Disrupting the beauty and wellness industry with Matt Danna of Boulevard

Bringing offline businesses online, known as digital transformation, is a huge opportunity. There are entire industries where the efficiencies of digital tools and workflows haven’t penetrated. That’s changing with the market today valued at $535B and anticipated to grow to $3.3T in the next decade.

Out guest today is helping lead that transition in the health and wellness services space. Matt Danna is the Co-Founder and CEO of Boulevard, a vertical SaaS that describes itself as “the first and only client experience platform for appointment-based, self-care businesses.”

About Matt Danna:Matt Danna is the co-founder and CEO of Boulevard, a provider of the client experience platform used by more than 25,000 professionals to power more than 2,000 salons, medspas, and other self-care businesses across the US.

Prior to co-founding Boulevard in 2016, Matt was head of product for the LA-based talent agency Wasserman. His career also includes product leadership positions with Awesomeness, a multi-media platform company, and the global media company Fullscreen.

Matt holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology and Human-Computer Interaction from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

In this episode we discuss:

(01:23) How Matt got into tech and startups(04:10) The opportunity they saw with Boulevard(09:52) What market validation Boulevard did(11:00) Why the founders worked for free at salons(14:37) Biggest takeaways from the pre-launch market research(16:35) How they knew their MVP was ready to launch(18:26) The early bootstrapped days of Boulevard(19:51) Early employees and financing(21:38) Leaving stealth and launching publicly(23:45) Early successes and challenges(25:51) Why they spun up their own FinTech solution(27:21) How they reacted to COVID(29:32) Scaling rapidly while sticking to their vision(30:39) Boulevard’s long-term vision

Fast Favorites

* 🎙- Favorite Podcast: Asaassins 

* 📰- Favorite Newsletter /Blog: SaaStr

* 📲- Favorite Tech Gadget: Airpods

* 📈- Favorite New Trend: People freaking out about AI

* 📚- Favorite Book: Hard things about hard things (right now)

* 🤔 - Favorite Life Lesson: Dont rely on luck

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