Entrepreneur Profile
Kim Taylor, CEO/Co-Founder, Ranku
Mini Bio
Young entrepreneur Kim Taylor is CEO and co-founder of Ranku, a Seattle-based software company providing recruitment technology and analytics to universities to help scale online degree enrollment.
Name: Kim Taylor
Title: CEO/Co-Founder
Company: Ranku
Years in business: 3
Business location: Seattle
Number of employees: 7
Chief product: Online degree recruitment software
Website: goranku.com
First of all, how is business these days?
It’s a fascinating time to work in the online higher education space. We license software to state systems and universities with online degree programs and help them become more operationally efficient. Campus enrollment in America is currently contracting, so we got lucky with timing. Universities are very concerned about new revenue streams. We have product/market fit, so thankfully things are going well after three years of hard work.
What led you to start your own business?
I didn’t actually want to! It was more of a calling, and I felt like I had to out of sheer frustration. While I was working as head of sales, I pitched my previous two employers to let me build this product because it seemed so obvious that it was what the clients truly needed. They both said no.
Secondly, as a woman, I felt I was underemployed and underpaid. You reach a point where all the men around you seem to effortlessly get promoted while you overperform. That's when I decided the only title that would suit me was CEO.
What sources did you use for startup capital?
We did a startup accelerator in New York called Techstars and received $120,000. It got things rolling and allowed us to build our team. We rapidly launched the prototype then raised a seed round from Mark Cuban and Microsoft.
What do you think is your biggest business strength?
Personally, I would say writing. Writing is thinking. I believe it is one of the most important and unsung skills in business, especially when you think about the volume of time you spend with things like email. Email is modern business writing, and I think it should be taught in universities. It’s how you do sales, public relations, fundraising, and how you interact with clients, so you might as well be good at it!
What do you enjoy most about owning your own business?
I enjoy defining our strategy and building new things. I love the creative side of problem-solving.
Oddly enough, I was a journalism major. I view designing a product just like writing a story. You do the research, interview people, then work within the constraints of space, time, and resources.
What’s your least favorite part of running a business?
My least favorite part is stress and finding work-life balance. Thankfully, I became a yoga addict a few years ago. It’s the only way I know how to turn off my brain.
What do you think are important entrepreneurial skills to have?
Resilience. There's a breadth of terrible things that could happen to you that will seem overwhelming. I’ve become desensitized to bad things, as I now immediately focus on the solution. You just have to keep going. There is always a move.
Whenever my co-founder and I are working through an issue, we walk through all the potential solutions and have the last one be “the other brilliant solution we haven’t yet considered.” We usually end up going with that one.
What are some challenges you’ve faced in business and how did you overcome them?
I used to struggle with confidence and imposter syndrome. In the tech industry, if you didn’t come from Harvard, Stanford, Google, McKinsey, or have a background in software engineering, you could sometimes be made to feel like you shouldn’t be a founder. It's not a very good circumstance for entrepreneurship in America.
Our product, which was working so well at increasing online enrollment, helped me overcome that. Our thesis was correct. After that, I no longer cared what people thought.
In business, many people mistake confidence for competence. It’s important to know the difference. Many of the experts in our space speak authoritatively and may not always know what they are talking about.
What do you wish you’d known before you started out?
There are certain people that don't get it, and that’s OK. Some were never meant to get it. It’s also okay to change your mind as the business progresses. New information will become available, and decisions that once seemed logical or looked good on a spreadsheet no longer make sense.
What is the smartest move you have made with your business so far?
Our smartest move has been our ability to say no. Be ruthless with your time. There are two instances that stand out over the past three years where this was critical.
We were getting pressure to fundraise after closing our $120,000 from Techstars. We said no and focused on shipping our prototype after we incorporated as a business. Having the prototype done (and the subsequent coverage in TechCrunch) allowed us to close to seed round immediately after. Launching something that worked so quickly was a compelling narrative for our seed investors that showed what we were capable of.
We've also said no to partnering with other companies. People fall in love with the concept of partnering, and generally, it takes up too much time. It sounds cool but doesn’t do much for your bottom line. Guy Kawasaki sums it up best: Partnerships should simply solve spreadsheet problems. If you can’t input a number that either cuts costs or grows your revenue, it's likely not worth it.
What inspires the way you conduct business?
Growing up I was a gymnast. My methodology in the sport inspired much of how we do business. Gymnastics all comes back to its most basic move, which is a handstand. You hold it, pirouette in it, and muscle your way back into it from your core when you might fall. You have to be great at handstands. Keep your balance and constantly know how to get back into one.
I view business the same way. It’s great to do complex things really well, but great companies consistently excel at the basics and optimize around things that don’t change.
How do you find new customers? What do you do to make sure they become return customers?
Thankfully, my background was in higher-ed sales, so I was very comfortable sourcing and closing deals. Now we focus on referrals from our partners. We license a platform, so retention is less of an issue since we’re not B2C.
What’s your management style with employees?
I hire people who are smarter than me, give them autonomy and remove the obstacles in their way. I do encourage them to constantly learn about our industry and question everything they see. We have a general philosophy: start with the assumption that the way everything is done today is wrong.
What are some other companies or entrepreneurs you admire, and why?
I admire Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple evangelist. I’ve watched some of his presentations about 100 times, teaching myself how to fundraise and learning about the importance of design in everything I do. I still rewatch them when I’m working on pitch decks. I love the simplicity of his advice.
I also admire Jason Fried, founder of Basecamp. At Ranku, he inspired our focus on productivity and giving our team long stretches of uninterrupted time to solve problems (as well as half-days on Fridays). We limit internal meetings, don’t do internal email, and bought into his concept that work is like sleep as a phase-based event. You need to be able to get to the deep phases to solve the most complex problems.
Do you have a favorite inspirational quote?
There are three business quotes I love:
“Be brief. Be brilliant. Be gone.” I first heard this in sales training 10 years ago, and it always stuck with me.
“You have to look at your industry and think, how can I really f--- this up?”—Mark Cuban
“If you focus on the wall, then you will drive straight into the wall.”—Ben Horowitz on "The Struggle"
What new initiatives are you working on?
On the business side of things, we’re going to begin publishing our research, which I would argue is some of the best in the higher-ed business when it comes to the online degree market. On the product side, we've gone from slow to fast this past year, so our main initiative is not focusing on new features. We're just doing everything we already do better.
What advice would you give to someone hoping to start a business similar to yours?
I would tell them to join an early-stage startup first. Many people like the idea of startups, but once they work at one, they realize they may be better served in an entrepreneurial role within a bigger organization. Or they just hate the ambiguity of it all.
If you do start a business, ship the product as quickly and cheaply as possible to prove out the demand. Your idea means nothing. You must launch something. You can do more than you think with very little capital.
See full list of Entrepreneur and Business Executive Profiles
