Community Power: Heini Zachariassen on the Board of Smitten

Heini Zachariassen is a byFounders Collective member and Founder and Chairman of Vivino. Through his YouTube Channel, Raw Startups, he helps startups and founders solve the most common challenges in the industry. In the byFounders community, he offers one-on-one support to our founders within the realms of marketing, growth, and product development. Since its inception, Heini has been a Board Member of our portfolio company, Smitten. 

How were the two of you introduced to each other? 

David: When we started our initial conversation with byFounders, the team put Heini forward as a potential partner for us, because of his expert experience with building successful consumer apps. Heini understands the highs and lows that come specifically with building a consumer startup and that was, of course, really valuable to us. Before we even signed the term sheet, I had a call with Heini and I noticed right away that we had good chemistry. We’ve been in good contact ever since!

Heini: To me, there are two important things that need to line up when you get involved this way: the team and the numbers. From our conversation, I could tell that our mission lined up, and when I looked at the numbers, I thought, they’ve built something with serious engagement in, ok, a tiny-tiny market, but the numbers are still real! That, with how quickly they were executing, had me interested! 

What were the main challenges you were faced with when the partnership began? 

David: This was about five-six months following our launch in Iceland. As Heini mentioned, we had good momentum, but with that comes its own set of challenges. We were just a team of three. We had one developer and a lot of things that needed to be fixed every day. Still, we knew we had built something good since, despite the bugs, people kept coming back and choosing us over more established apps, like Tinder and Bumble. 

Heini: Yes, seeing that people loved the app despite those early-day challenges was a great indicator of its potential success! But I didn’t come in with three solutions that would fix all the problems. I don’t have all the magical answers but I thought that I could help on the longer journey. 

What specific challenges have Heini helped you overcome?

David: I think we could talk about a lot of different things but let’s take an example. We’re building an app that brings people together and without doubt an important part of that is keeping our users safe. However, that’s not always possible and it has happened that a user has found themselves in an unsafe situation. That’s an incredibly challenging situation and it’s hard to hear for me, as the co-founder. In those moments, it’s so valuable to have someone like Heini to have an open-minded conversation with, to receive support, and help when needed. 

Besides the organizational support, what is the one thing you value the most from this partnership? 

Heini: I’m a founder and I love building stuff quickly. Now that Vivino is more established, things move slow, so, although I’m not in the grind with them, it’s exciting and satisfying to be a part of the early days of the startup journey again, where things move so fast. 

David: Funnily, I feel like things are always moving too slow, but I guess that’s what it’s like when you’re the founder. But I would like to add that I also really appreciate that we’re building a nice friendship. The rapport is what really matters and I look forward to seeing how it evolves.