Velocity Q&A with PumpUp: How do you launch a successful startup?

PumpUp, the first photo-based community for healthy and active living, recently closed a $2.4 million seed financing round led by General Catalyst Partners. The most recent startup to successfully launch from Velocity, PumpUp has more than 1.7 million members on their app and is growing quickly. They have a new office in downtown Toronto and are on a hiring path to expand their highly skilled team.

We caught up with co-founders Phil Jacobson and Garrett Gottlieb, who started the company while he was a computer science student at the University of Waterloo, to share insights into their big news and what’s next for PumpUp.

Tell us how funding of this kind comes about for a startup like PumpUp?

Phil Jacobson: It’s definitely not something that happens overnight. It occurred through building relationships with VCs over the last year, keeping them up-to-date with our progress as we continued to grow PumpUp. Looking specifically at General Catalyst, I initially connected with them in August 2013. I built that relationship over the last year and they ended up leading our round. Building strong, relevant relationships is very important when it comes to raising capital. It’s also key to build relationships with investors who are interested in and have a strong understanding of your space.

What does this seed funding mean to you?

Garrett Gottlieb: To build a world-changing company, you need a world-class team, and we’re excited to have the resources to do just that. We are focusing on really growing our development team. We just brought on an amazing developer, Simon, who is leading our back-end team. Today we’re five, but we are growing to 12, with a focus on hiring iOS, Android, and front-end developers. Now that we are well-funded, we’re excited to bring on the top talent in this country to take our product to the next level.

Why is General Catalyst Partners the right fit for PumpUp?

Phil Jacobson: General Catalyst is the right fit for our business because they have a strong understanding of the consumer tech space, and have a very impressive track record with consumer startups like SnapChat, AirBNB, Warby Parker, etc. They were also very aligned with our strategy to grow PumpUp.

In addition, being part of the GC portfolio gives us access to founders who were in our shoes not so long ago, and investors who have seen companies scale to hundreds of millions of users. With them, we can get advice and insight around the challenges we will face as we grow.

Prior to this seed round, what other sources of funding have you been able to attract for PumpUp?

Phil Jacobson: If we go all the way back, Garrett, in the early days, won a $4,000 E Co-op award through the University of Waterloo in May 2012. We then won $25,000 at Velocity Fund Finals in Fall 2012, and then, in 2013 went into Hyperdrive, a startup seed-accelerator program where we received our first equity-driven funding of $40,000. We then raised a $200K angel round in September 2013, and leveraged that capital to grow our business to a point where we had the opportunity to raise our $2.4M seed round.

How’s the PumpUp community doing today?

Garrett Gottlieb: It’s awesome! It’s such an inspiring and motivating community. Everyone is incredibly supportive of one another, and we are proud of the positive difference we’re making in the lives of millions across the globe. You can find many of our members’ inspiring stories on our Instagram, through our blog, and of course, right on PumpUp. With over 1.7 million members, there are so many incredible stories!

What’s next for PumpUp?

Garrett Gottlieb: The next big thing for us is a boardroom table to fit our new larger team. We are growing quickly and are looking for the best people to join our rocket ship.

Phil Jacobson: It’s important to celebrate milestones, but now it’s time to get back to business. We have an exciting vision for PumpUp and a ton to accomplish. We’re growing an amazing team, taking our product to the next level, and scaling our user base from the 1.7 million we’re at today, to tens of millions more.

We can’t wait to show the world what’s next. Stay tuned, because it’s going to be big!