Building a Capital Efficient Startup from Nashville: David Stange, CEO of Beachy (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How did you finance this company?

David Stange: I started the company with $7,500. I lived in one of my warehouses. I traveled around to my offices with an air mattress in my trunk. I showered at truck stops for two years. Every morning, I’d wake up and go to a truck stop to shower. I’d come back, fold my air mattress, and be ready for all of my employees to show up.

No one really knew that was how I lived. Not that it was a secret; I just preferred that people didn’t know. I did that for a little over two years. I grew that business and sold that. I went to work for the company that I sold it to. I stayed in the relocation business until we started Beachy four years ago.

Sramana Mitra: What was the concept of Beachy?

David Stange: What changed everything for me was going back to the beach for the first time as a dad. Waking up early and taking my three-month-old little girl down to the beach, I was so excited. We were back at Sandestin where I grew up.

I was down at the beach only to stand in line for some 16-year-old kid to tell me which chairs I could or could not rent for the day. The idea behind that is why can I not book my beach chairs the same way I book my airline flight and the same time I made my hotel reservation six months ago.

There was no technology solution that existed that extended commerce all the way to the water’s edge. The line that we use now is technology ends where vacation begins. Hotels spend millions and millions on software systems that work really well inside of their buildings. Once you go outside, all of that doesn’t really exist.

I talked to all the hoteliers that we were familiar with, guys that I had grown up with, and my boss when I was still 14 years old. I talked to him and said, “You guys are on this multi-million dollar operation on clipboard and paper. Why is that?”

His response was that there’s no system that exists that can manage the nuances of the beach chair rental business. I asked my dad about his beach operations. My dad said, “I don’t have any idea. The only time I know what’s going on is when I hear a complaint or someone grabs me and tells that we have a problem.”

That was when I knew that we had a good idea by solving this pain point. The reason there’s no system is because hotels do not have a point of sale management suite that can manage all the nuances of beach operations. That was what we started to build.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Building a Capital Efficient Startup from Nashville: David Stange, CEO of Beachy
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