In IVP's Hyper-Growth Podcast series, IVP investors talk with CEOs from the fastest growing companies and discuss the ins and outs of company building in the hyper-growth environment.
In our third episode, IVP's Tom Loverro sat down with Eric Rea, Co-Founder and CEO of Podium, and Adam Edmunds, President of Podium. Recently named one of Forbes' Next Billion-Dollar Startups and Fast Company's World's Most Innovative Companies, Podium is a next-generation customer interaction platform for local businesses.
Headquartered in Lehi, Utah, Podium started by selling to single location small businesses -dentists, doctors, car dealerships - eventually catering to larger, multi-location corporations and franchises. Podium has grown rapidly, from approximately $1 million in run-rate revenue in 2015 to $60 million in 2018. IVP led Podium's $60 million Series B financing in June 2018.
The idea for Podium came to Eric after witnessing his father run his own local tire company. The pain points of managing a small business, from filling the sales funnel to maintaining online reviews, revealed themselves as clear opportunities to Eric, who views himself as a natural entrepreneur. Eric set out to create a solution built on the thesis that modern small businesses depend on their online reviews and presence to grow organically and profitably.
Local commerce isn't going away, yet small businesses don't have the time or resources to keep technology updated. With that revelation, Eric created a set of online tools for small businesses to communicate with their customers by gathering customer feedback and reviews. Together, Eric and his team at Podium realized they were facing a massive market opportunity spread out in pockets of small business owners across the country all trying to solve for the issue of customer discovery and communication.
Today, Podium helps small businesses interact with their customers pre-sale (webchat, mobile text chat, appointments, etc.) and post-sale (reviews and feedback). Podium integrates with over 100 CRMs and scales to enterprises with thousands of locations.
To reach Podium's goals to win over investors and customers alike, Adam and Eric discovered a few valuable lessons along the way. Here are a few key takeaways:
Product Market Fit Should be Obvious That first zero to one is hard.
Podium figured out early on what customers needed and where there were gaps in the market from existing solutions. The reason people buy and stay with Podium is because we help them get customers, and then we help keep customers, Eric recounted noting. Podium's customers saw an immediate increase in sales. That qualitative feedback gave the Podium team confidence it was on the right track. Podium's product market fit also demonstrated itself quantitatively-the company kept zooming past its financial projections. There was little room for doubt Podium's product had excellent fit with its customers and market, even quite early on.
Use Engagement Data to Guide Product Expansions Just launch it and then you see what happens.
Podium didn't launch any major new functionality until they were in market for nearly three years. They wanted to go deep before they went broad. When they finally did feel ready to make a major product expansion, they tested and iterated quickly in search of fresh product market fit. They rolled out the new features to a few users at a time and looked for the signs of deep product market fit and engagement before committing to rolling those features out globally.
Selling Software to Small Businesses Can Be Profitable Our experience proves it.
Conventional wisdom in tech startups is that you shouldn't sell software to small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) because they are difficult and expensive to reach and churn quickly. Podium has found that through a combination of focusing on a specific target profile of SMBs, namely larger revenue accounts in specific verticals, and selling a product with a measurable ROI that can be communicated over the phone and through a quick demo, SMBs can be a great customer set.
The company's numbers are still heading up and to the right, and perhaps more importantly, Podium continues to deliver value to its customers thanks in part to Eric and Adam's leadership.
The full transcript is below.
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TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Welcome to IVP's Hyper-Growth Podcast. In this series, we talk with CEOs of the fastest-growing companies and discuss the ins-and-outs of company building in the hyper-growth environment. If you like what you hear, consider following us on SoundCloud or subscribing to our podcast on iTunes. Thanks, and enjoy the show.
Tom: Welcome everyone. I'm Tom Loverro, an investor at IVP. On today's podcast, we are joined by Eric Ray, Co-founder and CEO of Podium, and Adam Edmonds, President of Podium. Podium is a next-generation customer communications platform for local businesses. Podium was recently named one of Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups and was just named one of Fast Companies' World's Most Innovative Companies. Podium grew from a million in run rate revenue in 2015 to 60 million in 2018. And for those of you keeping score at home, it's pretty fast, especially for a company that burned very little capital to get there. The company is headquartered in Lehi, Utah, and has over 400 employees and IVP had the privilege of leading Podium's Series B in June of 2018. Eric is a graduate of BYU and former software engineer at the International Atomic Energy Agency. He co-founded Podium in 2014. Entered Y Combinator in January 2016, raised a Series A in 2017 and he hasn't looked back since. Adam is a graduate of BYU as well and was formerly the founder and CEO of
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In IVP's Hyper-Growth Podcast series, IVP investors talk with CEOs from the fastest growing companies and discuss the ins and outs of company building in the hyper-growth environment.
