Julia Haber's Helping You Tap College Students to Grow Your Business

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the person behind all things Female Founder World. Today, I'm talking to Julia Haber, the founder of Home From College. Julia, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Okay, people that don't know Home From College, what are you guys doing? Yeah, we are a tech platform that helps brands work with college students at scale. So that can be anything from ambassador programs, focus groups, Gen Z advisory panels, your normal intern. we built the end-to-end rails that helps brands work with students from payments, contracting, tasks, and deliverables, and really have positioned ourselves as a career platform for students.

0:38So helping them get their foot in the door, get their first paid experiences, and all that type of chats. I recommend Home From College in the Female Founder World group chat all the time. And we see people come in and we ask, where are you from? And we're like, so amazing. So thank you for that. Yeah, of course. Absolutely. It's such a good platform. And we're going to talk in this conversation a little bit about how businesses and brands can work with college kids and college students and Gen Z and to do different things in their business and what that untapped potential is to help grow, which I think will be really interesting and you're an absolute expert at that.

1:15But then also your story, what you've learned, you've raised$10 million. Like we're going to talk about that, how you've been scaling the business and raising money. And then I also want to get your thoughts on marketing to Gen Z because again, Gen Z is like one side of your marketplace. So you clearly have figured out how to reach them. We continue to learn and be humbled. I feel like they're evolving a lot as consumers. So definitely excited to chat about it. Okay. So this business kicked off in 2021. Talk me through what the launch was like. So I can even maybe back up a little bit. So I started my first company when I was a freshman in college.

1:47It was an experiential marketing agency. So the same way you think of the world of pop-ups, this was specifically focused on college campuses. So we worked with the Shopify's, Refinery29's, T-Mobiles of the world to create basically 40-foot trailer activations on campuses. And when brands would activate on these markets, I would travel around with them. I think I've been to almost 100 college campuses in my life. But what we would learn was really that brands were trying to acquire an audience. But a really interesting learning that emerged was that students wanted to work for these brands. So it was this intersection between hiring and acquiring that kind of resonated as a deeper thesis that people want to work for brands they love.

2:30And that has really changed, I'd say, in the last five to seven years because there is this emergence of consumerism and TikTok and wanting to fall in love with the founders and the business building piece that was really missing. And we bought the domain homefromcollege.com really when the world shut down in COVID. And we spent about a year and a half doing product testing and focus groups to understand what is the problem we're trying to solve for students and for companies? And what does that connection point look like? And one of the big things that we've really focused on is being a brand ourselves.

3:04So one of the learnings we created was that there's no kind of cool brand of the college market. There's no place that is synonymous with going to school besides the college you go to. And we said, what if we can be the career platform that students actually love, that get them their first paid experience, that connects them with brands they love? And through that, we really built a foundation of trust with students through that product testing and focus groups. And then what really emerged was our core product that we call the gig, which for our brands, we call gas, Gen Z access as a service.

3:39And that was our initial product. We really rolled out in 2022 after we raised a little bit of friends and family and strategic capital. And then from there have scaled to really build this end-to-end large tech solution that Fortune 100 and 500 brands and small startups also use to really reach that audience. Wow. Okay. This is very impressive. I want to know a little bit about fundraising and how that's kind of been a part of your story. We have been a revenue generating business from the beginning. So the way that we make money is that companies pay home from college to use our platform. It's typically an annual or a monthly subscription.

4:18And all opportunities we create are paid for students. So there's always two pieces. It's never a paid product for students. We believe that it should be fully accessible. So in terms of financing, we made a decision to be the type of business that can create, you know, revenue generating moments from the beginning. So we didn't have this nervous relationship with financing, which I think is, I mean, as a female founder, we all know it's very challenging to get funding, but we knew that that would be a power lever that we would be able to pull. So the early financing we raised was from a number of strategic players in the media space who had brand connections, some friends and family, and that was enough to build an initial proof of concept where we generate, I think, a little under a million dollars maybe before we raised a seed round.

5:07And that gave us the leverage to then raise a larger institutional round. And our lead investors, Google Ventures, they're amazing. We raised around a six million dollar round for our seed round, but it gave us a lot of leverage because we had a substantial amount going on before we went to raise a larger round. Can I ask how old you were when you started this? I was 23. How did you know how to raise money? I did not. I definitely did not. But one thing I do know how to do is build relationships. And that has been my secret sauce, I think, in a lot of these successful moments where maybe the person sitting in front of you is not going to write you a check today, but they really could in the future.

5:50And if you do your part in building a relationship with them, I got a piece of advice from someone that said, even if you get a no now, every three to six months, send them a note, send them an article, send them something that you've done and be top of mind because you never know when it will come around. And the Google Ventures investment actually happened because we got a ton of inbound from investors and we were actually pretty far along in a process. And then I got a DM from a partner at Google Ventures on LinkedIn and I had met him at a different fund multiple years ago. And within in like two weeks we raised the round.

6:26So that is because of relationships. So when you're like 23 or 24, you'd hit a million in revenue. A little under, yep. Wow. This is very impressive. I was not doing that at 24. I don't know what I was doing, but not that. You definitely were doing something amazing and impressive. Definitely not that. I wanna know how you got those first customers. And by customers, I mean both your like Gen Z community, your students, but then also the brands who are coming on to advertise on the platform, because that's where your revenue is coming from, right? Yes. On the brand side, we, so I am definitely a salesperson.

7:03I am historically known for selling things that don't exist and calling someone and saying, we need to make this happen. And is my co-founder happy about that? No. But it has been the reason why we've been successful, because it has pushed us to the next level instead of just selling what's directly in front of us. And if I had one piece of advice for people who are nervous about their first customers, it would be to make something and sell something that maybe doesn't exist, but that could be in the realm of possibility. Because if you can share a vision that people can get excited about, they'll trust you to figure it out.

7:36What's an example of that? I love that idea. Tell me how you've done that. So we're actually rolling out a new product that integrates with Shopify. and we work with Liquid Death and Poppy and what continued to emerge is brands want to sample products with college students at scale and get the data of who are these people getting the products and are they going to create content around it and are they actually my ideal customer and where can all that data live? And I had no idea how to actually think about creating that but I had a number of conversations with both Liquid Death and Poppy about creating a fulfillment opportunity through the back end of our product and we said, this doesn't exist today, but it will exist.

8:20And it will exist in X period of time. And of course it takes longer than you think it will. But when you can get them to be excited about the investment with you, then you have a partner along for the journey to help actually give you feedback as you're going. So now that product exists, Poppy sends thousands and thousands of cans of product through our backend. And that was something that we just had an idea around that we said, okay, think it's in the realm of possibility. Let's just go for it. Wow. Okay. I need more advice from you on selling. It is not my strong suit at all. And so I'm always just so envious and also like curious about people that that's just innate for, because I think it's such an advantage.

8:57I think it's not one size fits all, which is interesting because we have 10 salespeople and even training them on our product and how that works. Everyone has their own shtick. It's really interesting. And I think it's about harnessing your superpower. So something that I do pretty much on every call, not even unintentionally, is complimenting someone immediately. Love your earrings. What's that background? This weather's crazy. Something that is just a neutralizer where it says we're friends and I'm not trying to take your money right now. And then everyone feels a little bit disarmed. And ideally, if you can find the person behind the sale and what makes them tick and what's most important to them in their daily lives and what will.

9:41And you can even directly ask, like, what is your biggest focus right now or What's your biggest pain point that, you know, relates to this topic? And then you can define your pitch to that, which is so helpful. But I think you have to meet the audience where they are. If they're giving you a hard no, take the no and move on. So I think it's knowing your strengths and leaning into that, even if it doesn't feel like a sales tactic. And then knowing that your strengths are going to be different than other people's. So don't try and compare it. Okay, so that's one side of your marketplace. talk to me about getting the college students involved how do you reach them when we first started we threw up a landing page and said we're building the home for career for college students sign up basically as just a wait list we had a series of strategies that were not intentional strategies I have a number of relationships with collegiate influencers and this happened to be around COVID when no one knew what to do with themselves because everyone felt helpless and specifically people who had platforms like influencers during that time didn't really know what to do to help.

10:47And what we ended up doing was having them put a link in their bio to home from college and people would sign up. And I would say in the first two weeks, we had over 10 ,000 people just sign up. And then I think the best thing that we did was involving that audience in the decision making of our business. We would host weekly focus groups with thousands of students and just show them different concepts and ideas and branding. and we made them feel like owners in the business so that what we were doing was, A, more authentic to that audience, but B, they felt an investment in having it be successful.

11:20And that created this really organic word of mouth growth loop. And to this day, we don't spend money on marketing to students. We have hundreds of thousands of students across every college campus in the US. And that has fostered a really trusted environment because not only do we talk the talk, we walk the walk because every feature within our product every element promotes the lack of imposter syndrome and paid opportunities and being okay to be who you are and if we just said that and didn't have our product show that then we would be getting cancelled yeah but I think continuing to have that gut check and that Gen Z you know voice in your head and actually Gen Z advisory panels and support has been the reason why we've been able to build that authentic relationship how do you get people engaged enough that they're going to turn up like thousands of people turn up to an advisory board like that's insane insane I don't wouldn't say that that could necessarily work today at the same level I think it was there was a lot going on the world but what we do have is a gen z advisory group that we meet with on a monthly basis and we made it a thing and for brands who are doing this I would definitely recommend we branded it as though it was like truly like you got on an advisory board as though you were a late stage in your career and you're on a public board.

12:34We have like 75 students and I would say 90 % of them posted about it on LinkedIn and 90 % of them have that on their like actual bio where it says Gen Z advisory panel like board member. And I think creating that branding and storytelling for them to grab onto to have that level of investment and being your loyalist is the way to do it. How much of the like branding and the direction or not even just the branding direction, I guess like the features and the decisions that you make come from you as like the founder and what your vision is versus what's coming through the community and this advisory board.

13:13I'm interested in that balance because we're thinking about like me personally. I'm thinking about redoing the website and involving the community in that and like how much of it should be me versus letting the community lead that. With any community, I believe you need to have really thoughtful guardrails because people get paralyzed by decision paralysis. And not if you're saying, hey, what should our landing page look like? It would be probably better to say these are the three copy options for headers. Which one do you like best? Or these are three ways that we should, you know, have a call to action.

13:50Would this resonate with you? and giving options is always good rather than keeping it open-minded, open-ended. So we typically will not bring the Gen Z advisory panel anything until we've done at least three rounds of internal and then we'll gut check it with them in that process, both on company and student. I want to talk about some ways that businesses, the brands and the community, people who are listening, how they can work with college students to move their business forward. So we've, I think the most obvious one that people think about and I often send people to home from college for is that like oh I need a content creator and that's kind of the first thing and you have plenty of people who can do that but what else?

14:32So I think there's three buckets that we talk about hiring which is more labor intern type of work so this could be your researcher, your salesperson, your copywriter, your UX designer, your anything that you would hire an intern or an entry-level employee for. Then there's acquiring, which is more of the marketing side. So this could be ambassador programs, decentralized sales teams on a student by student level. A lot of brands will come in and say, I'm launching a new app and, or I'm launching a new product and I want my first, you know, 5 ,000 customers, or I need people to download this app.

15:09What could that look like? They'll create like mini student led sales teams to get their peers and friends on the app. And you can create incentive structures as well. So you can do bonuses, you can do referral links, you can do promo codes. That's a really great way to do it to drive actual business impact with students. And then I'd say the last piece is more insights. So focus groups, product testing, research reports, any like package design, all of these types of things, or even like Amazon reviews, really common use case for brands amazing and what kind of when brands are coming to you like what kind of budget are they working with just to give people a ballpark who are listening to this thinking this all sounds great can I actually afford to do this so the way that it works is the lowest price point is$49 a month which is to use the platform listed gigs and essentially run your program on it then the compensation and what you pay students to be involved is totally up to you.

16:10So if you're like, hey, I only have$200 to work with, you know, 10 students and I need an Amazon review and maybe a piece of content, you can set that rate. And if you're not getting the level of applicants that you want, then you can increase the rate. So the starting point is totally up to you in terms of the talent, but these students are early and eager and they want to make an impact, but it doesn't need to break the bank. Julia, I'm so interested in you and like how you've been able to grow and up level and become this founder and business leader and you've got a team of 20 something in such a short amount of time like what are the things that you've done intentionally to be this version of yourself I think it's really easy to let comparison hijack you totally it's horrible but I think what we have done really well is slow and steady wins the race.

17:02When we started our business in 2021, there was maybe four competitors or five competitors that had raised much more funding than we had. And we kept our head down and we said, we know what we're going to do. We're going to take our time. We're going to do what we can actually control rather than hire a million people out the gate and build 10 different types of products and trust, try, you know, to launch products that may not work and then re-pivot and reorient the whole team, we said, no, let's be small. Let's take it slow. None of those businesses exist anymore. And I think that is a beautiful thing to learn that you don't need to be moving at a rapid pace to be successful.

17:44And that actually, if you can take more strategy and thought to make it happen, then that's, you're probably going to win. I want to ask you, we've spoken about fundraising, but I'm still curious about this. Like, what do you think is it that the investors saw in you or saw in the business that made them want to invest? Okay, business besties, let's switch gears for a second. Real quick, I want to talk to you about this season's presenting sponsor, Vistaprint. They are sponsoring this entire season of the Female Founder World podcast and we love a supportive sponsor. so much so that we're actually working with Vistaprint ourselves to create the merch and all of those beautiful event perks that you know and love from our in real life female founder world events.

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19:19Use the code FFW25 at checkout and step up your branding game. We put a link in the show notes if you want to learn more. I had a very specific mindset about this fundraising and this fundraising round. And I tell my friends this all the time who are going to raise, you need to be, can I curse? yeah hot shit like you need to walk in being like you need me and you are lucky to be having this conversation because there are other people waiting and if you don't take this bye and if you can't get to that headspace don't raise yet and I walked into every single conversation like that and I said hey you know I have 25 minutes um I gotta have to go we have another call after this but it's really lovely to meet you and I made every conversation that I was interviewing them as much as they were interviewing me.

20:08Because inevitably, if that's true or not, it creates a power dynamic that is way more balanced because you're asking them for money. It's so weird. It's like, when does that actually happen in your life? It's like asking your parents, can I have money to go to the mall as a little kid? And they're like, no, you can't go. And now you're stuck. But this is your livelihood. This is your baby. I think it's really important to create that power dynamic to feel really even. I think you can talk about metrics and what you need to be at. But I do truly believe it's how you show up in those conversations that creates FOMO and where you're playing the game as much as they are.

20:44I love that. Julie, the last thing I want to ask you is for some resource recommendations, stuff that's been helping you grow and build and that you think other people who are interested in this space should go and check out. So there's two things. One, I am part of a female founder book club and we meet every month. And I think it has been one of the biggest game changers in the last year in my career. One, because it gives you a support system that is so refreshing and like-minded. So if you have an opportunity to join a book club, highly recommend. The second is the book that I'm currently reading, which is, what's Mel Robbins' book?

21:21Oh, Let Them. Let Them. Tell me. I haven't read it, but I've obviously watched all of the TikToks about it. So I'm an audiobook person. And her tone is just the most empowering thing. the let them theory obviously is about you can't control the world it will exhaust you to try and do it but just let them do what they're going to do but let you make choices that make your life better and I think in the world of startups when there's so many things that you can't control I think finding the things that give you a little bit of peace to know that people are going to do what they're going to do people are going to say what they're going to say it is incredibly liberating and that has been something that I've definitely okay I'm going to download it I also love an audio book especially when the author is reading it and she's a badass and her tone is super like inspiring so i highly recommend okay amazing yeah thank you so much for coming on the show thank you for having me and congratulations on everything you've built it's so impressive