Startup Savvy: Young Entrepreneur Nick Cianfaglione Of RestauRent Shares His Secrets For Rapid Growth and Success
Passion & obsession with solving an issue that means a lot to you: As mentioned above there are going to be a lot of long, late, grueling hours over many years; this does not happen overnight! So you need to be passionate enough about the issue you’re solving so you have a “why” that powers you through the tough times.
The entrepreneurial landscape is more vibrant and challenging than ever, with young entrepreneurs at the forefront, driving innovation and redefining the boundaries of success in the business world. These dynamic individuals are not only creating new products and services but also building sustainable business models that thrive in today’s fast-paced, technology-driven environment. Their journeys are filled with lessons of resilience, strategic innovation, and the relentless pursuit of growth. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Nick Cianfaglione.
Founded by Nick Cianfaglione, RestauRent emerged from a personal challenge when planning a family gathering. Frustrated by the fragmented booking process, Nick partnered with hospitality and startup veterans to create a seamless platform connecting venues with “everyday event planners.”
As RestauRent expands into Atlanta and Chicago, it remains focused on its mission to make private event planning effortless. With a robust pipeline of future markets and continued technological advancements, RestauRent is poised to become the go-to platform for private event planning nationwide.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about cultural sensitivity, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by the concept of solving challenges which is what led me to becoming an “entrepreneur” as my career path because I am obsessed with creating solutions for common issues faced by many people!
I was truly catapulted into the world of entrepreneurship when I was a freshman in Highschool after coming up with a creative solution for raising money for a charity competition. The solution was simple, host a live music concert and donate all the ticket money to the foundation we were supporting. I was instantly hooked & spent the next 5 years hosting over 70+ concerts & live music events before building my first technology startup; Artist Republik.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
This is certainly a hard one as there is no limit to the amount of “interesting stories” I have encountered over the past 13+ years. From lawsuits, to entire websites blowing up, to even having the opportunity to pitch Gary Vaynerchuck on a startup I was working on, I have seen it all. Through all of that thought I would say the most interesting “story” that has happened since starting my career is less of a story and more of a period of time and that’s the period of time we are living in right now.
When I started my career building technology applications seemed so far out of reach in terms of knowledge, connections, and resources but it is so fascinating to be creating a technology company during a time period that truly feels like the “internet in the 90’s”. The rapid development & innovation going on around us everyday is creating stories & experiences that I would have never thought or dreamed of!
You are a successful individual. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I had a similar conversation with one of my college professors around how there are specific traits that successful entrepreneurs have that “normal people” try to suppress but it helps make entrepreneurs who we are and I believe that is
- Slight ADHD: When understood and used to your advantage it helps you be able to “focus” & juggle 10,000 things at once without getting overwhelmed; which is everyday in the life of building a company
- Slight Anxiety/Paranoia: When your building something you have to consistently think about it 24/7 and the anxiety/paranoia traits of successful founders help them consistently push themselves 15 hours (or more) a day until they get to a point where this fades because they have finally achieved the goal they set out to achieve.
- Obsession: Being overly obsessed about perfection & attention to detail while having an extreme obsession with achieving what is possible
If you combine these traits with relentless dedication, passion, and the ability to articulate your vision you will be able to build & sell anything!
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview about young entrepreneurs secrets to rapid growth and success. To start, how would you define success?
I think every single person defines success very differently. For me I define success as achieving what I said I would do both for myself and the people that are invested in my success.
What unconventional strategy did you employ that significantly contributed to your startup’s growth, and why do you think it was so effective?
My favorite book is Growth Levers and How to Find Them by Matt Lerner because the entire thesis of this book is to understand what “unconventional” strategies you can deploy to catapult your businesses growth. I have deployed hundreds of unconventional strategies to scale all of my companies & continue to think of new ways. My principle for these strategies is to identify something that takes less then $1k and a week to build/set up that costs less then $10/day to run and can result in growing your business 10x over the next month. It doesn’t have to be scalable in the long term but how do you get yourself to grow from 1–10 with spending as little money as possible without using “traditional” strategies.
Looking at marketing for example, if you want to truly scale a business fast you need to stop thinking about Social media ads, viral content growth, etc and focus on first understanding who you’re trying to reach, how your competitors are reaching them, where they are NOT being reached, and how you can reach them for as little money as possible.
If you can do this you can create true Growth Levers through unconventional strategies that will result in rapid growth.
Can you share a critical pivot point in your startup’s journey and how you navigated the decision-making process?
Similar to the story question, there are a lot of critical pivot points in every startups journey but looking at RestauRent specifically I would say one of the most critical points was when we made the decision to entirely re-platform our website. This caused us to lose about 3–6 months of development time but resulted in us establishing a new framework for development that has resulted in us increasing our development velocity by over 10x and slashing our development costs by nearly 50%.
Navigating this was extremely hard. The process took months of planning and consistently working 12–18 hours a day to make sure we got it done in time with no issues. But after it was done it was by far the best decision we ever made. Founders of all stages need to understand that what comes above “loving your product” is “survival of your company” so you need to be able to keep your eyes out for opportunities to pivot at any point in time.
How do you balance the need for rapid growth with maintaining a sustainable and healthy company culture?
In what ways has your personal definition of success evolved since the inception of your startup?
I think this is hard for any company and it truly starts with hiring the right people. For us we specifically made sure that everyone we hired was fully prepared for the high ambiguity, high stress, long hours environment that building a startup is so we could focus on growing while letting the healthy company culture build itself.
For anyone out there reading this thought I would say that making sure you have employee gatherings is one of the best ways to have a healthy company culture AND if you need a space you should certainly check our RestauRent.com!
Based on your experience and research, can you please share “5 Things You Need to Succeed as a Young Person in Business?”
1 . Passion & obsession with solving an issue that means a lot to you: As mentioned above there are going to be a lot of long, late, grueling hours over many years; this does not happen overnight! So you need to be passionate enough about the issue you’re solving so you have a “why” that powers you through the tough times.
2 . Ability to Pivot: Also as mentioned above, the company you build today will note be the company it is when it’s successful and that’s okay! As a founder you need to be able to identify pivot opportunities and have the courage to change everything. Replatform your startup, close markets, “fire” clients, and keep moving!
3 . Resourcefulness: It’s the old saying “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems”- everything thinks raising investor money fixes all of your issues but all it fixes is one issue; a lack of money. If you do not have the right resources already then all money will do is exaggerate the issues you have in your company because you will spend all the money and realize you have the same problems but now with no money. So you have to be resourceful because if you can figure out how to do it with no money then you will become massively successful when you finally secure funding.
4 . A calm demeanor: On a daily basis you will be sued, yelled at, things will break, employees will quit, and everything will break. So you need to be able to remain calm & focus on finding a solution rather than a reaction.
5 . A good attitude: Coupling with the calm demeanor, you need to always wake up every morning with a smile on your face and love what you do because if you don’t love this then stop doing it- there are a lot easier ways to make money & an impact.
What is one piece of advice you would give to an aspiring entrepreneur that you wish someone had given you at the start of your journey?
Always hire for the things you cannot do. The best entrepreneurs know what they are good at, resulting in them finding the most talented people for the things they are not good at. Three people that each balance each other out will create a significantly stronger company than 50 people who all are good at the same thing or have “strength gaps”. It’s not about how much resources you have, it’s about how you use them.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
My biggest movement would be to make startup funding more favorable to the startups they are funding. I have been lucky to work with some of the best investors in the world in terms of resources, terms, and “founder favorability” but many founders are not in a position to be able to “pick and choose” who their investors are. This results in many founder’s companies dying due to issues created by stakeholders rather than the company itself; or at least losing significant money & time.
How can our readers further follow you online?
Feel free to follow me on linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-cianfaglione/ and also check out Restaurent.com
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
Startup Savvy: Young Entrepreneur Nick Cianfaglione Of RestauRent Shares His Secrets For Rapid… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.