Brandon Pollet was kind enough to speak to me about his project, Embought. Embought is a shopping comparison site that allows users to find coupons and prices for a wide range of products. What really caught my attention about this project in particular was that 50% of the profits from each sale go to one of five charities.
Brandon took some time to tell us about his project, and some lessons he has learned as an entrepreneur. Here is what he had to say.
Embought
Embought is a shopping search engine that finds users great deals on products and donates 50% of all profits to charity.
Embought currently searches dozens of online stores to find great prices and coupons for thousands of different products. What makes us different from other search engines is that if a user purchases a product through us we then donate 50% of our profits from that sale to charity. We currently support 5 great charities ( info can be found here http://www.embought.com/info/charity ) and we are working on ways to allow users to choose which charity will benefit from their purchases. We’re also working hard to expand the number of products we offer so our users can save money and help people in need with everything they buy online.
The idea for Embought came to me after seeing the way my wife shops online, she is great at comparing prices and finding the best deal, especially in her use of coupons. After seeing how much money she was able to save I decided to try and turn her shopping process into a product that everyone could benefit from. The charity aspect of Embought started after I read an article about the Product(RED) campaign to fight Aids in Africa. People have been really excited about that program and they really seem to love the idea of helping out people while buying products. The problem with Product(RED), in my opinion, is that many of the products are marked up to cover the cost of the charitable donation. With Embought I wanted to make it easy for people to not only save money but also donate part of their purchase to help those in need.
Lessons
I’ve learned so much as an entrepreneur that it’s hard to narrow it down to just a few things. I think the most important thing is just to do it. There is never going to be a better time than right now, so stop thinking and take some action. If you have an idea for a project start working on it in your spare time and see if it turns into something that will make you happy.
Happiness is important in a startup, both the founder’s happiness and the happiness of your users. If working on your project doesn’t excite you then you should look into a different project. There will always be hard times in a startup but if you really enjoy your project then you’ll be better able to make things work. If your project is something that excites you and makes your users happy, you can’t fail. You’re either going to have a successful business or you’re going to have great experience for your next opportunity.
Finally I would say that, contrary to popular opinion, you’re not likely to have overnight success. Startups are not a get rich quick scheme, most of the successes are the result of years of hard work. So don’t set unrealistic goals of making millions in a few months, because it won’t happen. Just try to get users, if you can get a few then talk to them and see how you can improve your product to get more. Focus on making your users happy and you’ll be successful.
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