20VC: From Potato Farm to $200M in Revenue: The Never-Before-Told Story of Flo Health: Scaling to $1BN Valuation, 75M Users & Getting 100s of No's From Investors Along the Way with Dmitry Gurski
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2024
⏱️ 86 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dmitry Gurski is the Co-Founder and CEO of Flo Health, the leading women's health app and the first European femtech unicorn. Launched in 2015, Flo Health has grown to over 70 million monthly active users and 5 million paid subscribers. The app is recognized as the #1 recommended tool for period and cycle tracking, and it recently achieved a valuation exceeding $1 billion. Beyond Flo, Dmitry is a partner at Palta, a co-founding company with a portfolio of successful startups including Simple App, MSQRD (acquired by Facebook), AIMatter (acquired by Google), and Wannaby (acquired by Farfetch).
In Today's Episode with Dmitry Gurski We Discuss:
1. Why 99% of Startup Advice is BS:
- Why does Dmitry believe that speed is not the most important thing?
- Why does Dmitry believe that competition is actually a good thing?
- Why does Dmitry believe that craziness not intelligence is the most important trait in founders?
- Why does Dmitry believe that fundraising is simply a numbers game?
- What does no one understand about retention that everyone should know?
2. From Potato Farms to Billion Dollar Apps:
- What a childhood in potato farming taught Dmitry about leadership and technology?
- How mushroom farming taught Dmitry about diversification and focus?
- How does Dmitry advise people analyse the hardest moments in their life?
- Why Dmitry does not believe in talent? What else is there?
3. Scaling to Flo's First 1M Users:
- What were Dmitry's biggest lessons from two failed prior versions of Flo?
- What is the secret to success in consumer subscription?
- How did Flo acquire their first customers? What worked? What did not work?
- Why does Dmitry not believe in brand and PR?
4. Building a $200M Revenue Market Leader:
- What have been Dmitry's biggest lessons on monetisation?
- How does Dmitry think about retaining product simplicity with time?
- What are the first things to break in the scaling of a company?
- What did they do with Flo that he wishes they had not done?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Smart people, they work in McKinsey. Founders, they are crazy. |
| 0:04.0 | For consumers, simplicity is the most significant. It's much more significant than number of features, |
| 0:10.0 | is much more significant than anything. But many people don't understand. Retention is not about product. Retention is about user case. |
| 0:17.0 | It means that you may create the perfect app for gym and will have terrible retention. Why? Because gyms themselves have terrible retention. |
| 0:23.6 | Never take general advice. |
| 0:25.6 | General advice is always bullshit. |
| 0:27.6 | If you look on history of any company, you would see that everything is so nuanced, everything is so unique. |
| 0:33.6 | There are thousands of ways to be successful and you should choose your way. |
| 0:44.4 | So after 10 years of doing 20VC, I decided I've had enough of podcast tour guests, |
| 0:48.3 | guests who go on the same podcasts and you've heard their stories before. |
| 0:53.1 | 20VC from now on will focus on telling the best stories from technology with guests who've never been on a podcast before. |
| 0:56.0 | That's the case for our guest today. Dmitri Gerski, founder of Flow Health, |
| 1:00.0 | the leading women's health app and the first European Femtech Unicorn launched in 2015. |
| 1:06.0 | Flow has grown to 70 million monthly active users and 5 million paid subscribers with an ARR of over |
| 1:12.9 | $200 million. The app is recognized as the number one recommended tool for period and cycle |
| 1:18.9 | tracking. And what I love most, Dmitri the founder, started life picking mushrooms. This is such |
| 1:25.2 | an incredible story and shows like this make me so grateful to do what I do. |
| 1:29.4 | But before we dive in, when a promising startup files for an IPO or a venture capital firm |
| 1:34.4 | loses its marquee partner, being the first to know gives you an advantage and time to plan |
| 1:39.5 | your strategic response. Chances are the information reported it first. The information is the trusted |
| 1:45.2 | source for that important first look at actionable news across technology and finance, |
| 1:50.4 | driving decisions with breaking stories, proprietary data tools, and a spotlight on industry |
... |
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