Podium

Alumni Q&A

How did your company get started? (i.e., How did the founders meet? How did you come up with the idea? How did you decide to be a founder?)

Co-founder grew up working at his father's tire shop, a business doing $3.5M in gross revenue, and later ran an iPad accessory business on Shopify that generated $80K while in college. Noticing that his small e-commerce venture had better software than his father's more complex tire shop, he and Dennis founded Podium to build software for brick-and-mortar local businesses. Despite advice to focus on enterprise customers, they stayed focused on small businesses.

How did you decide to apply to Y Combinator? What was your experience applying, going through the batch, and fundraising at demo day?

The founders started Podium in 2014 but did not apply to YC until the Winter 2016 batch, initially doubting their SMB reviews product was large enough. During the batch they grew from $1M to $3.5M ARR, and their partners advised against a considered pivot. They had enough capital to delay fundraising, later raising a Series A in early 2017 at a $100M valuation from investors met at demo day.