Rybbon Co-Founder Jignesh Shah Talks Guts, Grit and Gifts on Dingman Bootstrapped

The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship produces Bootstrapped, a podcast featuring founders, investors and serial entrepreneurs. The podcast is hosted by Elana Fine, Executive Director of the Dingman Center, and Joe Bailey, Associate Research Professor at the Smith School. Each episode brings a different startup story to life with special guests offering advice and lessons learned on topics that range from fundraising and marketing to team formation and customer acquisition.

On this episode of Bootstrapped, we interviewed Smith School alumnus and co-founder & CEO of Rybbon, Jignesh Shah. At his previous position as CMO at Metalogix, Jignesh experienced frustration with the outdated physical gift-giving model; marketing was shifting to digital platforms such as email and social media, and sending a physical gift card in the mail was too slow and cumbersome. So, Jignesh founded Rybbon to streamline the digital gifting process and to serve as the digital gifting platform for marketers and researchers. In this episode, Jignesh speaks to the struggles Rybbon faced being a bootstrapped company, the unique strategy they implemented to acquire their first customers, and their the role they play in the digital marketing industry.

Jignesh Shah has been building and marketing products for over 20 years at startups and enterprises. Jignesh previously served in a multitude of VP roles at Software AG and webMethods from 2006 to 2012, and he was the CMO at Metalogix from 2012 to 2015 where he helped drive 3x revenue growth which led to an acquisition by Permira.

To listen to this episode and gain further insights into the startup world, subscribe to Dingman Bootstrapped on iTunes or download the episodes on the Dingman Center website.