willing to work hard and push boundaries.
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