This Cellphone Startup Needs You To Change Off 

It’s not on a regular basis you meet a expertise firm that wishes that can assist you change off your work units. However YourBusinessNumber, or YBN, isn’t your regular startup.

The telecommunication firm is on a mission to enhance work-life stability with its easy, however sensible, thought. It provides customers a second enterprise quantity to make use of with WhatsApp Enterprise on the identical telephone, making a clearer delineation between work and play.

“With everybody on their telephones all day, particularly WhatsApp, no-one actually totally switches off,” says cofounder George Lineker. “We enable individuals to have a separate work quantity on their telephone to make use of with WhatsApp Enterprise [and] disconnect from work out of hours”.

The target will chime with fashionable staff and entrepreneurs burnt out by an ‘always-on’ work tradition that claims work calls, emails, and texts should be immediately answered. Furthermore, the UK authorities, whose ‘Proper To Change Off’ initiative is gaining momentum.

“The place acceptable, we totally help the proper to change off – and have seen it work effectively in locations like France,” says Lineker. “Companies want to offer a niche between private communication. Enabling WhatsApp Enterprise on private telephones creates that divide.”

“Folks really feel they’ll’t ignore work messages”

In a latest survey of two,000 workers, 54% mentioned they anticipate to work whereas on annual go away, due to staff members sending them work-related texts and emails.

The pattern will be linked to distant working. With employees capable of take their units dwelling with them, it has change into tougher to set wholesome boundaries on availability. That strain doubles if requests from colleagues or shoppers are being despatched to the employee’s private quantity.

“I’ve heard from many individuals about how they obtain work messages on their private WhatsApp at night time or on weekends, which they don’t really feel they’ll ignore”, Lineker says.

It’s an identical story for small enterprise house owners. Entrepreneurs will usually run their corporations from a private quantity, utilizing apps corresponding to WhatsApp Enterprise, with the intention to keep away from the effort of carrying a second telephone and forking out for 2 enterprise cell contracts.

Recognising an apparent buyer want, Lineker and his cofounder, Sebastian Lewis, determined to arrange YBN. Now in its third yr, the startup debuted at #43 within the Startups 100 Index this yr, and has garnered 12,000 subscribers throughout the UK and US since launch.

“We obtain a number of nice suggestions from prospects, essentially the most beneficial is how fast and easy it’s to arrange,” says Lineker. “In the end, the driving pressure behind [our] success is having a product that’s reasonably priced, quick and easy to make use of.”

“We need to be on billboards”

Beginning a profitable enterprise isn’t a imply feat. However like all post-COVID startups, YBN has needed to navigate some notably powerful terrain; finance being one of many greatest. Whereas they’ve managed to boost £1m in funding, Lineker and Lewis have stayed cautious.

Lineker describes “attempting to strike the proper stability between money circulation, growth and dilution” as a key problem. Not that the model isn’t concentrating on development. Each founders need to broaden their viewers by 8,000 this yr, requiring a savvy strategy to promoting spend.

“Our digital advertisements campaigns are essential to rising the subscriber base and reaching 20,000 prospects by the top of the yr”, says Lineker. “In the end we need to be on billboards and the London Underground, however we’re not at that degree but.”

Fortunately, a slower strategy to scale-up has paid off. Quick-growth startups corresponding to Cazoo have run aground into immediately’s shrinking economic system. YBN has as a substitute adopted the mantra that “working with an excellent staff takes time.”

“Discovering individuals through advice and phrase of mouth is commonly slower,” provides Lineker, “[but] it has meant we’ve constructed an excellent staff.”

“Startups 100 generated enormous buyer curiosity”

Alongside having a “good” staff, Lineker additionally pays tribute to the Startups 100 Index, describing it as an “unbelievable platform for startups and SMEs.

“Being featured gave YourBusinessNumber enormous consciousness and credibility” says Lineker. “This elevated the curiosity within the enterprise and generated a number of new prospects”.

With YBN now hoping to roll out an eSIM product subsequent yr, and develop into new markets within the coming months, Lineker’s feedback are an excellent reminder of how enterprise prizes just like the Startups 100 can function a guerilla advertising and marketing tactic for brand spanking new startups.

In comparison with the costly and time-consuming strategy of conventional promoting, submitting an entry to a free enterprise index or awards ceremony could be a extremely cost-effective solution to market a startup to traders, prospects, and even companions.

Discover out what different advantages the upcoming 2025 Startups 100 Index may carry to what you are promoting, in addition to easy methods to apply.