Hi Friends!😀

I am starting a weekend edition of The Day 1 Lab where I will be interviewing startup founders each week to showcase their startup journey and the lessons we can learnt.

In today’s edition, we are featuring:

Quest (💵 Undisclosed)

Online marketplace for outsourcing tasks and services focused on Gen Z

👨‍🚀Founders: Evan Chow, Craig Choy, Matthew Wu

🌎️Location: Singapore

💰️Funding: Bootstrapped

💳️Monetization: Service fee for B2B customers

🏠️Category: iOS/Android app

1. Hi Evan, what's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

The idea of Quest first kickoff in 2018 when I wanted someone to run an errand for me in midnight but come to the realization that there wasn’t such a platform (known to be at that point in time) that can tap into the resources of the people around us. I used to play video games a lot when I was younger and the idea of performing ‘quests’ for characters has always intrigued me. I thought to myself that it would be cool if we can do real life quest for each other and tap into the potential of the gig economy.

Years later when I entered university (Singapore Management University), I met Matthew (Co-founder & CPO) and after convincing Craig (Co-founder & CTO) to join us, we started off building the app and entering different student entrepreneurship competitions to get started. A year and a half later, Jarod (Growth Lead) decided to join us in our mission to provide the next million jobs through flexible opportunities after working with him at Antler (our first pre-seed investor).

2. How did you build Quest and get your first 1K users?

Initially we thought the best way to build Quest was to get down to coding it out. However, months later, we realised that we were hardly progressing anywhere due to the limited resources we had and we saw the power of Telegram. We decided to try using telegram as our first ‘MVP’ to facilitate the flow of quests, people posting and offering to different services.

To kickstart the demand side of the marketplace, we went on different sites and asked our own network if they had any errands/problems to solve. Two months later, we had a thousand subscribers on our telegram channels from a mixture of university students looking to earn and working adults looking to find help. That built our initial traction, and months later we decided to go full force into building a full-fledged app known as ‘Quest - Hire a Hero’ today.

3. Since launch, what strategies have worked to attract and retain partnerships and customers?

One of our favorite growth strategies that worked repeated was using TikTok. As our main target audience for the supply side of the marketplace was Gen Zs, it was natural of us to try using TikTok to appeal to our peers. We had lots of fun building up our TikTok branding as well.

4. What were the biggest challenges you faced and lessons learnt?

2022 was a pretty tough and challenging year for us. We were first too optimistic in raising funds backed by our vitality and vanity metrics than proper consistent growth in our marketplace and growing revenue. Thanks to the numerous mentors and programs we were in, we quickly learnt the importance of generating revenue while scaling and came up with a B2B arm where we provide corporate concierge services to businesses.

5. What is your advice to entrepreneurs who are just starting?

Tap into resources around you. When we were first starting back in University, my cofounders and I tapped into whatever resources we could reach to get started quickly. From mentorship, peer support (first user base), co-working space, grants, and funding, we managed to make it thus far thanks to the immense support we received from people around us.

I wouldn’t have learnt what I know today without making previous mistakes. So I wouldn’t do anything different, but learn as I go, maybe just quicker.

That’s all for today!

Stay tuned for next weekend’s interview with a founder who created a web app that gathers your activities around the web into an Instagram-worthy profile! 📷️

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