Founders Talk with Wonderbly.
How did you get the idea of founding Wonderbly? Where did you meet as a founders team? What’s your founder’s story?
A few years ago, Asi received a personalised book for his daughter. After the initial warm and fuzzy feeling of seeing his daughter’s name in a book, he realised how tacky and inferior the book was. The shallowness of the creative idea and execution left both Asi and his daughter feeling hugely disappointed.
Asi showed it to his friend Tal, who immediately agreed that there was a creative and commercial opportunity to do something really special. Next came David, another friend and the writer of the book. David came up with the creative idea — the story of a child who has lost their name. It took us over six months to find Pedro, our illustrator and fellow Dad.
Together we set out to do it better and make something inspiring and genuinely magical.
What did you do before?
We all come from a technology and creative background. There’s Tal, who has a background in creative tech, Asi, a former advertising executive, David, a TV Comedy writer and Pedro, a graphic designer.
We’ve spent the last ten years working in marketing agencies and internet startups designing digital products and communications. The weird thing is, it turns out this is an excellent foundation for creating books that customers love in today’s networked world.
How do you collaborate with Project A?
Apart from Project A being our financial investor, we have welcomed members of the Project A operational support team to our London HQ and these skilled colleagues are helping us put an in-house business intelligence unit in place. We have also received advice on our CRM and performance marketing strategies.
What do you like most on your daily business?
Because we do everything in-house, from book creation to marketing, operations, and customer service, we’re really close to our customers. So the most rewarding part of working here is hearing from happy customers, who love the book and love the reaction kids have to it.
What are the biggest challenges in the initial stage of founding a business?
Everything was a challenge! When we were starting out and juggling it all between family and full-time jobs, the hardest part was managing our growth. We went from selling 100 books to over 20,000 in a few months and had to learn how to scale our business very quickly.
Do you have tips for entrepreneurs and people interested in entrepreneurship or in founding a company?
We are big fans of the Lean Startup movement — a simple framework for reliably creating and building new startups in a world of uncertainty. We learnt that it’s best to start small and to constantly strive to make your product or service better, all of the time. We did this by testing and learning at every stage of our journey. Above all, keep going! It’s hard work and startups fail far more often than they succeed.
Believe in yourself and your idea, keep improving and don’t give up.