Bringing Tech to Mom-and-Pop Shops

I’m excited to kick off the On a Mission interview series with a friend and former Airbnb colleague who founded his company during the pandemic. Today, we’re going to dig into his story, the struggles he faced during the first few months (literally yesterday), and get some helpful tips for first-time founders.

Neelan Bantu is the founder of Redkart, a start-up offering curbside pickup and delivery services to mom-and-pop shops during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based out of the Columbia Startup Lab in Soho, Redkart currently helps small businesses in the New York and Boston area digitally adapt to modern times.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got here.

So I grew up in Boston, my background has been in politics for the most part. I’ve been meaning to start my own thing for a while now, so right after grad school, I started this media company. About 7 months in, the pandemic hit, and like a lot of Americans, I had to find a way to pivot.

Was there a particular experience that made you think “I need to do this now”?

So it was in mid-March that I found myself having to drop everything and come to Boston to help out with the family business, we own a few retail stores up there. I was in this position where I had to save my own business while being forced to help out my family’s, and that’s how this came about. Redkart wasn’t concocted in a classroom or in a lab, but out of a real need to give our shop the digital means to offer contactless curbside pickup. Businesses on Main Street have been hurting for a while now, but I think Covid really highlighted some of the areas that need significant improvement. The pandemic instilled a sense of urgency I think, that something needed to be done and needed to be done now.

How did you overcome the fears of becoming an entrepreneur?

I think every entrepreneur requires some combination of inspiration and desperation to start a company. What I noticed is that there’s this point in one’s life where you feel a sense of boredom from the monotony of everyday life, that makes you want to do something different. But being inspired to chase something new is never enough. You need to feel the fear of failure, the fear of going broke, the fear of disappointment, whatever the case is. When compared to that, the fear of starting your own business is no longer the problem.

What was your biggest learning curve?

I thought it’d be on the technical/development side, but I think the biggest learning curve for me was just the general product iteration process. There are some do’s and don’ts in the startup world, that I think someone more experienced, who’s spent time at an early-stage startup perhaps, will be better equipped when it comes to avoiding pitfalls, etc. But the one advantage that we have is that there’s a lot of information out there, resources that can help guide you if you’re willing to take the time to learn.

What is something you wish someone would’ve told you when you started this journey?

That a good idea and a pitch-deck is probably all you need to raise money. If I knew this, I would’ve started a company 10 years ago.

In 15 words or less, tell me what being a founder feels like.

It feels like dreaming of being a movie star while you’re working the drive-thru.

What are three tips you would give to other founders getting started this winter?

Get an MVP out there fast. For most concepts, it shouldn’t take you longer than a month or two to create something to test out your hypothesis, sometimes it may even be a landing page of sorts to help show potential interest in your product. Second, save your money and spend frugally, especially during the economic uncertainty surrounding the pandemic. You want to have enough time to get customer feedback and iterate your product, so you want to stretch your dollar as long as possible. Third, if you can, don’t go at it alone, find a cofounder.

Who’s a founder you admire and why?

Well, I admire some of my colleagues at the Columbia Startup Lab. Some of these entrepreneurs are doing pretty remarkable things, in such a short time frame, and so it gives me a standard to live by on some level, like a benchmark to see if you’re going too slow or too fast. It’s one thing when you read about some startup success story somewhere, and a whole nother thing when you literally see the grueling hours, in person, that it takes to get there. You can’t help but feel a sense of awe, which makes you want to work even harder. Goes back to your question on fear I guess, no one wants to look bad in front of their peers.

On a Mission is a weekly publication of interviews with mission-driven founders trying to solve big problems.