Bringing offline businesses online, known as digital transformation, is a huge opportunity. There are entire industries where the efficiencies of digital tools and workflows haven’t penetrated. That’s changing with the market today valued at $535B and anticipated to grow to $3.3T in the next decade.
Out guest today is helping lead that transition in the health and wellness services space. Matt Danna is the Co-Founder and CEO of Boulevard, a vertical SaaS that describes itself as “the first and only client experience platform for appointment-based, self-care businesses.”
About Matt Danna:
Matt Danna is the co-founder and CEO of Boulevard, a provider of the client experience platform used by more than 25,000 professionals to power more than 2,000 salons, medspas, and other self-care businesses across the US.
Prior to co-founding Boulevard in 2016, Matt was head of product for the LA-based talent agency Wasserman. His career also includes product leadership positions with Awesomeness, a multi-media platform company, and the global media company Fullscreen.
Matt holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology and Human-Computer Interaction from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
In this episode we discuss:
(01:23) How Matt got into tech and startups
(04:10) The opportunity they saw with Boulevard
(09:52) What market validation Boulevard did
(11:00) Why the founders worked for free at salons
(14:37) Biggest takeaways from the pre-launch market research
(16:35) How they knew their MVP was ready to launch
(18:26) The early bootstrapped days of Boulevard
(19:51) Early employees and financing
(21:38) Leaving stealth and launching publicly
(23:45) Early successes and challenges
(25:51) Why they spun up their own FinTech solution
(27:21) How they reacted to COVID
(29:32) Scaling rapidly while sticking to their vision
(30:39) Boulevard’s long-term vision
Fast Favorites
🎙- Favorite Podcast: Asaassins
📰- Favorite Newsletter /Blog: SaaStr
📲- Favorite Tech Gadget: Airpods
📈- Favorite New Trend: People freaking out about AI
📚- Favorite Book: Hard things about hard things (right now)
🤔 - Favorite Life Lesson: Dont rely on luck
Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!
Disrupting the beauty and wellness industry with Matt Danna of Boulevard