Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Raj Thaker. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Raj, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

. My Co-Founder and I had been doing a lot of outreach to potential customers via email, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social channels. To track this information, we had been using a CRM and manually pasting these results over which was extremely repetitive and time-consuming.

In order to expedite the process, we built a software that could scrape our social media messages and automatically update our CRM since none of the current options offered any integrations. That’s when it hit us. If we were running into these issues, there must be other businesses wanting the same solution. So, we built Boondoggle AI, the first AI software to connect to any major CRM and automatically summarize your social media outreach. With our product, a single worker can save over an hour a day on average!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have been building software since I was 12 years old. Initially, I was a fan of video games and would recreate games that I was a fan of such as NBA 2K, however I quickly started building quick projects that solved my everyday problems. What I found out was that building programs that solve your problems is not much different than solving one of your clients. If you have problem that arises in your everyday workflow, there is a high probability that there are many others who have the same.

With this mindset, I ventured into the world of startups so that I could identify these issues and build solutions for them. I’m proud to be a serial builder that takes ownership over my work and believe that building cool things can bring people together.

A proud accomplishment that comes to mind is when I was the former Google Ambassador at my university where I was able to create a program to teach middle-school children how to build their favorite video games and expose them to the ever-growing world of Computer Science.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

My Co-Founder, Blake, and I met through a mutual friend of ours. He has suggested that we had a similar vision and thirst for building technical products. After meeting up, it was clear that we had aligned goals and would work well together. With his extensive knowledge in sales and mine in building technical projects, our skills complement each other. From there, we started talking to customers and building products until we found something that worked and have been working together ever since.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When embarking to college, I had never really taken the idea of dropping out too seriously. However, as I spent more time there I realized that I felt happiest when building something that I was passionate about solving rather than working in the corporate world. After our startup got funded, it was clear that I had to either take the leap to follow my dream or finish off my last year in college.

While having a degree is a fantastic safety net, making the decision to leave college and move to San Francisco was the right pivot in life for me. With the influx of AI startups, there is a lot of opportunity in the space and I feel that I have learned an immense amount of knowledge in my one year building real-world solutions for our clients without any oversight.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://boondoggle.ai/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rajthaker
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raj-thaker/