Interview with Mauricio Rubio founder of Numbby

January 13, 2014 Yoav Farbey

Numbby, enables people to share knowledge and information with numbers while engaging them in a sharing network that answers all your questions with numbers.

Numbby believe that by nature all of us prefer to see information in numbers and one of our main goals is to make it easy for anyone to find data/answers quickly and avoid hours of valuable time spent on the web searching for a specific number, percentage, data or statistic.

Think of it this way, when you hear about any startup what are the first questions that come to mind: “How many people are part of it?” “How many users does it have?” “In what date did it launch?” “How many times has it been covered by the press?” “How much venture capital have they raised?” “What’s their global ranking?” And so on… The answer to all of those questions is a number, but a number itself doesn’t mean anything, but a number + meaning = a numbby. And this same principle applies to the most basic concepts of our day to day lives. Take shopping for instance, “What’s the discount?” “How much does it cost?” or moving to another city “What’s the population?” “How does it rank in the Best Places to live index?.” Now in the business world, numbers take even more importance. Revenue, profit, year it was founded, number of employees, countries served, number of clients, offices, manufacturing sites, portfolio of products and so on… There’s really an infinite number of possibilities when you come to think about the number of numbbies people would like to share or learn about. Hence, our logo includes the infinite symbol.

Who is your startup aimed at?

Professionals
Educators
Bloggers and Consultants
Startups and Businesses
Non-profits
Companies

How does your startup stand out against it’s competitors?

Ability to share numbers with meaning (numbbies), data, statistics, percentages in a free, intuitive, modern, easy to use web and mobile app.
Reliable source for numerical and statistical information that people consider relevant (since they are actually posting it!). Hence becoming the first, modern data sharing app in the world.
Built in spread the word, so that you can share Numbbies with your contacts, friends and networks.

Where did the idea for the startup come from?

We realized that by nature humans want to see everything in numbers, population, costs, frequencies, percentages, etc. As we had the epiphany, we also came to the conclusion that there wasn’t a centralized easy to use, modern place where people could generate this type of content and share numbers with meaning with each other. As you do with pictures in facebook, text in twitter or content in wikipedia.

What is your business background, and what got you interested in startups?

Experienced project manager, tech savvy, business savvy, with experience in the tech industry and consumer industry, fluent in spanish, english, portuguese and local, regional and global exposure. I’ve traveled to over 10 countries including China, have two MBAs and have lead teams of up to 200 people.

I got interested in startups because I’m passionate about creating and innovating. I see myself doing this until the last breath of life. I enjoy developing value added apps, products and services that people use in their day to day life.

How long has the your startup been in the making, and who is the team behind the business?

Product development started on January 2013 and we launched in August 2013.

We’re a team of 4 passionate hard working entrepreneurs that just started this amazing journey of taking a product from a concept to reality to virality.

Cristian Perlaza- Chief Design Officer
Jefferson Garcia- Chief Technology Officer
Tatiana Gomez- Chief Operations Officer
Mauricio Rubio- Chief Executive Officer

What has been your biggest challenge so far as a startup owner?

Reaching the general audience without financial resources. It’s been tough to spread the word using social media and free press. But we’re proud to have a growing community of users, Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers and on-going interest from the press.

In the coming year, what would you like to achieve with your business?

Be in the top 100,000 sites in the world. Gain the attention of media and tap on crowdfunding and venture capitalists for seed funding.

If you could give one piece of advice to someone thinking about starting a business, what would it be?

Be passionate and persistent. Taking and idea to reality is really tough, tougher than most people imagine, but that is just a starting point, so the end of one path marks the start of a longer journey.