“Analyze your data” with Daricus Releford
Original Post: Ben Ari, Thrive Global
Fundraising: Many people in our black community think they have to do everything themselves but in order to run a tech company, you need help or you won’t make it. Fundraising and investors are major key players on this journey of building a tech company.
Support of friends and family: They will be your first customers. They will tell you critical things that are wrong with your plan. They are part of that foundation and love that you need to keep going.
As a part of my series about “Lessons From Inspirational Black Men In Tech”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Daricus Releford.
Daricus, CEO of StoreCash, is a serial entrepreneur who started his first business at age 12 and earned $3,800 per summer in order to financially help his military mom compensate for his father’s drug addiction. At 14 years old, he started a hot dog cart that generated $6,000 on weekends, and in college, started an online business that went from $25,000 to a multi-million dollar business featured on Steve Harvey show, Kiplinger Magazine, and several other news outlets. Seeking funding and an expansion of the business, Daricus drove from Pennsylvania to Silicon Valley where he landed jobs at Apple, Facebook and Google and ultimately founded StoreCash, the Venmo for the unbanked.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
With a love for tech, I drove across the country to Silicon Valley and landed jobs at major tech companies. One day, my nephew called from Nebraska and asked me to send him money for his laptop. I found out that not only did he need to be 18 years old or older, but he also needed a bank account to receive and use the funds. It got me thinking, “I can build a tech company to fix this problem.” And that’s when StoreCash was born.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?
The most interesting story is how I met my co-founders in an Uber. One day I was in an uber and made a friend named Venkat. After a quick Google search of me, he believed in my vision from that one car ride and introduced me to more of his friends who are now my co-founders.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The funniest mistake I made was thinking I could build an app in 3 months which ended up turning into 9 months with still many bugs and iterations that needed to be done. I learned to never complain about app bugs ever! haha but really, everything down to a back button requires a lot of coding and to be cognizant when developing applications.
Keep Reading the full Thrive Global interview.