Entrepreneur Enthusiast & Founder Of The Rella Social App, Natalie Barbu
Natalie is an influencer turned entrepreneur. She began her social media career in 2011 on YouTube in the beauty guru phase. She has grown her following to over 360,000 followers throughout her platforms, made it her full-time job, and pivoted multiple times in her journey. She is the host of The Real Reel Podcast, a show where she speaks to entrepreneurs, business leaders, creators, and everyone in between talking about the real reel - not the highlight reel - the CEO and founder of Rella, a management tool made for influencers to run their business.
Tell us about your app, Rella Social. Why did you create it, and what does it offer?
I started Rella to make it easier for people to manage their personal brand on social media. We want to empower creators and build a platform that helps creators in all aspects of their business. Starting with creating a content calendar that posts across platforms, organizing your sponsorships and brand deals, keeping track of your revenue, and viewing your analytics in one place. We are a tool for anyone looking to manage their social media by making it easier and saving time.
What challenges did you face when founding Rella Social, and how did you overcome them?
One of the biggest challenges of starting a platform like Rella is the technical aspect of it. Although I have an engineering degree, I am not a technical founder. I needed help developing the app and to build it. I enlisted the help of 2 software engineers, we worked together at first, and then a few months later decided to partner together. After that, another challenge was funding. We did not have money to scale Rella without capital. We raised a small friends-and-family round and put in our own time and money into the business to get it off the ground and launch an MVP before we decided to raise money from VCs.
