How Whippy CEO David Daneshgar grew Whippy 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...