Three Time Tech Builder with back against the wall | Behind The Growth with Dev Karaca
Behind The GrowthShow Notes
He started with £30k split between three co-founders, building an app out of a single room where two of them shared a bed and the third slept on the floor. That was Dojo. It didn't work out the way he planned. He did it again anyway.
In Episode 4 of Behind the Growth, host Laura Donadio sits down with Dev Karaca, co-founder of Kyra an AI-native creator marketing company built for ambitious brands and one of the most quietly sharp entrepreneurs in the UK creator economy.
Dev's story is 13 years of spotting the right wave slightly too early, pivoting without panic, and building through moments that would have finished most people. From shutting down a production company overnight when Covid hit, to nearly losing everything and rebuilding from scratch, to quietly developing technology that now watches 3 to 4 million videos a day — he's done all of it with a co-founder, a notepad full of ideas, and a wife who told him early on that he wasn't his best self at work.
He also talks about why obsession is overrated as a badge of honour, why the best decision he ever made lost them money, and why, if he lost everything tomorrow, he'd be quietly fine about it. In this episode:
* Starting Dojo at 22 with £30k, three co-founders, and no idea what was coming * Why not getting the exit they deserved taught him everything about expectations * Spotting Charli D'Amelio and Addison Rae before they blew up — and what they did with that * Renting a jet and a crane for a Converse campaign and losing money on it. Best decision they ever made. * Covid hitting overnight when they'd just signed a massive LA lease and were about to raise * "Jump out of the plane and build your parachute on the way down" — the advice that stuck * Why every great period in the business coincided with him finding balance, not grinding harder * Building AI that watches 4 million videos a day — and why they're keeping it for themselves * "I felt most out of my depth... all the time." On imposter syndrome, 13 years in.
Follow Dev Karaca: Instagram: @devrankaraca LinkedIn: Dev Karaca / devran-karaca Join The Growth Collective: The community for ambitious people thegrowthcollective.com Follow Behind the Growth: @behindthegrowthpod
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She was 26, struck down with a chronic illness, passed between ten GPs with no answers, and told by Western medicine there was nothing they could do.
He started as a professional poker player. Then built a bootstrapped software company in the northeast of England. Then raised £8M before a single product existed and built Skin + Me into a business with over a million customers and well over £60M in revenue.