Gifting Made Smart: Inside HintHint with Iman Dakhil

0:00Welcome back to the Serial Entrepreneur. I'm your host Anna Wood. On today's episode, I chat with Iman Dakhil, the founder of Hint Hint, a universal wishlist management tool to simplify the gift-giving process. We discuss being a solo non-technical founder in a tech-based business, bootstrapping the business from the start, and the perfect gift. Let's dig in. Hello, welcome to the podcast. It's nice to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being here. So we begin every podcast episode with our signature icebreaker question, which is what's your favorite breakfast cereal and why?

0:41I don't actually have breakfast, I must admit, so I guess it's a latte. I mean, as a child it was Froot Loops or Honeycombs, but it's been a long time since I've had the pleasure of that kind of breakfast. Yeah, I feel a lot of people don't eat breakfast anymore. It's becoming more and more common. So would you be able to introduce yourself and tell me about your background? For sure. So my name is Iman Dakhil and I am the founder of Hint Hint. My background was in fashion and e-commerce, but I actually had a really thriving private jewelry business before I started Hint Hint. And that's partly what led me to this journey of this startup.

1:31So as a jeweler, I spent so much time curating amazing gifts for other people. And, you know, often like the most incredible engagement ring, but then I would take it a step further, the presentation, how was it going to happen? Where was the element of surprise? And I realized that there's just so much emotion built into the gift and the gift giving. and there's a real gap in the market for how to really marry emotion to practicality and then to make it a meaningful experience. What exactly is Hint Hint and what is your mission? So Hint Hint is a universal wishlist and gifting tool. It basically allows you to save anything you see online anywhere you want in one place.

2:18So we're traditionally primed to gift registries that are baby registries or wedding registries so this is basically like your registry for life and it's a way for our friends and family to see your taste and to know what might be the perfect gift for you when it's a birthday or a holiday but it's also kind of morphed into a shopping tool so i'm the chief purchase officer for example in my house i have three kids i am constantly the one buying shopping figuring out what needs to be bought and as a result used to have 150 tabs open on my computer so this allows me the opportunity to like see something save it quickly in one destination and then come back and revisit when I have the attention and bandwidth and not have to space those 500 tabs open on the desktop that terrify me So you said that you're doing other things such as being a jeweler before founding Hint Hint.

3:19How do you think those previous experiences shaped your approach to Hint Hint? I mean, to be perfectly honest, I built Hint Hint for myself. My husband was a horrible gift giver. He won't mind my saying that. And I found myself constantly creating the perfect gift for other people all the time. And then it would be my birthday or a holiday, a meaningful holiday or milestone. And it would be like, I didn't know what to get you. I would be like, well, really? So I, you know, naively used to tear like sheets out of magazines and leave them bedside thinking I was dropping a subtle hint here or there.

3:57He had no idea what I was talking about. And he said to me, you know, gift giving isn't easy for me. He said, it's easy for some people, but it's not easy for me. And he said, just, you know, go buy what you want. If you want, I'm happy for you to get what you'd like. but I'm like but that's not actually a gift is it that's me buying what I'd like and I'm not looking for permission to go buy something I want to feel you thought of it you thought a little bit about me and what I like and what I won't like and you know gave you that process and he just couldn't really understand where the gap was why I was just you know in his mind gift giving was like the end product it wasn't the process and for me it's all about the process so so you know you just have to make it easy and if you make it easy I'd be so happy to give you anything you want so I essentially built Tint Tint so that my husband would be able to see everything I ever want as a result though you know we've basically bootstrapped this company self-funded it and there have been no gifts that's the flip side of it the gift of it has been giving myself Tint Tint Yeah, but I think some of the best businesses do come from that need that you have yourself.

5:06Like you realized this is an issue that we're having. Other people must also have this problem too. I mean, I do spend so much time thinking about what somebody might want as a gift. Because in the past, when we give gifts, if we're short on time, and I'm definitely that person, you end up kind of going for the thing that is either a classical no-brainer gift or you give a gift card which I don't really like to give or you give something that might just have been expensive because that connotes like you're meaningful to me so I spent money but it might not actually be the thing that person wants and then they've now received something that's expensive that they didn't really like and yes if they got a gift receipt great but then you've given them an errand and they have to go to a store and kind of do the walk of shame to return the gift and take a gift voucher that they might lose and you know there's so much waste actually in the gift gifting space and I really wanted to address that when we started him in so that was one of the key focuses for me it's like let's remove some of this friction and let's normalize saying that this is what I like it's not saying you have to buy this for me but at least if six of my girlfriends have lists and it's their birthday, I have an idea of their taste.

6:25And I have a general idea of what they might want. And even better, if I can get them exactly what they want, it might be out of my budget, but it will give me like a marker to okay, actually, she's into beach bag, she needs a beach bag, or she's looking for a summer sandal, this will be a cute one, you know, it some people go directly, you know, A plus B equals C. And that's the formula we found for teens. The teenage market loves Hint Hint, and teenagers love to tell you what they want. And no parent or adult seems to know what a teenager wants unless the teenager tells you directly, this is what I wanted.

6:58Because if you try to guess what a teenager wants, it'll be like, hmm, wasn't exactly the right one. Wasn't the color I wanted. No, that was last year. So I find that that's been an amazing kind of surprise audience for us was the teen market. Great. So how do you differentiate Hint Hint from other traditional wish lists and competitors in the market? So there's a few different ways that we can differentiate. I think to begin with, traditional wish lists have usually been for babies, baby registries or wedding registries. And not everyone's having a baby and not everyone's getting married. And that shouldn't also eliminate opportunities for them to be gifted nicely at different times in their lives.

7:45I think one of the main elements that differentiates us is that we're universal. So if you look at your wish list for a specific retailer, it's just limited to that retailer. You're the only one that can see it. It's not public to your friends. With Hint Hint, you get to choose. Do you want to make it public or private? Do you want to share it with a select few? so I could save on my hint hint list you know 10 items from Net-A-Porter, four things from MyTheresa, three things from Amazon and it's all in one destination and I'd say above all it's you know with us there's a certain taste level that really drives the process.

8:26I mean we've designed a really beautiful product I think and that is like a deeply personal thing for me. I need it to be beautiful. I need it to be, I want to be able to stay on the site and enjoy the site and keep looking. And I like to look at my friends' lists and I like to look at other people's lists and get inspired. And I think that it's designed in a way that makes you want to stay on. Great. So when you first started, Hint Hint, how did you start acquiring users in the space and what worked best for you? You know, I initially tapped into my own communities of friends and clients. And that, interestingly, was not the best way.

9:05The best way for us was actually really organic. Just kind of word of mouth, spreading, you know, getting the one odd, you know, one teenager at one school would use it. And then that kind of set a tone for other teenagers to use it. and I really think community build is a great way to build. So, you know, looking at different communities and trying to get it moving along in those communities. But there wasn't like a specific, you know, initially you would think, okay, I'm just going to go to my 100 best friends and ask them all to sign up. And they all, of course, do sign up, but they're not necessarily your user or your best case user.

9:44You know that you have traction when you're five people removed removed from the user and you don't actually or you don't know the users at all and you see that they're repeat users. I mean that's the best validation for a product. So as a founder there's a lot of challenges kind of on the road. What would you say have been the challenges that you faced on the journey and how have you overcome them? There are so many challenges. Every day is a challenge. There are so many challenges. I mean the biggest challenge for me was not being part of a tech ecosystem. You know I I'm a sole founder. I didn't have a tech background.

10:21I really had the taste and the fashion and the e-commerce background, but I didn't have a tech background per se. So I had to really learn how to build a product and learn the language and figure out how to hire a team. And all of that was learning on the go. And that was really tough and really burnt me many times over. I mean, if I could do it all over again, the first thing I would have done was find a technical co-founder. Cool. So on the flip side of that, what would you say have been the highlights so far? It seems that it's actually being used. That's really an amazing thing. When you see people, you have no idea who they are regularly using the product.

11:03That is kind of like, oh, okay, actually this works. And then the occasional validation from a 13 or a 14 year old, it's like, oh my god you built that I I love hint hint like nothing feels better than hearing that yeah I can imagine I think when all your hard work goes and people are actually using it and they're really happy with what you're making at the end I think being able to see that must feel great it's great and it also feels terrible when something's not working and they send you that feedback too That is also really hard and sometimes things don't work. It's just the nature of tech.

11:45You know, like I get so excited if Dropbox has a bug. I'm like, yes, Dropbox also has problems at times. I'm sorry, Dropbox. I'm sure you don't. But I've definitely had an experience here or there. I get really excited if, you know, a page isn't working. I'm like, oh, this is amazing validation for me that everybody has. like this is not just we're terrible and we can't do it this is the nature of what we do things will break and you have to fix them yeah definitely so what have been the lessons that you've learned on the startup journey it is not a romantic experience to be a startup founder it is a lonely hard schlep you have to be able to take a lot of no's a lot of negative feedback a lot of cynicism and I think if you can kind of weather that or accept that then you're at a starting point and that's just the starting point right so you have to learn a certain sort of resilience and every morning you have kind of talked to yourself I'm in a position where I haven't raised money yet so I can still talk myself into do I is this the right thing to do should I be doing this is there a reason to keep doing this and every day I find a reason to keep doing it so that's you know you have to kind of give yourself a real reality check I think every morning and you need to be super honest with yourself and unfortunately there isn't kind of an energy and an idea that like oh you're a startup founder and you know how cool and how fun and everybody who's a startup founder just makes it and it's going to work and it's like actually very few make it very there's no no guarantee to that so then why are you doing it and what is it fulfilling for you and you i think you need to have that really honest conversation with yourself all the time and how can you make it what is making it is making it an exit of this company is it making it profitable is it you know just making it viral what what's the main you know and so those goals change pretty regularly too i think it's really dynamic and you need to be very nimble that's the crucial thing that I've learned and also whatever technology you're building it's dated by the time you've built it so you need to be ahead of the curve constantly and for the hint hint experience in particular I think like we're not just about the build we're about an experience it's a brand we want you to you know to really understand and immerse yourself in our taste we create these beautiful gift guides every season that really kind of set a tone for what we think make wonderful gifts if you're looking for inspiration and ideas and that's the part I really enjoy I mean that part is kind of a labor of love but it's it's a very dynamic experience you know there's never a typical day yeah you say about how kind of any tech you build is outdated by the time you launch it I think a big thing on everyone's lips is AI is that something that you're integrating we are evolving into a full AI powered shopping and gifting experience so um I hope within the next eight months you will be able to find like Hint Hint is actually your best shopping friend and is your shopping companion and it'll still be grounded in like the wish listing element but it will be so much more uh tailored to your personal taste to smart discovery to you know pricing that suits you there's this idea that like when you're gifting everything has to be expensive and it doesn't to be a great gift it just needs to to be thoughtful or something that that person wants that's it it doesn't you know it could be i mean one of my most favorite gifts ever to receive is a specific pair of socks that are not expensive but when i put them on i'm so happy and the friend who gave them to me knows because i text her a picture of them every time I have them on.

15:49And that's finally one of my most favorite gifts ever received and probably retails for 20 quid. Not expensive, not inexpensive, but just really thoughtful and so well suited to me. I'm always cold. That's great. So also you mentioned about how you haven't raised money and you're bootstrapped. Is that something that you're going to continue going forward? Was that a decision that you made early on that you didn't want to raise money? It was a decision that I made early on because I felt that, look, it's a double-edged sword. When you're bootstrapped and you don't raise money, you might be more conservative about decisions.

16:33And you're probably more frugal than you should be. But it also kind of put me in a position where I learned how to be very creative with resources and how to leverage one thing to make it into five. And I believe that the best companies are run really efficiently. And that taught me that discipline. So I did not want to raise money until I had that discipline down because I don't want to be cavalier with anybody else's money. And I really wanted to only raise money when I felt sure that there was proof of concept, that there is a reason for this product to exist. There are so many apps out there, so many products out there, so much in the shopping space.

17:13so why this one and I needed to prove that I probably am the most cynical and hardest judge out there so I needed to prove it to myself before I took anyone else's money but I think we're now at that point where I feel quite comfortable that I'm willing to work that hard for someone else as well yeah I think it's quite interesting speaking with founders who early on make a decision that they're going to bootstrap and that they're not going to raise any kind of funding for a while because I think you see online you see on LinkedIn that funding rounds are constantly being announced people are constantly talking about VC funding so it's really interesting to see people who straight away said I don't want to start with that.

17:57I think there's so much noise around fundraising and there's so much self-congratulations around it and and and it's important and if you raise money it's really hard to raise money so if you do you should congratulate yourself and you should but it's easy as a founder to get distracted by that and I don't if you're not ready for it so I just wasn't ready I wasn't ready for that element I needed to really learn what I was doing build I needed to invest in myself and I didn't feel comfortable taking that risk yet from somebody else I just didn't feel like that was a responsible thing to do but I fully appreciate and understand that most people who are doing this actually know what they're doing in the beginning and are ready to do that you know and that's wonderful and amazing for them um but you know I just I'm probably more conservative and and maybe that is a red flag to some people because they want a very risk ready founder but I you know I have to operate with my own sense of integrity and my own sense sense of values and I just wasn't ready to do that until I really knew myself yeah you've got to run your business the way you feel comfortable running it because when something goes wrong and you you've been taking loads of advice that's kind of when things can go wrong so you're like I wouldn't have even got myself in this without having other people's opinions in it.

19:25Yeah, I really think when you use your own money, and to use my own money really meant whatever money we made, and it's very little, I would figure out how to put back in the company, right? Or if I could, you know, I learned how to build things by myself, how to do certain graphics by myself, how to do social media by myself, you know, all of that became, it's a one man, And, you know, it's like startup party of one for a really long time because we just couldn't afford staff or we'd get some freelance support. And we have some great support in the freelance world that gets us and gets me. And I'd love to bring them in to a longer term, longer role.

20:07But, you know, it really is a certain kind of ability to be able to do that where you can figure out how to make a dollar spread to five, you know. But I don't advise that. It's really hard. It's probably turned most of my hair gray. So if you are ready to go and know what you're doing, by all means, raise. But I just didn't have that talent. To be honest, I didn't have the skill set. I do now, but I didn't when I started. And I didn't think that was fair to anybody. And mostly not fair to myself, because then I would have lived with that responsibility every morning and concern. and then it would have distracted me from learning what I needed to learn.

20:50Yeah, definitely. So going back to a previous question, we spoke about the lessons that you've learned, but looking back on the beginning of your journey, what's one thing you wish you would have known or a lesson or a piece of advice before you even founded the company? That I needed a technical co-founder.

21:12That would have been a game changer. You know, you don't have any, if you are not a computer science or a software engineer or don't have any background in building products, it is, you are really locked out of a language. And it's really hard to navigate. And, you know, I would think I was communicating to the development team that I want to build this road that's going to take me to Narnia. And I would end up with a road that took me to Oz. You know, and so where did it go wrong? What happened? You know, all of that was really kind of overwhelming in the beginning. But I think had I had a technical co-founder, it would have just been all the easier for someone else to run that piece of it.

21:58And then I could have really focused on the creative and on the story tell and on the user journey. So what do you think is next for Hint Hint and what goals do you have for the upcoming year? You know, we're really excited about the shift into AI. it's not just like it's a grocery store name everyone's using it everyone's saying ai ai ai ai is here and if we didn't make that shift to ai we would be irrelevant very soon you know so i'd like to think that you know we're really moving ahead of the curve actually on the ai piece we're using our imagination we're really addressing what do people need or want from the ai what how does AI in the shopping case make life easier for you without it being a hundred different ads being pushed at you and products being pushed at you without it being this kind of you know overtake of consumer culture at the palm of your hand that's not what we're looking for either but really most people are pretty time poor and if this can alleviate that sense of like I need to find a dress I need to find the right school shoe for my kid whose foot has a high arch if we can give that to our user that makes me really happy yeah definitely I think the whole how you say so many people are time poor it's AI when used the right way it means that everything can be done slightly faster everyone's life can be slightly better which I think is what everyone wants everyone wants a bit more of their time back I think yeah I've more stretched in 900 million ways and we have to make so many decisions constantly so this really gives you that sense of um okay I I just heard that my daughter has a very high arch in her foot so let me just check on hint hint like what's the best shoe what are the best five shoes that I should look at and boom there they are and that makes me just relieved to know that I've gotten a good answer that's a real answer that is backed up by reality it's not just you know pulling random things and somebody saying it no we've established some authority in this space we've established some authority on taste and on knowing and on product discovery and knowledge and I think it's really good to leverage that but our AI is also built on our taste and our I use the royal you know expression of the royal we it's really my taste and I am like the ultimate consumer I've spent so much time online building these lists clothing my children gifting my friends that you know I really think I know and so if I can help inform that AI that's fantastic but even better if the user can inform their own AI tool you know so my user might not like my taste and that's totally fine but the AI will understand their taste and cater to their needs.

24:57Super bespoke. It then means that more people would want to use it especially if it's kind of curated on their own taste rather than... I mean a lot of people might hate my taste and that's totally fine. By no means will it be like oh this is the only you know these are it'll be based on the users needs most importantly so really bespoke great so my final question for the podcast is is there anything else that you wanted to add or discuss or plug you know we have a fun app i'd love it if people would download it it's on that itunes and apple store um it's just called hint hint and i think that we've just arrived at a place where it's completely normal to say what you like and you should get what you want you should buy what you want you should buy for people what they want there's no shame in it people feel a little embarrassed that was an initial pain point for hint hint was like people I'm not sure if I should tell people what I want for my birthday but actually as it turns out people would like to know they'd like to know and like to get you what you want and there's nothing wrong with that but more than that if you're shy to use it in that tool use it for yourself just for your own shopping edits you need a black shoe 900 ,000 black shoes out there start saving them to one destination and do your edit you know it's so much easier yeah I do find it quite funny how you say that those kind of embarrassment for people to start using and asking because since I was probably like early teens my family have always made lists for birthdays and Christmas because everyone's like what do you want like I don't want to get you something that you're that you just kind of think oh that's nice but aren't actually going to use because even I tell everyone what do you want I don't I don't just want to guess and get you something that you're not going to like I want to know I mean my goal is to eliminate everybody's gifts covered at home with the recycled gifts you know everyone has one let's get rid of it let's make this sustainable let's be direct let's you know let's buy quality over quantity let's you know let's make things a perfect fit yeah definitely well thank you so much Iman it's been great speaking to you and learning more about Hint Hint really lovely to speak to you thank you so much thanks for your time if you like this episode be sure to subscribe to the podcast and check out startup magazine socials to stay up to date on the latest startups news