Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp

Phil Jacobson is Co-Founder At PumpUp, a community for healthy and active living, with over 2m users. Phil leads the operations, finance, marketing, business development and external relations for PumpUp, with great success having accumulated over 220,000 Instagram followers! Prior to PumpUp, Phil held brand management positions at Unilever and PepsiCo. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How Phil started PumpUp? How Phil got 1,500 downloads in day one? What marketing strategies are PumpUp working on to continue growing? What social media strategies Phil recommends founders attempting to build an online presence? How did Phil accumulate the 220,000 instagram followers organically? What has Phil done to create such a heavily engaged user base? Who are Phil's biggest competitors and how does PumpUp aim to stay ahead of them? Where are PumpUp in the fundraising process, what has Phil learnt from the $2m seed round? How can startups determine how much they need to raise? What are PumpUp doing to ensure customer retention rates remain high? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: PumpUP App General Catalyst Partners Favourite Book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz Favourite Blog: MatterMark Daily As always you can follow Harry, Phil, The Twenty Minute VC and PumpUp on Twitter here! A new one recommended by Phil, click here to follow the awesome Instagram pages of Harry and PumpUp!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  You're listening to the 20 Minute VC and a very special episode of Founder's Friday with your host, Harry Stebbings. Now, why is today so special? Because I have the opportunity to interview the incredible Phil Jacobson, founder and president at PumpUp, the incredible app that combines a motivating community with the tools to lead a healthy lifestyle. Over the past two years, the milestones for Phil and PumpUp are just incredible, with over 2 million users, 220,000 Instagram followers, and 2 million in seed funding from the likes of General Catalyst Partners. A huge thank you to previous guest, Niko Bonatsos, for making this interview happen. But before we dive into today's interview,

• 0:43Harry Stebbings?

  I want to wish HiringScreen, the smartest and fastest way to identify candidates for jobs, the best of luck in their journey on the blueprint Hong Kong accelerator. For all startup founders considering accelerators, you can find out what the accelerator life is like by following the amazing Richard Hansen on Medium. However, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you Phil Campbell, founder and president at PumpUp.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 1:18Harry Stebbings?

  Phil, welcome to the 20 Minute VC and this episode of Founder's Friday. It's a great pleasure to have you here. I'd love to start off by hearing a little bit about you and PumpUp and maybe for any of our listeners who don't know what PumpUp is, give us a little bit of background.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me here. I'm excited to share a little bit about the PumpUp story with you here on the 20 Minute VC.

• 1:42Harry Stebbings?

  More than welcome.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Cool. So yeah, PumpUp, it's a positive and supportive community to share your health journey with like-minded people, your challenges and your triumphs, and really both physical and mental. It's a photo-based social network on mobile for both iOS and Android. And Garrett, who's my co-founder, we met in university, we were fraternity brothers in Waterloo, Ontario, up here in Canada.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  And we got started on the project when I was in my last semester of university and we started actually doing something a little bit different. Uh, we built a workout app that built you a custom workout and showed you how to perform the exercises. Uh, we did about eighty thousand downloads on that product and we learnt a ton from it. Um, from talking to our users and looking from our, uh, from the data we had collected after doing about eighty thousand downloads on that first product. We learnt a lot. We learnt that we were solving really the wrong problem. We're solving the problem of providing users direction such as what do I do when I want to work out or when I want to be active when. We recognized that that was a secondary problem from talking to users where the primary problem in health and fitness is.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Is the want. It's it's motivation. It's how do I get and stay motivated? So we started focusing on that as we. Started to evolve our product and and eventually got to launching a health and fitness community and we did that just just uh over a year ago. And ever since we put that out in market, it's just been a completely wild ride. We've grown quite quickly and our community has evolved into a very, very special place. Um, it's really the most positive and supportive social network or community on the internet as far as we're aware. Um, we we don't allow negativity and we really focus on providing a safe and positive experience uh within the pump up community.

• 3:28Harry Stebbings?

  And was it difficult when considering pivoting for you?

• 3:32Speaker 02

  We really look at it as more of an evolution, actually. So. We actually still have tools surrounding our community built into the product. Things like weight tracking or activity tracking or even custom workouts. Um, the product's all about community, but we surround that community with the tools to lead a healthy lifestyle. So. We evolved from a workout play to a broader community and social network to share and achieve your health goals. Um, and we really viewed that as an evolution by following what users wanted.

• 4:03Harry Stebbings?

  And you have enjoyed phenomenal growth. I I read somewhere it's in the millions of users now. How did this ball get rolling, if you know what I mean? Often it's the hardest thing to get the first hundred users. What was your tactics to get the initial user base?

• 4:18Speaker 02

  To get actually our first thousand users, it was something that would not scale at all. I actually went around the the university campuses in our city. There was two of them. Uh, University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Lourdes University. And for a couple of days, I walked around with my laptop before we had launched our product. And I got, I I sat down beside people and asked them, hey, what do you have a second? What do you think about this idea we're working on? If they were into it, I asked them if they would give me their email and put it in like a signup form as I was standing there. And I did a thousand signups that way. So when we launched our product, um, we actually had a thousand people to send it out to immediately. We had a couple of articles and on day one, we we did a few, uh, I think about fifteen hundred uh, downloads on the product, which was pretty cool.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Um, and as we kind of move forward, we really focused on uh, social media and content marketing as a core growth channel. And that has helped a lot and it still is a huge piece of our our marketing mix today that has driven growth. But most importantly, as as we iterated and listened to users, we built something they wanted and they started to talk about it. And share it with their friends, um, and and bring them on. And, you know, if you build something people love, it starts to oscillate. And as the social network grows, just based on network effects, it starts to generally grow faster.

• 5:37Harry Stebbings?

  And you said about content marketing there. Do you think that the blog, do you pump up have a blog, correct?

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we do.

• 5:43Harry Stebbings?

  So do you think the blog converts to downloads well?

• 5:47Speaker 02

  We know it does, and it's more than just the blog. Like, social media has been huge for us as well. We have uh, over three hundred thousand followers across our social media channels, none of which we've purchased. They're all real and organic that we've acquired through great content marketing that appeals to our audience. And on Instagram alone, we have two hundred and twenty five thousand um, followers. And the link in our bio, which travels right to the app store, gets clicked a lot every single day. Um, so so this is absolutely a strong channel for us.

• 6:17Harry Stebbings?

  Would you have any tips for for using Instagram effectively? I mean, two hundred and twenty five thousand followers is a massive following. How did you accumulate such a huge following organically?

• 6:27Speaker 02

  So, I mean, I think the the main piece is who is your audience? You have to understand who your audience is to be able to speak to them effectively and create content that appeals to them. Um, so that's what we really focused on. We learned who was our best users of Pump Up. Who was the the majority of our user base was using it the most often? And we started building on a content strategy that really appealed to them while at the same time bringing our brand to life. Um, and really we're just providing them something that they wanted to have in their feed. And, you know, through captions that we post on our photos, we encourage people to tag their friends and more people discover it. And if it starts to get a lot of likes, it pops up in the discover feed and more people start to discover it.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  So it's all about really understanding who's the audience and then providing them content that they really can't get anywhere else. That really, really appeals to them. Um, and they start to fall in love with the brand and eventually convert into a user.

• 7:21Harry Stebbings?

  And because of this, you have a phenomenally engaged and active user base. How have you managed to create this unity? And you said, obviously, you have no negative comments. How have you created such a united collaborative environment for Pump Up users?

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's a, it's a great question. So we focused heavily on providing a safe, positive and supportive space for our users. Anybody across the world, regardless of shape, size, et cetera, can feel comfortable to share their challenges and celebrate their triumphs when it comes to their health within the Pump Up community. And that's what makes it so special. You know, when it comes to health, physical or mental, it's actually quite a sensitive issue, especially for females, which make up a large percentage of our audience. And what we found is that positive support is a transformative experience. It it can change people's lives. And it, the opposite of that, non-positive support can actually be quite damaging.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  So we've invested a lot behind community management to ensure Pump Up remains this way. A positive, safe and supportive space to share and achieve your health goals. And that has enabled us to have strong engagement. When someone comes in and shares a post, the very first po- post, uh, or photo of their body. That they've never posted online before and they get immensely positive reinforcement support from the community. It becomes a very sticky experience and they start to use it very often because you just can't find this type of positive support when it comes to health, physical or mental, anywhere else really on the internet. And that's really been the core driver to to the engagement we're seeing in our community.

• 9:02Harry Stebbings?

  And how do you control the content? Do you moderate it yourself or do the users moderate it as a group themselves? How does that work?

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have a few different tactics in place. Um. Some of the ones we're happy to speak about are, I mean, we we don't moderate every single post that's shared. There's way too many of them every day for that to be feasible.

• 9:19Harry Stebbings?

  Sure.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Um. The community is strong. If someone posts something inappropriate or someone posts a negative comment on someone's post. The community is so strong at this point that we'll know probably within like thirty to ninety seconds. And it will go straight to our community management team and we'll um we'll we'll take the appropriate actions on that piece of content. Um. So we've never had too large of a problem that's ever lasted more than a couple of minutes.

• 9:44Harry Stebbings?

  And you said obviously that there's far too many for you to moderate.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:49Harry Stebbings?

  Huge, huge growth. How are you going to continue this fantastic growth?

• 9:53Speaker 02

  So, you know, I already touched on the piece of, you know, social media being a really core piece of our growth strategy.

• 9:59Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  We don't, we don't buy ads. Um. We haven't yet. We don't, we don't really believe in that. I can't remember the last time I bought an ad. I mean, sorry, I saw an ad and downloaded an app from an ad that I became an engaged user on. Um. But we're really focusing on building products that our users love and that encourage them to share more about those externally. Um. On their other social channels, inviting their friends and giving them a reason as to why they should bring their friends into the pump up community. Um. And at the same time, um, really just keeping up with what we've been doing so far. Building awesome products that appeal to our users and get them to use it more and they talk about it more and it grows faster. I mean. The the growth rates we're seeing are pretty strong and they have been now for for quite some time.

• 10:44Harry Stebbings?

  And who would you say are your biggest competitors in the space and how do you plan to stay ahead of them?

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, when it comes to our category, most players, especially the successful ones, are utility products. You look at Fitbit or FitnessPal or MapMyFitness or Runkeeper, um, tracking apps or pieces of hardware. When it comes to social and community and the health and fitness space, there really isn't something on mobile doing what we're doing specifically. So we view our competition as where else would you look for positive support around your health? And really, a lot of people are actually doing that on Reddit subreddits, on the Lose It or the Fitness subreddits, or maybe in the bodybuilding forums, or if it comes to uh fitness photo sharing or health photo sharing, a lot of that's happening on Instagram.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  So instead of saying who's the direct competition, it's where are people spending time with taking actions they should be in our product? And those are some of the places that's happening. We're really focused on, you know, building awareness within those channels because it's a great way to actually find the highest quality users as well.

• 11:47Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely. And and with this incredible growth, I presume you've taken external funding?

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have.

• 11:54Harry Stebbings?

  Can you fill us in on this stage? Where are you at in terms of funding and what lessons have you learnt from the process?

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Um, so we raised a two point four million dollar seed round, uh, just under a year ago, led by General Catalyst Partners, uh, Nico from General Catalyst led it. He's a fantastic, uh, fantastic mentor and.

• 12:13Harry Stebbings?

  And Nico was on the show previously.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Oh, awesome, awesome. And um right outward, a strong financial position and we're not actively focused on raising a series A, though we we do get inbound interest here and there. Um, but when it comes to lessons learnt around fundraising, you know, I'm twenty four and it's my first company and I've never done this before. I I learnt a ton raising our seed round uh just under a year ago. And I learnt you need to build the right relationships with the right partners who really get what you're doing well ahead of fundraising. And you know, I'd connected with Nico from General Catalyst um almost a year before we ever did a deal. And we stayed in touch and I kept him up to date on our progress and we had some conversations. And by the time it came to to having them get participate in our company.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  And invest in our company, we'd already had an established relationship. And I think that's a really crucial aspect when it comes to fundraising. Um. Another thing I learned was it's important to raise enough to get to the next milestone for that next round, if that's the path that you're taking. And there's gonna be speed bumps, probably many of them, that's just how the startup world is, it's very up and very down. Um. And you wanna be able to get through them. And and raising the right amount of capital is something I think a lot of people uh don't consider enough.

• 13:28Harry Stebbings?

  And how did you determine how much was the right amount?

• 13:32Speaker 02

  You really have to do your best to build out um how much money you think you're gonna need for about eighteen months. And that should provide you enough time to get to hit the goals you need or the milestones you need to raise the next round. And then assume everything you just did when you build out those projections was um essentially underestimated. And add a decent buffer zone to it. Um. And the way I learned that was talking to other founders. I think that's really, really important. Talk to people who've been in your shoes recently, in the last six, twelve, eighteen months. And it's fresh in their mind, they have a lot of lessons to learn and they're more than often happy to share.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  I have a lot of mentors that have uh been crucial in helping me make some decisions where I really had no idea, cause it was the first time doing it.

• 14:19Harry Stebbings?

  And what was the most challenging or potentially maybe surprising aspect of the fundraising process?

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Um. How long it took to get the first check and how fast the rest of it came together.

• 14:30Harry Stebbings?

  Okay. Is that merely just because of a momen- momentum shift?

• 14:35Speaker 02

  I believe so, but also, you know, our first check came before we were a social network and that was a hard, a hard story to raise on. Um. When we pivoted or evolved into a community for healthy and active living.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  We, we, when you opened the app, you saw the engagement and it changed the conversations completely. I would walk into meetings and people who played with the products were extremely impressed with what they were seeing happening. Um, and that just totally changed the tone of the conversation.

• 15:04Harry Stebbings?

  And finally, how can you ensure that your company doesn't become another maybe dead fitness wear like? Many have said of the majority of Fitbits and gym memberships with very little user retention. What, what are you gonna do to ensure that this doesn't happen to you?

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a great question. We're, we're really focused on this. I think this is the most important thing to focus on in, for anybody playing in the health and fitness space. You know, I kind of touched on it before, but most fitness products are utility driven and utility is useful. But doesn't often focus on the motivational aspect enough, which we believe is the primary problem in the category. And I, I think this drives massive drop off. You know, we take a community driven approach. Community is the core of our business and our product. And that, that focus is focused on motivation. And you know, from the data we have, what we've seen is community is super powerful when it comes to keeping users.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  When we get a user involved in that, in our community, we keep them. So all we're focused on is converting users into becoming those who get involved within the community. Every user who signs up and focusing on building products um for our community. That keeps them engaged, that adds extra things they can do or extra things they can share based on what they're looking for and asking for. And that's kind of what we've done so far, what we plan on doing as we, uh, as we, as we move forward. And I, it should help us maintain the retentions we, we, um, the retention we see with our strong community.

• 16:32Harry Stebbings?

  And if it's okay with you, we're gonna dive into a quickfire round now.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 16:36Harry Stebbings?

  So your favorite book and why?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Um, startup related or not startup related?

• 16:41Harry Stebbings?

  Let's start with startup related and then do a non-startup related.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Sure. Um, The Hard Things About Hard Things was great.

• 16:48Harry Stebbings?

  Okay.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Well, let's, I guess that's kind of cliche. Everyone will probably say it's an awesome book.

• 16:53Harry Stebbings?

  No, no, it's not cliche. We've had twelve.

• 16:57Harry Stebbings?

  So I think I'm driving the majority of their sales.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  That's funny. Um. Yeah, you know, really amazing lessons to be learned and decision making frameworks to deal with. The the hard decisions that come up when you're building a company. It's super real and actionable. And I think that's why so many people like it.

• 17:16Harry Stebbings?

  Fantastic. And then the non startup related.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Uh. Yeah, I love Fight Club, both the book and the movie. Um. It's just super raw. I love how it focuses on the individual's identity. I love how it. portrays the our consumption and brand oriented society and it's just fun. Uh. It's. I've I've seen that movie and read that book numerous times.

• 17:37Harry Stebbings?

  Awesome. And then the most challenging aspect of being a founder.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'd have to say focus. There's so many things to do and so many things that you can do. And what you really need to do is cut through the noise and there's a lot of noise out there. Gotta cut through it all and focus on. What's the most important thing I need to do today to get to tomorrow while at the same time planning ahead?

• 17:59Harry Stebbings?

  How do you how do you do that? Do you have, you know, productivity tips or tricks? Do you have any list to do lists? What's your kind of strategy?

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's challenging. I mean, you have to have a vision and a direction you're going and be focused on on. Goals and do everything you need to do to get there. You know, generally for a business like ours, that's that's growth and engagement focused. So anything that I'm doing that's not focused on growth or engagement is likely not the right spend of time. Um. And I use Evernote uh for all my different to do lists and I run many different uh. Lists and and notes based on uh the the different things that need to get done that help me stay organized.

• 18:39Harry Stebbings?

  And then when I say successful founder, who's the first person that comes to mind for you and why?

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Uh. Elon Musk for sure. I mean, Elon's the man. That guy's gonna get us to Mars. He's solving some massive problems and. Has been just, he's just, he's transforming the planet and I think Elon's awesome.

• 18:58Harry Stebbings?

  Which project of his are you most excited by?

• 19:00Speaker 02

  SpaceX.

• 19:01Harry Stebbings?

  Okay. And then your favorite newsletter or blog?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Uh yeah, I really like the Mattermark newsletter. It's just a good summary uh of a few different links you should read bit from the startup scene every day. It helps me. Uh it does all the work for cutting through the noise of what's shared on a daily basis.

• 19:17Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:19Harry Stebbings?

  And then finally, the next five years for you and Pump Up.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, i- it's all about growth and dominating the health and fitness space. Building something that not only hundreds of millions of people use, but that actually changes and improves their life. Um that's a huge focus for us. We're a very mission-driven company, and I think we have the opportunity to expand the category and have way more people participating in health and fitness than ever before through the distribution that there is with mobile and the power that community holds and that's what we're focused on, building a leading consumer health brand.

• 19:51Harry Stebbings?

  Well, Phil, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been such a pleasure having you and being such a great Founder's Friday guest.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Thank you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I uh really enjoyed it here.

• 20:01Harry Stebbings?

  As always, all the resources for today's incredible show with Phil can be found on the blog at www dot the twenty minute V C dot com. And I would love to hear what you think of the new Founder's Friday episode, so you can email me at harry at the twenty minute V C dot com, all in letters. But before we leave today's episode, head on over to W W W dot hiring screen dot com where the brilliant Richard and Luke have dedicated a special package to all twenty minute V C listeners. There are only two hundred spaces, so get cracking. And if you have any questions about the process or hiring screen in general, you can find Richard on Twitter at hiring screen R H.

• 20:43Harry Stebbings?

  As always, thank you so much for listening and we look forward to seeing you in the next episode.