EKMH Innovators Interview Series
An interview series spotlighting global tech influencers, disruptors, visionaries, and of course, innovators.
In late September Drum launched with nearly $11 million in seed funding, reportedly unveiling the first instantly available, massively scalable and completely flexible sales force platform. Investors participating in the round included Propel Venture Partners, Felicis Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, American Express Ventures, GroTech Ventures, Wildcat Venture Partners, BoxGroup and SV Angel.
“Now, standing up a sales force is easier than launching a Google AdWords campaign,” indicated Drum CEO and Co-Founder & Kabbage Co-Founder & CEO Rob Frohwein. “With Drum, businesses of all types, from digital brands to local small businesses, can launch sales efforts in any geography, in real time, giving them a sales boost where, when and how they want.”
The Drum platform aims to leverage gig economy power to give companies a new customer acquisition channel to help them scale and compete. With Drum, businesses have a compelling alternative to traditional advertising and digital marketing through which they can more easily measure success and pay for conversions rather than clicks. Atlanta-based Drum seeks to help businesses gain better access to gig contractors, aka “Drummers”, who can promote their products and services in and out of their personal network and generate income.
Drum has an experienced leadership team including co-founders Rob Frohwein, Kathryn Petralia and Troy Deus. Kabbage Co-Founders Frohwein and Petralia continue to steer Kabbage and its automated cash flow solutions to SMEs which have provided more than 200,000 small businesses with access to nearly $8 billion in working capital, while Deus has taken the lead as Head of Product & Experience.
Drum just launched its optimized browser experience for businesses to promote products and services and its iOS and Android apps for Drummers. Drum is now filling the ecosystem with Drummers and offers from businesses in its first market targets, Atlanta and New York.
I had the pleasure of connecting with Deus via email to learn more about the genesis of Drum and its brand, his Kabbage experience, funding advice, target demographics, platform predictions and Metallica. Yes, Metallica.
Our interview follows. Drum roll, please…
EKMH: Congratulations on co-founding Drum Technologies! Please share more information about what led you and Kabbage Co-Founders Rob Frohwein and Kathryn Petralia to co-founding this new development.
Troy Deus: I’ve had the privilege of working with Rob and Kathryn since the early days of Kabbage. At Kabbage I was tasked with establishing the customer experience, brand and later taking on the Head of Product role. I’ve always enjoyed brainstorming and problem solving with them.
Rob came to us about a year ago with an interesting concept that would drastically rethink how businesses find customers. Businesses today can spend money on traditional advertising and cross their fingers that investment pays off and/or stand up a traditional sales team, which requires significant overhead and is geographically limited. On the other hand, person to person advertising has proven to be the most effective. Rob’s idea: “What if we created a platform that allowed anyone to be a sales person for any size of business?”
This lightbulb moment led to some exciting brainstorming sessions, customer interviews, and prototyping. Once we felt we had the right formula, we presented the concept to a handful of trusted advisors and they loved the idea. We secured seed funding and were off to the races.
Drum Co-Founders and Troy Deus, Rob Frohwein & Kathryn Petralia
EKMH: How did your Kabbage experiences together affect founding Drum?
Troy Deus: My Kabbage journey spanned the early days attracting a handful of customers to hitting $8B in loans helping small businesses achieve their dreams. I loved that challenge of taking an idea, bringing it to life and seeing it enrich the lives of small businesses everywhere. Through that time we have seen and faced numerous challenges together which makes us stronger as a team. Together I believe that Rob, Kathryn, and I bring complementary elements to the table which makes us a great team.
I’m very proud of the culture we’ve built at Kabbage. The Kabbage culture focuses on putting the customer first, caring deeply, and shooting for the moon. Through our years of working with businesses we have a deep understanding and empathy for the challenges businesses face. That combination of culture and customer empathy puts us in a solid position to help businesses grow while empowering a new breed of sales people called drummers.
EKMH: How does Drum Technologies dovetail with Kabbage? How will Drum Technologies march to a different beat?
Troy Deus: We learned a lot at Kabbage, but this isn’t Kabbage 2.0. Drum solves a fundamentally different problem. While Kabbage’s goal is to address the capital and financial flow challenges of small businesses, Drum enables any sized business to stand up an on demand salesforce. Drum also empowers anyone to earn money and financial freedom promoting the businesses they believe in.
EKMH: What is your dream role at Drum now and how do you want your role to evolve in the next two or three years?
Troy Deus: Creating a company from the ground up is an exciting and challenging ride. Honestly, I’m doing my dream role now as a Co-Founder and Head of Product & Experience. I’m responsible for overseeing and empowering a kick ass team to deliver products that will enrich the lives of our users. As the product evolves, I will be focusing on scaling the product suite while keeping the experience across every customer touch point elegant, simple, and delightful as we expand nationally and globally.
EKMH: Please tell us about your current clients in the NYC and Atlanta test markets.
Troy Deus: We have had a ton of interest from every size of business from sole proprietors to national brands. We have been told the value proposition for businesses is a no brainer, and we are talking to as many of the customers as we possibly can to make sure their needs are met. Our value proposition, of easy access, zero risk, and paying for performance has resonated strongly across the market.
On the Drummer side, the adoption has been super fast. The great thing about Drum is, anyone can use it. We have seen strong adoption across existing sales people, college students, retirees, gig-economy workers, you name it. Everyone has businesses they frequent and believe in. We now give them an easy way to earn money promoting them.
EKMH: Which clients (or types of clients) have seen immediate success? What changes have you made to strengthen the platform?
Troy Deus: We are actively tracking the Drummer and Business adoption and things are looking great. We will have a better gauge on the buyer app (offer consumption) once that goes live on October 14th. One important theme we have heard is the importance of trust in the Drummers. This has lead to a number of exciting additions we have made to the roadmap to increase trust in the recommendations of Drummers including sales training, etiquette guides, Drummer ratings, and more.
EKMH: Who is your ideal client and how will you (continue to) tap into this market?
Troy Deus: The great thing about Drum it has broad appeal to all types of consumers, Drummers, and businesses. Our ideal business is one that provides a good customer experience and values the work a Drummer provides when delivering a customer. Our ideal Drummer is one that cares about building personal relationships with businesses and people in the community. These drummers are invested in the success of the businesses they frequent and wish to share their experiences with others.
EKMH: Drum recently launched with nearly $11 million in seed funding, unveiling “the first instantly available, massively scalable and completely flexible” sales force platform. What gives Drum (and its Drummers) an edge over its peers?
Troy Deus: Drum is a completely new channel -- a refreshing alternative to traditional advertising, digital marketing or a full time sales force. Drum can be an addition to your current customer acquisition strategy or replace channels that aren’t working. Our leadership team has great experience understanding the needs and pain points of businesses, and collaborating with them to find a solution. We feel we have earned that experience, and that is a big part of the edge we have in building a solution that is effective and easy to use.
EKMH: Investors participating in the seed round included Propel Venture Partners, Felicis Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, American Express Ventures, GroTech Ventures, Wildcat Venture Partners, BoxGroup and SV Angel. What advice do you have after the seed round for those just starting the process? What would you do differently?
Troy Deus: We are fortunate that our my co-founders knew many VCs and other investors, which made the seed round more manageable than it was for them back in 2009. Back then, it took them nearly a year to raise $500,000 and then they had to work super hard to get to a Series A.
The advice they and I have for anyone starting up is to pitch, pitch and then pitch again. We’ve heard founders talk about having a huge number of meetings and then, when you chat with them, you find out the number is in the single digits. You should be prepared to pitch your concept hundreds of times. There are many reasons for this, but the three most important are (1) practice makes perfect, (2) you have to kiss a lot of frogs before one of those frogs will invest and (3) you can actually get good feedback from professional investors and you can press them to tell you what they like and don’t like about your idea. Be open to the feedback and, if you see a trend of feedback in all of those meetings, that probably means that you have something you need to seriously address.
EKMH: What were your own first experiences with multi-sided marketplaces?
Troy Deus: Multi-sided marketplaces can be tricky. Getting that fly wheel started and moving in rhythm takes strategic planning and clear value propositions across all sides of the market. The great thing about Drum is our value proposition is clear and the barrier of entry is non-existent. In addition, at the core of our platform are Drummers. We enable them with the tools and motivation to sign businesses, Drummers, and buyers to the platform helping us scale the platform.
EKMH: Please share your predictions about how Drum could lead the multi-sided marketplace sector.
Troy Deus: I predict that Drum continues to expand nationally, then globally with its offering that enables anyone to earn money by promoting businesses. In parallel, Drum will expand its reach to support more complex sales cycles and empower existing sales organizations. Eventually the Drum platform will become the central tool for advertising and sales throughout the globe.
EKMH: Shifting to music, who are your favorite drummers? To which songs did you and the team listen when you wanted inspiration? Are there drums in the office?!?
Troy Deus: Haha, great question. Metallica is great, so Lars Ulrich get’s my vote, however all time best drum song goes to Paul Simon for “Obvious Child.” And yes, we do have a big bass drum in the office that we strike at the beginning of our company meetings.
EKMH: And last but not least, which books and/or authors have made a significant impact on you?
Troy Deus: Ah, so many great books. Hard to choose. Some of my favs are:
Good to Great by Jim Collins. Amazing example stories of businesses who have built great companies when others failed.
The Power of Moments by Dan Heath and Chip Heath. Opportunities and rewards of delighting your customers with memorable experiences.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Great practical experience for dealing with tough issues facing a business.