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Welcome to Future Sharks Sasha!

Tell us a little about your upbringing: 

I am an entrepreneur in the digital and social world, dedicated to the life of building value and growing together. I was 17 years old when I founded my first social company, Marin Soccer Academy, a soccer organization that aimed at providing soccer coaching and camps to give back to the youth in the Marin County area. Now I am currently involved as the founder and CEO of Excelsis Labs, a digital agency that is focused in app development and digital value creation. The goal is to show the necessary need of applications and digital content for companies and personal branding. 

City where I’m from: San Francisco, California

Hobbies: I play Division 1 soccer, like to go to the beach, and like to explore new places

Favorite quote: “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”

Instagram: @sashaboussina

Background

Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?

When I was 17 I saw that youth soccer from where I was from was missing the point of why we played soccer. It was fun. It was our passion and it was what we loved to do. However that concept was lost when parents and coaches started to not teach the love of the game to these kids so I saw that I could make a difference and help. I started Marin Soccer Academy and received great reception from our first summer operating as we had over 60 campers in just 3 weeks. From there it grew and this summer it will be our third year. After that I saw that by having a good heart and idea you can make anything happen. Thats where I say the co-creative journey comes in. In my ideas entrepreneurship is rarely a solo ride. It works best when you have the goal of having value created for both sides and when you truly follow that vision. I began to understand that the core values of anything I was working on would have to fall under this co-creative idea.  

Who are your biggest influences? Was there a defining moment in your life?

My biggest influences have been the people I surround myself with. This can be cliche but I owe the success of anything in the future to the team that works on it with me. I said above how it isn’t a solo journey but a collective one and I find that is true. The team works so hard to achieve anything they put their mind to and that is how I would want my “legacy” to be. I want it to show that we rose together. I mean this fully as well. This isn’t for myself or for my parents or to prove something to someone. My idea of entrepreneurship is for everyone to bring up everyone and to provide opportunity for everyone. I know I didn’t answer the question that great but my biggest influences in my life are the people who I surround myself with. From my core team of Esen, Ryan, and Matt to my soccer team to my girlfriend Alana to even my family. I do it for them and they do it for me. They are the driving force and the biggest influences in my life.

Now

What are you working on? How did you come up with this idea?

I am currently working on a digital tech agency called Excelsis Labs that prides itself in its ability to work quickly while also having the highest quality of work. At Excelsis we are focused on providing our unique process on digital content and value creation in any environment. We break it down into three stages: Design, Development, and Data (Launch). We start our sprint method by identifying design and functionality in the app during our product design sprint. Coupled with that is our lightning fast development so you can have a working product in weeks. We provide routine 48 hour check ins during each development sprint as well so at the end both sides are ecstatic with the final product. We break up the whole project into sprints based on functions and after each sprint the customer will be able to have a fully working product of what functions were developed in that week. After we provide services for in depth data analytics to help make more informed decisions for the company. We guarantee all of our apps to be completed in under 60 days as well as our website design in under 1 month. A very trusted friend of mine and partner Dominic Whyte is my CTO and him and I realized that there is a huge issue in the digital tech agency industry with lack of transparency and people providing services and not living up to what they say they will deliver. We put together a team of driven people from Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Harvard, and BU to work on these projects and thus Excelsis Labs was born.

Who are your customers? How do you find them?

My customers are anyone with an idea or a need. We are working with investment companies, A list celebrities, non-profits, and others. We also do value creation so we have weekly meetings to think tank ideas that we then pitch to companies to show how they can implement these ideas into their company. We have a group of interns currently working on client acquisition and its going outstanding and I couldn’t be more proud of them.

Did you experience failure along the way? What did you learn from it?

I have experienced failure along the way. Recently we did a pitch for a non-profit and both sides were super excited about it but we couldn’t come to a conclusion and so the deal fell through but our team learned so much from it. We learned about what it means to be hungry for more as after that meeting we were sitting down in the living room of my apartment and one of the team members said, “now what?” There was some silence before everyone pulled out their notebooks and laptops and began cranking on new projects. We didn’t sleep until 5am that night. That’s why my team is special and are apart of this co-creative journey.

Value-add questions

Give the readers the best entrepreneurship advice you have.

Don’t quit. Simple. You hear this all the time from your parents and people you have in your life, but chances are if you are reading this we may have never met before and honestly I don’t mean much to you yet. But hear it from me. Don’t quit. You cannot. You will not. It will ache and tear at your soul and heart when you fail and things don’t go your way but you will prevail and if you believe in your idea you will make it happen. With my soccer camp I had no idea what to do and how to market. I decided to do something about it. I spent hours and hours collecting business cards from parents and once I had around 500 I put them into an excel spreadsheet and emailed them. You cannot quit because it isn’t easy. It will be insanely hard and you will want to quit but don’t. Eventually you will reach the point where you are addicted to making things work when you thought they were impossible before. Once you hit that point then you will never want to quit again.

Teach us something about {internet marketing, social media ads, fundraising, sales funnels or another topic} Can you recommend any favorite websites to learn that topic?

Hubspot’s inbound certification is huge for marketing. It takes about 7 hours but it is so worth it. Other than that it is trial and error. Figure out what works for you as people can give advice but it doesn’t mean it will work necessary for you.

What should an entrepreneur focus on?

Striving for success for everyone. Don’t be selfish and fall into the entrepreneurial pitfall of not being able to take a step back and see the best path to continue through. Listen to everyone. It doesn’t mean you have to do what they say but it gives you another look on what you are doing.

What are some of your favorite books?

The Gunslinger, Outliers, The Tipping Point

Where do you see yourself and your product in a couple years?

Changing the world around me and providing for my family.

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