Founder Story: Zupyak by Erik Wikander

We're thrilled to spotlight Zupyak, a game-changer in the content marketing sphere, rooted in Stockholm. They've evolved from a user-generated content hub in 2017 to becoming the world's largest content marketing community for startups and small businesses.

With over 400,000 users and 50,000 monthly articles across 90 languages, Zupyak empowers businesses with generative AI technology to create SEO-optimized content that hits the mark every time.

Guided by a seasoned leader with a rich background in management consulting and tech, Zupyak simplifies marketing for small businesses, enabling them to amplify their reach effortlessly.

Lets hear from them directly!

I joined Zupyak in 2021 as CEO and co-founder, bringing with me a background in management consulting from my time at PwC and leadership positions in various tech companies, including serving as the Country Director Nordics for eDreams ODIGEO.Zupyak is a content marketing platform specifically designed for small businesses.

Our platform utilizes generative AI technology to streamline the creation of SEO-optimized marketing content, empowering small businesses to effectively reach their target audiences.Before Zupyak, I was both the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Chief Product Officer (CPO) at Lendify, a pioneering fintech startup in Sweden.

At Lendify, we revolutionized the finance industry with our peer-to-peer lending model, ultimately leading to the company's acquisition by the Danish unicorn, Lunar.As CEO of Zupyak, I continue to grow our community user base and product offerings powered by generative AI. Our mission is to transform the way startups and small businesses market themselves.

Zupyak, based in Stockholm, has redefined content marketing for startups and small businesses. Founded in 2017 as a user-generated content platform, Zupyak has grown into the world's largest content marketing community, boasting over 400,000 users worldwide. They create and publish 50,000 articles each month in 90 different languages.

Led by a CEO with extensive experience in management consulting and tech, Zupyak leverages generative AI technology to help small businesses create SEO-optimized content effortlessly. This platform empowers small enterprises to reach their target audiences more effectively, making sophisticated marketing strategies accessible and manageable.

Zupyak not only simplifies content creation but also provides a robust community for users to engage, learn, and grow their marketing impact.

Our platform solves the end-to-end problem for small businesses of growthing through SEO-optimised content. Helping businesses all the way from idea to content creation to content distribution.

We initially started as a content community, and managed to find a growth model where users drove growth by creating and sharing their content through our platform.

We tapped into a community dynamic where the users had incentives to promote the platform,knowing that increased Zupyak users meant more potential viewers for their content. This, in turn, led to higher chances of converting viewers into customers.

We chose to integrate AI technology at a rather early stage, but initially, we struggled to find the right solution for the problems we identified our users were facing. We were fortunate that AI made huge technological leaps that enabled us to build unique AI-powered products, enabling us to solve our customers' problems in a much more effective and relevant way.

We’ve been fortunate to have angel investors who believe in us and our vision. Early on, we made it a priority to seek out investors who were relevant for the problem we set out to solve.

Through our network we were able to find angels who shared the same vision and goals for the future and that we connected with on a personal level. This wasn’t the case with all angels we met. Given that you’ll most likely be working with them for a few years, you want investors who you think you will have a good relationship with.

As we started out as a community-oriented platform, meant that we had a slightly different story and outset than a “traditional” startup. For us, it was challenging and took a while to find the narrative and storytelling around our future vision and existing community.

We managed that by iterating the story with many different people and investors in our network, gaining feedback along the way. Eventually, through this iterative process, our story evolved into one that was both compelling and credible.

We’re on a mission to build a content marketing autopilot powered by AI, which will allow any company regardless of size to enable growth through content - from the ideation phase, to the planning phase through to the content production and analytics phase. We recently launched a world first and unique product: an AI keyword planner.

This tool lets users create a keyword plan for any company within minutes. Before AI, this would take weeks, or even months and could cost you $5k-$10k when outsourced to a marketing agency. With our subscription based model, users can do this for a monthly fee in only 2 minutes.

Generative AI is moving at a rapid pace, and now we have a very interesting competitive landscape where Open AI once led the race, but competitors like Google and Anthropic are catching up. I’m really excited about what this technology can do both in the short and long term.

I’m convinced that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of AI’s capabilities. Sam Altman, from OpenAI, believes that 95% of what a marketing agency does today can be done by AI, and I think he is right. This shift will have enormous implications for both agencies and the companies who hire agencies, as they will need to adopt AI into their marketing processes in order to stay competitive.

Building a startup is a bit like setting sail on a boat with a continent in mind rather than a specific destination. You must remain steadfast in your conviction that you'll reach your goal, yet remain open to continuously questioning your beliefs and ideas.

It’s about finding the balance between being committed and stubborn while also being open to perspectives from people with a different background or competence. This is something that I’ve personally had to learn along the way, the importance of being “carefully stubborn”.