Advice from our Meet the Drapers Winners: DigiBuild’s Top 4 Ways to Take Your Startup to the Next Level

Last season, DigiBuild’s blockchain-powered construction management software captivated the Draper family and investors from all around the world. Not only did DigiBuild win $100K in investment from Tim Draper, but the startup also maxed out its crowdfunding campaign with over $1 million in investment. Meet the Drapers gave them the momentum to surpass their goal of receiving $2 million in seed funding and now, DigiBuild is officially backed by Y Combinator. We got the chance to sit down with Rob Salvador, Founder and CEO of DigiBuild and asked for his advice on what entrepreneurs can do to take their business to the next level — here’s what we found out.

Prioritize Your Product

Rob’s first piece of advice is to not overlook your product. While it is easy to get sucked into other aspects of your business, it’s important to make sure your product is validated and ready to be used by customers. At the end of the day, your product is the core component of your startup. By focusing on your product, you’ll have a solid foundation to strengthen and grow other aspects of your business that you may be worried about.

Know Your Customers

It’s one thing to be a domain expert in an industry, it’s another to truly understand your customers. Rob’s second piece of advice is to know your customers, and that means talking to them. By speaking with your customers, you understand their priorities, needs, and what tools are necessary for your customer to succeed on a daily basis. Rob emphasizes that “you have to understand the customer intimately to be able to build a product that provides value to them.”

Plan Your Distribution

Once you’re building a product that customers like, Rob’s third piece of advice is to plan on how to get your product to many customers. To plan your distribution, you need to think about how you want to scale your startup within the next couple of years and strategize on what is the best way to gain the new customers you are trying to attain.

Be Passionate

Last but definitely not least, Rob’s last piece of advice is passion is key to taking your startup to the next level. Running a startup can be both an amazing but awful experience, especially during the first couple of years. Unless you’ve made money from previous exits or previous jobs, being stressed all the time and struggling to keep your startup alive is the norm. Rob points out that if you don’t have the passion and there is something you’d rather be doing in life, then you might want to reconsider going into the entrepreneurial field. However, if you got these don’t apply to you, “consistent input will eventually get you the output you are looking for.”