In this episode, we cover bootstrapping & transitioning from side gig to full-time, featuring Darian Shimy, Founder @ FutureFund. He shares the origin story of FutureFund and how his children’s school experience inspired the company’s mission & product goals. He shares valuable tips on dealing with anxiety, betting on yourself, setting expectations, and making decisions as a founder. We also dissect how to iterate on your core marketing message & test pricing strategies throughout the different phases of FutureFund. Plus, considerations for scaling, fractional work engagements, hiring, and organization structure.
In this episode, we cover bootstrapping & transitioning from side gig to full-time, featuring Darian Shimy, Founder @ FutureFund. He shares the origin story of FutureFund and how his children’s school experience inspired the company’s mission & product goals. He shares valuable tips on dealing with anxiety, betting on yourself, setting expectations, and making decisions as a founder. We also dissect how to iterate on your core marketing message & test pricing strategies throughout the different phases of FutureFund. Plus, considerations for scaling, fractional work engagements, hiring, and organization structure.
Darian Shimy is the visionary founder and CEO of FutureFund Technology, an innovative platform designed to streamline fundraising and sales for K-12 school groups. With a robust background of over 25 years in web technologies and engineering team management, Darian has held key leadership roles at notable companies including Square, Weebly, and eHarmony.com. He holds an MS in Computer Science from The University of Southern California and maintains a passion for coding in his free time. Outside of his tech career, he dedicates time to coaching youth sports, in both recreational and competitive teams.
"I feel like I'm doing an experiment and the experiment is this, what if you can get a fraction of time from the best people you've ever worked with in your entire life? Some could be 10 hours, some could be 30 hours, some could be 20, whatever it is, but like the best designer, the best product, the best engineer, the best salesperson, the best whomever, and pull them in to help out on a short amount of time. It has allowed us to grow at a pace that I think is sustainable for us and allows us to focus on quality.”
- Darian Shimy
FutureFund streamlines fundraising and selling for school groups! FutureFund is a digital platform that provides powerful tools for K-12 school groups and PTAs for fundraising, growing membership, financial reporting, and communicating with volunteers—all in one clean, user-friendly interface.
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Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/