Hypetrain: Simplifying Influencer Marketing with Transparency and Automation
Please introduce yourself and Hypetrain to our readers!
Hi! My name is Yauhen Razhko, I’m the CEO and founder of Hypetrain, a platform that helps launch and manage influencer marketing campaigns. I’m a serial founder with a great interest in social media and communication, and Hypetrain is my latest startup.
Hypetrain used to be called EasyBloggers, and under this name it became the most upvoted product on Product Hunt back in 2020. Our platform helps marketers and agencies discover and scout influencers for their campaigns, contact them, and manage all related activities within one digital space.
Why did you decide to start a business?
I used to live a very comfortable life, having a job in marketing that was bringing me a steady income. However, at some point I started to feel that I was not living up to my potential.
I felt that I could do something more ambitious and meaningful. So, one day, walking around my neighborhood, I decided to quit my comfortable job and start my own company. Since then my life has turned into an exciting adventure of building a startup.
What is the vision behind Hypetrain?
As a person with a long career in marketing, I can surely say that influencer marketing is a real force. It can help elevate your business and reach your audience, even when it’s not so easily reachable. It also helps building trust and the desirable brand image.
There’s a problem, though. The thing is, the internet is a vast ocean of information, and it’s not a simple task to navigate it and know all the new influencers and trends. In addition, influencer marketing is a rather young branch of marketing, so it used to be and sometimes still is a wild space with no specific rules and regulations.
Hypetrain’s mission is to make influencer marketing easy and approachable for every business, big or small. We aim to create a space where the execution and impact of an influencer marketing campaign are fully transparent for both businesses and influencers, promoting trust between them.
From the idea to the start, what have been the biggest challenges so far and how did you finance yourself?
Actually, fundraising is a big challenge, it’s more complicated than it seems to be. Especially when you don’t have the product yet and you need to pitch an idea. It’s not easy to persuade investors to finance something as abstract as an idea.
However, I managed to do just that in the very beginning. But it’s important to remember that I had experience in marketing and launching startups prior to Hypetrain which is a MarTech startup. So, I definitely gained more confidence due to the relevance of my CV to what I was planning to do.
Who is the target group of Hypetrain?
We work for marketers, marketing agencies, business owners, and basically everyone who may need influencer marketing to boost their brand or their client’s brand. It may be a business of any size, a marketing team or an independent marketing consultant, a small business owner or somebody promoting their personal brand.
How does Hypetrain work? What are the advantages? What makes you different from other providers?
Hypetrain makes starting, executing, and evaluating influencer marketing campaigns a simple process. We have so-called Influencers’ Wikipedia, a resource that helps discover influencers and find the most suitable ones for your brand goals.
Also, Hypetrain helps to automate many processes and keep all the information, related to your campaigns, within one platform. Using Hypetrain, you can communicate with influencers and your team with no need to switch to other messengers.
Soon we are launching features that will help our customers to better track performance of their campaigns and automate drafting contracts with influencers, and the payout process. It’ll make Hypetrain an even better marketing assistant to our users.
Hypetrain, where does the road go? Where do you see yourself in five years?
We are striving to build the most convenient platform for influencer marketing that has ever existed. That’s why we plan to launch new features that I mentioned above. Naturally, we have more ideas for our future, and there will be more exciting features.
We think a lot about automation, AI, and other tech trends that can be implemented within Hypatrain. We plan to try things out, test them, and see if they are worthy of adding to the product. Basically, typical startup stuff.
Taking into account that influencer marketing and the tech landscape are constantly changing, being flexible and adaptable is a big enough ambition for the next five years. It’s going to be an interesting ride, surely.
At the end: Which 3 tips would you give to future founders?
First of all, remember that the product is created by your team, not by you. Be thoughtful when hiring people and take care of those whom you hire.
Secondly, always make sure that everyone on your team understands your ideas properly. I used to believe that I was very articulate when explaining my ideas but I learnt that it was necessary to talk about the same things again and again until everybody was truly on the same page.
Last but not least, be ready to be a coach for your team and show an example of work ethics and healthy communication. It’s you job as a founder.
Thank you Yauhen Razhko for the Interview
Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.
