Kamyab Ayanifard has a special gift for scaling, low-budget marketing, and savvy decision-making, which takes a startup business out of the trial stages and into the marketplace. As both a founder at Shots, an online presentation creator, and a lead founding engineer at Bubbl, a service that encourages people to go offline and back into real-world events, Kamyab has unique insight into what makes a startup business successful, as he’s now successfully navigated two different startup company launches.
As an entrepreneur and technology leader specializing in scaling startups, particularly through low-budget marketing strategies and scientific decision-making, what is Kamyab’s answer to the complex problems that starting a business presents? Using mathematical and scientific principles as your guide.
Ayanifard’s Academic Background in Computer Science and Neuroscience
Kamyab’s computer science and neuroscience background has given him a deep understanding of the scientific principles underlying human cognition and technology. This interdisciplinary knowledge has allowed him to apply scientific methods to technology development, ensuring that his and his teams’ products are innovative and grounded in data-driven decisions.
After graduating with a double major in computer science and neuroscience, Kamyab got into the tech industry through several early startups because he wanted to touch as many lives as possible and create something that could help a vast number of people.
Kamyab realized that by combining his computer science knowledge with his unique neuroscience insights, he could create innovative solutions that not only solved technical problems but also resonated with users on a deeper, more intuitive level. These experiences have been instrumental in shaping his approach to his ventures since, including Bubbl and the founding of Shots.
Kamyab has found that a relentless desire to innovate has served him incredibly well. When speaking about the success of Bubbl and Shots, he says, “We just make sure that we push and change as much as possible before it goes to every single user. So that definitely has come from my background in science in general and, I guess, neuroscience.”
Case Study: The Development and Success of Bubbl
As a service that strives to get people offline and back into real-world events, Bubbl makes it easy for anyone to start thriving communities, brands, and companies around live events.
At Bubbl, Kamyab was the lead engineer and was in charge of creating a ticketing marketplace. He managed to create a whole ticketing platform that reached $1 million in ticket sales in only ten months.
Leveraging the company and team’s humble origins, Kamyab recalls, “We would go to an organizer and give them a beta. It was dead simple. They would use it, and obviously, organizers know more organizers; it would just be as simple as, hey, ten more organizers are interested because their friend used it, and now they want to join the platform… users just doing outreach for us, posting, telling other people they just love it so much that they just do the advertisement for us.”
Case study: The Development and Success of Shots
At Shots, Kamyab has reaped the benefits of grassroots advertising and good word-of-mouth marketing. Shots is a website that allows you to create beautiful presentations for your social media, website, and more. It has grown consistently at 10% and has over 60,000 monthly users, with almost 1.5 million images generated thus far.
Tracking Shots’ usage and user interactions has made the site more worthwhile to their clients. “We just track events. So if we have an idea of, like, ‘Hey, if we add this little mini feature or mini improvement, will it actually deter users from doing this other specific thing?’ So we attach a ton of events to it, and we see for a specific set of users whether this makes the user more efficient or, I guess, deter them from doing some other stuff. We just find these little things, and whenever we find them, we test them again and again until we’re one hundred percent sure. So it’s just been doing many, many A vs. B tests and other types of event tracking. That’s how we find a little bit of it. If there are any inefficiencies, we just patch it and make it better again. That’s putting an extreme amount of effort into it. That’s basically coming from data and utilizing scientific methods.”
Ayanifard’s Perspective on the Future of AI in Design and Tech
Looking forward, Kamyab is excited about the future of technology and how AI can amplify his scientifically-minded protocols.
“My goal is to revolutionize the way people approach design and content by making it easy for individuals with no design skills. We’re currently working on an Alpha version of an AI co-pilot for design, which is fine-tuned to recognize and suggest improvements based on established design principles. We (at Shots) are focusing on design elements such as layout, color theory, and typography with the aim of providing real-time feedback and helping users with no design background create visually appealing content. Our goal is to democratize beautiful design and visual content for everyone.”
Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs on Leveraging Diverse Skill Sets
His advice for other entrepreneurs starting out in the field is to always lead by example when spearheading a team of young, passionate individuals and utilize every skill you have in guiding your business.
“I lead by example, consistently striving to be the first person in and the last one out. My goal is to serve as a cornerstone of motivation for my team, instilling confidence that we can tackle any challenge that comes our way. Whenever my team encounters a problem, I am proactive in researching and devising multiple solutions. This approach not only addresses immediate issues but also promotes growth by fostering a forward-thinking and resilient team culture.”
Without his background in the sciences, Kamyab Ayanifard acknowledges that he would not be the leader he is today. However, ultimately, Kamyab’s success stems not only from his technical expertise but also from his ability to integrate seemingly disparate disciplines into a cohesive strategy that encourages growth. His career shows that embracing a wide range of knowledge and leading by example are fundamental to building resilient, scalable businesses.
