Podium’s customer interaction platform expands beyond Utah County
Podium CEO and co-founder Eric Rea poses for a portrait Wednesday, July 12, 2017, at Podium's headquarters in Lehi. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
Podium CEO and co-founder Eric Rea poses for a portrait Wednesday, July 12, 2017, at Podium's headquarters in Lehi. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
Podium CEO and co-founder Eric Rea poses for a portrait Wednesday, July 12, 2017, at Podium's headquarters in Lehi. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
Podium CEO and co-founder Eric Rea poses for a portrait Wednesday, July 12, 2017, at Podium's headquarters in Lehi. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
Podium CEO and co-founder Eric Rea poses for a portrait Wednesday, July 12, 2017, at Podium's headquarters in Lehi. ISAAC HALE, Daily Herald
Podium has only been in business for three years but its growth and revenue read like that of a company twice its age.
“We rarely see such efficient growth paired with such a large market opportunity,” said Miles Clements of Accel, which led Podium’s Series A funding round of $32 million in May. “Podium’s growth is on par with some of the most well-known tech companies in the world, and we believe that’s due to the technology, the team, and a unique approach to an often neglected market: local businesses.”
This growth is even more impressive when one notes that only two years ago, Podium’s founders were selling their product door-to-door.
Podium, now based in Lehi, is a software as a service customer interaction platform that enables local businesses and consumers to interact through messaging tools and online reviews. Eric Rea, co-founder and CEO of Podium, explained that the company’s clients are non-internet businesses that need to manage and interact with their customers online as well.
Podium’s first product helped local businesses generate and report on reviews and feedback. Now the company is poised to impact the entire customer lifecycle, from initial customer discovery to returning customer engagement.
“We help bridge that gap between online and offline interactions. Our goal is to help these businesses transform — to have powerful interactions between the business and the customer that makes it a personal, engaging experience,” Rea said.
Rea and co-founder Dennis Steele started Podium in Rea’s spare apartment bedroom in Provo in 2014. Rea initially thought of the idea while working with his father in the elder Rea’s gas station and tire businesses. Eric realized there was a disconnect between his father’s customers’ in-the-shop experiences and the company’s online interactions. Eric hoped to make his father’s company online presence more accurate to their physical experiences.
Initially Rea and Steele targeted businesses within the automobile and transportation industry.
“And then we realized our product was applicable to a lot of businesses,” Rea said.
So they started selling their platform door-to-door to businesses in Utah County and Salt Lake County. Rea said once they got the hang of it, they had a lot of success that way — success he believes would not have been possible without their obsessive product-first focus from day one. He said the company has always been solidly engineering heavy, and has never sold ahead of product developments.
They quickly realized, though, that door-to-door selling was not scalable. So they hired a salesman with experience selling software over the phone. They continued innovating their product, and sales took off.
“What makes us successful is we are obsessed with solving the customer interaction problems of our customers,” Rea said. “We want every interaction our customers have with their customers to build their relationship. We focus on how we can make it feel human again.”
The company moved into its sprawling Lehi office at the beginning of 2016. From just two co-founders in 2014, the company grew to about 100 employees by the end of 2016, and has already doubled that number today. But when asked about the company’s growing pains over such a short amount of time, Rea doesn’t mention hiring woes or scalability. He says for Podium, its own internal communication was one of the company’s biggest challenges.
“We went from a set-up where communication basically happened by osmosis, because you’re all in the same small room. Adding ten times the employees to that meant that communication didn’t flow as it did before. So now we’re making sure that communication flows from the top of the company to every employee,” Rea said.
During seed rounds prior to its Series A funding, the company had raised $4 million — enough to drive an increase of over 600 percent in year-over-year recurring revenue, and acquire a customer roster that spans across the United States totaling more than 80,000 users. But Podium isn’t slowing down.
“Businesses are rapidly learning that online interactions, online reviews, or digital communications, lead to offline, face-to-face interactions and ultimately to purchase decisions,” Rea said. “That understanding has made us hyperfocused on improving the relationship between local business and consumers. Our goal is to make interactions more convenient for consumers and more productive for businesses. We believe we are the best in the world at helping local businesses tell their story through online reviews, and we will continue to work tirelessly to build on that foundation by providing technology solutions that benefit both the businesses and their end-consumer.”