Hello everyone,
I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself to the Squadhelp community. My name is Darpan Munjal, and I’m the founder of Squadhelp.com. Some of you probably know me as Dan (my nickname). We launched Squadhelp in 2011, and the last few years have been an absolutely fascinating journey and I’m very excited about the opportunities that lie ahead of us.
First, let me start by saying Thank You for your incredible engagement and support through out the years. I’ve gotten to know several of you through the discussion forums and it has been amazing to read your thoughts, suggestions and feedback everyday. Squadhelp wouldn’t be what it is without you and your active participation. It motivates me to see the winner board every day, and get inspired by AWESOME names (and logos) that all of you come up with.
Second, I wanted to share a bit about how the idea of Squadhelp was born…Back in 2010, I was trying to come up with a name for another startup I was thinking about launching (nothing to do with Squadhelp). After several days of research, the name choices that I came up with myself were either pretty horrible or were already taken. I didn’t have the budget to hire an expensive branding agency, and that’s when I thought it would be great to have a platform that would bring together creative people to help entrepreneurs come up with a great name for their business. So I launched Squadhelp purely as an experiment, and let it grow organically for first few years while I was focusing on other business opportunities in parallel. Few of you have been with us since the early days of our journey (@lightless, @moretal, @RockyOrpinada, @tkpro72, @jackieheraty, @miyvex58 to name a few!). Then there are many others who joined along the way and made tremendous contributions in improving our platform. I remember when we initially started, we used to have contests with $25 and $50 awards. Most of these contests were public (every one could see each other’s submissions). We have come a long way, and I am grateful to all of your contributions and support in helping improve this platform.
I jumped into this on a full time basis in late 2015, and while there have been several learnings over past few years, the purpose and core principles remain the same as when I started the company. Our purpose is to be world’s #1 naming & branding platform which combines the power of technology and creativity by connecting businesses with the most talented creatives across the globe. I will share a separate post that delves a bit deeper into the core values that we stand for.
Since many of you have shared about you as individuals in addition to your role as creatives on the platform, I thought I’d share a bit about me. I live in Northwest Chicago suburbs for the past 20 years (so if any of you happen to be my neighbor and want to grab a cup of coffee, let me know!). After getting my engineering degree in computer science, I went to Kellogg for Masters in Business Administration. Throughout my career, I loved the intersection of technology and business and continue to be fascinated with the opportunities to create disruptive innovation in industries that haven’t seen a lot of advances in technology yet. In my spare time, I like to read, travel, and bike. One of my favorite things to do is travel the world with my family. I’m a father to two amazing kids who are at the fun age of 11 and 14. A little over a year ago, we also added another member to our family, Cody, who is a Maltese (they are rightly known as “Spoiled” Maltese). Surprisingly, he does show a keen interest in computers (True Story: he almost brought down the Squadhelp website one day by strategically placing his paw on the Enter key at the wrong time). So if you see any glitches on the website, its probably his fault . On a serious note, we do have a very talented engineering team who is working on some really exciting stuff, and I will share more about that in my future posts.
Thanks again for your incredible support, I look forward to engaging on this platform and will share more in terms of where we are headed in my next post. I also look forward to hearing more about your own personal stories so we can all get to know even more about each other.
Here’s to more exciting times to come…