When PurPics was first being developed in a dorm room at the University of Virginia, the idea was simple: connect big brands with Gen Z consumers. Young adults used their sway as social media influencers to help companies promote their products, and the companies made donations toward social causes.
The idea gained traction with several big players like Shake Shack and Clif Bar. The startup raised a pre-seed round and was accepted into Techstars' Farm to Fork accelerator.
But now, after moving to Austin in early 2019, the startup is making a couple of significant changes.
Co-founder and CEO Aneesh Dhawan said the company has rebranded to Knit and shifted its mission. Now, instead of using social media channels to help brands reach Gen Z consumers, the startup is connecting brands directly with its network of 60,000 young adults to provide detailed consumer insights from text-based surveys and short video Q&As.
Knit is particularly focused on working with emerging CPG brands, which it can help in the development phase as founders and engineers build their products to target specific audiences. Dhawan said this is a major blind spot for many CPG startups — they don't talk to potential customers enough during product development.
Such feedback can be critical to tweaking design and marketing plans ahead of launch. But you have to know how to reach the right people, which is where Knit has a strong start with activations on hundreds of college campuses. Dhawan said students tend to be interested in social good and fundraising. And, of course, they also respond quickly to texts and video.
"We've created a phenomenal audience of this next generation that's incredibly high quality," he said. "So if you look at our response rates, it's twice as high as the industry average. If you look at our response times, we're getting responses within, you know, five minutes and hundreds within 24 to 48 hours. So we've really built out a high quality audience of Gen Z consumers."
Knit's approach leans on both the network it has developed on campuses and its technology, which allows it to rapidly analyze text and video to provide insights to developers working on new products. It uses third-party APIs, which it often customizes, in addition to retraining machine learning models to get accurate insights from both text and video. That combination of analytics allows its clients to quickly filter feedback and adjust accordingly.
"We've really, really sped up that process for them," Dhawan said. "It's great for emerging brands and great for these large firms, the largest companies that are moving toward more agile and iterative processes."
Knit has raised a little more than $2 million in total from investors including Felton Group, the family office of Charlottesville, Va.-based angel investor Jaffray Woodriff, and The Syndicate Fund, a Twin Cities group created by Techstars Farm to Fork Managing Director Brett Brohl that has since rebranded to Bread & Butter Ventures.
It currently has a team of 11 people, mostly based in Austin. It's hiring for an account manager position, and it plans to hire additional employees for client success and product positions in a few months, Dhawan said.
Dhawan said Knit's shift from social media influencer campaigns to text-based consumer insights was largely driven by requests from existing clients. Now, the startup is working with a mix of new and old clients. Some, like Clif Bar and Shake Shack, aren't clients anymore, he said. But many of its other previous customers, including Jarritos, Riff Cold Brewed and Core Spaces, are taking advantage of the new consumer surveys and insights.
Though the startup remains mostly focused on CPG brands, it is also looking at expanding into student housing and consumer technology.
"The vision for this company is really just understanding not necessarily just Gen Z, but that next generation of consumers," Dhawan said. "We like to think about ourselves as like the Nielsen for Gen Z. If you have a question about this next generation, whether it's Gen Z, whether it's Gen A, we're going to be really that one-stop shop for that data."
