Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp

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4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2015

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Phil Jacobson is Co-Founder At PumpUp, a community for healthy and active living, with over 2m users. Phil leads the operations, finance, marketing, business development and external relations for PumpUp, with great success having accumulated over 220,000 Instagram followers! Prior to PumpUp, Phil held brand management positions at Unilever and PepsiCo.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

How Phil started PumpUp?
How Phil got 1,500 downloads in day one?
What marketing strategies are PumpUp working on to continue growing?
What social media strategies Phil recommends founders attempting to build an online presence?
How did Phil accumulate the 220,000 instagram followers organically?
What has Phil done to create such a heavily engaged user base?
Who are Phil's biggest competitors and how does PumpUp aim to stay ahead of them?
Where are PumpUp in the fundraising process, what has Phil learnt from the $2m seed round?
How can startups determine how much they need to raise?
What are PumpUp doing to ensure customer retention rates remain high?

Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

PumpUP App
General Catalyst Partners
Favourite Book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Favourite Blog: MatterMark Daily

As always you can follow Harry, Phil, The Twenty Minute VC and PumpUp on Twitter here!

A new one recommended by Phil, click here to follow the awesome Instagram pages of Harry and PumpUp!

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the 20-minute VC and a very special episode of Founders Friday with your host,
0:05.3	Harry Stebbings. Now, why is today so special? Because I have the opportunity to interview the
0:11.3	incredible Phil Jacobson, founder and president at Pump Up, the incredible app that combines the
0:17.9	motivating community with the tools to lead a healthy lifestyle. Over the past
0:22.8	two years, the milestones for Phil and Pump Up are just incredible, with over 2 million users,
0:29.1	220,000 Instagram followers and 2 million in seed funding from the likes of General Catalyst Partners.
0:36.2	A huge thank you to previous guest, Nico Bonatzos,
0:39.0	for making this interview happen. But before we dive into today's interview, I want to wish
0:44.0	hiring screen, the smartest and fastest way to identify candidates for jobs, the best of luck in
0:50.2	their journey on the blueprint Hong Kong accelerator. For all startup founders considering accelerators, you can find out what the accelerator life is like
0:59.0	by following the amazing Richard Hanson on Medium.
1:02.0	However, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you Phil Campbell,
1:08.0	founder and president at Pump Up.
1:10.0	Three, two, one, zero. Phil Campbell, founder and president at Pump Up.
1:18.4	You have now arrived at your destination.
1:22.7	Phil, welcome to the 20 minute VC and this episode of Founders Friday.
1:24.5	It's a great pleasure to have you here.
1:28.4	I'd love to start off by hearing a little bit about you and Pump Up and maybe for any of our listeners who don't know what Pump Up is, give us a little bit
1:33.3	of background. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me here. I'm excited to share a little bit
1:39.1	about the Pump Up story with you here on the 20 minute VC. More than welcome. Cool.
1:44.7	So yeah, pump up.
1:45.9	It's a positive and supportive community to share your health journey with like-minded
	...

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