If you ask entrepreneur Ajay Yadav about any given stage in developing his app, chances are, he’ll mention Twitter as an important tool to his business. He’s used it to do everything from recruiting users to meeting his mentors, and he thinks you should, too.
Yadav is a New York City-based India native and founder and CEO of Roomi, an app that allows you to scope out your potential future roommates on social media before you respond to their home postings. So of course, he believes getting to know someone is a must before making any big step in life, and he sees social media as an avenue to get there.
“Why would anyone help you if they don’t know you?” says Yadav. “The only way I could do that was on Twitter. You have to become part of the conversation.”
After a year and a half of meetings with users, mentors, and investors, Yadav has the process down to a science. He laid out three steps – finding the right mentors, early user acquisition and fundraising – that heavily leveraged social mediums like Twitter.
Yadav started by making a list of people he admired, either from the books, articles or companies, and followed them on Twitter. Whenever they tweeted, he favorited, replied to them with questions or compliments, or engaged them in a discussion.
When he got favorites, replies and retweets, he knew he was making progress. The process of being recognized, or being “that same guy,” as Yadav called it, took him between one to seven months.
But Yadav says it paid off – getting him his first investors, advisers, and mentors.
“I just packed my bags and went to San Francisco for a month, just to meet people,” says Yadav. “I had no idea what I was going to do there. So I tweeted that I had dream that the only thing I wanted to do was to meet [entrepreneur] Andrew Chen. Within two minutes I got a message from him. Best meeting ever.”
By tweeting at his idols, Yadav scheduled almost daily meetings to get feedback on his app. When he started finding his first few users for testing, he again turned to Twitter, gaining 3,000 users and 20 meetings with real estate brokers by searching terms like “moving to New York.”
Still today, he estimates that between five and 10 percent of his users find Roomi through Twitter.
Again, Yadav proactively kept clear and constant communication with his early users. Sometimes when the app didn’t have enough postings, Yadav contacted them personally.
“Everyday I would look on Craigslist, and compile a personalized list for each user,” says Yadav.. “I said, ‘Let me know what you’re looking for I’ll help you try to find it.’ It made their life easier.” He even created a Tumblr blog of the listings on Roomi so he could tweet the link to potential users that had questions about what was available on the app.
“It’s something that’s true for every business,” Yadav said. “You have to find your customer base, find where they are and follow them there. For us, it was Craigslist.”=
When Roomi started looki fundraising, Yadav again tried to establish himself as a familiar face through constant communication.
“Whenever I hear “no” [from an investor], I add them to a list of people I heard “no”s from,” says Yadav.
Yadav would keep them in the loop by sending them emails every few months to update them on Roomi’s progress. He did catch their attention and eventually showed them why they should care.
Building strong relationships goes back to a spiritual belief for Yadav, who finds that running a solo company is only possible if you really believe in people, and take the time to build their trust.
“You have to be personal, tell your story. I don’t really shy away from people,” says Yadav. “I learned a powerful thing, and that is, if you don’t approach people, you’ll never know.”