Denis Asamoah and Jay Cheng of Buzzup: How Transitioning From Agency Advisory to Product Traction Built a Creator Economy Startup

As part of my series about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Successful App or SaaS”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Denis Asamoah and Jay Cheng.

Denis and Jay are Co-Founders of Buzzup, a startup helping online creators identify and engage with their top fans, reclaiming the visibility, engagement, and revenue social media’s algorithmic changes have kept from them over the past year plus. The two come from the worlds of investment banking and consumer imports, respectively, and first joined forces on launching a candle company backed by influencer Jackie Aina, Denis’ fiancée. After working with other influencers and hearing their concerns, Buzzup was born.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

We both come from immigrant families — Jay’s family emigrated to the States from Taiwan in 1983 and founded a small consumer import business in order to make a new life for their family. From the time he was around 15, Jay knew he wanted to work building businesses. Eventually, became the fifth employee of his family’s business, working to quickly scale to a team of 40 in the US, and over 200 in two factories in China. Since then, Jay has become a serial entrepreneur with roots in consumer and tech. He launched and scaled two hyper-growth 8-figure e-commerce businesses in the 2010’s, then pivoted to blockchain in 2016, which he describes as his “first love.” Denis was born in Tottenham, London, and raised by Ghanaian parents. Denis did not get pocket money when he was young, so early on he had to get creative about how to make money. He quickly learned and employed a “buy low sell high” model for in-demand products such as candy, school event tickets, and Pokémon cards. When he got to university, he started his own events organization called The Net Location, which helped graduates to get jobs in the corporate world. In 2016, Denis left investment banking in the UK to take a front seat in the creator economy advising many mega creators (including his fiancée, Jackie Aina, a pioneer in the Black Beauty space) on navigating the rapid changes occurring on social media platforms.

We were introduced in 2018 by mutual friends in VC when Denis and Jackie were toying with the idea of launching a candle brand. Jay’s history in consumer and family business in the manufacturing space was a good match for the potential hyper growth Jackie’s first creator-brand would experience. The plan was put on hold until April of 2020 when Denis reached back out to Jay with a tall order: He and Jackie wanted to launch their candle company, FORVR Mood, that August. Sure enough, FORVR Mood launched four months later and sold out in presale, then sold out the next set of inventories, achieving just under $5M in sales within its first five months.

What was the “Aha Moment” that led you to think of the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?

To be totally honest, Buzzup wasn’t the first idea. We joined forces to launch FORVR Mood in 2020 and as you know that did extremely well. Nearly $1MM in first day sales and several MM of revenue within its first half year. I think word got out that we had managed to scale growth quickly, so a lot of creators reached out asking us to help launch their own consumer brands. We were initially going to advise and/or co-own and operator influencer brands. It wasn’t until we kept hearing the same thing — “I’m tired of brand deals. I’m burnt out. Instagram keeps changing the algorithm. I never know what to expect next.” — across the board from creators large and small did Jay look at Denis and go — “you know there’s a bigger problem here right?” He said, “Yeah, it’s a shame there isn’t a world where creators can earn a living simply by creating good content and engaging their audience.” Jay asked, “Should we build that instead?” A wide grin grew across both our faces at that moment, and “Aha” Buzzup was born.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

You generally want to raise a big round pre-product, as in the idea phase, so investors don’t hold you to traction OR post some alpha or beta product to show initial traction. The hardest time was when we made the decision to build an early product versus raise significant capital to build the platform. We had taken a small pre-seed round from creators and decided to switch gears into “make something with traction” before going after larger investment.

There hasn’t been a time where “giving up” was in the realm of imagination — not yet anyway, knock on wood. For us, the drive to continue is spurred by a deep desire to build something meaningful to us personally. Denis’ life has certainly been changed by the creator economy; he and Jackie live a life they could never have dreamed of if it weren’t for social media. To him, this is a way of giving back to the community that built him up and making sure he’s helping the current generation as well as paving a way for the future. For Jay, it’s about building a safer place for Gen Alpha — those his kids’ age demo who are 10–12 right now and will be graduating from simply video games to creator-based content very soon.

We’re both at a place where we’re relatively successful with what we’ve done but are looking to spend the remainder of our careers creating something valuable for future generations.

So, how are things going today? How did your grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?

Jay: Haha. Today is great. Earlier today was amazing, then not so great, then horrible, then good and so-so, and then back to great. When you build anything meaningful it has to suck, so I love your question. Honestly, the harder things are, the better — it means we’re breaking through and either progressing along the journey or breaking out of a prior mold of ourselves individually and corporately.

I come from a generation that believes hustle is the trump card. It’s not your brains, your brawn, your beauty — it’s busting your ass no matter what — 24/7 especially when it sucks. Grit and resilience — or what I call “hustle” — always eventually leads to success. It’s whether you have the constitution to embrace that hustle.

Denis: Things are moving. I strive to always be better than yesterday. I learned from my dad that if I could improve by 1% every day, I would be a success. My to-do list never ends, but I’ve learned the importance of writing everything down, and taking on each task one at a time. Today I am preparing to meet with creators to on-board on Buzzup

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

Jay: The funniest ones to me involve bathroom humor so I won’t drop that here. I’ll share a story of when I was hosting a GoToMeeting (yep dates back) with one of my largest customers during my manufacturing days. It was a pretty large jewelry company with revenues north of $350MM a year, so a big fish in our books. The owners were very conservative Christian and after our meeting I left the camera and mic on and started rapping to Snoop’s Nuthin But A G Thang. And I mean LOUD like rippin, making a fake joint with my fingers and puffing it. I didn’t know the owners were watching. When I turned around to see their faces still on the call I shrieked, slammed my computer shut and thought “I’m done”.

I went into hiding for three days and might have had a dozen mini meltdowns privately. On the fourth day, they sent over the largest purchase order they’d ever placed and, in the comments, wrote: “God loves You and God most certainly loves Snoop. Keep it real G.”

I was elated. I learned that it’s okay to be your authentic self in business / that transparency builds trust — and business is entirely about trust.

Denis: When I started my clothing line, I had a quote on a t-shirt that said, “Greatness is a process.” Before it went to print, I had cross checked the spelling… or at least I thought I did. I approved the vendor to print 1k tees and little did I know that I spelled “Process” with two Cs I ended up selling the product without noticing the mistake — surprisingly it took some time before a CX notified me, but somehow not that many other people knew or cared

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Wow, so many things. The one thing we want to highlight is that we are a Black-first technology company- while Jay is obviously not black, 70% of our team is.

Here’s the story: Black people have been oppressed globally for hundreds if not thousands of years. We’ll say it another way — the global oppression of Black people across history must be addressed. Today and forward we get to participate in the change that our generation and the next will bring to reduce, and hopefully eliminate, not only anti-Black hate, but ALL hate.

What we’re doing obviously and quietly — and what we mean is that we’re not going to shout about it, we’re just going to do it — is take a Black-first approach to building this technology company and let the result speak for itself.

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

Jay: Stop avoiding burn out — it’s inevitable. You’re going to be burnt out from time to time. If you’re married, find a good therapist. If you’re unmarried, find a good therapist. If you’ve got kids, it’s a good thing that you feel guilty for missing things. There’s more to you than your business. But you’re doing this business because it’s important to you — part of who you are and what you are. Keep doing it. It’s about how you come back out of the burn that defines your journey — and everybody has a different journey. And if there comes a time when you get off one path to do another, that’s okay too. Don’t do Elon, do you.

Denis: When you love what you do; you’re naturally going to work day and night; countless hours to achieve your goals. What’s helped me is afternoon naps, participating in group sports activities to get my mind off work and recharge me. Swimming if you’re lucky enough to have a pool it’s great for the mind. Massages to relax your mind and body.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

Jay: My wife! I can’t put my finger on any one story — it’s the million many many many things along the way collectively all the time.

Denis: Parents, Siblings, Fiancée, Friends, Community. But specifically, my fiancée, Jackie, who introduced me to the creator economy and opened my eyes the good and bad that comes with it. I just want to help contribute and create a better world for them.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. Approximately how many users or subscribers does your app or software currently have? Can you share with our readers three of the main steps you’ve taken to build such a large community?

We’re launching our Alpha with about 20 mega creators — established creators with a following of one million or more. So, once everyone is properly onboarded, we’re addressing about 20MM Instagram audience and over 30MM YouTube audience. We just opened our waitlist a couple weeks ago and have 400 creators large and small waiting. We’ve been lucky to have special access to creators through Denis- he comes from the creator space and his fiancée is Jackie Aina, a leading Black American influencer. We’re fortunate to have built the software to specifically address pain points of a powerful early network. Beyond that, it’s hard to take credit for any growth hacking technique except to confess that our unfair advantage has been our origin story — made with Creators, by Creators, for Fans.

What is your monetization model? How do you monetize your community of users? Have you considered other monetization options? Why did you not use those?

We won’t monetize until a little later in our platform journey. We’re a gamification platform for Fans and Creators. Fans can free-play or pay-to-play to create Buzz for content and its Creators. The more Buzz Fans create for favorite Creators, the greater access they get to exclusive content, community, and campaigns like giveaways. Instead of hitting Fans with a hard paywall (a la monthly subscription), Creators and Fans transact on a micro basis — turning the relationship into an investment rather than a transaction.

Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a very successful app or a SaaS? Please share a story or an example for each.

1. Speak directly to customers/consumers, really listening to what they have to say, to reach the right Product-market fit. If you have it, everything works. If you don’t, then it won’t.

2. Try to focus on 1–3 max major problems at a time. Don’t try to solve every problem.

3. Observe user behavior when they use your app and make the necessary adjustments.

4. Hire people smarter than you

5. Stop overthinking things, and don’t be picky about everything. It’s never going to be perfect. There will always be room for improvement.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Simple: A movement that helps Black people to grow their economic capability — more opportunities; brand deals, investment, jobs, etc.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can keep up with us on Instagram, Twitter, Medium, and our website.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Thanks for having us!