How Whippy CEO David Daneshgar grew to $4M revenue and 600 customers in 2024.

as David in 2008 9 10 11 was the height of actually his poker career won the World Poker in 2008 which was great used that money said okay I'm going go to business school sharp went up here then launched a company called uh Bloom nation in 2012 stayed there until about 2020 you know they raised a bunch of money there were three founders you know they got really diluted the three founders owned about caught under 50% of the company when he left and ultimately launched whippy AI which is now helping folks like doctor's offices right do better marketing and also use uh use the for for operational experience he's currently got about 600 customers paying an average 600 bucks a month but clear Enterprise motion built-in area already has customers that are paying more than 100,000 bucks per year he's hoping to expand in that Market and drive Revenue growth this year in 2024 of over 75% they're at about 4 million run rate today up from 2 million a year ago and about a million before that so good growth all bootstrapped which we love hey folks if we haven't met yet my name is Nathan lka I launched and sold my first software company back in 2015 and went on to write a book about it which you guys made a Wall Street Journal bestseller purchasing over 30,000 copies thank you so much for that after the book I launched this show and went went on to create founder path.com I raised a large fund to do non-dilutive deals with B2B software Founders so far we've invested in over 400 software Founders totaling $150 million here in 2024 we're doing three to four New Deals per week so if you're looking for Capital and don't want to give up Equity go sign up at founder path.com for free to get your offer all right let's jump into the interview hey folks my guest today is David danar is a former WSOP champ co-founder of Bloom n Bloom nation and today co-founder of whippy David you ready to take us to the top yeah yeah go for well I did not know you played poker what year did you play yeah I was a professional poker player between 2005 and 2008 and then in 2006 I was ranked top five in 2008 I won the the World Series of Poker so it was super fun couple so how much is how much is skill and how much is luck I think it's like classic like everything else the shortterm it's a lot more skill dominated it's hard to see the variance but sorry shortterm is more skill-based luck based sorry today's been a long day um but longterm yeah skill-based like to see a poker player win Millions over a long term over a certain long number of hands is definitely very skill-based and um was a fun fun time actually that's great all right so let's get into whippy uh maybe tell us what the product does maybe Through The Eyes of a customer that uses you today yeah yeah so it's being used basically uh a lot of businesses are looking for a Automation and I call it functional they're using like crms that are not the most stvy so they have B of these databases and they can't run automations so we'll integrate and be able to run automations text automations voice automations uh email automations workflow automations basically um but we started with text recently added email now adding voice voice AI an example could be like a staffing company where an applicant comes on indeed and they need to qualify them and ask questions but a person can get them right away and before they apply to 100 other staffing companies the text email and voice will come in to collect all that information and add it to their database so that would be a good example of how how whippy works and so are you are you working specifically with like I see body Prof Chiropractic are these physical these are physical office dentists things like that yeah most of them at least in the early end are you would think of it as like lawyers dentists pharmacies insurance companies you're correct like the old old school World meets New School Technology and and what got you into this I mean did you in between poker hands run a legal practice or a dentist shop or something no no but I think the one experience I had is after poker and before this we started a company this one we bootstrapped but the last one we raised about 20 million from Andre and Spark Ronnie con a bunch of of people and it was helping local florists so I think there when I looked at how they communicate and how they can be more efficient retention stuff like that I noticed just things were really manual um and we our first foray was in text messaging because just that's where you get to leads quicker that's where you get action quicker that was like the lowest hanging fruit interesting and I guess close out the bloom Nation story before we dive deeper into whippy so how much did you raise there and what what was the end story there what happened yeah so we raised about 20 million I actually parted I was a co-founder in cro and I think just decided after six or seven years wanted toh start something else so I left both my co-founders are there I think they raised around after I left um so yeah it's still there still intact I believe it's about a 100 people employees when I last checked but I think the one thing for me is I wanted to build something a little bit differently bootstrapped there was two things I want to do not raise money so I could decide my own fate and how I wanted to do stuff um and second secondly the addressable Market size I think we were really specialized into florists and I think lumination as I was leaving or after was trying to get other Industries but that was difficult I think here we started with something super broad like communication and then we narrowly defined the use case which was challenging in itself to start but I think allows it to scale scale easier without like hitting hitting roofs or hitting a small small industry um but yeah the company's still there and uh excited to see them continue to grow I'm not asking you to throw the VC investors under the bus but I do think that Founders you know VC money is I think the best marketed money in the world and for everyone that raises there's a thousand that are profitable happily bootstrapping at 5 million run rate you have the the foresight or you know just the site in general that basically have both you've seen both worlds what advice would you give to someone today looking at raising vers not I think the best thing I've ever heard someone says optionality so it's like if you don't raise you have the option you can do it on your terms you don't look needy so I compareed a lot to going to a bar and talk you don't need to meet anyone and generally things come to you um like right now I think I've had three or four emails in the last day just on family offices private like just looking and when you don't need it they want you more I think that's that's part of it I think this the second thing is just I think you think you make poor decisions I don't want to throw them on the bus as you said but when someone um starts a company if someone gives them five million bucks I think they make poor decisions if the only way to hire people is through customers paying you on contracts that means you have to actually build something that people want you have to get a credit card and they have to pay you so it's much more difficult to start but I think once you get to like the as you said like the three to five million AR and you scale you build product better you make better decisions you're much more coupable like even on sales and acquisition you look at Payback and you look like things that matter you look at your p&l a lot it's it's you actually act like someone like your dad how he ran a business right but actually with New Age Technology and if you can do the both and scale and get past that Chasm I think it's just lights off I mean you can do whatever you want well yeah and forgive me for putting you on the spot and doing this analysis live I'm G make some sweeping generalizations generalizations here so the audience can learn with us I mean three co-founders right let's ass you know 2010 you founded it let's assume just for the sake of argument you split 33 each which maybe you didn't but let's say you did and then you do the the seed series a maybe a preed I mean preed is 20% delution series a I can tell you yeah I can tell you about happens is you freaking burn out and that's what happened to you six I want to go start something new yeah the three of us when I left I mean cumulatively own less than half um and I think what it was is I can just tell you kind of the path without getting too much details like the first thing we did is as we were raising money we went to mucker Labs which is like I don't know if you've heard of mucker but it's similar to like yeah it's a local incubator that's done well actually like they had service tight in honey Etc come out of there so they've done quite well the owners there but like there was a small percentage we gave for base Capital um you know just just the incubator world then we ra raised a c seed series a and I don't know if I call it A+ or B um as well so you're right like at the end of the day just the process is daunting like at that point the co has to spend a crazy amount of time I think just the hardest part is actually decision-making like if you want to change your path like if you don't grow you don't get money like I I hate to say it but it's like someone who has the carrot so to speak and I just I think at this point we can scale how we want to and we don't have to worry about like oh if we don't have certain growth metrics or stuff like that oh no we can't get Capital if we don't have Capital we can't sustain our burn rate so I think um but that was our path it was like you said getting chopped chopped chopped I think there are paths for that I think what I'm just learning of us to give advice to your audience is we don't realize that we can do it without it when our backs are against the wall like if you're break if you're creating like hardcore like AI Hardware or I don't know certain stuff you you may need it but I think for the majority of software companies if they ask act a little Frugal and a little bit of difficulty in the beginning they're better off long term um and then there's things that I learned even now that I'm like shooting myself for like by bootstrapping the company I'm sure you know about like things like the 83 b elction or where you can get a certain amount back like by bootstrapping it you or you can get 10x what is that that price when you do go to to like a C Corp so there are things I'm learning that are other advantages for being a bootstrap company I think just most importantly you don't have to waste that time and they come to you so that's kind of been my realization it's harder to start how much of those initial the the mucker labs then the SE how much of that was you guys I mean you maybe you look back and say you know it would have taken us longer but we could have done it bootstrap but a lot of in my opinion raising money the reason especially first-time Founders do it is it's actually just it makes makes them feel better it makes them feel like they're doing the right thing if they can convince people to give them money and then they sometimes stick in a bad idea for too much time yes so I think the main reason we did it the Cardinal S there is none of the three founders were technical which by the way like 10 years ago when I came out of the University of Chicago and we started out of there and like rubub or Etsy were just starting and you're building a Marketplace business there weren't as many no code and API tools as there are now so it's harder to start so you had agencies you had so I think there was maybe some reason for that but I think were starting that now there's probably no reason with all the tools also my co-founder now at this company um was someone that worked at my last company and is highly technical so the skills are completely different so I think that was part of the reason why we we raised the capital and I think you're right like the last thing and I can see smiling but the last thing is I think it was just more like that's what we were told or that's what we saw was sexy and I think now again I don't want to throw them into the bus because there are definit reasons why but I think there are better reasons to try to figure that out with contracts with p&l like doing it that way because I think when you finally unlock something real and you really need to scale on capitals at your disposal you're giving less solution everything is really clear um in terms of how you're going to scale that money really is the necessary Fuel and it might not be at that point either yeah I mean all disclosure I mean you're not buying a 100 wind turbines you have to go install to start helping Flores run their companies better uh so it's it's not like it's Capital intensive I don't think so unless I don't know about Capital intensive at the start um but look Lessons Learned makes a lot of sense I guess what year did you leave was it 2016 no no no I was so my kind of path I'll just give you my path in a nutshell it was like 2008 one the World Series of Poker 2010 to 12 I went to the University of Chicago for my MBA and then we started it in 2013 I left in right right during covid so I've been there by the way the company's been there company's actually been there for now for like 10 years um so um but I left uh in 2020 2019 2020 and started this kind of in the midst of covid with some again and when we started it wasn't exactly this idea myself and my partner were testing different ideas but I think this really took hold at the end of 2020 2021 that that makes a lot of sense okay so um going back into hello whippi today describe to me how you guys charge right so what's the average customer pay you per month or per year yeah yeah sure so even though my email is that the company is now kind gone to whiy so it's whippy the domain is wii. I would say right now we're moving more up market so average Mr for a customer probably is around 600 bucks a month so seven seven anywhere between five and 10 K I'd call that SMB but we are starting to have customers that are are are north of six figures AR so basically moving up more Enterprise up Market what's to land that deal so some you do have customers paying more than $100,000 per year because you got them paying for what API cost what's the utility based not API cost but what happens is when so the SMB it's like why should use our platform over another texting or automation platform for them it's developer cost so like if they were to build off twio they would have to build a communication folio build certain features certain sets and like then it becomes like can your and the developers even you know a team of 10 and a big company couldn't really build this and get this s so if they have a specific pain Pon that's where I think our our our API comes in and then we also have happened to be integrated to all the different what's called aggregators so like we can increase deliverability to a certain degree so when you put those two together in your large company it's just not worth it's better to buy and build I would say that makes sense and you started onboarding customers in what year when you how did you get your first customer yeah so the actual whe first customers and I don't know if they were the best used case for people but it was just my old customer so Flor for some of the first and you look at retention retention wasn't great and I think the reason we realized is they were using it just for marketing we saw High retention in people that use this for operations like if the platform came down we'd get messages within one minute like I can't communicate with customers so I think that started to happen about two two years ago two and a half years ago and the hardest part was just finding the use case it was depressing like I I come from the sales background so making cold calls walking into people but eventually I think it was a couple cold emails and sequences getting databases sending out sequences looking at open rates getting on demos and then honestly just customizing the software a little bit for that use case that that helped a lot and then when you do that but how do you even know which data you had to do something to say I want to go get a database of lawyers or a database of what I I I looked at competitors got it so rather than the simple thing is rather than go to actual um Industries I went to use case I went to someone who uses this software i' pulled that from like builtwith or just different databases but put them into I think we use Apollo now but I think then it was like Outreach so Apollo sequences um look at open rates adjust subject lines to see you know like the the hustle hustle type stuff um tell me what you searched and built with to get a result of all the sites that that JavaScript was it was installed on just give me the name come on no I think that the thing is for anyone here like built with's a great tool and and other tools like Apollo there is all see there's also right now like a lot of intent based tools right like you could look up intent for Ms communication but for a for for filed with I mean I just go find a competitor's name I'd find a competitor I think yeah so I'll give you one example because I think two years ago um example would be zip whip zip whip was about by twio and went out of business so there was a feast for all the customers and like we just started this so I was able to pull list from zip Whip and then feed that to someone on upwork to like get deeper into the data because I didn't have Apollo back then and then just like blast them and up you gave that list to upwork to get emails attached to all the customers yeah I think now obviously Apollo and stuff but I I had them do the hardcore way I went on upwork and had them even fill out their web forms right oh got it got it I see I anything anything no no everything I would text their their landline number go on their web forms um put them in email sequences and the upward person would use their own tactics I would say but now I think they're probably title were you targeting was it like the cro well at the point in time because they were smaller remember I started started with like 5K it wasn't difficult like if you're going after a lawyer whatever if you're going after a staffing person it was operations you're going have to loow managing partner so so I i' kind of yeah I mean but those most of those companies weren't like they were like 10 to 50 um 10 50 employees in the beginning yeah yeah yeah that makes sense okay and then fast forward to today how many customers are you working with I think we're getting close to a thousand uh um so probably right now neighborhood 6 to 700 so you can do the math on the AR but somewhere between three to four um about 2x what it was a year ago that's where you're at 600 customers at 600 bucks a month is what seven point what does that put you at 3.6 yeah somewhere between three and four right now would be our ours as well um bootstrap right I mean this is you're you're in such more of a powerful position today than you were two years in at illumination I think they're both different experiences because I think it's i' I've gone and spoke on on both of them probably was a better place for me to learn um there on someone else's dime to be honest with you so that was also not a bad you know time as well yeah I mean You' have to do the math but I think you make a good point like um if you if you were to do a venture back company and you raise and you have you know multiple Founders and multiple like your cap table is this big right yeah you're like at the end when these companies exit you don't realize but I think the math thing is really a good one it's like they ex like five or 10% of let's even say like a $300 million exit like that's not actually huge wor as if you're getting a 6070 million exit which seems like that's much more attainable or 100 with private equity and all these buyers and you have 50% that's a lot more so you're a poker player would you agree with the statement that if you want to in the least risk way possible build $5 million of personal Network you should bootstrap I think so yeah I mean I have my own net wealth calculator that I put now ever since I started this like I put my stocks I put this just so I understand I think so and I think you want you were pretty wealthy early I mean I think in ' 08 that prize was 625k and in I think 2011 what did you earn like 2.4 million on poker back how old were you then 2011 yeah so I think I was basically when I was at the height of Poker I was in my 20s and I and I did have a seven figure uh Bank account uh from poker so that was really helpful as say as long as you don't go you know spending on the yachts and all the crazy stuff great yeah yeah but I think to answer your question like I think the answer is yes I think the harder part is you shouldn't fool yourself so I think the hardest part that's why the bootstrap idea I like because it's the truth quick right it's truth serum the mistake I think most people make and I was telling this to someone yesterday is it's like how do you price and find product Market fit if you go to someone and you ask hey would you use this 99% of people are not going to offend you they're going to say yes I mean who's not going to tell you that at a dinner if they're your friends or something but then if you go to someone you're like okay I built this at the end of the okay cool like here's the stripe link it's 6,000 do you want to put in your credit card like the Troth really hurts or or you see that and so I think with a bootstrap thing the other thing is you just don't have a lot of time to waste you have to get to the truth quick because your cash flow your cash statement is the ultimate Sayer of if you exist or not nailed it talk to me as we wrap up here quickly about growth if you're at about 4 million Runway today today where were or sorry Revenue today where were you about a year ago um it was about half so we we we doubled in the last 12 months um I think kind of on our our road map is probably I would say think about 70 to 75% this year and maybe 50 the next but you know within the next 24 months definitely we want to be at 10 million in a food strapped as well so so I guess you broke the one million run rate in 2022 uh yeah that makes sense real quick uh how do you Drive 75% people say you can't bootstrap and also Drive crazy good growth what are you how are you going to drive 75% growth raising capit I think that's that's a good question because in December i' present this to comp I think it's just different channels so here's my first question for most people listening but it's like what what is the channel that people use let's just call for B2B sales we started with outbound which is different from a lot of people like we started because of alumination again a blessing AB alumination like cold calling cold emailing like s true SDR and I was the AE I think now we're starting to see inbound but I think with our API like Partnerships trade shows outside sales like inbound like those channels that most people rely on the beginning are things that we haven't even tapped yet so I think Partnerships will be a big thing because as we go to different systems and we have mutual customers and they're missing stuff in their system right if you're accounting CRM and you don't have this this and this you can now use our API you push people to us um there could be like an affiliate web share there um that and white labeling stuff like that I think would be a big part of the growth of the next 24 months all right good stuff here let's wrap up David with the famous 5 number one your favorite book my favorite book I think the the I mean the I'll just say the shoe dog one Nike is actually a solid book number two is there a CEO you're following or studying I think I'm always better for worse looking at what Elon says I think it's pretty amazing what he's saying number three what's your favorite online tool for building whippy besides your own my favorite online tool um well yesterday for example I hav't done an inbound so yesterday we just started looking at SC Rush which was pretty insightful yep yep we uh Shameless plug we'll have Eugene the president of semr speaking at sass open on March 28th if you guys want to meet him in person um number four uh David how many hours of sleep to get every night when we started this like four to five but I think it's more six to seven all right and what's your situation married single kids single my parents are worried that's amazing Vision be wor that's great and how old are you 40 40 last question something you wish you knew back when you were 20 years old I think my biggest thing that I think about a lot is probably just spending more time learning about real ested and I think recently more more recently spending more and more time with my family with your family parents my brother he just had a niece um I just had a niece sorry he has a daughter so just in general with the people that are more important to you I would say makes sense guys David in 2008 n 10 11 was the height of actually his poker career won the World Poker in 2008 which was great used that money said okay I'm g go to business school sharp went up here then launched a company called uh Bloom nation in 2012 stayed there until about 2020 you know they raised a bunch of money there were three founders you know they got really diluted the three founders owned about caught under 50% of the company when he left and ultimately launched whippy AI which is now helping folks like doctor's offices right do better marketing and also use uh use the platform for operational experience he's currently got about 600 customers paying on average 600 bucks a month but clear Enterprise motion built-in area already has customers that are paying more than 100,000 bucks per year he's hoping to expand in that Market and drive Revenue growth this year in 2024 of over 75% they're at about 4 million run rate today up from 2 million a year ago and about a million before that so good growth all bootstrapped which we love check it out at whippy.it