A slice on Jacob Carter, Founder and CEO of Nurture Boss
Sometimes the journey to success is less straight and narrow and consists more of twists, turns and pivots. Jacob Carter of Nurture Boss experienced firsthand the determination and flexibility it requires to successfully pivot an idea and product. The proof of his hard work is reflected in the $2 million raised for the multi-family marketing engine, coming mostly from investors in his home state of Arizona.
Carter’s career began as a software engineer for several different companies before starting his own businesses, including Swap Chain, a financial trading platform for cryptocurrency. Due to inherent issues with that idea, compounded by a problem a friend was having in the residential real estate market, Carter pivoted to building Nurture Boss: a multifamily marketing engine, and the first of its kind to hit the market.
Carter set out to help his friend by creating a less expensive, tech-based solution to the “old-fashioned” PDFs each home buyer and seller receives. Anyone shopping for a home has most likely received one of these PDFs…they ultimately end up in the trash or stashed in the backseat of a car. Enter the “nurture page”, a scalable way to provide buyers and sellers the same information with a personalized landing page. What better way to access this short URL than via text…makes sense, considering everyone’s on their phones 24/7, right?
As a first attempt, Carter reached out to real estate agents and found that it was easy to get them on board initially, but difficult to retain them. Overall, agents were looking for instant results and not willing to dedicate the time and effort to a long-term marketing solution. Real estate brokers and teams with dedicated marketing staff were the only ones willing to put in the effort.
Cue, pivot time. Carter set out to find a better-suited market and ultimately landed on multifamily leasing. Consultants in this space were more than willing to invest in a scalable solution for customer acquisition and retention because of the ROI they were seeing.
Though things were trending upwards, Carter was about to face another hurdle: fundraising. Carter describes the investing scene in Arizona as having two distinct sides. On one side, you have the modern thinking founders-turned-investors. On the other side, you have old-school angel investors. The first are eager to turn Arizona into a tech hub, while the second are unwavering in their methodologies, ultimately missing out on innovative opportunities.
Carter found that he had to do what was best for his company, even when hearing drastically different pieces of advice from investors. He absorbed information wherever he could (books, other founders, investors, mentors) in order to formulate what his path should be with Nurture Boss. “At the end of the day, it’s about turning inward and understanding your business, the market that you’re in, the metrics and numbers that make your business make sense and the strategy for how you’re going to build it. Being comfortable around that and speaking to that with authority.”
For Carter, it’s about messing up enough to build the confidence to tell his story, while understanding that not everyone will be on board. In order to keep himself motivated, Carter has a network of founders to fall back on for support when needed. This, along with his team, helps Carter manage his emotional state while going through multiple ups and downs in a day. Additionally, having a “forever curious” software engineer mindset keeps him waking up each day ready to learn more.
While many people say they measure success through money, that’s not the case for Carter. “If I had to pick a thing to measure success, I’d say impact and the caveat being that it’s a lot of different areas of impact that are being measured, but I think that they’re all relevant.” From his ability to impact customers using Nurture Boss, to the impact on his team and family, Carter strives to be a positive force wherever he goes.
Founder Bio
Jacob Carter is a software engineer by trade out of Scottsdale, Arizona. Prior to founding Nurture Boss, Carter founded a cryptocurrency trading platform, Swap Chain. Now he serves as CEO of Nurture Boss. Connect with Carter on LinkedIn.
