Popl 🤝

Lead and contact management for teams

Setting the Scene

  • In the whirlwind of networking events and business dinners, you cross paths with hundreds of professionals.

  • However, keeping track of these connections proves challenging.

    • The majority of business cards you receive end up misplaced.

    • Many of your LinkedIn follow-up messages go unanswered.

  • This week’s company provides a contact sharing and management platform for individuals and teams to track leads.

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In a Sentence


Popl is a digital business card solution for individuals and teams to manage their networks and leads.

  • Individuals: With QR codes or NFC tap technology, users can exchange contact info that auto-generate in the phone's contact app.

  • Teams: Catering to both enterprises and small teams, Popl provides a streamlined solution for tracking and managing employee contacts and ensuring customer leads are cataloged.

Bulleted version: Think of Popl as the Apple Pay for networking; a simple tap transfers contact info into a team’s centralized CRM, with connections tracked much like those on a credit card statement. 🤑

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The Basics

  • Industry: B2B SaaS, Consumer Tech

  • Headquarters: Los Angeles, CA 🌴

  • Year founded: 2020

  • Employee count: 31 FTE

  • Investors: Goat Capital, Urban Innovation Fund, Cathexis Ventures, Y Combinator, Ralph Gootee

  • Amount raised: $2.5M Seed

  • Currently raising: Series A

  • Business model: Premium subscription for individuals, B2B enterprise software for teams

  • Early traction: $10M ARR 🤯, 3.5k teams as customers including Disney and Google, 1M+ professionals using Popl, 2k downloads daily

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IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

  • The #1 way to burn cash is on fixed costs such as full-time employees, contractors, or agencies to perform tasks.

  • Fractio converts fixed costs to variable ones, reducing risks for investors and giving founders more runway.

  • It is a SaaS platform for startups to pay per skill on a fractional basis through a monthly subscription.

  • A subscription includes on demand guidance, marketing, sales, business operations, finance, people management, and more.

  • Fractio extends your team on a pivot - the same velocity and trust at a fraction of the cost and without liability, IP, or equity.

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Due Diligence

WHAT WE LIKE

  • 📈 Market positioning: Popl is well-positioned in the growing customer relationship management market, where CRM adoption is becoming the business standard.

  • ⬆️ Traction: With a notable ARR of $10M, a remarkable 100% retention rate among enterprise clients, and 90% of customers being inbound, Popl's early traction demonstrates both PMF and scalability.

    • This is further underscored by top-tier customers including Disney, Google, and multiple NBA teams.

  • 🙏 Unifying contact management: Only 10% of leads and 12% of paper business cards find their way into company contact lists.

    • Popl ensures that all connections are not only seamless but also integrated into company databases.

POTENTIAL RISKS

  • 🔁 Employee turnover: While Popl Teams facilitates the acquisition of multiple users simultaneously, customer retention at the individual level may pose a challenge if a user leaves their current employer.

  • 💻 Virtual shift: In today’s increasingly digital environment, where many events and professional interactions occur virtually, Popl's primary focus on in-person contact sharing may limit its applicability.

  • 📊 Market competition: The digital business card and contact management market has several emerging players offering complementary solutions.

    • Popl needs to continuously innovate and differentiate its offerings to maintain a competitive edge.

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Founder Profile

  • Jason Alvarez-Cohen, Co-Founder & CEO: Forbes 30 Under 30, previously a software engineer at Boeing, Ticketmaster and UCLA.

  • Nick Eischens, Co-Founder & COO: Forbes 30 Under 30, UCLA grad with experience in supply chain management and global distribution.

To request an introduction to the founder, respond to this email.

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Comps

Why Popl: By focusing on team and enterprise-oriented solutions, Popl has managed to position itself to outgrow other digital business card offerings. 🤝

One more thing: We’re so bullish on Popl helping its users grow their networks, that we’ve decided to team up with them for our #NYTechWeek. See below. 👇

📌 Bulletin Board

  • 🎉You’re invited: We’re only two weeks away from #NYTechWeek and we are throwing an event that you won’t want to miss.

    • Join hundreds of founders, investors, creators, and operators already coming to our event for FREE. Click here to sign up.

  • 📰 This week in venture: Venture capital, known for its double-digit returns, just had its worst quarterly return in a decade.

  • 💡 The innovation situation: Artists are unifying to safeguard creative control from AI’s growing influence.

🗳 Cast Your Vote

Would you invest in Popl?

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Last Week Today

  • The results are in: MOGL, an influencer marketplace connecting college athletes with brands was favored by readers.

  • Subscriber feedback: “Hot, growing space - the approach sounds compelling but not sure there's a real moat - almost ready to write a check.”

✍️ Written by Brett and Juliana