I’m a 23 year old first-gen Ukrainian-American from Chicago, and I’ve been building businesses since I was a kid. My dad ran his own businesses, and I wanted to do the same. In 5th grade, I was selling Lifesavers out of my locker and charging $1/hour to blow up balloons.By 8th grade, I got hooked on Madden, the Xbox game. I got so competitive I was playing for money and ranked among the top Madden players in the world. That led me to start my first real business—a matchmaking service connecting top players for money games.In college, I played Division 1 Football at Butler (barely D1, but still counts). While there, I started multiple businesses:• A LinkedIn for sports pros with an ex-NFL player.• A "Dirty Shirley" drink company.• An Etsy store selling products with tweets on them (the only one still going)I even created my own class at Butler, which became a formal program at my college to help other students start a business instead of taking "mandatory classes".After graduating, I took a job at J.P. Morgan, working with high-growth tech companies. But I wasn’t done building. I worked part-time with Jesse Pujji, helping double his LinkedIn following, and later became Chief of Staff for Shaan Puri from My First Million.Even with all that, I wanted to build something of my own. After interning with two YC startup growth teams, I had a major realization: your customers are your best marketing tool.But there was still a huge problem: most companies either hope advocacy happens on its own or manually ask customers to advocate for them. It’s random, clunky, and not scalable. Without a platform, businesses miss out on the power of their happiest customers.That’s why I started Zealot.The easiest way for enterprise B2B companies to utilize their customers as marketing tools.When I’m not building Zealot, I’m probably studying preventative healthcare, playing tennis, traveling with my fiancé, or trying out new restaurants.Email me anytime at sam.farber@joinzealot.com if you want to exchange business ideas or talk about customer advocacy.