Startup Spotlight #207: Diddo
Diddo is building next-gen computer vision to empower a paradigm shift and open up new revenue streams for social commerce.
Diddo is building the infrastructure for social commerce. We want to do for social commerce what Stripe did for e-commerce. Using a simple API, we enable video-based content to become highly monetizable through many avenues.
Rishi was born and brought up in Cupertino, California. He is the son of two immigrants that both work in the engineering field. He has worked at three different startups, helping raise north of $20M in financing. At eBay, he helped roll out a couple of products and started a company called Sencha, which he could get to profitability. Diddo is his latest creation, aiming to remove the friction between consumers and culture. Outside work, he enjoyed surfing, skating, listening to beach rock, and shooting around crazy ideas to change the world.
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Startup Spotlight: Diddo
Problem: Shopping for the content you see on TV is an incredibly cumbersome process—we make it simple. By removing this friction, we also enable the owners of the TV content to open up new streams of monetization to drive their revenues by creating content that their consumers want.
Market: The social commerce space is beginning to rear its head in the United States after being incredibly successful in other countries. It is expected to grow from $46.2 billion in 2022 to $79.6 billion in 2025 (https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/social-commerce-the-future-of-how-consumers-interact-with-brands)
Solution: We build an incredibly simple and easy-to-use API that sits on the backend of video-based content providers and enable all of their content to become shoppable without infringing on the user experience of their consumers.
Team: Diddo’s founders include Rishi Nair, CEO, Ryan Sullivan, COO, and Pamela Chen, CTO. Rishi met both in college—Ryan has an extensive background in early-stage startup operations, and Pamela has experience leading computer vision and e-commerce teams.
Recent Success:
Nair: One thing I’ve been pretty successful at so far in the Diddo journey is prioritizing community and the people around us in this journey. It truly takes a village, and you need to be picky about the people you have behind you, helping open doors and bounce ideas off of. I have been fortunate enough to be in the position to leverage my background to find people who will help us scale and sell throughout our company-building process.
Recent Struggle:
Nair: One thing I’ve struggled with has to be delegating. I like knowing what is going on at all times and playing a part in everything. I am blessed to be building a product I am passionate about with the strongest partners out there, and with that comes trusting them to handle the task without me being a backseat driver of sorts :) Growth is hard but very necessary for our long-term success!
Founder Advice:
Nair: Build a robust support system. This process is hard, and having people you can turn to is incredibly important. Having founder friends who understand the struggle and can help me has been super helpful. Every entrepreneur should have a group of people they turn to for every issue they could have.
Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:
Nair: Here are three founders you should check out next!
Max Kauderer, Founder of Yuzu Health: Yuzu provides startup health plans.
Rachel Josepho, Founder of Mindfull: Our ketone-enriched beverage is revolutionizing how you get your energy fix!
Ali Debow, Founder of Somewhere Somehow: Your time-based social network to create and share quality time
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Startup Spotlight #204: Yofi - Yofi is a platform that enables you to better understand your customers, their intentions, and the best way to interact with them.
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