Building Rella
An authentic glimpse into what it's like building a startup in the creator economy, by a creator.
Hi everyone. Happy Friday! This is Natalie from Rella's Newsletter, a newsletter about my journey building a startup made for influencers, by an influencer.
For those that don’t know, I have been sharing this journey of building a startup from the ground up through my social media channels. I had the idea of Rella in September 2020. Started designing the first versions in October. Started developing Rella beginning of 2021. And launched on January 18th, 2022. When you view the timeline, it sounds so simple. But, this journey has been anything but.
Shameless plug to check it out here…
I am starting this newsletter to provide a transparent glimpse into what we are working on, how we are doing, and insights from the week. Our goal at Rella is to be a community-driven platform. And we know, “community-driven” is a buzzword. But, truly, we want our users and our community of content creators to feel like they are a part of this journey with us. To know that they are contributing to a product that will help make their lives easier and allow them to focus on creating. This newsletter is one other way of doing that.
Some reflections from this week:
💻 Zoom can never fully replace in-person meetings are. This week, I met with one founder in the creator economy (shoutout to Josh, from Smooth Ops for even giving me the idea to start this newsletter) and one investor. The energy and inspiration from meetings IRL can’t compare to the Zoom fatigue.
💰 Fundraising is a full-time job. We just began our pre-seed round and I am trying to reach out to everyone. When I say everyone, I mean… everyone. Well, anyone who is passionate about the creator economy, next generation of founders, and startups that are truly community-driven. I’ve scheduled more meetings, asked for more intros, and spoken to more people than I ever have these past few weeks.
📲 All the VCs really are on Twitter. I’ve been told for months to get on Twitter. “You need to start tweeting” was something I ignored for a few months until recently. I made a Twitter account, followed inspiring VCs, listened to Twitter spaces, slid into some DMs, and realized, yup - all the VCs are on Twitter!
Rella Updates:
💡 We are working on new features to manage your earnings, tracking your revenue, making sure you are getting (on time!), and showing you a holistic view of your finances. Being a content creator is a business, so let’s treat it like one.
If you have any feature requests, we want to hear it. You can reply, email us, or join our Slack community.
📱 We pushed out a build with bug fixes last week. We want to thank you for your patience with us. As we said, we just launched. We have a lot to learn, but we are excited to have you on the journey with us.
👩💼 We are hiring! We are in the process of hiring a front-end developer. If you or anyone you know wants to work at a startup that is growing in the creator economy - have them apply here.
Thanks for joining along the journey. This newsletter will become better and better every single week. Let me know what YOU want to hear.
If you made it to the end, share this newsletter with your friends and followers and tag me on your story (@nataliebarbu / @rellasocial)
Can’t wait to open up more and really share the insights of Rella with you.