Written by Liam Gerada, co-founder and CEO of Krepling

Krepling might just be the fastest-growing e-commerce platform you’ve never heard of. Launched in 2019 by two teenage brothers, it breaks away from the standard offering, which caters only for digital retailers. Instead, delivering a complete e-commerce solution, serving all types of online businesses – from content creators and photographers, to academics and motivational speakers. The idea is to allow entrepreneurs to start, grow, and manage an online business, with customised content and complete control. Removing many of the stumbling blocks that startups traditionally face. But while Krepling is currently on a roll, growing at an unprecedented rate, the journey to this point hasn’t always been easy. Being accepted and finding funding as a young entrepreneur raises many challenges.

The challenges of being a young entrepreneur

The first thing you learn as a young entrepreneur is that there is nothing special about being a young entrepreneur. There are thousands – who knows, maybe millions – of others out there just like you. All of them struggling, and all of them trying to find a way to be taken seriously. What’s important in any business is not your age, but your vision, your ability to implement it, and your motivation. But that doesn’t stop others from perceiving your age as a barrier. If you have previous experience, it helps, allowing you to show potential colleagues and investors that while you might not know everything, you know enough for your business to be viable. But that’s not the only challenge you’ll face.

Working in Fintech, and in Silicon Valley generally, can be an isolating experience. And unless you take time to build connections with other founders, the universal pinch points – team management, customer relations, fundraising – can become insurmountable. And fundraising in particular, is an area that all entrepreneurs will struggle with at some point.

How to fundraise as a young entrepreneur

Before launch, the Krepling team had never sought to raise any outside venture capital. And we didn’t want to go to the capital market to just raise funds, and so explored many other avenues first. And if anything, the lesson here is that there is no one single best-practice approach for startup fundraising.

Our ultimate goal was to attract investors who could share our vision. So, we networked while continuing to build our product to the best possible non-funded level. That way, we were able to find investors who understood what we were about and were willing to support our venture. Instead of anonymous faces looking to see a rapid ROI.

Our ages were a barrier in this process, and many potential investors asked the question of whether we had the wherewithal to achieve our aims. But our passion for our industry and the problem we were solving, and our determination to make it work, attracted the right people to Krepling. Because it’s dedication and ideas that many investors are looking for.

How Krepling is working to transform e-commerce for DTC businesses

The pandemic has impacted so many areas of life. But one of the most far-reaching, has been the way that we all do business. Online retail has grown at a rate previously unknown. And other businesses have, by necessity, shifted more of their services into a more accessible digital format. And it’s been a deeply complex transformation, leaving those without the financial power to maintain an in-house tech team floundering behind.

Krepling’s aim is to level that playing field.

The world’s first no-code, AI/automation-based e-commerce platform, Krepling was devised to help retailers and other businesses to find their way through the maze of e-commerce infrastructure, leaving space for bespoke design and content creation, scalability, and unique customer experiences.

Providing so much more than the foundation for a website, Krepling helps businesses to manage their full spectrum of channels – stock inventory, behaviour tracking, multi-site selling, post-purchase emails and SMS – in one place. Removing the barriers to growth traditionally experienced for the SME market, and providing the Fintech that allows all DTC brands to have a 360-degree view of their channels and integrations, not just the few established giants.

The success of Krepling is nothing to do with the age of its founders. It’s about the discovery of a space in the market and the creation of the tools that were needed to fill it. Our ages have, occasionally, gotten in the way. But they are not the story of our business.