. @dafrankel and the @fcollective team invested in us as AdHawk, an adtech platform for SMBs doing $15M in ARR.

At the time we hadn't had conversations with anyone at FC but @parulia was on our monthly investor updates and reached out to us. We are so lucky she did. https://twitter.com/dafrankel/status/1314593216776343552

Those updates and a few conversations with the team at FC, led to @dafrankel joining our board and leading our Series A.

They gave us the opportunity to take a step back, and really analyze our customer base/unit economics.

A few months into the analysis we realized that over 50% of our revenue came from the flooring industry (yes like carpet, hardwood, vinyl flooring) and our unit economics with those customers were growing rapidly - 90% annual retention, 91% NRR.

Long story short one of our customers at the time, @FloorForce was a website platform for the flooring industry and was using our adtech to help serve their clients.

We realized that together we could build the entire vertical platform for the $316B flooring industry.

We told @dafrankel we wanted to acquire them, and go all in on building a platform for flooring retailers. @danielppratt and I agonized over telling him this as he just led our Series A for an adtech company, now we are a flooring company?

Without hesitation @dafrankel introduced us to @zalessam and the @CarGurus team which was a pivotal moment in our company's journey. After the meeting, we all looked at each other and realized we were in the midst of building the Cargurus for the flooring industry.

Fast forward to today, we changed our name from AdHawk to Broadlume, we are back to $14M in revenue, our platform is used by 1,800 flooring retailers across the country and our network of flooring stores represents $8B in annual sales.

Without the support of @dafrankel and the FC team, we wouldn't be where we are today.

They believed in us, no matter the industry.

Morale of the story is that great investors and board members can change your business forever.

The flooring industry might not sound sexy. But a $316B industry w/o tech, with lots of inefficiencies & products that have 100% DAU is pretty damn sexy to me.

Questions about flooring and/or unsexy industries? Happy to chat. If you're thinking of working w/ @fcollective, do it.