Sasine takes lessons from job he hated to co-found Nolodex
Adrian Sasine, a Sandy Springs entrepreneur, said he learned an important lesson from a job he hated enough that he sold the company.
Sasine, the co-founder of Nolodex, previously started BrandingHawk, a branding merchandise firm, with a partner who was in charge of selling branded merchandise products.
“When I bought my partner out, like, all of a sudden, I had to sell [the company’s services]. And while the company was successful, and I was able to sell it, I didn’t love it,” Sasine told Rough Draft Atlanta in a phone interview from his Sandy Springs home last month.
He felt underutilized at the company and capable of doing so much more.
As a growth-oriented person, what Sasine took from that job he hated was the philosophy that entrepreneurs must spend a lot of time at their jobs, so they should love what they do.
So Sasine sold BrandingHawk in 2020, right before the COVID pandemic and a little more than eight years after he founded it. As he looked for his next venture, he offered business coaching to clients.
Sasine met Joe Mindak, his business partner, through a LinkedIn message. Mindak was running a networking group for sales and marketing professionals about how to increase business with referrals. Sasine was pleased by the quality of Mindak’s members and their intentionality, with everyone eager to help others.
As he watched the Atlanta start-up eco-system evolve dramatically, Sasine saw that entrepreneur were challenged while raising capital in a business world dominated by remote communications such as Slack and social media groups. When the COVID pandemic struck, it isolated people who were working from home, which further prevented them from developing social and professional bonds.
The lack of community in the business world and the success of Mindak’s networking group led the two to co-found Nolodex in June 2022. The platform is designed to help individuals and organizations make meaningful connections, manage and track referrals, build long-term partnerships, and get compensation for value creation.
Sasine is a one of a few – an Atlanta native who was a Northside Hospital baby. He stayed in the state to study marketing and earned an undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia and a graduate degree at Georgia State University.
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He expected to make more business connections by being an Atlanta native and a graduate from in-state schools. However, Sasine said he felt a lack of community as he ventured out into the business world, which was compounded by the isolation COVID caused.
“If I’m feeling it – then I can only imagine what somebody that you know just moved here two years ago and is working from their house – what they’re feeling?” Sasine said.
He concluded that many people weren’t fully tapped into the power of their networks.
When Sasine and Mindak started their group, they couldn’t find suitable software to manage billing, referral payments, or invoices. Their first homegrown effort was too limited, and they were overwhelmed. That led to creating the Nolodex software, which they tested for a year.
A bigger rollout that started in the first quarter of the year put their sales and marketing focus on communities that do networking, such as co-working spaces, chambers of commerce, business associations, and alumni associations.
“I think that the key differentiator there is that we’re not trying to replace any group. We want to make those groups better,” Sasine said.
Sasine said he could sit all night long working on Nolodex and be happy, as now he enjoys the process and the journey.
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