When Rashaad Galloway was a UNC-Chapel Hill student two years ago, he never thought he would be an entrepreneur. He had his sights set on dental school.
All that changed with an August 2017 call from his friend Dezbee McDaniel, who was starting a business and looking for a partner.
Together, Galloway and McDaniel founded Everywhere Ad, a mobile advertising business that pays ride-hailing service drivers to put tablets advertising small businesses in their cars.
Before Everywhere Ad
Both McDaniel, who is CEO, and Galloway, who is chief operating officer, graduated from UNC-CH in 2017 with communications degrees.
After leaving Chapel Hill, Galloway enrolled in a post-baccalaureate program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to finish the dental school prerequisites.
McDaniel, on the other hand, knew he wanted to be involved in the startup scene right away, thanks to UNC-CH’s entrepreneurship minor, now the Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship.
“The minor did a lot for me as far as choosing the path that I wanted to take, and teaching me about entrepreneurship and having a business mindset,” said McDaniel. “For me, that was where it all started.”
Immediately after UNC-CH, McDaniel joined Venture for America, a two-year fellowship for recent college graduates who want to work in startups.
“Think Teach for America, but with entrepreneurship and business,” he said. “I worked in Baltimore for a while, and then Charlotte. Throughout the whole time, I knew I wanted to start my own company.”
McDaniel had previously worked in an advertising job and observed the marketing problems small businesses dealt with.
“I wanted to come up with a product better than the product I used to sell,” said McDaniel. “That’s where Everywhere Ad was born.”
The big idea: nailing it, then scaling it
The company is a pre-revenue startup in the beta testing phase. Galloway and McDaniel are currently based out of the Triangle area, recruiting ride-hailing drivers and small businesses to test their service.
Galloway and McDaniel used the lean startup method, which emphasizes constantly testing assumptions to fail quickly and cheaply, to arrive at Everywhere Ad’s latest business model.
“I was at an after work event and I saw Dez and heard what he and Rashaad were working on with Everywhere Ad,” said Jan Davis, a veteran entrepreneur and investor who teaches Shuford Program classes. “I was really impressed that they were following the lean startup method and the nail-it-then-scale-it process I taught Dez three years ago.”
The original idea was to advertise on the outside of ride-hailing drivers’ cars, but the Everywhere Ad team quickly learned that small businesses weren’t interested in that type of branding.
Instead, they wanted to engage with potential customers directly.
“We pay Uber, Lyft and other ride-share drivers a fee to be brand ambassadors,” said McDaniel. “We’ll provide them with digital tablets that they’ll place on the back of their seats to be used as an advertising medium to their passengers.”
The tablets will have directions for riders to claim special deals at the small business that is advertising.
Finding support: “Y’all are the type of people I need”
Galloway and McDaniel have taken advantage of several programs that help young entrepreneurs.
One such program was through the North Carolina Entrepreneurship Center at UNC-Greensboro where Galloway was taking his post-baccalaureate classes.
“I was taking straight science classes,” said Galloway. “Then one day I just happened to scroll through my email and I saw Justin Streuli’s name. I randomly called his office one day and told the lady up front about our venture and she said, ‘Oh yeah, I have to get y’all in with Justin immediately.’”
Streuli, the director of the center, invited Galloway and McDaniel to join his program during their first meeting.
“He was like, ‘Y’all are the type of people I need in this program; we need more of y’all,’” said McDaniel.
They were also accepted to a four-week customer discovery program at the Durham-based NC Idea Labs, a private foundation that supports entrepreneurs in North Carolina. There, they developed the idea for tablets inside cars, and began beta testing with one driver in Charlotte.
“We were able to see a 70 percent interaction rate and a 20 percent conversion rate there,” said McDaniel. “That was another point where we decided we should keep moving forward.”
They also found a National Science Foundation Innovation Corps program while searching for grant funds. They did 30 more customer interviews to qualify for that I-Corps funding.
Now, Galloway and McDaniel are working with Launch Chapel Hill, a six-month accelerator that connects young entrepreneurs to business resources, mentorship, a workspace and funding potential. Everywhere Ad is one of 10 startups in Launch Carolina’s 11th cohort, or class.
“We used to struggle to find resources, now we almost have too many to choose from,” said Galloway. “It’s a great problem to have.”
What’s next?
The Everywhere Ad team is staying true to the lean startup method that’s gotten them this far. They’ll continue prototyping and testing their assumptions to make sure their strategies actually work before investing large amounts of capital. They’re anxious to start selling, but want to create a reliable product first.
“We’re beta testing our software,” said McDaniel. “Before, we were testing the direct engagement concept more than the actual software.”
They originally found testers by cold calling and going door to door, but their network is growing, word is spreading and testers have started referring other potential testers.
“Entrepreneurship is not easy, I’ll be the first to tell you,” said Galloway.
McDaniel joked that he’d definitely cosign Galloway’s advice.
“You have to be crazy enough to believe that the loss you feel like you’re taking right now is going to lead to a bigger win later,” McDaniel said.
Nonetheless, the excitement of entrepreneurship was enough to end Galloway’s dental aspirations.
“I’m certain that I want to do this,” he laughed. “Dental school is pretty much off the table.”
