Scaling to $10 Million: Humanity.com Founder Ryan Fyfe (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Why did this European investor contact you?

Ryan Fyfe: Kristof had found some of our online reviews. I had a business partner who was really sales-driven. We had a disagreement where I thought things were heading online. I really focused just on organic marketing.

A big part of that back in the day, and even more so now, is if your customers love your product, they’re going to say nice things about you. We were getting a lot of early press that helped in some of the early SaaS review forums. He read some of those reviews. The story resonated with him. He was able to see the opportunity.

Sramana Mitra: How much money did he put into the company?

Ryan Fyfe: Our first seed round was small. The entire round was $150,000. The company has since raised a total of $12 million.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go step by step. You raised seed round for $150,000, and then what happens? What’s next in terms of milestones?

Ryan Fyfe: Most companies start out with a very small team. At that point, it was just me. That $150,000 gave me some breathing room. It was a very exciting time for me. I’d never hired anyone in my life before. That’s when I hired my first developer, my first marketing person, and my first customer support team.

We went from a team of one to a team of four or five over a six-month period. We were able to continue scaling out and proving that there was a business. The next milestone was, we had gone from a few thousand in recurring revenues to about $30,000 in recurring revenues. We were looking to raise the next round. The interesting thing, though, was our team had been completely distributed up until then.

I was in Panama. We had a marketing person in New York. We had some client success folks both in the US and Pakistan and developers in Eastern Europe. Things have gotten a lot better now, but around 2010, a lot of the VCs just didn’t open their doors to founding teams that are outside of the Valley. If you do approach them for funds, it comes with the understanding that you’ll relocate there.

That round took a little bit longer. We ended up setting up our headquarters in San Francisco in about 2013.

Sramana Mitra: Why were you in Panama?

Ryan Fyfe: I’m still in Panama. I moved here when I started making some money doing digital marketing. Panama was a chance for me to spread my wings a little bit on my own. There was a lot of fantastic investments opportunities here. The economy was just booming like crazy. I got a property here when it was just pre-construction. Spanish was a language I wanted to learn as well as the fact that you can have a fantastic quality of life down here.

Sramana Mitra: It was more of personal pleasure.

Ryan Fyfe: It was. I’m still here for the same reason. I’ve got an eight-year-old daughter. She has stayed here throughout this time. It’s been very challenging trying to run a growing business that has offices in three countries now. Throughout that time, I was flying back and forth to San Francisco. Sometimes, every week.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Scaling to $10 Million: Humanity.com Founder Ryan Fyfe
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