Peerfitting in 2016: Validation, setbacks, rapid growth and of course, workouts.

(spoiler alert: I love memes/gifs, get over it. Actually so does our whole team, so there)

Life during the past year has been nothing short of amazing. I've heard sometimes the best way to get even is to let someone get exactly what they are asking for... well, every start-up asks for rapid growth, capital injections, new markets and we certainly were the dog that caught the car this year.

Scott (my co-founder and the guy who really gets everything done at PF) and I look very happy in this picture since we made it through 2016, and actually got gifts from the team (instead of coal).

Going from a few hundred paid user accounts, to a couple thousand in one year taught us more than the best Ivy League MBA program could have.

Andre & Jeni from our team with one of our first clients, Emma(left). #NoNewFriends #JKLotsOfNewFriends

Not even one year ago (end of Jan 16) our investors/advisors told us to switch who we were selling to, from employers to brokers/insurance companies. Cause yeah, no one else is trying to get in with those guys, right?! Well, they were right! Hard work took us from the very bottom of the supply chain selling to one employer at a time, to getting a handful of brokers selling our product, to several national carriers all pushing Peerfit to clients in states all over the US, in 11 months! Talk about fast moving.

One of our favorite broker teams to work with, Montoya out of Jacksonville.

Not everything was smooth sailing, we had (thought) we had an investment round all set-up, lead investor ready to write a check, follow-on's ready after the lead (stop me if you've heard this one)

And out of the blue, after months of meetings, next steps, deadlines for the investment, the deal was dead. We were literally speechless and clueless on what to do next.

(no photo needed other than the 20k steps I got in the following hours cause I put on my headset and started burning up the phone lines, I'll let you picture the intensity)

The most important trait isn't to be great, it is to survive. That is what we did, found ways forward with a ticking clock expiring, cash running out, to get more validation with the money we had left. <insert weeks/months of pain/stress/pressure> then finally we had "enough" validation to finish putting together our investment bridge round. Now back to trying to scale our model.

We worked out, a lot.

More importantly than our team being fit (but great job everyone) our clients did too, and they used studios all over the country, over and over again.

This year, peerfitters across the country burned nearly 3M calories because of our studio partners.

I told you, a lot of sweat was generated this year at PF.

People using Peerfit invited friends, they planned fitness parties... all the stuff we actually designed the platform to do, woohoo!

The platform got some major upgrades (the product team gets maaaajor props for taking us from a bad wordpress website to a robust platform which plugs-into national partners and passes external audits from insurance carriers, not easy stuff to do). The way our site worked a year ago, the number of bugs and issues compared to what is launching this final week of 2016, well night & day would be an understatement.

So.Much.Cold Weather. Another note, we are in Florida. This isn't an accident, this was in fact by design, it is warm, we like it here. Apparently, most of our national partners and their events end up in very cold cities, during the winter. Sorry, Florida-based PF team, time to buy a jacket for anything colder than 50 degree weather. (I feel the judgment, I get it, no sympathy needed)

Growth generally means more capital

We raised a "Florida" Series A this Fall after really starting to turn some heads with national partners piloting with Peerfit. Which was great, never a bad thing to get $1.5M in the bank while you are trying to scale. S/O to all our amazing investors.

I don't wanna grow up... (cue Toys R Us music) or so I joked with our Board in the Q4 meeting because we finally reached the point with nearly 2 dozen employees, several national partnerships and $1m+ COH that it was time for all the "real" company stuff like external audits and layers of boards to help set policy, (name boring corp words you hear a lot, I am sure it was mentioned), etc. You know, the things other "real" companies will be looking for in 2017 from us.

Also, as the demand was increasing, so did our team. Proud Papa Moment, we have grown to nearly 20 f/t peerfitters and they are freakin rockstars. Yes, we did TopGolf for our holiday party... I guess we are turning into a real company, cause that is what everyone else in Tampa Bay did apparently.

#2016wasreallyConferencesForDays

So.Many.Conferences.

But seriously, we tried a lot of different types of trade shows, and conferences to see which ones were the best for us and which was were total wastes of time. We knew near the end of the year was the time to push hard to hit that next inflection point, or spend months wondering what we missed for prime insurance selling season.

AHIP, the conference that seemed to change a lot for PF (that is my co-presenter, Phil from Aetna)

Then, a funny thing happened. After months of pitching to carriers/brokers, showing them our amazing data (why don't you see how awesome we are!?) with little new contracts to show, we showed up to one of the major insurance conferences(AHIP), and we "tipped". That's right, thousands of calls/emails/LI messages all had pushed people to the point where it seemed every carrier wanted a piece of Peerfit in 2017.

Can't even imagine what will happen when our super interesting promo videos for the carriers/studios in Jan 17 comes out, because everyone wants to watch those, right?

Good old behind the scenes of a video shoot

Here we are, the final week of 2016, and all we got to show for it is a super cool updated platform coming this week, tons of new clients, national partnerships, new (and old) amazing team members and a couple of sweaty shirts. Doesn't sound too bad if you forget about the hard lessons, expiring bank accounts, sales dry spells, self-doubt and the glitches that happened during the year (but seriously who doesn't have nightmares of those times).

We are at the place we are at because of the team that pours their heart and sweat (see what I did there) into Peerfit. The current and past team members built the success we are now seeing/feeling. Scott & I couldn't be more thankful to have the support of those people, our investors/advisors, studio partners, and the entire community we try and represent every day. With a lot of major chances to succeed in front of us, we must be mindful of the small and large things which can slow us down when we aren't focused.

2017 at Peerfit is about one thing, a national Peerfit takeover. What was it Uncle Ben told Peter Parker again...