573 - Tomer Molovinsky (Per Diem) On a Platform For Brick And Mortar's To Have Recurring Billing

All right, how's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Forward Thinking Founders. We talk to founders about their companies, their visions for the future, and how the two collide. Today, I'm very excited to be talking to Tomorrowinski. He's a co founder of Per Diem. Welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's going well. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

I'm excited to have you on a little more about what you are working on. For people that haven't heard of per diem, what is it? What are you working on?

Yeah, so Per Diem, essentially we're making it easy for local businesses to start selling subscriptions online. And so we're giving them all the tools, marketing tools, fulfillment tools, to essentially build their own Amazon Prime.

So let's kind of walk through what that looks like. Let's say I find you on this podcast. You know, I hear about you for the first time. I go to your website and I sign up. What can I expect? Walk me through a little bit of like the user experience of like an average customer for you.

Yeah. So basically what we built is a plug and play solution for any business owner so focused on brick and mortar businesses. So essentially you come to our site, you sign up, just a few details, you then enter in. We sit on top of stripe, so you enter in basic stripe information so we could make sure all the funds get into your bank account. And then it's really simple. You add products, you'll add a pickup location or delivery, and that's it. We generate a link for you and then you can put that link on your website, you can drop it in an email, put it on your social media. But like literally a typical business can get going as soon as 20 minutes. And so it's just a really easy way to start selling subscriptions.

And walk me through a little bit about why did you decide to start it. What's the origin story for Per Diem?

Yeah, so about six months ago, we had some friends who had built a vegetable box subscription and they were building it on a mix of like square. They were selling the subscriptions and then they were managing the subscriptions through a bunch of spreadsheets. And it was just really inefficient and it got way too big for them. And every change that needed to be made was like hours of overhead. So they came to me and asked if I could help either find a solution or maybe build something. At that point, I reached out to my co founder. We always talk about startup ideas and we're just always wanted to do something on our own. So we started investigating and seeing like what was needed. And right around the same time, Panera Bread came out with their own unlimited subscription service and they sold 500,000 subscriptions. And so for us, that really turned on. You know, we started thinking like, okay, this is clearly a lot bigger than just a vegetable box subscription for farmers markets, but this could potentially be suited for all brick and mortar businesses. And so that really gave us the insight as instead of just building for one specific market, let's build this as something that any brick and mortar business can essentially utilize. So that was the insight and then we ended up building out a proof of concept in December.

It's funny you mentioned Panera when they first. I'm a huge Panera fan. I've worked out of a Panera for years. And when they announced their subscription coffee, I immediately became a customer. And I actually wrote a post about Panera on how Panera, it's titled How Panera is the Future of Work for Remote Workers. It's like, you know, I just love Panera. So I think that's pretty cool. So you're pretty. Are you pretty much enabling what Panera did in house because of their, you know, their resources and technology? You're kind of enabling that coffee program to almost be replicated with other brick and mortar stores. So they can kind of get the same benefit of having something like that.

Exactly. So for instance, we have a few different coffee shops that are, that are on the platform already. Some of them do simple coffee drinks similar to Panera and then others do subscriptions for coffee beans. So we have the ability to fulfill both. And then, yeah, we're looking at other. Initially we're focused on food verticals, but we see this also going into, potentially into adjacent verticals. So any business that really has a recurring customer base, so you could think of barbershops, you can think of personal trainers, something that, you know, anything that really could suit itself to a membership subscription type of platform. We're essentially just making it easy for those businesses to enable subscriptions.

And then I'm curious, for your average day, like, what does an average day look like for you? Are you shipping code? Are you trying to go out to these customers and these, these, these brick and mortar stores and selling them like, what's a day in the life for you?

Yeah. So given that it's been Covid, we've been less like going out and meeting physically, but setting up a lot of meetings, a lot of zooms, talking to customers pretty much as much as we can. So it is having like at least like 3, 4, 5 demos a day. So it's been like constant outreach and just for us putting together who are we, who are we targeting and then putting together those lists and then doing the outreach and, and getting meetings with them. So I think that's on the one hand then as we have those meetings and build up our customer base, it's obviously working with those customers to go live and that depending on the customer, some are easier, some are harder, some are more involved. So obviously diving deep there and then. Yeah, and then it's making sure that they're set up for success and that we're successful. So you know, best practices, working with them on the initial implementation really to get the subscription program off the ground. So I think that's a lot of what my day to day is. You know, more recently we're, we're a Y Combinator company so we're, we're, you know, been doing a little fundraising lately. So that's eaten up some of our time. And then we're preparing for demo day which is about two weeks away, a little less than two weeks away. So there's all that fine tuning of just presenting ourselves as a company to the larger public.

For sure. That sounds like full days, which it should be. As you're a startup. Walk me through 5 years, 10 years, 15 years down the line. What do you see as the big vision here? Or I guess in other words, when every restaurant in the world is using per diem, what does that look like? What's the big vision and what direction are you rowing in?

Yeah, so I actually come out of like the OpenTable and Resi ecosystem. That's my previous work history. So very much, you know, taking a page from them and building a, the tools to help these small businesses, brick and mortar businesses, really build their own subscription platform. But then eventually we think that we can also become a destination for local subscriptions and then help really drive and help these businesses in terms of user acquisition. And then you know, the one interesting thing about subscriptions is that once you acquire those users, they're kind of yours. Like you have the retention built in, so it's not a one time thing. So we really see value in terms of us building out this two sided marketplace so that we can become a destination as well as like the fulfillment partner for the businesses and then doing all kinds of interesting things in between. There are ways that, you know, we can imagine a world where you have a subscription to Your neighborhood. And we give you the best of that neighborhood on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, whatever it is. So maybe one day you get, you know, a coffee subscription, the next week you're getting, you know, a boot camp with Barry, whatever it is. So thinking through like what can be, you know, unique, unique subscriptions, unique experiences so that you really can get the best out of your neighborhood.

In order to make that happen, you'll need some help, right? It takes a village to make a startup work. So my question for you is how can the forward thinking founders community help? Are you hiring, raising capital, looking for customers, how can we assist?

Yeah, so thankfully we're close to raising our initial round and so one thing that we're looking at right now is making our first few hires, making a few engineering hires that are really going to help us build out the product and really set the tone for the company moving forward. So I think that would be one thing. And then I think if you have a good relationship with a local business that you wish that, hey, every Tuesday, Wednesday, whenever you could just like have something on, on repeat, then we, we'd be happy for any referrals, whether coffee shops, bakeries, restaurants. We'd love to talk to anyone that you think this would work for.

And then if someone wants to reach out, how can they find you? Where can they find you? Online? What do you have a website, social media, email? How can someone get in touch?

Yeah, so the best way is probably to go to our website. So it's per diem co P e r dash d I e m co and yeah, from our website you can reach us in any plethora of ways.

Cool. Well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. Thanks a lot.