“In 2013, Corbett Drummey left his job at a top advertising agency with $3K in savings. He and co-founder Allan Holmes decided to go ‘all-in’ on what had been a side project: building a marketplace for creative content.”
Corbett had just $120 left in the bank when Popular Pays received its first check from investors [disclosure: I am an investor]. Since then, Popular Pays has raised $5.5 million in funding and transformed how brands source social content.
In this interview, Corbett speaks candidly about the journey from that close call to the present. He shows why persisting – no matter how daunting or uncertain the future looks – is the real battle. We’ll talk about how Popular Pays’ mission question and newly released culture document have guided the team through tough choices.
No one sugarcoats entrepreneurship anymore, but not all founders take you into the dicey moments like Corbett. Here’s why it pays to stay in the game:
Jayna: Let’s start with the origins of Popular Pays. Tell us about why you launched the company. What vision guided you?
Corbett: Popular Pays started as a side project, but my co-founder Allan and I saw something bigger. After our work days at Leo Burnett, we’d stay up drinking bad 7-Eleven coffee and hyperventilating ideas in an alleyway.
Allan put forth the idea of identifying one question to keep us on the right path. He came up with, “Is it worth sharing?” We wanted to build a marketplace for content and creativity, so the product and its output had to be worth sharing.
Read the rest on Forbes.