Raj Suchak was accustomed to success.
The Buffalo entrepreneur founded Salesforce consultancy Cloud62 and sold it four years later before moving on in 2018.
His next idea hasn’t exactly been a smooth sail: Suchak founded Grit Seed in 2019 as a new, software-enabled take on recruiting.
And that, well ...
“The first 18 months of Grit Seed were nonstop pain and failure,” Suchak said of trying to find product-market fit in the crowded recruiting software space.
Suchak decided to pivot his company in summer 2020 toward conversational texting as a way for businesses to connect with stakeholders. Billed as an ultra-efficient means of communication, Grit Seed’s revenue has doubled this year as it onboarded new corporate clients and expanded relationships with others. Six Flags, for instance, started using Grit Seed’s messaging service at one park and now uses it at 16 parks.
“Texting helps companies connect with constituents and candidates in a very different way,” Suchak said. “Customers love the product.”
Grit Seed is based in the University at Buffalo’s Baird Research Park and now has six employees. Suchak recently acquired a company with two brands – gogoTexting and Telefio – that will focus on small-business clients. Suchak said they are already profitable businesses with valuable technology and will drive cross-selling across their respective customer bases.
“We are in a much better position than we were two years ago,” Suchak said. “We understand our product-market fit, our sales cycle is shorter and we have a rhythm. We’ve developed a playbook.”
Suchak said he’s learned a lot about the uniquely challenging process of entrepreneurship over the last three years.
For one, Grit Seed’s pivot toward texting latched it onto a significant trend at the intersection of technology and customer service.
“Every startup should be attached to a trend,” he said. “We know that texting is a giant trend.”
For another, the biggest challenge and thus biggest priority for any startup is how its product fits into the marketplace. Without that core understanding – which connects a company to its paying customers – a business cannot scale.
Toward that end, Suchak said startup founders must be “patient, persistent and laser-focused” on how customers are explaining their own problems.
Grit Seed now has a clear path forward as a white-labeled texting service for businesses big and small. Suchak sees rapid growth ahead.
“Entrepreneurship is understood as a badge of honor, but really it’s like you have to be bent into submission to understand you’re not in control of what’s going to happen,” Suchak said. “The only thing in your control is how hard you are willing to work and how much you’re willing to listen to your customers and team.”
