8 minute read
One to Watch
By Kirsten Shaw
The life of an entrepreneur involves failures, successes and often new paths that lead away from the initial plan. Calvin Waddy experienced it all before even graduating from Mississippi State.
The 2018 alumnus is co-founder and CEO of Buzzbassador, a software company he launched with COO Shelby Baldwin (2019) while both were MSU business undergrads. Today, their company serves 450 brands and 150,000 users and has generated more than $20 million in sales for its customers. A recent investment from Google has marked Waddy as an emerging tech founder to watch.
“From a very early age I was drawn to entrepreneurship,” says the 28-year-old. “My grandfather owned his own lawn care business, and some of my favorite memories are going to Cleveland, OH, in the summers and helping him cut grass. It was a modest business, but I got to see him do something that he enjoyed – and I got to be a part of it.”
As a youth growing up in Atlanta, Waddy found enjoyment in building and creating in a variety of ways. Then, in his mid-teens, he moved to Madison, MS, with his parents and two younger brothers. In high school, basketball and swimming pushed entrepreneurial inclinations to the background. But when athletic college scholarships weren’t forthcoming, he needed a new plan. Advice from parents and friends led him to Mississippi State.
“My experience was fantastic,” he shares. “I got plugged in early. I was part of Freshman Council, New Maroon Camp and other organizations. I was an orientation leader and an Alumni Delegate, so I got to experience campus from a serving perspective, and that was impactful for me. I got to meet a ton of different students who I grew really fond of.”
It was here, too, that his interest in entrepreneurship was rekindled.
He recalls, “One day I was in class – I think it was a marketing class – and we were going through different businesses like Facebook and how they started, and I found the passion for entrepreneurship again.”
Waddy had an idea for a social media app, and a professor pointed him toward the Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach (E-Center).
“I went for a meeting where I talked about an idea that was really very half-baked, and I had no direction on how to get started. I was nervous, too – I thought they might steal my idea!” he laughs, looking back. “But [Director of Entrepreneurship] Eric Hill walked me through what the E-Center does for students and talked me through their Venture Catalyst Program. Essentially, it teaches you from A to Z how to start a company, how to build a business plan and a pitch deck and come up with a go-to-market strategy. So I jumped in.”
Realizing his app idea wasn’t strong enough to get off the ground, he tried a few variations on the idea and worked with Baldwin – who was also active in the E-Center – on some other businesses, but nothing was really sticking. Then he began thinking about how he might exercise his passion for creating merchandise using Shopify, the e-commerce platform for online stores and retail startups.
In 2018, when most of their peers were off on spring break for some R&R, Waddy and Baldwin launched a business. They built a clothing brand that grew into a six-figure business within a year.
“That happened by using influencers to promote our brand,” says Waddy. “We tried every marketing strategy we were learning in class, but when we tested influencers, that really drove our growth.”
Success brings new challenges, and one of those was managing their influencers –individuals with strong social media followings who are paid by brands to create content to promote their products. Influencer payment rates can be based on multiple factors such as follower count, engagement rate or sales generated within a campaign.
“As you can imagine, working with 8,000 people [influencers] who are spread across the globe is a really difficult task, especially while you’re building a business. And on top of that, we were in college,” comments Waddy. “We were having trouble paying everybody on time, attributing the right orders to the right influencers and communicating and running campaigns. So we ended up building the prototype to what’s now known as Buzzbassador.”
Thinking others might find their software helpful, they decided to open it up for public use to make a little extra revenue. It was quickly obvious that other brands were in great need of this type of solution. Through various E-Center pitch opportunities, Waddy and Baldwin had garnered enough grant money to hire the developers needed to build out a public beta. In 2020, they pivoted from clothing to software – to Buzzbassador.
Buzzbassador aids business owners in tasks like onboarding influencers, tracking which sales they generate, monitoring their social posts, paying them and more. The software saves a tremendous amount of manual work that smaller businesses often don’t have time to manage, nor the budget to hire a team who does. It automates the administrative workload that comes with influencer marketing, enabling the businesses to make better use of this key marketing strategy to get the word out about their brands and grow their sales.
Buzzbassador clients range from large public enterprises to small artisan brands. Shimano is one of the world’s largest producers of bike components. BLK + GRN offers all-natural personal care products created by Black women. Gatsby Chocolate, created by the founder of Halo Top ice cream, sells tasty, low-calorie chocolate.
GoNanas, which sells healthier banana breads and mixes, was an early client. Its products are in stores like Target and Whole Foods, but COVID propelled the owners to ramp up their ambassador (influencer) program to build online sales. Using Buzzbassador, the company has generated more than $1 million in sales from content creators.
“Buzzbassador helped us scale from 20 to 2,500 ambassadors and gave our ambassadors an interface to check on their sales and get insight into what they’re driving,” shares GoNanas CEO/ Founder Morgan Lerner. “We’ve attained a 233 percent increase in ROI through this channel. The Buzzbassador team is amazing – there to help with anything we need.”
From the outset, Buzzbassador’s potential has been recognized and backed. In 2019, the company was the overall winner of the MSU Startup Summit, won the SEC Student Startup Pitch Competition and was named a finalist in the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council Student Entrepreneurship and Pitch Competition – resulting in a combined $17,000 in prize money. In 2020, it became the first Mississippi-based company selected as a Venture Atlanta Southeast Showcase Company. In 2022, it was selected for a $120,000 investment by accelerator Techstar Atlanta Powered by J.P. Morgan.
A connection made through Techstars led this year to Buzzbassador’s selection as a Google for Startups Black Founders Fund recipient. As one of only 23 chosen, the company received a $150,000 nonequity grant along with $100,000 in access to Google products and programming.
“You get so much access to Google executives and Google sales training and products,” adds Waddy. “There’s an abundance of opportunity in being a part of this program, so it’s something that we’re truly proud of.”
Waddy and Baldwin are just getting started. They aim to raise a seed round of about $2 million in the coming months to enable them to add new engineers and personnel to their team, which currently consists of the two founders, a software developer, a customer service representative and a part time product manager. They will continue to enhance their platform with options such as a matching service to connect their Shopify clients with more influencers and eventually will fully automate it using AI. Expanding to other e-commerce platforms is also on the horizon.
When not working – which is rare because he loves it – Waddy is learning to golf. He also gets to see his middle brother and fellow Bulldog alumnus regularly, as both live in Dallas. (Their younger brother is currently at MSU.)
Waddy is grateful for the education and encouragement he found at his alma mater. He shows it by serving on the E-Center’s Peer Review Entrepreneurship Panel, assessing first pitches by today’s aspiring Bulldog entrepreneurs.
“I can’t say enough about the E-Center and its people – Eric Hill, [Director of Outreach] Jeffrey Rupp and [former Program Coordinator] Brooke Lammert,” he states. “And [former] Dean Sharon Oswald’s support of entrepreneurship gave us all the room to be as creative as we wanted to be. It was those people who helped shape us as entrepreneurs.”
He’s grateful, too, for COB faculty like his business law professor Cecelia Cook, who, as the business was getting started, answered questions about contracts and terms and offered advice.
“From the very beginning of his journey with us, Calvin’s tenacity and drive stood out as unmatched,” observes Hill. “Over the years, I’ve had the privilege to witness his evolution from young and passionate student into an incredible tech founder, now recognized by one of the most iconic brands in the world. Calvin’s dedication, unyielding perseverance and unparalleled commitment to innovation serve as a testament to what is possible of MSU students.”
