Welcome to the Brydge Club podcast! I'm your host, Ruffin, and today I'm going solo to break down one of the most misunderstood startup stories of the last decade: how Payal Kadakia built ClassPass.
Fewer than 1% of funded startups reach $1 billion. Only 7% of unicorn founders are women, and women of color lead even fewer. Payal is one of them. But the ClassPass we know today, with 100 million hours of workouts booked across 30,000 partners in 28 countries, is not the company she set out to build.
In this episode, I trace the full arc: from an MIT grad and lifelong dancer who couldn't find a single ballet class in New York, to spending $500,000 on a booking product that generated about ten reservations a month. I get into why the "OpenTable for fitness" thesis was built on a false parallel, the five distinct business models ClassPass cycled through, the $99 unlimited era that grew 50x while quietly bleeding money, and the decision to kill it in 2016 and lose 10% of the user base overnight.
I also dig into the part of the story that matters most to me: the rooms full of male VCs who sat in silence after every pitch, the fellow South Asian woman who wrote the first meaningful check and told her to bet on herself, and what that representation gap actually costs when you measure it in billions.
I hope you enjoy!
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More on Host Ruffin Mitchener:
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About Brydge Club:
Brydge Club, hosted by Ruffin Mitchener, aims to bridge the $1.7 trillion financing gap for female founders. Every Wednesday, the show features in-depth interviews with industry leaders and innovators, educating and empowering women in venture capital and entrepreneurship. Through insightful discussions, Brydge Club seeks to inspire listeners to break barriers and achieve success in the business world.
