Elevator Pitch is a regular feature on Lifehacker where we profile startups and new companies and pick their brains for entrepreneurial advice. This week, we’re talking with Kieran Warwick, CEO and co-founder of social media app The Burger Collective.
In 128 words or less, explain your business idea
The Burger Collective is a social media app dedicated to burgers. Users are able to share reviews and browse over 3000+ burger locations across Australia. Restaurants owners are able to list their business for free, and can immediately start advertising to the 50,000 users of the app.
The app has a number of features to help users locate new burgers and locations, including an interactive map, live leaderboards and a news feed that features over 50 new reviews daily.
What strategies are you using to grow and finance your idea?
Capital raising has been our main strategy for funding and to date, we have raised just over one million. We are currently sourcing our Series A round of funding. We also generate revenue through marketing packages that we sell directly to restaurants.
What’s the biggest challenge facing your business?
The biggest challenge for our business is monetisation. This is fairly common among social media apps, and I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t proved challenging for us. Now that we have reached a relative scale, it’s crucial that we start testing out revenue streams that can support the business moving forward. You can’t keep raising money forever!
How do you differentiate your business from your competitors?
Most other food review platforms focus on a broad range of food categories while we focus on only one: burgers. This allows us to tailor our product to the exact needs of burger lovers and burger restaurants. It also taps into a more engaged community and translates to better quality content creation – something critical to social media.
What one phone, tablet or PC application could you not live without?
TBC and Uber Eats, I clocked over 400 orders through their platform just last year. You could say this was a mixture of leisure orders as well as ‘research’.
What’s the best piece of business advice you’ve ever received?
Ideas are nothing, execution is everything. Share your ideas with as many people as possible because you never know who can assist you with turning it into a reality. You also might find an investor where you least expected it.
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