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Payal Kadakia, 34, is the founder and executive chairman of ClassPass, a New York-based subscription gym-class service that connects its customers to over 8,000 fitness studios.
ClassPass bills itself as "the leading membership to the world's largest fitness network". More than 30 million reservations have been made through Kadakia's company, which now covers 39 cities from London to Las Vegas, San Francisco to Sydney. Since launching in 2014, the startup has won $154 million (£120m) in funding from investors including Google Ventures and Thrive Capital, and has expanded into 39 cities across the globe.
Before ClassPass, Kadakia worked at Bain & Company and Warner Music Group, and founded The Sa Dance Company, which increases awareness of Indian dancing. She shares what she's learned on her entrepreneurial journey.
You don't need an MBA to learn business"Working at Bain was amazing. You're trained to become smarter than every other person in the room about an industry you have maybe never heard of - I worked in oral care, reinsurance and shipping - and you have only two days to do it. That helps you to be more 'big picture'."
Go all in"I had that epiphany [to start the company] and six months later I quit my job. That was hard to do. Then I almost took a job at Spotify. I met with one of my advisers and she said, 'If you take the Spotify job, I won't invest in you. If you're not betting on yourself, why would we?' I have never looked back."
Role models are vital"My mum was the dominant figure in my family and having a strong female person around me was super-influential in my life. Nothing fazed my mum. If there was a problem, she would be like, 'Here's what we're doing to fix it.' That's the same perseverance and determination that I know I have."
Get the right introduction"When building a business, whoever's introducing you to venture-capital firms is the most important person. A valuable piece of advice that someone once gave me early on was to go via one of the venture-capital firm's successful portfolio CEOs because they will trust that person."
Creativity likes a deadline"I went to San Francisco and met a bunch of entrepreneurs who inspired me, so I gave myself two weeks to think of a business idea. I came back to New York and had my ballet clothes with me. I looked for a dance class online and was frustrated. My idea: What if I could build an OpenTable for classes?"
1983: Born in Randolph, New Jersey, to Indian parents
2001: Graduated from Randolph High School
2005: Graduated from MIT; joined Bain & Company
2008: Joined Warner Music Group, gaining tech experience
2009: Founded the Indian-themed Sa Dance Company
2011: Started Classtivity, the precursor to ClassPass
2012: Accepted into the Techstars accelerator
2014: Rebranded Classtivity as ClassPass
2015: Raised $40 million in Series B funding led by General Catalyst and Thrive Capital, followed by a $30 million Series C round led by Google Ventures
2017: Swapped titles from CEO to executive chairman
Not all problems are worth solving"You need to do quick market research on five to ten people and see if they can feel that 'pain point' as well. Importantly, you have to be passionate about it. You have to know that if, seven years later, you are still solving the same problem, you still care about solving it."
Learn to stomach a pivot"It was my purpose to make sure people were going to class. One of the data points we had was that 15 per cent of people would go back to our studios after they used our product, but we wanted it to be 75 per cent. We moved from a prepay to a subscription model, rebranded as ClassPass, and it took off."
Dealing with setbacks"The press will write good and bad things, it will go through cycles. When we increased our prices we faced criticism, but what was important was making sure my customers knew what we were going to be doing and building. I personally spent a lot of my time building that future."
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Communicate your vision"We grew really fast; we doubled in size in six months. I came into work and was talking to people. You think people understand your vision but often they don't. I had to spend months figuring out better ways to communicate the vision to the team. If we forget that, we will never build the company we mean to."
Set goals systematically"I pick five areas that I want to focus on over the next three months. I've been doing that for three years now. I do diagnostics on how I'm spending my time. I believe that the number-one thing you can change to achieve a goal is how you spend your time."
Play to your strengths"I knew I wasn't going to let myself focus on building the company if I carried on the responsibility of being a good CEO. I wasn't creating; a lot of it was about managing people and that wasn't what I wanted to work on. My title isn't what brings me happiness, it's the impact we have on people's lives."
Practise what you preach"My whole thing is living an active and passionate life. It's how I'm centred. I hated feeling like I couldn't do anything until I left work. It makes people crave leaving. So we wear fitness clothes to the office. A lot of people go to [fitness] class together, it's very much a part of our ethos."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
