Dan Uyemura - PushPress

PushPress: From CrossFit Passion to 8-Figure SaaS – with Dan Uyemura [414]

PushPress: From CrossFit Passion to 8-Figure SaaS

Dan Uyemura is the co-founder and CEO of PushPress, a gym management software platform for boutique gym owners.

In 2009, Dan was working as a front-end developer at Myspace while also falling in love with CrossFit as a personal hobby. His passion for fitness led him to open his own gym, despite having no prior experience in the industry.

As a gym owner, Dan quickly realized the existing software options weren't meeting his needs. Believing he could create a better solution, he recruited two friends – a developer and a designer – to help build his own gym management software.

Building the software proved tougher than they expected. As they were working on it, they also talked to other gym owners and realized many shared Dan's frustrations. Seeing the bigger opportunity, they decided to build a product they could sell.

But for years, the founders struggled to gain traction. They faced several technical challenges, often having to scrap entire versions of their software and start over. The slow progress was demoralizing – it took them nearly 5 years to reach $1 million ARR.

Behind the scenes, Dan was battling personal demons. He struggled with drug addiction, which added another layer of complexity to his entrepreneurial journey. These personal challenges threatened to derail both his life and his business.

By 2017, Dan was on the verge of quitting PushPress and returning to just running his gym. In a last-ditch effort, he decided to invest in an accelerator program. This decision proved to be a turning point.

The changes the founders made worked. PushPress doubled revenue to $2 million ARR the following year. They teamed up with another company to add features they needed. But then a competitor bought that company.

Suddenly, the founders were in crisis mode. They had to race against time to build crucial features themselves or risk losing everything they'd worked for.

Today, PushPress generates 8-figures in ARR, serves over 3,500 gym clients, and has grown to a team of 100 people. The company has just $11 million in funding.

In this episode, you'll learn:

  • How Dan and his co-founders persevered through five years of slow growth before reaching their first million in ARR
  • Why PushPress decided to pivot from relying on third-party integrations to building their own full-stack solution
  • How a competitor's acquisition of their partner company forced PushPress to rapidly develop crucial features
  • Why PushPress chose to focus on customer retention and organic growth rather than pursuing aggressive paid acquisition
  • How Dan balances running the business based on instinct with the need for more data-driven decision making as the company scales

I hope you enjoy it.

This episode is brought to you by Leadfeeder – Turn Pageviews Into Pipeline!

Transcript

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[00:00:00] Omer: Dan, welcome to the show.

[00:00:01] Dan: Thank you so much. Excited to be here.

[00:00:03] Omer: My pleasure. Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?

[00:00:08] Dan: It's not a quote so much as it's a, just a mindset and it's basically focused on inputs, not outputs. It's something I really try to drive every aspect of my life around.

[00:00:16] Omer: Cool. So people who aren't familiar with PushPress what does the product do? Who's it for and what's the main problem you are helping to solve?

[00:00:25] Dan: Yeah, so PushPress is basically a gym management software platform for boutique gym owners. So think single owner operator, yoga studios, martial arts studios, CrossFit Studios, stuff like that.

[00:00:36] What we're basically our, our big value prop is trying to give these gym owners who are fanatical about delivering whatever fitness modality that they love and believe in more time and energy to focus on their clients while giving them software and processes to streamline their business.

[00:00:52] Omer: So can you give us a sense of the size of the business?

[00:00:54] Where are you in terms of revenue? Customers size of team?

[00:00:58] Dan: Yep. We're low eight figures, so below 20 million, but above 10 in a RR 3,500 clients and about a hundred people on our team right now.

[00:01:07] Omer: Great. So the business was founded in 2013 so let's kind of travel back in time. What were you doing back then?

[00:01:16] Like what was your background and then how did you come up with the idea for PushPress?

[00:01:21] Dan: Yeah, so right around the time I, we started PushPress. I was working for MySpace as a front end developer. And I also, at that time, maybe about a year before that, had discovered CrossFit for myself personally and.

[00:01:33] What I started to notice was on the work side of things, I was kind of just showing up to get a paycheck, but on my personal side of things, I was looking more and more towards being able to leave at the end of the day so I could make my CrossFit class. This is right around the time CrossFit was starting, like 2007, 2008, or.

[00:01:50] It was early days for CrossFit and what was happening was a lot of gyms were spinning outta my gym. So the gym that I belonged to, I think maybe like five or six gyms spun out of it 'cause people fell in love to and opened gyms. And because I kind of had a technology background, I was helping people who were opening gyms, like set up their website and get lead funnels built and some of these stuff in place for them.

[00:02:09] I was myself just falling in love with the science and of CrossFit and I ended up getting a coaching licensure. And then I ended up opening my own gym too. And that's kind of as I opened the own, my own gym, I realized the software that was out there I wasn't super thrilled with. And I wanted to just build my own for something that I, I knew could be built that would be better.

[00:02:30] Omer: What was the process you went through? Did you. Did you go out there and try to look for software that could help you run the business and, and what did you find at the time?

[00:02:40] Dan: Yeah, so, and again, this was fairly early, like we're talking 2009 ish, 2000 maybe early 2010. First thing I did do was look for software because I, I'm a software guy, so of course I'm gonna look for software and everything I found, I just felt was very disconnected from what.

[00:02:55] I knew could be built just because they were built in probably the early two thousands and between the early two thousands and late two thousands, like the iPhone came out and APIs were, were created. None of these things were available in the early two thousands. So I. What I, I, I just saw that visual disconnect between what was available and what I knew could be built, and I just decided like, I, I don't, I don't want to use that and so I foolishly thought it would be easy to build my own.

[00:03:23] It was actually super hard, but I thought I could build my own first version at my first gym. We just kind of rolled together something on top of Recurly and WordPress and just kind of made it work. But what I, what I didn't realize was I ended up kind of joining a whole bunch of gym ownership support groups and those people in those groups ended up seeing my website and realizing I wasn't using what everyone else is using.

[00:03:44] And people started asking me, and that's when I realized that the demand was there.

[00:03:47] Omer: Around what time wa was that? 20? 2010. 2010. So that was about three years before you actually launched PushPress.

[00:03:54] Dan: Correct? Yeah.

[00:03:56] Omer: Let's take a quick breather here. You know, I've come to realize that some tools can really change the game when it comes to building a business.

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[00:04:24] Head over to leadfeeder.com/try for a free demo and get a free extended premium trial when you let them know that you're a listener of the SaaS podcast. That's leadfeeder.com/try. Alright, let's get back to the show. So you've identified the demand, but like how did you get to the point where you went from.

[00:04:46] Okay. Kind of, you know, kind of duct taping something together with WordPress to saying, I'm gonna go and actually build. A product for other gym owners as well?

[00:05:00] Dan: I mean, to be honest, I'm, I think I'm very entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial minded, so I'm sure I'm, I'm, it's all hazy now, but I'm sure when we opened the gym, we were also thinking the software would be cool to build.

[00:05:10] Then we realized the software wasn't good. I. 'cause we're software people, right? So we're like, probably should build a software. Realized software wasn't good, realized people wanted something different. So it was like helping us build conviction all the way around. And then probably around 2011, we actually sat down with the partners that were forming kind of the, the nucleus of the company that is today.

[00:05:30] And we just started coding. And so it was myself, another coder, and then somebody who was like a ui ux director at a, at a pretty big company kind of formed the founding three. And so we would just go to Starbucks and coffee beans and anywhere we could just sit together and code and we just coded and it took us probably.

[00:05:51] A solid year and a half. I think things, things are way faster to build nowadays. So this might sound crazy to people listening, but you know, a solid year and a half and I'm, I think we threw away two versions of code. 'cause like first version we built on top of WordPress. Again, we did something else that wasn't wrong.

[00:06:04] Then Stripe came up and we're like, oh, we should use Stripe. So it was kind of a process that took quite a long time.

[00:06:10] Omer: So while you were developing that idea and getting ready to, to ship this product there was some. Struggles going on in your personal life, which I think didn't, you know, didn't help.

[00:06:27] Can, can you, can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:06:29] Dan: Yeah. So I'll back it up a little bit. So the catalyst for me actually starting CrossFit was I got a divorce. I. So I got out of a kind of a bad relationship, got a divorce lost my house. I dunno if you remember during those like Obama years where they were doing the whole housing, I forgot what they called it, but they had a program where you could try and restructure your loan 'cause there was predatory lending.

[00:06:46] I was in that boat, lost my house had a lot of negative things happening in my life. Also got laid off from MySpace, opened the gym, which was positive, but just all in all a lot of bad things happening. During that time. I got introduced to drugs and I like literally in a. Six or a nine month timeframe.

[00:07:03] I went from being a fully functional, normal person to a fully functional drug addict, to a non-functional drug addict who kind of lost his head. And it kind of I guess capitulated in me thinking that the mafia was trying to come kill me. I. During that time I had bought some guns, which probably a stupid thing to do in hindsight, but ran out in the middle of the street, shot my guns in the air, called the cops to tell 'em to come save me.

[00:07:25] Cops arrested me, 'cause obviously I'm the crazy one. And then I, it happened to be by a park, so I got like, I. These enhanced charges because drugs were involved near a park and a gun shooting. So it turned into this whole felony offense and it was just like some crazy thing that just like snowballed outta nowhere.

[00:07:40] So yeah, it was nuts. I, and I basically was kind of like confronted with this life choice once I sobered up. 'cause they left me in, in like a holding cell for like four days straight. And I sobered up and I'm like, well, I'm a college educated professional who has a good job. You know, I've never done anything wrong.

[00:07:55] What am I doing? And it was kind of this moment where I had to basically pick a path. Because normal people probably don't think this way, and I've never thought this way, but when I was confronted with this whole felony, I realized like, you can't get a job, you can't get an apartment. You're basically relegated to, I don't know, a life of crime or really low pay for the rest of your life.

[00:08:13] And on top of that, you know, I was sitting on 13 years in a state pen. So I'm talking like places they send killers. And so I'm, you know, having to make this choice of like, do I, do I, if I go to jail, how do I survive? Because I consider myself adapt. I think most entrepreneurs are adaptable. Like, we'll serve we'll, we'll try to excel wherever we are.

[00:08:33] So honest. Literally, in my mind, I'm like. Do I have to shank somebody? How many fights am I gonna have to get in? Like, I'm mentally preparing for this because this is the way I'm going. But then as the judge started to show me leniency, I'm like, okay, I'm 110% gonna fix my life. Never gonna be here again.

[00:08:48] And that was kind of the turning point when I think the judge thankfully gave me leniency and said like, community service, no, felony, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, it was pretty nuts.

[00:08:57] Omer: That that's like. One, one. It's like, it's just crazy that something like that happens con considering kind of what, you know, your background and, and what you were doing maybe, you know, six, 12 months before.

[00:09:11] But also it's like this, this point where you get to where you know, someone's decision or something externally. Could have, you know, sent your, direct your life in a completely different direction.

[00:09:25] Dan: Yeah, yeah. So I'm, I'm very thankful for that. And I think, you know, I think I, I had the ability to recognize that exact fact that like I.

[00:09:33] I could be in a federal penitentiary or I am able to fix my life. And I, once I was given the choice to fix my life, like I went a hundred, a hundred percent that way. I will say, and you know, maybe someone out there is struggling with some type of a, a problem. This, I think, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are obsessive compulsives and obsessive compulsiveness shows up in different ways.

[00:09:52] Drugs, sex, gambling, starting businesses, buying domains, you know, just like we do obsessive compulsive things. And in some ways PushPress saved my life because I was able to go 110% into helping gym owners and building software as opposed to, you know, something a little bit more negative or a lot more negative.

[00:10:09] Omer: Yeah.

[00:10:10] Dan: Yeah.

[00:10:11] Omer: Okay, great. So let's, let's talk about the, you know, getting the product out there. So eventually you guys, after several iterations, you, you got a product that you were ready to ship. Yep. So 2013 comes around, you get it out there. One. What was the reaction? Like, were people running to, you know, sign up and start using the software?

[00:10:35] Did you do any marketing, like as you were working up to the launch? Or was it what some founders experienced, which is like, okay, we finally built the product, but now it's like crickets and it's like, ah, like what do we do now?

[00:10:47] Dan: Yeah, more the latter than the former. I think as all entrepreneurs are building their product, they're so attached to it.

[00:10:51] They think like, oh, we're gonna launch this and we're gonna have a flood of people wanting to use it. It's so obvious that was not the case for us. Like my gym was the first client. We happened to land a second client like the day after I launched my gym just randomly. And that gave me the signal of like, oh, we're good.

[00:11:07] Like this is gonna be great. But then it was like very slow from that point forward. And the way I describe it, it's basically like. You're in a jungle looking for people to have hand-to-hand combat with. It's not even just hand-to-hand combat. It's like you're looking for the fight and it's, they're few and far between and you lose more than you win.

[00:11:24] The other way I kind of describe it is like, you're basically, in the early days of running a business, you're basically like you know, fighting Mike Tyson or pick a pro boxer, but you don't even know how to box yet. And so after a few rounds, maybe you learn how to block a punch and then you're, you're getting better at blocking, and then you're able to throw a punch, but you miss, you know, it's just like this slow progression of actually being able to hang in the ring for a while, but.

[00:11:46] You've gotta take all the punches for all those rounds.

[00:11:49] Omer: So I think it took you about, I think you said you told me like four or five years to get to the first million in a RR. So this wasn't like, you know, kind of like the first, the second customer came and then there was like 10 and 20 and, and before you knew it, you, you, you were a seven figure business and.

[00:12:09] I, I wanna spend a little bit of time talking about how you actually grew that business and got to that first million. But just to set some context here, it was about a four or five year journey, and, and you got to a point where I think after about three or four years where I. You were ready to quit, PushPress, and go back to running your gym, right?

[00:12:27] Dan: Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, every, every business it, it's in gyms and it's in software. You get just enough clients where it's hard to shut down because enough people rely on you, but you're not growing fast enough where you can see a clear line of sight to like, I can pay myself. Anytime soon. We were at that point, probably in 2017, I remember turning to my my co-founders and I said, Hey, I think I'm just gonna focus on the gym because I know I can make this gym get to a point that pays me some money.

[00:12:54] And I was not sure about that, about PushPress. Yeah, I mean, starting any one of these businesses like to get to a point where you have enough. Velocity that you can pay yourself and you start to see a bigger picture than just like getting through the, the month. It's, it's really, really hard work and it requires a lot of conviction.

[00:13:10] So I'm kind of a proponent of like, you should start a business. Either around something that's super trendy that you can like definitely launch and get going fast or around something you're really passionate about because there's gonna be a lot of low moments and you're gonna need that passion and that connection to the customers you serve or whatever, to like get you through some many days in the beginning.

[00:13:28] Omer: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think it's like the number of times I talked to founders who are working on an idea that they don't really seem that passionate about and they're sort of, they may not say it, but I think. The, the bet they're making is, well, it'll be okay because I'll, I'll get this out there and make money and, you know, something good will happen.

[00:13:50] And it's like, yeah, hopefully, you know, that might happen. But are you willing to go through the years that you're gonna have to struggle and wake up and question yourself and, and people are gonna be telling you to quit? Or why the hell you, you still doing this thing and you feel like a failure and all of that stuff.

[00:14:07] So I, I wanna, let's kind of unpack that. Those, those first four or five years from that second customer, like how long did it take? To get those first 10 customers. And, and how did you go about getting them?

[00:14:22] Dan: We probably got to 10 customers in the first few months, you know, maybe, let's call it quarter or two quarters.

[00:14:28] The beginning was really just founder led everything, sales, marketing, word of mouth, everything. So personally, myself and another co-founder, we landed ourselves in these like Facebook groups where gym owners were, and we've. You know, since day one we've adopted this help first mindset. So somebody would ask a question, Hey, I'm thinking about like building a landing page.

[00:14:50] What technology should I use? And I would just tell 'em I didn't. We've had landing pages built into PushPress, but I would tell 'em like, Hey, if you want to build landing pages, you use like, I know one of these landing page systems and you'd set it up doing this way and you'd want to get a Stripe account so you can get payments and blah, blah, blah.

[00:15:04] Or you can use PushPress. Like I'd always throw in the like easy button at the end, but I wouldn't sell from the front. I'd sell from the back. So it felt more help first, and that was kind of my, and then our initial motion of getting the word out because. I think we genuinely were seen as help first.

[00:15:19] Like, and it wasn't just anything technology that PushPress could solve. It was anything. Anything. Like, I wanna build a founder's plan at my gym. How should I do it? Here's how we did it. You know? And I would say how I did it at my gym. So just establishing that credibility in the community as a fellow gym owner, but somebody who can also help in technological ways.

[00:15:35] Omer: And then that led to people, some of those people checking out, PushPress, signing up. What was the product actually like? Like were you finding that? Once you know the time that you guys had spent those two or three years building the product, how much of it did you feel you got right, that that customers were actually able to run their business with it and weren't coming back and saying, you know, I can't do this or that, or they were churning, like, how well did that first version do?

[00:16:09] Dan: I think for, let me lemme start by saying this gym management software, probably like a lot of other vertical management, sys vertical softwares. It's it's a vertical software, but it's very horizontal, meaning like part of our original release, we had to build waivers, which was basically DocuSign, but we had to build a really light version as a feature.

[00:16:28] We had to build calendaring and scheduling, which was basically acuity. But we had to, you know, it's like we had to build a lot of stuff, very lightweight across the whole domain of running a gym. So I think honestly. It landed pretty well, and we did pretty well with our first launch. But as it's, it's race because as gym owners become better business owners, they are demanding more functionality.

[00:16:50] As business trends change. When we first launched, there wasn't a concept of workout tracking. Like people actually, like I. Tracking their workouts and seeing their progress and looking at charts like the customers of gyms that hit the scene a couple hours, a couple years after we launched. So we had to build that.

[00:17:04] Like they're just constant never end. Like to this day I still feel like we have 20 years of product to build. This is never ending. What most of the customers coming through this Facebook group, we'll call it word of mouth. Yeah. So originally it was basically me and my other co-founder helping first, and then one of the, one of the tenants that we had early on was.

[00:17:24] And it was kind of spelled out as clearly as customer support requests are answered within five minutes. So a, a frustration of mine as a gym owner was, anytime I use any software system, I'm like, Hey, how do you do this thing? And I had a customer standing next to me who wanted to join the gym and they didn't get back to me for three days.

[00:17:39] 'cause that was like the common response time. I'm like, well. Thanks. It not only, not only did it not help me in the moment, but when they did get back to me, I'm like, well, thanks a lot because three days ago this would've helped me, but I don't know why you're answer even answering me now. So we kind of had this motto of customer support in five minutes.

[00:17:55] And what we found was, there's actually actually two, two interesting findings. The customer support one's one. So in the customer support one, we found that people were so unaccustomed to anyone getting back to them in any kind of real time without it being a robot or a telephone tree that they were like, whoa, whoa, what?

[00:18:10] You're actually helping me or talking to me? And they actually began to lean on us and like, Hey, I can't figure out how to make my TV work. Like stuff that wasn't even PushPress. And we would help 'em to this date, one of our most highly SEOed and trafficked. Help docs is how to restart your fire stick your Amazon fire stick, which has nothing to do with PushPress, but it gets like a hundred thousand hits a month or something.

[00:18:29] So that turned into word of mouth. The other crazy thing is what we found was when we release bugs, if they wrote in and we're like, and this was very nimble, like I would get a, I would talk to somebody and I would just fix it, right? Because I could do that. And it was just this crazy things to be like, yo, your system's broke.

[00:18:44] And I'm like, tell me about it. And then I'm like, okay, I just pushed the fix. Does it work? And they're like, oh my God, it works. Like that's amazing. Like we actually got more props for fixing bugs than just releasing good code. So like later on it became a joke of like, oh, I did that on purpose so I could fix it for people.

[00:18:56] But that, those two things turned into a lot of word of mouth out in the, in the population because they're like, dude, they listen to you. They're there to help you. They fix their bugs, you know? And it turned into this word of mouth cycle that I think really helped us early on.

[00:19:08] Omer: Is that something that.

[00:19:11] Like, do you think that was because of your experiences as a gym owner? Like if, if you hadn't had that experience, would do you think maybe you guys would've just said, well, let's just do what everybody else does?

[00:19:21] Dan: Yes. Yes, exactly. I think most of our competition at the time were not built by gym owners, so it was easy for us to say like, well, I don't know why they do that.

[00:19:29] That doesn't make any sense because as a gym owner, I would expect this. And that gave us that early wedge. And I think that wedge was playable from like 2010 to 2015. Now it's like you see coffee shop software being written by coffee shop people like this is. This, this kind of a thing happened across every vertical in the last like 10 years.

[00:19:47] But yeah, early on it was like people who were so disconnected from the space that they had no idea how to even interact with their own customers. Right.

[00:19:54] Omer: What, what's the downside of doing what you did? Like, you know, I, you, if you over-optimized for, for support or, you know, being super responsive, you Yeah.

[00:20:05] May you need to, maybe you need to hire more people. Right. But it's like, I just wonder like why more? Startups don't, you know, focus on, on.

[00:20:15] Dan: So I'll, I'll answer the first question. I have a DD so I might read the second question, but the two questions were, what are the downsides and why don't more people do that?

[00:20:22] So the downside, I'll tell you explicitly is our company is founded around empathy, customer empathy, and everything has a double-edged sword. So like in the later years it turned into like. Oh my God, this one, client's writing in, they have this problem with this one abstract, unique thing that only they do.

[00:20:37] And it'll be like, oh, everyone, stop what you're doing and let's fix that one thing. And we had to change our culture to be like, well, does it really impact like a hundred people or just one? We still have remnants of that today where it's like the smallest problem, that's the every pain that's felt by a customer once it comes into our, my team is like magnified 'cause they're like, oh.

[00:20:55] A customer's feeling pain, we all have to just stop and talk about it, you know, which I'd rather, I'd rather err on that side of things than not, but it's not really scalable and it also doesn't help you grow in the right directions when you're trying to do focus later on, which is where we are now. Why don't other people do it?

[00:21:11] I remember that's gives me props. Other people don't do it. I think because they're not connected to the industry. So they don't really understand, you know, it's like if I was a, you know, a, a Stanford Business School graduate and I come out and I'm like, oh, the biggest opportunities in logistics, shipping software.

[00:21:28] I'm just gonna build logistics, shipping software. But I don't really know except for the interviews I do and stuff. Like I don't really, I. Feel the pain that the customer feels inherently, like in my gut, you know, and to this day, it's like, I think we can make decisions on a gut call that are more, more than 50%, right?

[00:21:44] I would even say like 70%. Right? Just because we've sat in the seat of the gym owner. Whereas if I didn't, it would be like, you're, you're very blind to a lot of things and you just don't know all of the nuance and details of what a gym owner's thinking, feeling, seeing, et cetera.

[00:21:59] Omer: Yeah. I think in many ways if you are a, you're an early stage founder.

[00:22:03] Yeah. It's hard. Yeah. It's gonna take up more of your time. But just going in, in fact, I would say, when I think about a, a lot of the founders who've been on this show and have done, have been know. You know, done well in terms of building, you know, multiple seven figure eight figure business. A lot of times you go back to those early days and, and a lot of them were going the extra mile to help customers, and it wasn't, you know, some.

[00:22:33] Some, I dunno, some kind of strategy at the time, it was just like, they just wanted to help. And the more they did that, the more people talk about you, the more people are like, 'cause like, like we, we were, we were talking earlier, the bar is so, so low.

[00:22:49] Dan: Yeah. It's, it's like you shock people when you actually are there to help them.

[00:22:52] I, I would get on sales calls and say like, oh, we're not the right software for you because we don't do X, Y, and Z yet. And people would be like, what? What? Like, you're, you're telling me the truth. This is insane. Like. I actually want to use you, and I'm like, not yet. You're gonna have to wait. And then I would get like five referrals from them.

[00:23:07] You know? It's just like, it's crazy to me because the equation for business is so simple. It's like I. I'll, I'll, I'll defer to like a couple things. Like what is the, what is the definition of money? Money is the transfer of value in a deferred state. Like, I give you some value, you give me value back, but it's like something I can, I can hold onto and use later, right?

[00:23:26] That's what money is. That do you, how do you earn money? You give value to customers. Like, just, it's just that simple. And if you, the closer you get to the customer, the more you understand the customer, the more value you can focus on providing them. This is the input versus output thing. The money comes, the money's the output, right?

[00:23:42] But most people are just focused on the money, so they're, they're like not worrying about how do you actually deploy business strategy to earn the right to have money.

[00:23:50] Omer: That's a good way to think about it. Okay. So those first few years you're getting customers, most of them coming through word of mouth, but you're still.

[00:24:03] Seemingly, you know, far away from that first million you, we talked about, you get to this point where you're saying to your co-founders, look, I might just go and run the gym business. What happened after that? Like one, why did you continue with PushPress and then did something happen that accelerated your, you hitting the seven figure mark or,

[00:24:28] Dan: super good question.

[00:24:29] So I don't know where or why this happened because I've never been a fan of school. But sometime around that time I realized that there was so much stuff we didn't know that we had to get help from people who have been there. Now I'm on an ever ending quest, like I'm always trying to position myself around people who have been way farther than me so I can get just nuggets of like, what I know is around that next corner today.

[00:24:51] So it's not, you know, so you're not like scratching for it in the dark, you know?

[00:24:55] Omer: Yeah. It's like that expression, like, you know, if you wanna be good at tennis, like I guess play someone who's gonna kick your s all the time. Right. It's like that's how you're gonna get good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. So you, you get to the, the seven figure mark, the bus, you're starting to get traction.

[00:25:11] You've got a little bit more focus on this business. Let, let's talk about the, the partnerships. What point did they come into play where you, you started looking at the competition and saying. Like there's competitors now we, we have a bunch of gaps in terms of what we need to, to deliver, and then you, you start looking at potential partnerships.

[00:25:34] Dan: Yeah, so what happened was, and I I mentioned this earlier, is as we were going through our journey the business acumen of the gyms was widening. So they went from just wanting software to bill people, to also wanting software to do workout publishing and tracking. And you know, like that's kind of like that value delivery to the clients.

[00:25:54] And also there's another segment of, of basically like. Website, lead nurturing, customer lifecycle management. So in a gym specifically, it's like, oh, you've been at the gym for nine, nine months. I wanna send an automation to you. That's like recognizing the fact you've been here for nine months or maybe the first 30 days.

[00:26:08] It's like, here's the rules, here's the etiquette, here's some recipes. Right? Like there's a, a cadence, right, to joining a gym and, and going through your lifecycle with the gym. Those two big. Trends popped up after we had launched, but there was no way we were gonna be able to build either of those 'cause they were so hefty.

[00:26:24] The workout publishing and tracks the interesting story because we acquired a company. I have a little backstory to tell about, this is a fun one. There was another company that was competing with us and I used to, and he used to ask questions all the time on Facebook in the, in like a SaaS operators group.

[00:26:37] And I used to answer all his questions, like, how do you do this? How do you do this? And they were, he was literally trying to compete with us. Did you, did you know that when you were answering all these questions? Yep. Yep. And he is like, he, he, and he messaged me, he's like, you know, I'm trying to compete with you.

[00:26:48] Why are you answering all my questions? And I'm like, 'cause what you're trying to do is so hard. You don't realize how hard what you're trying to do is I could tell you everything you need to know and you're probably gonna fail. You know, like it's all about execution and it's, it's, it's really hard.

[00:27:00] Right? And so anyways, because of that, I built a little bit of relationship with him and then the time he ended up partnering with someone who was close with us and for business advice and I told that person like, Hey, we're looking to buy a workout tracking thing. And he's like, what if we got. He's like this company, his name is Mike.

[00:27:15] Mike doesn't really want to compete with you anymore. He realizes it is hard. He just wants to focus on workout tracking. What if you guys buy him? Like, what if, and because I had created that relationship by helping him and working with him early, I. Like the trust was already there and the deal was much easier to put together.

[00:27:30] So it's just, that was a really interesting story, right. Of how that came together.

[00:27:33] Omer: Are you, are you one of those people who believes in karma? Like just going out and doing like good things and, and coming back?

[00:27:39] Dan: Yeah. Like I, I firm firmly believe like, and it goes to the input output and like how you earn money.

[00:27:43] It's like if you just do the right things. And, and a lot of this comes from my relationship with drugs and my recovery process. It's like. When I was going through recovery I was very cynical. I'm like, I, I don't know how anyone can get to this point just by doing the right thing every day. This is stupid.

[00:27:56] 'cause we would go to speaker meetings and they'd be like, oh, just do the right thing every day. And like in 10 years, see where your life goes and dah, dah, dah. I'll, I'll tell you this story real quick. And like, there was a guy on the stage, he was worth 10 million or something and he was talking about it.

[00:28:07] And his basic message was just wake up every day, do the right thing, and one day you'll be worth $10 million. And I saw, like I went to the bathroom after he went in the urinal next to me and I'm like, it's not true. Tell me it's not true. Like it can't be true. And he's like, it absolutely is. And he was so positive about it.

[00:28:20] It just stuck with me that I do believe that like I. As long as you know where you want to go and you're doing the right things and treating people right, and being a, a good human being about it, like the universe comes back to you. And I think I experienced the opposite boomerang. Like I was doing the wrong things.

[00:28:35] I was, you know, hanging out with the wrong people, blah, blah, blah. And like the universe got me, I, I do believe that a hundred percent. Yeah.

[00:28:41] Omer: And then you, you ended up raising a series A, which is about $11 million.

[00:28:47] Dan: We raised a seed first. Which I, I have another interesting story to tell about that one for founders.

[00:28:53] So the, the guy who, who, or the company that, that funded our seed, I had pitched him. Five times. First time, you know, was like not interested. Second time was kind of a not interested. Third time was like, Hey, when you get the 10,000 MRR come back, you, you've, you've probably reached a escape velocity.

[00:29:08] We'll talk then. Right when we hit 10,000, I called him. He's like when you hit a hundred thousand MRR come back. You've probably hit a, he, he gave me the same line, like, I think he forgot, right? Like when he hit a hundred grand, come back. You've probably hit Escape Velocity came back, we hit a hundred grand, and he is like, nah, not interested.

[00:29:24] And then when he found out from other people that we were raising kind of a friends and family around, and some people he knew were invested in and bought into it then, then he called and he's like, okay, like let's have some serious talks now. But it was that perseverance of like, I, I don't know how many times I pitched him and got told no, you know, and only for that relationship to have been built so that when the time was right, he came back and, and funded the seed.

[00:29:46] Omer: So. What was it overall? It was like eight years of like trying to raise funding.

[00:29:52] Dan: Yeah. Yeah. So the first, I mean, all three of our co-founders have been CEO EO at some point. All three of us have pitched all three of us have failed. Now that I've gone through the whole process, I realize like I. There is a, a very clear way of pitching that works which we did not possess early on.

[00:30:08] So in the beginning I was, I had a big chip on my shoulder thinking that VCs were stupid and this, this, and this. But I realize more it's now, it was more us. Like, we didn't know how to approach the pitch. We didn't come off with the right, we didn't have the right information. We didn't have the right deck.

[00:30:20] We didn't, we weren't excited enough. You know, like some, some VCs were like, we don't sense the excitement in you. And I'm like, we are so excited. What do you mean? But it's just like how you deliver the actual pitch matters. So yeah, eight years. Probably a good six of 'em. Literally laughed outta rooms like, yeah, not interested.

[00:30:35] Don't waste our time again. You know, that kind of stuff. It was pretty brutal in the beginning.

[00:30:39] Omer: And then when you raised your series A, what was what? What was the valuation? I.

[00:30:42] Dan: I think it was 62 post, so it would've been like 52 51 pre.

[00:30:48] Omer: So, so you beat the, the 10 million valuation the guy told you you'd get to, right?

[00:30:55] Dan: Yeah. Yes, we did. And that's, that's the other thing, like I always say to founders is like, as I went through this journey and as I've talked to other founders. VCs can never understand the tam. In fact, like they thought Airbnb's TAM was like one 10th of what it is today. You know, like nobody understands the TAM until you've built the business and you start to understand what the customers want.

[00:31:14] Like I already know and I, and I don't have a way to convince any VC at this point, but I already know our TAM is gonna be 10 times bigger than anyone's even thinking right now because I know how to approach these customers in a way that provides so much value to them. It's gonna unlock. Again, think of values.

[00:31:29] The money is reciprocation of value. Like when I provide this much value, the money will come.

[00:31:33] Omer: Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about kind of the growth and data, and obviously with running a SaaS business, there's a whole bunch of metrics and data that's super important. And when you and I were chatting, you told me, you know, we are still figuring a lot of that stuff out.

[00:31:52] We still don't really feel on top of the data piece and in many ways. A lot of the reasons we've been able to grow and get to where we are in terms of an eight figure business. It's been driven by gut more than by data. So just can you, can you just tell me about that? Like how, how did that happen and, and.

[00:32:11] And like what are some of the things that you've been, you've been dealing with?

[00:32:14] Dan: Yeah. I mean a lot of this is symptomatic of as you're, if you're a first time founder and you're growing, it's really hard to attract people who have really been there, done that. Like really seasoned people who know exactly where you need to get to, to hit certain levels of the business.

[00:32:28] So you're always kind of like. Adding people to the company as you can who are the right fit at that time. But very rarely are they like, oh yeah, I've been a series CCFO at, at seed. Right? Just, it just is really hard to do. So if you're in that boat, it's, it's totally normal, but you, you're just blind, like you don't know.

[00:32:46] By the time we become a series B, series C company, we are gonna need to know not only like our customer acquisition costs, but. By channel and by ICP type, like we're gonna have to be able to slice this data four different ways and be able to look at charts, understand how a plan, you know, attaches to the actuals and week over week, not month over month, day over day.

[00:33:06] Like, there's just so many ways that the data pivots as you grow in order to make good decisions and have I guess a proactive approach to looking at data that until you get there, you don't know. And we didn't know until we got there. So it is something we're, we're kind of backfilling now, and now we are at the revenue levels and we have the cash in the bank to hire the people who have had the previous experience.

[00:33:29] But it's it's a constant battle you're gonna have growing a business where like you don't, and this is why I say I try to talk to people who have seen around the corner for me, because you will hit many times where you're just like, I didn't even see, I didn't even realize I needed to know this thing at this point until I was right here at this moment.

[00:33:45] And you, you need as much forewarning as you can get as you're like going down the path. Data was one of those.

[00:33:52] Omer: I, I think when it comes to, to data, yeah. I see. Founders who maybe rely on gut maybe more than they say. But I also see a lot of, a lot of founders who kind of over optimize. Like they try to almost want to track everything, which probably isn't a good use of their time either.

[00:34:15] So if you give, you know, going back in time and, and giving yourself advice in those, in those early days in terms of like, okay, you don't know what you don't know, I. But you've gotta do something, but you don't wanna spend, you know, all your time just trying to track a whole bunch of metrics that are kind of ultimately meaningless.

[00:34:36] How do you find the balance?

[00:34:38] Dan: Yeah, that's super good observation and a good question. I think like the differences when you're kind of going from zero through series A and into series A. This has to transition probably around there. You can do a lot of things just with output metrics because like you're pivoting so fast, like you are able to run through walls.

[00:34:59] You don't have like, you know, teams of 30 engineers working on something for next year right now. Like, you know, like you're working in the now. But as you get bigger, you start working in quarters and years a little bit more. Like I'm already, you know, like I'm thinking about 2026 while I'm trying to get my team right now to.

[00:35:16] Plan the roadmap for 2025 and I have to have 2026 laid out so they can have 2025 directionally going in the direction of 2026. So you see how like you start to expand your time once you do that, like you've gotta be able to think a little bit more in terms of data, in terms, you know, like where we need to go what type of growth trajectories we need, stuff like that.

[00:35:35] So in the beginning though, it, I think it would be overkill to track too much. And I think in the beginning you can probably get away with your standard output metrics, which would be, you know, your cac, your a RR, your NRR a RR growth, you know, just some of the basic stuff that, that track how you run your business.

[00:35:51] But as you become more and more sophisticated, I think you need, you have to start thinking about inputs because it's really, the inputs give you the levers to drive the, the goals and the plan that you're trying to achieve. And if you, if you're only thinking about the outputs, like you're not really giving your team.

[00:36:06] The ability to you know, change the output, change the direction of the output.

[00:36:10] Omer: Yeah. No, that's good advice. All right. I think we should wrap up. Let's get onto the, the lightning round. I'm gonna ask you seven quick fire questions. Just try to ask them as quickly as you can. You ready? Okay. Alright.

[00:36:25] What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received?

[00:36:28] Dan: I go back to the inputs and outputs thing and, and how that ties back to customer value. I. It is, it is a cornerstone of everything. Yeah.

[00:36:35] Omer: PushPress would you recommend to our audience and why?

[00:36:37] Dan: For me it was Naval, the Naval Almanack, Naval Almanack, or the How to Get Rich Without Being Lucky Podcast series, just like every single chapter or tweet is a gem.

[00:36:48] Omer: What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

[00:36:53] Dan: It's the combination of curiosity and relentlessness.

[00:36:56] Omer: What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

[00:37:00] Dan: Having an EA.

[00:37:01] Omer: What's a new or crazy business idea I'd love to pursue if you had the time.

[00:37:04] Dan: I wanna reinvent wineries.

[00:37:06] Omer: Interesting. Oh what's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

[00:37:10] Dan: I. I was in Glee club and I was a cheerleader in high school.

[00:37:14] Omer: I would never have guessed that. And, and finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

[00:37:19] Dan: Besides my family and my dog, I would say it is actually getting into the gym and lifting some weights.

[00:37:24] Omer: Cool. That's a, that's a, as quite a relevant and kind of a positive thing to do. And shocker, huh? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you get to meet all your customers as well, probably.

[00:37:34] Dan: Yes. That's a cool thing.

[00:37:36] Omer: All right, great. Dan, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a, it's been a pleasure. Just love to, you know, have a chance to share your story and, and kind of the ups and downs of building this business.

[00:37:45] You know, congratulations on, on what you've achieved so far. It, it feels like you guys have still got, you know, some, some big ambitious plans ahead of you and you know, hopefully lots of opportunities that you're gonna, you're gonna tap into. If folks want to check out PushPress, they can go to PushPress.com and if people wanna get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

[00:38:08] I think the easiest way PushPress.com/dan has kind of a launch launch off to all of my, all of my contact ability, I guess, if you will.

[00:38:17] Okay, perfect. We'll include a link to that in the show notes as well. Great. Thanks man. It's been a pleasure and I wish you and the team the, the best of success.

[00:38:25] Dan: Thank you so much. It was super fun. Thanks.

[00:38:27] Omer: My pleasure. Cheers.

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