Case study: Thrive Market

The other inflexion point, which also relates to people. So I’d say one big theme is, like people are everything. But the other inflexion point for us was um, on the fundraising front, when we finally decided to say, you know screw it. Like if these um wealthy, you know male, um you know urbanite VCs are not willing to fund us you know all these guys are like that don’t do their own grocery shopping and live within a block of a Whole Foods if they do, um you know and fly over the Midwest but never actually spend time in the middle of the country. Like if they don’t get it, let’s talk to people that do.

And we ended up actually raising our first $8.5 million or so by going to health and wellness influencers and other entrepreneurs in the space. And what we found is that they, the conversations were totally different. It wasn’t about how do how do you risk this or even like what the specifics of the business model. It was focused on those things that were the why behind us starting the business. It was about the mission, and it is about who is the customer. And what was really interesting is these influencers understood intuitively who that customer was because it was the same person that was in their audience.

So whether they were like, podcast hosts or bloggers or YouTube stars or Instagramers, they just felt at a gut level the same thing that we did, which is this is a problem and Thrive could be the solution. And how do I help? And so we um you know raised in $10,000 to $25,000 increments. Um, it was a total cat-herding exercise but one that brought– –to get to $8 million. It was crazy. Um but, we have, we have 500 plus people in our cap table. Amazing. A whole nother story, but um, it was the best thing that ever happened to us.

Because it both capitalised the business, but more importantly, it brought people in who were truly aligned with the mission and the vision and who were value values aligned, but they were also value add. So people like that could tell the story, and that actually added the second, the next inflexion point, which was, when we launched, all we had to do was let those folks tell their audiences about Thrive. And you know, we turned out to be right that people in middle-class Middle America want to get healthy. And that you know, it’s not, it’s no longer something that is just like wealthy urbanites in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Um it is people from all walks of life, all geographies.

Um you know, our average household income on the site today is about $85,000. So it’s you know, really is middle-class families. Um, and even like from an age standpoint, like yes, it’s a millennial phenomenon in some ways. But we have as many um members that are over the age of 50, as under the age of 30. So.