Side Hustle: Schnap!
For our third interview in our Side Hustle series, we were thrilled to speak to Martin Taylor, who is the CTO at MBA Group, as well as Co-Founder at his side hustle, Schnap!.
Schnap! is a local social commerce platform which was designed to help local communities. The platform keeps communities shopping and socialising locally, helping to boost sales for small businesses. The app encourages customers to spend their money locally, instead of on large commerce or tech platforms.
Some of the biggest platforms we all shop on are the likes of Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Deliveroo, and Just Eat to name a few. Although these platforms allow for local businesses to register and offer their products and services, it can often be at a financial detriment and with minimal exposure.
In turn, this results in less local community interaction, both socially, and equally taking a hit financially. This has been magnified due to the pandemic, so Schnap! launching, came at a poignant time.
Martin currently manages over 50 people at MBA group, so creating this app is the definition of a side hustle. For years, Martin and his Co-Founder Phillip were discussing the prospect of creating their own business. They wanted to challenge themselves and build something from scratch.
“We wanted to give community businesses a technology platform that won’t destroy their profit margin. This planted the seed for Schnap! - which started from a song that I heard in my car.”
Most creatives and entrepreneurs will agree, some of the best business concepts are derived from the most unexpected places, and Music's depth of inspiration struck a chord with Martin.
By September 2019, they had incorporated the business, and set to work to create the layers they needed to ensure it was helping the local community effectively. The first step was building a feature to enable a 500 m radius, so users of the app could see all local businesses at the click of a button.
“This feature would instantly connect anyone, even if that wasn’t their local hometown. Although this sounds easy, it was one of the most difficult things we had to do.
We bootstrapped everything ourselves, so we’ve invested a lot of time and money into getting things right.”
Martin highlighted that although they’ve considered investment, it’s not something they’re looking to rush.
Covid-19 set them back a lot in terms of growth, as they launched three days before the first national lockdown in March 2020. Since then, it’s been a slow and steady process to get Schnap to where it needs to be,
“It’s hard work juggling this and a full time job, there’s not enough hours in the day sometimes. We meet twice a week, and in some ways covid-19 has helped us because we can meet digitally via zoom and still get things done. “
Overall, although there have been some bumps in the road, Martin expressed how happy he is that people have responded well to Schnap!.
The most rewarding thing has been coming up with a business idea that adds value, and has had nothing but positive reception from the desired target market!
You can visit the Schnap! website here to learn more.
Have you got a side hustle you want to talk about? Email us - we would love to feature you in this series.
