Karly Pavlinac: Grit & the Right Partnership Scaled Her Celebrity Fitness App
- S3E8
- 34:15
- November 1st 2022
In this episode of Exit Stories, Karly Pavlinac, the co-founder and former CEO of WAAM, joins our host Kevin Mosley. WAAM was a digital training app connecting world-class trainers to individuals worldwide.
The idea came to her while she was working at an architectural firm and teaching paddle board yoga in Hawaii during the summer of 2017. From personal experience, she understood how difficult it was for fitness trainers to scale their businesses.
It wasn't an easy journey, but Karly was determined to succeed, even if that meant sleeping on a blow-up mattress in her parents' living room for two years. She discussed working with Cofounders Capital, recruiting celebrity trainers to join the app, and the lessons she has learned along the way. In 2021, Karly and her team discussed pivoting from mobile workouts to physical goods. That's when St. James came along and acquired WAAM.
Exit Stories
Exit Stories features tech founders, buyers, and sellers from the Triangle, North Carolina and the Southeast to tell their stories about raising capital and selling their startups.
This program is produced by GrepBeat and hosted by Kevin Mosley of Jurassic Capital.
Meet the Host
Kevin is a General Partner at Jurassic Capital, a Durham, NC-based Growth Equity firm focused on growing B2B software companies in the Southeast. Alongside cofounder Joe Colopy, Jurassic’s deep entrepreneurial and operating experience from Bronto and other SaaS companies helps grow and scale capital-efficient companies over $1M in Revenue. They recently closed a $20M+ fund and have portfolio companies building software in HR (Workdove), B2B eCommerce (Corevist), and Test Automation (Cycle Labs).
Kevin spent his pre-Jurassic career operating at growth-stage software companies, including Sageworks, Lulu, Bronto, and Republic Wireless/Relay. He graduated with a BS in Finance from Clemson and loves spending time with his wife in the Triangle as well as watching and playing all sports, especially golf and tennis.