Varun Mayya was in college when he along with his friends started up a t-shirt manufacturing business called SIZR. Later on, he went into building a recruitment platform, Jobspire. And they were one of the youngest teams to raise venture capital of Rs 1.7 crore even before they graduated, and scaled the company to serve 4 million requests in 2016. In 2017, they sold Jobspire to a New York-based company.

Varun also authored a book named Pyjama Profit which is a guide for millennials to get started with an online freelance practice, while developing the skills needed to succeed.

Along with running a youtube channel, Varun also co-founded Scenes, a community platform for creators to manage, moderate, and monetize their communities in one place. 

Scenes has raised funds from some notable investors including Kunal Shah, Gaurav Munjal, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Tanmay Bhat as well Tanglin Ventures, Better Capital, Whiteboard Capital, iSeed Ventures, and Blume Founders Fund.

Tune in to this insightful episode with Varun to learn about building a brand, processes around content creation, and leveraging your youtube channel to scale your business. 

Notes – 

03:10 – Intro

04:05 – His journey before entrepreneurship

06:49 – Getting introduced to oDesk (now Upwork) via his mother and earning his first $100

09:10 – Starting a visual version of Naukri in fourth year of college

11:09 – Writing an Amazon Bestseller Book – “Pyjama Profit: The Millennial’s Guide to a Sustainable Freelance Career” 

12:48 – Starting Avalon Scenes

18:07 – Two rounds of funding for building a community space

19:22 – Top clients and why do they use Scenes?

22:11 – Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?

24:09 – What excites him the most about Scenes? 

26:40 – Solving a problem really well v/s Building a large business

28:41 – What’s their longterm goal with Scenes? 

33:02 – Can Scenes eventually replace Discord? 

34:36 – Why he continues to a creator with Scenes growing? 

41:25 – Learnings on YouTube and Twitter around content creation

46:15 – One of his best videos on YouTube

52:44 – “I think we live in a trust-deficient economy and content is the only way to beat it.”

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