Before finding traction, Dave and his co-founders built and shut down two separate SaaS companies.

“After shutting down two failed saas companies”

The founders then spent three years running a marketing-education course business ("Facebook Ads Mastery", "Webinar Bootcamp", "Web Conversion Secrets"). It generated some income but proved structurally hard to scale.

“Courses businesses are great for learning, but hard to scale.”

The founders' next company, Proof (a YC-backed website personalization / social-proof tool), never grew past being a single feature rather than a durable platform business.

“Proof was a feature, not a company”

The team found website personalization a genuinely hard product category to build durable software around.

“Building a website personalization product is very hard”

By fall 2020, with Proof's growth stalled and cash burning, the team made the call to lay off roughly half of its small staff.

“We made the painful decision to lay off about half of our small team.”

Proof's user growth had plateaued while the company kept burning cash, forcing the reduction.

“Growth is stalled. Burning money. Getting weary.”