YouSaid · the spoken record

Phil Jacobson

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26
first
2015-07-10
most recent
2015-07-10
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “Yeah, absolutely. I mean, 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. 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. That's what we're focused on, building a leading consumer health brand.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

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

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Elon Musk for sure. I mean, Elon's the man. That guy's going to 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.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yeah, it's challenging. I mean, you have to have a vision and a direction you're going and be focused on goals and do everything you need to do to get there. Generally for a business like ours, 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. And I use Evernote for all my different to-do lists and I run many different lists and notes based on the different things that need to get done that help me stay organized.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, I mean, I'd have to say focus. There are 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. You've got to 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.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah, I love Fight Club. Both the book and the movie, it's just super raw. I love how it focuses on the individual's identity. I love how it portrays our consumption and brand-oriented society. And it's just fun. I've seen that movie and read that book numerous times.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “That's funny. Yeah, you know, really amazing lessons to be learned and decision making frameworks to deal with 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.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Sure. The hard things about hard things was great. I guess that's kind of cliche. Everyone will probably say it's an awesome book.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, it's a great question. We're really focused on this. I think this is the most important thing to focus on for anybody playing in the health and fitness space. You know, I touched on.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I believe so, but also our first check came before we were a social network, and that was a hard story to raise on. When we pivoted or evolved into community for healthy and active living, when you opened the app, you saw the engagement and it changed the conversations completely. I would walk into meetings and people would have played with the product were extremely impressed with what they were seeing happening. And that just totally changed the tone of the conversation.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “You really have to do your best to build out how much money you think you're going to need for about 18 months. And that should provide you enough time 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 essentially underestimated and add a decent buffer zone to it. And the way I learned that was talking to other founders, I think that's really, really important. Talk to people who have been in your shoes recently in the last six, 12, 18 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. I have a lot of mentors that have been crucial in helping me make some decisions where I really had no idea because it was the first time doing it.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “For that next round, if that's the path that you're taking. And there's going to be speed bumps, probably many of them. That's just how the startup world is. It's very up and very down. And you want to be able to get through them. And raising the right amount of capital is something I think a lot of people don't consider enough. And how did you”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Oh, awesome, awesome. And right now we're in a strong financial position and we're not actively focused on raising a Series A, though we do get inbound interest here and there. But when it comes to lessons learned around fundraising, I'm 24 and it's my first company and I've never done this before. I learned a ton raising our seed round just under a year ago. And I learned you need to build the right relationships with the right partners who really get what you're doing well ahead of fundraising. And I'd connected with Nico from General Catalyst 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 having them participate in our company 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. Another thing I learned was it's important to raise enough to get to the next model.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Absolutely. So we raised $2.4 million seed round just under a year ago led by General Catalyst partners, Nico from General Catalyst Let it. He's a fantastic mentor.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “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 Map MyFitness or Runkeeper 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 fitness photo sharing or health photo sharing, a lot of that's happening on Instagram. So instead of saying who's the direct competition, it's where are people spending time with taking action 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”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “So, you know, I already touched on the piece of social media being a really core piece of our growth strategy. We don't buy ads. We haven't yet. 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. But we're really focusing on building products that our users love and that encourage them to share more about those externally 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. And at the same time, 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 growth rates we're seeing are pretty strong and they have been now for quite some time.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, we have a few different tactics in place. Some of the ones we're happy to speak about are, I mean, we don't moderate every single post that's shared. There's way too many of them every day for that to be feasible. 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 30 to 90 seconds and it will go straight to our community management team and we'll take the appropriate actions on that piece of content. So we've never had too large of a problem that's ever lasted more than a couple minutes.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, I mean, 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”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So, I mean, I think 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. So that's what we really focused on. We learned who was our best users of PumpUp, who was the majority of our user base was using it the most often. And we started building out a content strategy that really appealed to them while at the same time bringing our brand to life. And really we're just providing them something that they wanted to have in their feed. And 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 discovery feed and more people start to discover it. 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. And they start to fall in love with the brand and eventually convert into a user.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “We know it does, and it's more than just the blog. Like, social media has been huge for us as well. We have over 300,000 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 225,000 followers. And the link in our bio, which drives right to the app store, gets clicked a lot every single day. So this is absolutely a strong channel for us.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Still is a huge piece of our marketing mix today that has driven growth, but most importantly, 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 and bring them on. And 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.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Together, actually, our first thousand users, it was something that would not scale at all. I actually went around the university campuses in our city. There was two of them, University of Waterloo and Wilford Laurier University. And for a couple days, I walked around with my laptop before we had launched our product. And I sat down beside people and asked them, hey, 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, we actually had a thousand people to send it out to immediately. We had a couple articles and on day one we did a few, I think about 1,500 downloads on the product, which was pretty cool. And as we kind of move forward, we really focused on social media and content marketing as a core growth channel. And that has helped a lot.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “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. 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. And we really viewed that as an evolution by following what users wanted.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “As what do I do when I want to work out or when I want to be active, when we recognize that that was a secondary problem from talking to users, where the primary problem in health and fitness is the want. 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 eventually got to launching health and fitness community. And we did that just 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. It's really the most positive and supportive social network or community on the internet as far as we're aware. We don't allow negativity and we really focus on providing a safe and positive experience within the pump up community.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “So, yeah, pump up. It's 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 and Garrett, who's my co-founder, we met in university. We were fraternity brothers in Waterloo, Ontario up here in Canada. And we got started on the project when I was in my last semester of university. We started actually doing something a little bit different. We built a workout app that built you a custom workout and showed you how to perform the exercises. We did about 80,000 downloads on that product, and we learned a ton from it. From talking to our users and looking from the data we had collected after doing about 80,000 downloads on that first product, we learned a lot. We learned that we were solving really the wrong problem. We're solving the problem of providing users direction.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me here. I'm excited to share a little bit about the pump-up story with you here on the 20-minute VC.”

    2015-07-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source