Founder Spotlight: Huddled

Dhruv’s journey as an entrepreneur began long before he co-founded Huddled. At just 14, Dhruv launched PROTEGO, a project designed to monitor the movements of elderly people in their homes, which won the BHP Billiton Science and Engineering Awards in 2015. His early success even landed him features on ABC's Behind The News and Channel 9's 'Today Show'.

I (Jerry) had first crossed paths with Dhruv in high-school, where our connection rekindled in early 2023 just three weeks after I joined NextGen. Since then, the team at NextGen has had the privilege to watch Dhruv, along with his co-founders Archer and Davin, grow Huddled from a nascent idea to a thriving community platform operating across major Australian universities. To date, Huddled has received pre-seed funding from Antler.

For aspiring founders, Dhruv’s advice is clear: start small, learn continuously, and prioritize your team’s well-being. We’re excited to see where Huddled goes next and are proud to support founders like Dhruv in their journeys.

From right-to-left: Archer Simmonds, Dhruv Verma, and Davin Karunanayake

At NextGen Ventures, our mission is to identify and nurture promising student founders like Dhruv at their earliest stages, before anyone else.

Stay tuned for more inspiring stories from the student startup ecosystem and learn how NextGen Ventures is supporting the next generation of young founders.

Huddled's Story

What's your story? Can you walk us through your journey from studying at RMIT University to becoming the co-founder of Huddled? What inspired you to take this path?

When I was at uni, the biggest thing I saw was that universities invest in a lot of learning system technology and try to establish all of these clubs and societies for their students but students are still left to their own devices. I remember I had to find out on my own that these communities even existed. We had to create our own chats and comms just to get by because nothing was ever provided for us. The scariest part is I learned that this has been going on for years.

The real turning point for me was when I was sat in class and the teacher told us to form our groups. It's quite scary for most students to do this especially when you know no one. I found my group and someone had just self-appointed themselves as the leader and decided to setup a Snapchat groupchat. A snapchat for gods sake....not to even mention disappearing messages but I didn't even have it. Things like this happened every single semester. If you look at this from an international student's perspective this experience is horrible - even worse for them.

I decided it was time for change after this.

Learning to understand customers

What was an unexpected obstacle you've encountered, and how did you overcome it?

I think at the beginning we didn't particularly understand our customers well enough and how to navigate the sales processes. We lost deals or ruined them ourselves because we didn't invest enough time into understanding our customers and the core needs.

We took these learnings, consistently iterated our sales processes, pitches, and continuously put ourselves out there in the education ecosystem. This was a turning point for us - all we did for 6 months was just talk to all the major stakeholders at a university. We did our best to understand everything about their organisation and figured out how to adapt our solution to fit their core needs.

Today we do everything we possibly can to stay up-to-date on customer needs.

First steps

What has been the most memorable moment of your founder journey so far?

Probably when the course coordinator at RMIT agreed to trial a chat app made by three random uni students (us) in their class. Coolest moment for us - our first believer. We learned SO MUCH from that trial and understood what direction our product needed to head into, because in our business we need to ensure our platform meets the needs of students as much as it does the academics and university as whole. We need to manage 3 core stakeholders at the same time.

Values & Principles

What values or principles do you hold dear that you would never compromise on in your business endeavours? How do these values align with the mission of Huddled?

1. Never do things just for money.

   • Sometimes 'quick monetary gains' are not necessarily long-term opportunities. We will always focus on relationships first, because the monetary gain and upside for both parties is much greater that way in the long-run.

2. Team comes first.

   • Huddled would be nothing without the people behind it. We will never do anything that would compromise our team. I am so grateful to work with an incredible team. We want to ensure that all of our employees feel like Huddled is theirs too and that they feel happy working on our product. Without this, most companies will fail to achieve their goals.

3. Mental-health first

   • This kinda leans in on the second one as well, but we won't do anything the compromises our mental health. If it is harmful to us, it is likely a terrible decision. If we want to provide the best service ever and consistently we need to make sure we are operating at 100% too. So this means ensure the team is taken care of, not overworked and breaks are important too!

Advice for Australian Student Founders

For another student founder just embarking on their entrepreneurial journey, what advice would you offer?

1. Even if you're looking to start a b2b company don't not do anything because you feel you won't be taken seriously. If you just get started you'll eventually find that first believer and build up from there.

2. Spend heaps of time learning about your customers before you even think about building anything or selling them anything.

3. Don't get caught up in the fundraising hype and 'how fast startups should grow' train that is all over TechCrunch and other media. Work at your pace.