Startup Spotlight #2 Latest Free Stuff
Learn more about the startups coworking in our London office in our second Startup Spotlight. Each month we will be giving you insight into the Startups based in the Rainmaking Loft. This month we are thrilled to introduce you to LatestFreeStuff.
LatestFreeStuff.co.uk is the UK's largest aggregator of free products in the UK. The team update the website everyday with new freebies, free samples, discount codes and special offers. They attract over 400,000 visitors a month and have a growing social media following of over 80,000+ followers. The company has recently launched in the USA.
LatestFreeStuff, composes of Deepak Tailor, the founder, Francois the business development expert and Laura the content writer.
We managed to grab a few minutes of Deepak’s time to get to know his story.
LatestFreeStuff is the UK’s largest freebie giveaway site. We show you how to find free product samples of everything from perfume to make up, all delivered to your house for completely free.
R: What attracted you to become an entrepreneur?
D: I became an entrepreneur accidentally. I didn’t feel a need to become an entrepreneur.
"By creating my business, I just really wanted to help people in the UK."
I walked into entrepreneurship as a kid. When I was 15, I was trying to make pocket money to buy the latest games. I started initially with eBay, and I ended up becoming one of their Powersellers. However, it wasn’t an automated business and I seemed to be spending too much time handling the products and logistics of the business and ultimately there was no way to streamline the business.
I realised that a website could be more flexible and accommodating for me. I wanted to make my lifestyle easier and above all be able to scale my business. I therefore started to run mini-affiliate websites. I started them all during university and ended up building about 80 sites. They were pretty small, with only 200/300 visitors on each site. But together they were a really good earner. They were all hosted from one server which at the time was only costing me $15 a month!
R: How did the idea of LatestFreeStuff come about?
D: I was using other freebie website and I didn’t think they were good enough. What people traditionally associate with these websites is that there are full of SPAM or dodgy links. Sites where they are going to steal your details and never actually post you anything. I wanted to change that perception and show people that there was a genuine way to actually order real free samples of products that they want to try before they buy.
"The idea behind the site was to create this massive portal where people can order genuine free sample from top brands in one place."
Of the back of that, I thought, if I create this fantastic resource it would help people to save money and they would recommend the site to their friends. That’s actually how we’ve grown into what we are today. The website only cost £400 to build at the start and we are still using the same basic website right now.
The first year and a half I built and managed LatestFreeStuff on my own and then Francois, who was then part-time content writer, came on board. I was dealing with everything from marketing to advertising to business and all the technical stuff like the coding.
After a year of hard work, we had a breakthrough moment that helped us to boost our self up the Google rankings. We were featured in the Daily Mirror as the best freebie website. Ultimately, it had a massive impact on our website traffic. At that time we had 10 people a minute coming to the site and within a year we were attracting over 100 people a minute. This massive jump was completely organic and in the end it helped us to grow the SEO that we have today.
R: What were the biggest struggles in your startup/entrepreneur journey?
D: The first biggest struggles for me was working on the website on my own for about a year and a half. During that period, I was literally managing everything from the marketing to the development and strategy. I was spending 19 to 20 hours a day trying to drive interest in the website. I could see from the start that the website was having a profound impact on people’s life. People were coming to rely on our service. That’s what kept me motivated when we were still small and growing.
When I launched LatestFreeStuff, it was in the middle of the recession; people were really tight for money. This kind of sites really were starting to grow.
The second biggest struggle I had was hiring the right technical staff. The app we developed was the first one of its kind in the UK. It was completely unique and I know nothing about app development. I ended up visiting lots of different networking events in the UK to meet developers. I received dramatically different quotes that went from £500 to £40,000.
"My lack of knowledge in the field was the issue, I had to learn everything as we were going along."
In the end we found a team in Romania that developed the app in 8 months and me and my team managed to launch the app last year. We have now attracted over 100,000 downloads with no advertising spend.
R: Do you have any advice for the other entrepreneurs to be?
D: "My advice is: go and do it!."
People have all these brilliant ideas but the execution of the ideas is where lots of them are lacking. People need to test and experiment what they are thinking and actually give it a go. Everything I learned today was literally by trial and error. I think the reason why people don’t try out their ideas is a mixture of the fear of failure and lacking in ambition.
If it doesn’t work, you should be able to fall back on something else, see what went wrong and realise what to do differently the next time.
R: What are the next steps and the vision for LatestFreeStuff?
D: We have more exciting developments coming soon. Because we are becoming larger and larger, more and more companies are coming to us exclusively to promote their brands and products. We have new deals everyday and you won’t believe some of the deals that are coming in the next few weeks. Make sure you join our email newsletter to keep a breath of our latest offers.
R: How did coworking in the Rainmaking Loft help your business?
D: Rainmaking loft has really helped improve my business in lots of different ways. It’s helped create this platform where it allows us to meet different advertising clients. I think a coworking space is brilliant for working together. We now work with several different companies in the Loft, using their product and services to increase or revenue and growth. The Loft also has a fantastic location, it helped us getting this “bigger than what we are” feel.
On top of everything I run my own events at the Loft, the event space is brilliant. Before coming to the Loft, we could never find a venue big enough for our meetup, and it is really easy to access via public transport. Since we started to run the events, we have only had positive comments from our attendees.
"I visited lots of coworking spaces before we launched LatestFreeStuff and I really believe we have found the best coworking space in London."
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