Nichole has more than 18 years of experience helping to grow and build businesses. She is the co-founder and CEO of Cheddar Up, the leading platform that helps groups and organizations easily collect payments and information. Cheddar Up was founded in 2013 and serves over 100,000 groups and organizations across North America helping them to collect millions of payments each year.
Nichole was part of the 500 Startups accelerator in San Francisco, has presented at SXSW, and has sat on numerous fintech and female entrepreneur panels. Prior to founding Cheddar Up, Nichole worked in management consulting for Accenture and KPMG. Nichole currently resides in Denver, Colorado with her husband and two teenage daughters.
What is Cheddar Up all about?
Cheddar Up helps group organizers collect payments and forms online. Every day groups find and use Cheddar Up in new and creative ways to collect payments and information from their communities. Membership fees, HOA dues, tuition, spirit wear, troop dues, group gifts, after-school programs, events, fundraisers and beyond. Organizers can create a page on Cheddar Up for anything in minutes. Our goal is to help groups and organizations save time so they can do more and support and grow their communities.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company.
Certainly. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Cheddar Up. Prior to founding Cheddar Up, I worked in management consulting at Accenture and KPMG. I was inspired to create Cheddar Up when I was consulting for a fintech company. You can say that I had fintech on my brain already. At that time, I had two young daughters and I found myself writing a lot of checks and filling out a lot of paper forms. It was tedious, inefficient and it seemed like there should be a way to automate those tasks. After realizing there wasn’t an easy-to-use tool that was flexible and robust enough for the job, I knew there was a gap in the market. It’s this gap – and pretty sincere frustration – that prompted me on the journey of creating Cheddar Up.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
It’s hard to believe, but Cheddar Up has existed for over 10 years. Thus, we’ve had a lot of opportunities to learn about our target market and experiment with growth strategies. We do best when we keep our ear to the ground and respond to user feedback and requests. We’ve been doing this since the beginning and it continues to pay off. It’s what led us to recently launch a brand-new sign up form feature, which our users love. While we already had normal forms and waivers, our new sign-up feature makes Cheddar Up extremely versatile for group organizers.
Our decision to launch ticketing (a feature coming out in the near future) was also a result of user feedback. Users not only help us know what new features to build, but also what needs to be improved or enhanced. And as it relates to growth, we’re lucky in that our platform has a great deal of built-in virality. For example, if a PTA leader brings Cheddar Up to their school, that’s hundreds of parents that now know about our platform and can (and often do) bring it to their sports teams, booster clubs or troops. We also have a savvy and sophisticated growth team that is constantly innovating our growth strategies based on data and feedback loops.
How have the pandemic and Lockdown affected you or your new business?
The height of the pandemic was not amazing for us – we had a lot of events canceled and refunds initiated, and in general, groups were simply not gathering. Because of that, we initially braced for impact. And while we didn’t see the normal growth we would have seen in 2020, ultimately, the pandemic catapulted our business and the mindsets of our target demographic, which has resulted in phenomenal growth. In fact, we estimate that the pandemic fast-forwarded online payments among group organizers by at least five years.
During the pandemic, while we didn’t see nearly the volume of activity that we normally saw, we had a lot of new users who suddenly had no choice other than to move their basics online. Once the pandemic cleared up, we saw the benefit of all those new and existing users picking back up again, which in turn fueled our viral flywheel.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
There are a few things that make Cheddar Up unique from other platforms – the first is that we’re focused on groups. While we are indeed a payment-focused company, we’re not simply getting money from point A to point B. Cheddar Up is a great deal of beautiful, intuitive software that enables payments – and that’s done by lots and lots of features that are built for groups. We also enable groups to collect both payments and information in tandem – and this is an important, nuanced task, very specific to groups. We help group organizers stand up online payment pages in a matter of minutes that can look and feel exactly how they need them to. Organizers can create a one-stop shop for a combination of things—be it fundraising, selling an item, event tickets, etc. Groups have varying needs and their volunteers have varying tech fluencies, thus building something that is easy, customizable, and flexible is critical.
Cheddar Up is also focused on enabling friction-free payments for communities. People can pay right from their web browser without having to download an app or create an account. And our ability to track both payments and information dynamically for the group organizer is critical, as is the ability to hand off a Cheddar Up account—easily—from one volunteer to the next as roles change.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
There have been a lot of learnings along the way, but there are a few lessons learned, aka mistakes, that have fallen out of the last decade. The first is that there’s no right way to do things. In the early years of Cheddar Up, I was immersed in the start up scene – both in Denver as well as San Francisco. Anyone in that environment can attest to the fomo and comparison that exists as it relates to raising capital, networking, and growing your business. One thing I learned, somewhat the hard way, is that there’s no right way to do things. Each business is unique, which makes trusting your gut that much more important. I also learned to fire fast. If a teammate’s performance seems to be going off the rails, or if there’s a clear communication or transparency issue, it’s better to find a replacement – fast.
Last, I learned that it’s important to make no assumptions, especially in the early days of a new company. Assuming more money will be easy to acquire, or the economy will be stable – none of that works. So balancing the need to grow and take risks, while also being conservative enough to plan for the unexpected is a delicate balance and an extreme challenge.
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
The most successful form of marketing for Cheddar Up has been word of mouth, and cultivating that word of mouth in addition to SEO, email marketing and pay-per-click. While we’d love it if we had a one-trick marketing strategy, when it comes to acquiring our target market, it requires an integrated approach rooted in data and iteration.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Two come to mind. One is from the earlier days when I was tasked with raising capital. Having never done this before, it was completely outside of my wheelhouse and comfort zone for a myriad of reasons. It required sheer brute force and persistence to get it done. I sometimes joke that I have PTSD from the effort. But looking back on it, it was a big time of growth for me personally. We were ultimately successful raising capital, but it took a great deal of mentor-seeking, practice and will to get it done.
Secondly, our shift from making decisions based on gut to making decisions based on data was one that took us longer than we would have liked – in part, because we had become extremely good at operating from our gut. It wasn’t until we found the right talent that we made the switch. And while our “gut” will always play a part in our business, there is a great deal of peace of mind and confidence that comes with being so data focused.
If you started your business again, what things would you do differently?
I would relinquish certain tasks that I held on my plate for far too long and I would bring on more expertise – even if part-time – a little bit earlier. There are a lot of things that we have done at Cheddar Up that are part of why we have been so successful. And being scrappy is one of them, so I wouldn’t undo that. But I think there were times when we had earlier inflection and proof points and we could have brought on more talent and expertise a bit earlier. However, now being in a position of fast growth, I’ve learned from this and I’m quick to bring new talent to our team when needs arise.
Can you recommend one book, one podcast, and one online course for entrepreneurs?
I’m a big fan of Brene Brown’s “Dare to Lead”, but then again, we’re a pretty authentic, empathetic team at Cheddar Up. Her practices of having hard conversations and being curious and empathetic resonate with how I live my life and how I desire to lead.
What helps you stay driven and motivated to keep going in your business?
I feel very lucky to be able to do what I do – to be able to guide a team and continue to innovate an amazing product that hundreds of thousands of people rely upon. I feel lucky to love what I do and to serve the users who we serve. The group organizers using Cheddar Up are heroes within their communities, working to bring people together and make things better. Our ability to help them do this is a privilege. Each day we have a new challenge to solve or feature to build. It’s pretty inspiring.
What is your definition of success?
In life, my definition of success is happiness. In business, my definition of success is achieving growth while staying in integrity, and ultimately achieving a meaningful outcome for all stakeholders in the business and making a difference in the lives of our users.
