Maybe, after a long day, you like to unwind with a book. Perhaps you learn how to cook something new.
Or, you can be Lyonel Dougé, a 37-year-old digital product manager at pharmaceuticals giant Johnson & Johnson who spends his down-time running a growing social media company, which he launched from his West Orange, New Jersey, home in 2017.
Called TipSnaps, Dougé's side hustle is a subscription platform where fans can view exclusive content from their favorite social media creators. In less than five years, it has registered more than 450,000 users and paid out more than $2.5 million in subscription fees to 60,000-plus>'I had this epiphany'
In 2016, Dougé was scrolling Instagram during some downtime from building websites for Johnson & Johnson products like Listerine or Neutrogena when he had an epiphany: Social media influencers could profit much more effectively if their fanbases paid them directly, especially for exclusive content.
Today, that concept is the lynchpin of the "creator economy." But Dougé proudly points out that he entered the market relatively early, around the same time as personalized video platform Cameo and adult-themed>'I've got to pay bills'
Building a business in your spare time is hard enough. But Dougé has reached this point with hardly any help from outside investors.
He's quick to cite the fact that Black founders get a tiny fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars handed out to start-up founders each year by venture capital firms, and says a lack of VC interest has made his bootstrapping prowess more than a fun story: It's a necessity.
"I'd love to quit my job and just focus on this full time," Dougé says. "But I've got a [family] and I've got a mortgage and I've got to pay bills. So I've got to go the hard route for now."
