A little about me...

Hi! My name is Rohith Pasula and I am an entrepreneur. I’m 19, a rising sophomore at Syracuse University, and studying information technology and management. Like many of you, I was shocked by the first cryptocurrency boom: those couple of months when 1 Bitcoin spiked from just a few thousand to over $19,000. I was in school at that time. My friends were talking about it, Bitcoin was all over the news, even my Professors were hosting after-class discussions on cryptocurrency.

This is around when I first began to learn about cryptocurrencies and blockchain. The idea seemed foreign to me; payments that were seen and checked by everyone. I found analogies extremely helpful when studying the applications of blockchain. One of my professors in particular, Jeff Rubin (CEO of SiDEARM Sports), held several classes on blockchain and I made sure to listen to all of them.

The Idea... 

Around the end of January 2018, a close friend, Paolo Dionisio, and I, decided to launch a company focused on cryptocurrency. Our idea was to sell flash drives that held various amounts of cryptocurrencies. We made sure to encrypt our flash drives and to secure other ends for maximum security. We wanted to add a physical aspect to cryptocurrencies because of how new they were. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain represent cutting-edge technology, a change from fiat currency. Our flash drives provide customers with cryptocurrency that they can hold, see, and touch. They are a novelty item, a talking point, something to pass down through the family. We committed to our idea, launched our company in February, and named it KryptaPurchase.

Our Logo

Challenges... 

When KryptaPurchase first started, I focused mainly on product development, security, and website management. Paolo handled marketing and website design. Together, we worked on our pricing models. We were balancing the work of KryptaPurchase with college, sleeping less, eating unhealthily, and always staying busy. It doesn’t sound great, but we were freshmen in college; hungry and full of energy.

Just when we began to have some traction, Paolo suffered from a medical emergency. At the beginning of March, he had to fly back to California to his family. He hasn’t been able to return and had to miss spring semester college credits. In sight of this emergency, Paolo had to take leave from KryptaPurchase. He is currently working to catch up on his credits, but as of now is not yet able to come back to KryptaPurchase.

During this time, I was struggling to keep up with schoolwork while handling all aspects of the company. My grades were suffering and I wasn’t getting much sleep. I had always found entrepreneurs inspiring; Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and others who were willing to take the risk to pursue their passions. However, I could not follow that lifestyle. I didn’t want to disappoint my parents and I came to Syracuse to learn. Thus, I decided to made school a priority and was forced to put KryptaPurchase in the backseat. From March to mid-May, KryptaPurchase was inactive.

Revival...  

Once spring semester ended, I was ready to put KryptaPurchase back on track. The company had lost all its previous users during its inactivity, but I was determined to build it back up. At the end of May, I relaunched KryptaPurchase with a new team. 

Currently, three major constituents represent KryptaPurchase. I, Rohith Pasula, am the founder and CEO of the company, and I currently attend Syracuse University. Eric Jiang, of Carnegie Mellon University, heads marketing alongside Hima Kethu, of Boston University. Additionally, Eric focuses on finance and Hima specializes in research and development. We three are all rising sophomores in college. We also have two offshore teams focused on programming and security.

KryptaPurchase is separated into two major teams, one working on the programming and the other on marketing aspects. For programming, we focused on coding the user interface for each flash drive and incorporating AES-256 bit encryption. We also cleaned our website and improved its search engine optimization. For marketing, we committed to daily informative posts on social media, and we sent out hundreds of emails to local news sites, local magazines and newspapers, and of course tech websites. We wrote multiple press releases and signed up for tech meetups. We started when summer did and hit the ground running.

We’re currently operating and doing great. We’re a global company and service every major country. You can check out our website here: https://www.kryptapurchase.com/ 

What I Learned...  

One of the best ways to gain customers is media outreach. We have contacted hundred’s of editors and writers with personalized messages in attempts to get KryptaPurchase featured in an article. The response rate has not been very high, but it’s still important to keep trying and emailing. The lesson we learned is: try to spread out emails over multiple days if you’re contacting employees of the same newspaper. In addition, calling elicits a significantly higher response rate, but can be seen as rude (if not predicated with an email) by some. You can email local newspapers and magazines, podcast hosts, youtube influencers, and a variety of other people with social media influence.

An example of a successful article: My Central Jersey, part of the USA Today Network, wrote about us.

It is important to maintain a daily blog on all social sites. This helps build up your credibility as a startup and gives the company more of a background. You can write short descriptions of current news related to your company. Good sites that we used are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Medium, and Reddit.

Do not trade quality for time. It is a race to get your product or service out as fast as possible, but you want to make sure your first customers are your best-served ones. These will be the people who define the start of your company and its reviews. Positive reviews will help a company grow, but negative remarks can severely harm it.

Go to meetups related to your company’s focus. This will help you pitch your idea to experienced people and get you valuable critiques. You can also see other ideas and network with professionals.

The most important thing is to not give up. Working with KryptaPurchase, I faced multiple points where it felt overwhelming, but that only made it more essential to continue working hard. Resilience is one of the best qualities an entrepreneur can have. One of my favorite quotes by Einstein matches this feeling: “You never fail until you stop trying”.

Learn More About Us... 

Starting KryptaPurchase has been one of my proudest accomplishments. I am happy to be working with a dedicated team today.

Our social media sites:

  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kryptapurchase/
  • Twitter Handle: @KryptaPurchase
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/krypta/
  • Quora: https://kryptapurchase1.quora.com/

Feel free to email us at [email protected] or call us at 908-829-5603 or ask us any questions on this thread!


Left to Right -  Rohith Pasula, Eric Jiang, Hima Kethu