David Yeom, CEO of Evite, shares how he transformed a struggling legacy brand into a thriving digital platform. From ditching ads to building premium experiences, he reveals the mindset and strategy behind Evite’s reinvention—and why finding what makes you tick is the ultimate key to success.
David Yeom knows success—from high-growth roles at Honest Company, eBay, and startups to buying and reinventing Evite. But if you ask David what makes him successful, he’ll start by telling you about his failures.
That’s exactly what David and host Everett Sands dig into in this debut episode of Small Business Unscripted: how failures turn into the most valuable lessons. David shares why it all starts with finding what makes you “tick,” and breaks down the strategic moves that led Evite to profitability for the first time in a decade—and set the stage for international growth.
Whether you're a small business owner, thinking about launching something new, or just figuring out what drives you, this episode is packed with real-world insights on perseverance, product instinct, and building a business you love.
David:
“I absolutely believe everyone is designed to love something and be good at something. Once you find that, everything else—career, quality of life, even compensation—falls into place.”
Links & Resources:
Connect with Everett: linkedin.com/in/everettksands
Connect with David: linkedin.com/in/davidyeom
Continue the conversation at smallbusinessunscripted.com
Learn more about Lendistry: lendistry.com
Timestamps:
01:15 – David’s Origin Story
02:20 – Startup Experience and Success
11:10 – Marketing Insights & Product Strategy
21:40 – Evite’s Turnaround Story
29:45 – Overcoming Initial Failures
35:20 – Global Expansion & Future Plans
0:00:00.3 David Yeom: They will pay for a premium experience if you give them the premium experience. Before, less than 2% of our users were opting in for the premium experience. It's well over 20% now. It's been a game changer. There is no such thing as overnight business success, right? It's tremendous work day in and day out. And are you willing to put in that work on a consistent basis? You know, be humble, right?
0:00:25.0 Everett Sands: That's David Yeom, CEO of Evite. Evite is the world's first and leading digital platform for bringing people together. Today, David and I talk about breathing new life into Evite, advice for making bold pivots, and building resilience. I'm Everett Sands, your host and CEO of Lendistry. This is Small Business Unscripted. Let's get into it.
[music]
0:00:53.8 Everett Sands: Welcome to Small Business Unscripted. How are you doing today, David?
0:00:55.5 David Yeom: Doing great.
0:00:56.3 Everett Sands: We are unscripted, so we're just going to kind of let it flow for the audience. We met at Entrepreneur Of The Year in LA. You were the cool kids at the table that were hanging out and making a lot of noise. And I just wanted to keep the conversation going at that. I learned a little bit more about you. Different things like that. But let's start from the beginning. Tell us a little bit about the origin story. I know you're from the area, which is Los Angeles.
0:01:20.2 David Yeom: I grew up, you know, seeing single mom. But her story, it really is just my story, really starts with her story, where when she was married, my dad passed pretty much when I was born. And so it's like, Okay, I don't think I want to raise my kids here in Korea. I think, you know, better opportunities. I could raise them better in America. And so with her husband passing, brought me and my sister as little babies to America. And so that's really how it started for me. And so, you know, look, everything I do, really, I mean, I think about her journey and what she had to go through. You know, she just really has just instilled really all the kind of risk taking and going forward and all those things. Because, you know, when I think about like, you know, being entrepreneurs, the journey is always difficult. But then you just think about the people in your life that's really helped you. And you think what they go through. Right?
0:02:15.7 Everett Sands: Exactly. What type of risk did they take? And if they can take some risks, I can take some risks. I'm totally with you. Let's talk about your journey a little bit before Evite.
0:02:24.5 David Yeom: Yeah.
0:02:24.7 Everett Sands: So marketing background. I would even maybe say a little bit of product.
0:02:29.2 David Yeom: Yep.
0:02:30.3 Everett Sands: Tell me about that, a little bit about that journey.
0:02:32.0 David Yeom: Yeah. No, in fact, I'll do you one even better. Because I do also love asking the question, like, what's your first job out of college? My first job out of college, I worked at Arthur Anderson in public accounting doing audit and tax.
0:02:45.2 Everett Sands: Oh, yeah. Lots of fun.
0:02:46.3 David Yeom: Yeah. Yeah. But sometimes, look, you go into something and you may not necessarily be like exactly sort of what you envision. But I just without exception, I've always met some incredible people in my career. And, you know, I viewed it as what an opportunity and what a privilege to work at, you know, one of the bigger sort of professional firms in the world at the time. So just met great people. And more importantly, you know, I met great people who also encouraged me to really follow a passion and pursuit. And, you know, at the time, this is like '99-2000, where just 500 miles up north, like some of the greatest innovation is happening. Right? And so it's kind of like I think, of course, all the incredible AI type breakthrough that's happening now, in some ways feels very similar to sort of what I experienced sort of back then. And I was like, you know what, how could I not go for it? Like, you know, it's not even that far from me. And it's not like I can't go back. And so that's the thing about I would say for a lot of people who are thinking about taking a chance.
0:03:50.5 Everett Sands: Yeah.
0:03:51.3 David Yeom: Why not? Because, you know, a lot of times you can go back. I like how Jeff Bezos kind of talks about it. Like there's one-way doors and there's two-way doors. And most things in life are two-way doors, meaning that, you know what, you make a decision and sometimes it doesn't necessarily work out the way you want. You can go back. Right? There are only a few sort of things where it's kind of one path. But, you know, this is I'd say for the most part. So, I think a lot of time people sort of overthink it and things like that.
0:04:19.3 Everett Sands: It's a two-way street though, too. Right? Because sometimes people think about it like I got a plan A and plan B. And what I've learned with that is you got to be careful because the plan B could also be a limiting factor, too.
0:04:31.1 David Yeom: Yes.
0:04:31.5 Everett Sands: Right?
0:04:31.8 David Yeom: Yes. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be all in.
0:04:35.2 Everett Sands: That's right.
0:04:35.7 David Yeom: You have to kind of have that mindset of it's going to work out. And most of the time, even if it is a sort of a two-way door, most of the time it just works out in that one way sort of path. And so when I talk to a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs, it's always this like, oh, but what if it doesn't go right? There's a million things that could go wrong. Yeah. But you know it could go right, too. It could go right and all these amazing things could happen. And, you know, so, yeah, just go all in. You know what? It could lead to other opportunities. Right? And so being in the Bay Area, I landed at just again, just stroke of luck, just landed at an amazing company in eBay where, you know, at the time just, you know, it was a couple of years as a public company. But the company was just experienced just phenomenal growth. And it was pioneering the way, you know, e-commerce is done. I mean, this whole way of sort of buying online through auction and buy it now, this and that was just all sort of new. And again, just met incredible people who's willing to take a chance on just a young, hungry kid that just wanted to learn and was just so curious. And so...
0:05:46.4 Everett Sands: What did you do at eBay?
0:05:47.5 David Yeom: So, I first started out in FP&A, sort of transitioned from audit and tax into FP&A. It's a different discipline, but then, you know, to move into product and marketing and all these other sort of areas. Yes, I got my MBA at USC, but I really got my learning on how to do business at eBay. It was just an amazing place to be surrounded by incredible people with an incredible business to learn from where, you know, we have hundreds of millions of users doing all sorts of really interesting things. And so it was just such a great time and an amazing time to be in the Bay Area. Like just the entire community was just amazing. And so really then for the next, you know, many years just stayed in that consumer tech world. But I knew I wanted to come back home to LA because that's where my mom is and some dear friends. And so eventually I knew I'd sort of kind of work my way down. And so I landed at Yahoo in the search marketing side to just really learn about this new sort of way of like, you know, online marketing works.
0:06:50.6 David Yeom: Again, met some great people. Spent some time at MySpace about places because at the time when it was, you know, 20 times the size of Facebook. But look, sometimes you learn from your failures, not your success. And, you know, we had some colossal failures for sure. But again, just, you know, some innovative things that we were doing was just so much fun. And then really starting in 2009, 2010 is really when a good friend of mine went to HauteLook, which is a flash sale retailer where we were competing against people like Guild Group and Groupon and those kind of daily deal sort of space. And I was then just hooked at that point where it's like, wow, a small group of people with a common goal and a common vision to really, you know, try to build something truly great and new. That was just so much fun.
0:07:44.3 Everett Sands: And that was your first time at a startup?
0:07:45.9 David Yeom: That's my first time at a startup company that's less than 100 people, very minimal revenue. But just the unshakable belief that we could really do it. And so all of a sudden we just went from a very small business to a very large business in just literally like less than two years. And then we eventually sold the business to Nordstrom because they viewed us or they were looking for a way to figure out, hey, how do we find a solution for our non full price discount part of our business? And, you know, because you're a super successful entrepreneur, most startups don't work.
0:08:24.4 Everett Sands: Absolutely.
0:08:25.1 David Yeom: Most turnarounds don't work. Most, you know, it is incredibly difficult to, you know, create any viable business. But when you're part of something where there is product market fit, where there is something working, you have to appreciate where you're at. You have to appreciate sort of all the factors that came into play that, you know, has it sort of enabled that? And I definitely took that to heart. I was like, wow, I knew from the get-go, even though it was my first one, this is something special. And I know that this isn't the norm. Just like, you know, just a kid coming out of, you know, counting to be part of eBay. I knew that this isn't the norm. This is something truly unique and special. And I cannot like emphasize enough just how much luck and timing played a part into all those things, and how much that plays a part into entrepreneurship. And so from HauteLook, I went into a company called The Honest Company, where I met this amazing entrepreneur, mentor and friend in Brian Lee. He's also an LA guy. And, you know, when opportunities like this come into your life, you have to ask yourself, are you ready to really sort of go for it? Or do you still need to learn?
0:09:46.7 David Yeom: And even though like, you know, you know, we're fairly, you know, competent and confident. We're like, okay, we got a lot of belief in ourselves. We could do it. I'm not going to lose anything to just like continue to learn from someone like him for the next couple of years to see where this could go in. And in four years, we got 80% of moms in America to have a high affinity and love for that brand.
0:10:08.9 Everett Sands: It's amazing.
0:10:10.1 David Yeom: Yeah. No, I mean, just from a valuation standpoint and also from a revenue standpoint, because it's a public company now. So you can see it. But we did 10 million in revenues just that first year. Then, you know, we 5X it to 50 million in year two and 150 million in year three and then 300 million in year four.
0:10:27.1 Everett Sands: And the main product was diapers?
0:10:29.1 David Yeom: That was the hero product and still continues to be the main hero product. But basically we, from a market valuation standpoint, because we were basically doing around like under 12 months every single year because of the growth of the business, but we got to a $1.7 billion valuation in just like less than four years on essentially like the first three years was just like 20 products. But you know, sometimes you don't have to sort of oversaturate with a lot of things, you don't have to overthink it. I mean, it's especially for a product that everyone knows, they need, right? And it's a natural subscription, right? So it just made a lot of sense.
0:11:09.3 Everett Sands: How do you think about product? It's interesting because you brought up two things that I thought we should probably unravel a little bit. One was, hey, you had a product that went to Nordstrom's because they were trying to figure out a differentiator in the market, and they're thinking about price point and how do they bring in different customers. Then you just said, hey, look, we had 20 products, which in the grand scheme of products and SKUs is not that many, you know, as a professional, because you know way more about this than me. By the way, for the audience, I can't even draw stick figures. So I am not your marketing at all. But like, how do you think about like that? Like, do you tend to think of marketing and product from who is the end customer I'm trying to sell to? Just help me unravel that just a little bit.
0:11:51.6 David Yeom: Yeah. No, that's a great question. And we think about this a lot now with the new ebuy, which I know we'll get to. A lot of folks sort of wish, this is what I want my brand or my business to be. This is who I want my customer to be. But what is it now? And what are you really known for, right? And I think that goes into like, you know, this notion of your right to win, right? And I think people tend to just look at, you know, just expanding the sort of product selections or features to go, right? I mean, here's a great example. You know, one of the early product expansions we thought about at Honest Company was two key areas, because we just thought it was completely additive and we're just gonna take over the market because, you know, it was like, it was not that too far of a sort of lead. One was in femcare. And then the next thing we try to do is double down on that and go into makeup.
0:12:58.2 David Yeom: And look, it did make some sense because, you know, when you have Jessica Alba as one of your co-founders and your creative director or your chief creative person, you know, look, she has a huge platform, but there is a graveyard of companies with fancy, high profile personalities that's like kind of the, you know, the access, kind of the platform for your brand. But you know what? I think we have learned that authenticity matters and authenticity worked for Honest and Jessica because she was a mom and this was her company. It was her idea. And so it comes out, you can't fool users. You know you're onto the right things when it's like, you're almost sort of like playing a little bit of catch up, right? Like, and you hear from your customers, right? And this is where customer feedback and your own team is coming to you. And you're saying like, Alba like, hey, what's going on? Like, you know, they keep complaining about X, Y, and Z. Why don't we have that? And so you're like, we should naturally have that. You hope that you're always a little bit ahead of the curve. But you know, a lot of times that's when you know you're there. Instead of trying to, you know, I think that a lot of sort of, you know, operators and entrepreneurs, like we get in, we fall in these traps of like, oh, but this is the new thing and I just want to add that on. And that's, you know, more often than not, that doesn't really work, right?
0:14:23.0 Everett Sands: Yeah. And you mentioned like obviously raising capital. And I think that's definitely something that our entrepreneurs care about. But let's go to the other side of that. I mean, if you're going that fast, how are you finding the right people, good people, training, onboarding? Like, what about that journey?
0:14:40.6 David Yeom: Today, I think because of, you know, there's less emphasis on the sort of mindset of grow at all costs, where I think there's more value placed on like prudent, rational growth instead of like, hey, like having these long payback sort of investments and things like that, where, you know, and there's, I think, a more balanced view on profitability and growth. I think these are healthy things. I think the things we were doing like 10 years ago, I mean, there's a lot of things that was very unhealthy, and you see it in terms of some of these companies, that had some pretty good ideas, but then you look at the unit economics or some of these payback roles where it's like, hey, yeah, this will pay back, yeah, but in five, six years. Like this is not a good investment, right? I mean, unless you know that your operating margins and other things are just, you know, you're closing that gap so that all of a sudden it goes from a very long period of time to much more closer period of time. But even then that becomes, I think, a slippery slope, right?
0:15:44.1 David Yeom: And so, you know, for me, you know, I've really have changed sort of my view, especially with the way we sort of grow and hire with Evite. You know, like this is a brand that's been around for over 25 years. And, you know, it's, look, we thought we were dead. This was a business during COVID. Like we're a party company. Our motto is about bringing people in-person and can't do that in the midst of a pandemic. And there was a time, Everrett, where literally like over 90% of our users were gone. And which is why Liberty kind of gave it up for dead. And we were in a position to buy the company and turn it around. And, you know, it's, you know, but for us, like the company has never, you know, been growing faster and, you know, revenue and profitability has never been greater. But still, I take a very methodical approach. Yes, can we probably grow a little bit faster if we sort of kind of threw more at it? But is it efficient? And what's the impact on people, culture?
0:16:45.2 David Yeom: And also, I like to operate with the belief that, you know what? People like having a lot of responsibility. People like, you know, especially smart people that we hire, you know, like they want to be trusted and have autonomy. And so, you know, I think that you get more out of a lean team than you do with, you know, sort of right-sizing it with access. I think you have more fun when you historically needed 10, but it's better to have five, six people and let them all stretch.
0:17:15.0 Everett Sands: Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's right. We're going to be right back. We're going to talk a little bit more about the story of Evite. And we'll listen to our customers now, who are our boss.
0:17:25.2 Kam Horton: My name is Kam Horton, and I am the owner of Kazi Blooms, and we're located in Diamond Bar, California. Well, my business is a non-toxic relaxation bar. The idea is it's a place for working professionals to come, relax, and enjoy some self-care services. Before working with Lendistry, I think as a small business owner, we were all facing recovery from COVID and the shutdown. Lendistry came at a time when small business owners really needed some direction along with support. So, they were able to help us navigate through getting the funding that we needed. That someone really took interest and truly partnered and linked arms with us, it restored my hope. And the fact that we weren't out there alone. So at a personal level, it was of support to me to help me regain my trust and confidence within the community. And then from a professional level, it helped my business to pay off our light bill and have some operating support. I would recommend Lendistry, and I have recommended Lendistry many times because of the level of support that they provide to a small business owner.
0:18:31.1 Everett Sands: All right. David, I ask every leader that comes on the show the same question. There's no wrong answer, just to be clear. So put these three things in order of importance; career, compensation, quality of life.
0:18:45.4 David Yeom: Career, quality of life, and compensation. And the reason why I say that is, well, first, they all go hand in hand. And the easy thing to say is that old cliche and meme you see on TikTok, follow your passion and everything will just kind of work itself out. But it does work out. I absolutely believe everyone is designed to love something and be good at something. And that is what you've been sort of designed for. There's things that just kind of make you tick. There's things that make me tick. And so everyone has to just play to their strength. And if you do that, like, you know, I always view compensation as a by product of just the things that you're really good at. And so, but once you find that like, you know, quality of life, a lot of people can look at that as work-life balance and this and that. But when you love something, you don't want to be doing it. You want to keep researching that stuff you want to spend time on.
0:19:52.0 David Yeom: And when you're doing that, you know what you're doing? You're kicking ass at your job. You're crushing it, which means, you know what? Compensation, all those things are always going to be there. Going to Evite, when I bought the business, we had 130 folks. And the thing I noticed about the business pretty quickly is things were very broken. There's no way to just sort of sugarcoat it. And it's not like Liberty was doing a bad job. It's not like my predecessors was doing a bad job. It's when you have a business that's been around as long as Evite has, and it's part of this multi-billion dollar conglomerate, the culture and what it does is it's made up of sort of the people. You know, do people truly care? Are they all in, right? Do they set a high sort of standard for themselves? Do they want to sort of do amazing things, right? Really sort of break the norm and achieve great stuff. High achievers always want to do that.
0:20:58.6 David Yeom: I love the Nick Saban quote. You know what? Overachievers and high achievers, you know, they mesh well with people who are like underachieving, right? And vice versa. Like low achievers, underachievers don't want to work with people like, you know, who are high achievers. You know, it just will conflict, right? And so I just knew sort of right away, just like, you know, just the way sort of things were done, the way they act and talk is like, oh man, this is like, this is not, you know, we are not going to sort of make the Evite a truly great company if this is sort of the way that people are thinking.
0:21:40.2 Everett Sands: Yeah. Wind it back for starters because you are a numbers guy, guest marketing and product, MBA guy. What did you see that even make you think to acquire Evite?
0:21:53.2 David Yeom: There isn't that many Evites with where you have a top 100 in a brand that has the history that it has, that has 100 plus million unique Americans that use the product, right? And when I apply sort of both all my hats on it, look at just, wow, here's this amazing platform with all these sort of users. Touches pretty much every sort of adult American, because who doesn't want to receive a party invitation?
0:22:20.8 Everett Sands: Right.
0:22:21.2 David Yeom: But when you look at it from a revenue standpoint and a revenue per user, it's probably one of the worst monetizing platforms out there.
0:22:29.3 Everett Sands: Yeah. When you're talking about unit economics, I was sitting there thinking like...
0:22:32.9 David Yeom: What is this, right? And you think like this should be up there with some of the greats, right? Especially when you think about sort of, it's a catalyst for all of this amazing commerce and value that's being created. It's like, why is it not be able to capture its sort of fair sort of [0:22:50.9] ____ hare of the amount of value that's being generated? And so I was like, I know consumer. I just felt like, hey, I know this brand. I have a huge affinity brand to this. I've been an Evite user for so long, especially giving two kids. I also don't mind throwing a good party into this box. So I have loved the product, huge fan of the business, and I just saw a huge massive opportunity. And obviously with COVID, again, sometimes you have these awful macro things that happen, but then it creates these amazing unique opportunities. And so just we're able to be in a position to extract the business. And for all these factors, we're like, hey, look, I think we can do it.
0:23:39.7 David Yeom: I know we could turn around and, because it was primarily utilizing the same business model that the original founders back in 1998 and the Stanford dorms use, which is ad sales. Hey, we got all these people on this platform. We'll figure out a way to sort of better monetize. But in the meantime, hey, what's very simple? Let's just throw ads up there. Okay. But you think after over 20 years that you think you could come up with a better strategy or at least a better way to complement it. But this is where I think when you do something super well and you're just like, oh, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. But this is part of it when it is part of a multibillion. Where's the incentive? Where's the, you know, where are the chart charters that's really going to sort of try to really push it through? You were just kind of lacking that. I mean, look, we still have some amazing people from the time before I was even there.
0:24:37.0 Everett Sands: I was going to ask you, like, do you like go in and clear house? Do you...
0:24:40.1 David Yeom: I had to. First, because one of the things I wanted to do, and this is where, because it's not like they didn't have prior leaders that said all the right things. And, you know, but talk is cheap. And I said it right away. It's like, hey, look, here's my plan. Here's the vision of why I believe that Evite is truly going to be great. And now we've heard like many of the guys, you're not. The only one that's like, yeah, but then you know what? I'm going to take away our, the way we used to monetize. Literally 90% of all the revenues came from ad sales. And it was not for a consumer tech company. It was a ad organization-driven business. And I was like, we're doing away with that. So literally...
0:25:26.3 Everett Sands: It freaked everybody.
0:25:26.6 David Yeom: Like, how are we going to keep the lights on? We'll figure it out. Right? And so I have a thesis that, hey, you know what? We're going to, you know, the way we're going to monetize on a go forward basis is through commerce, through transaction, our freemium model. We create incredible value for these hosts that's looking, you know, whether it's a birthday party, a wedding, baby shower, these really monumental life events. They will, you know, pay for a premium experience if you give them the premium experience. You know, great features and great design and all these things that, you know, there's great value and benefit from them. And so we spent the better part of the first year just doing nothing but cleaning and improving the overall user experience, making the platform really fun, great design. I'll tell you, this is shocking. Look, because, you know, for a business, as long as it's been around, when you ask, like, what is the thing that I saw? Well, this business had two aspects that was truly special and unique. First is, where do you find a company that has built-in marketing? Meaning, this is a business that, unlike a lot of companies where you have to spend a ton of money to chase after customers and get them to use it again and again and again. And so you're paying Facebook, Google, paid social, and all these other sort of programs. We do none of that.
0:26:54.6 Everett Sands: Right. Customer does it for you.
0:26:55.9 David Yeom: Exactly. And what is the best form of marketing? Word of mouth.
0:27:00.1 Everett Sands: Absolutely.
0:27:00.7 David Yeom: And what is a great form of word of mouth marketing? A party invitation. Because you know what sucks? A party of one, right? The average party, you know, event invitation goes out to about 30 guests, right? And when it's time for them to throw a party, what are they going to use? Oh, I had a great experience using Evites. I'll use Evites. So, that whole guest-to-host engine has kept this brand going year after year after year. And you know what's never going to go out of style? Parties, right? Get-togethers and all those kind of things. Weddings aren't going out of style no matter how fancy the AI gets, right? And all these sort of special moments. And so, when you have this amazing built-in distribution system, it's like, wow, this is pretty special. True network effect. And then the other thing I looked at is just like any business, you need good unit economics, right?
0:27:46.9 Everett Sands: Absolutely.
0:27:47.0 David Yeom: And wow, there's nothing to source. There's nothing to pick, pack, and ship. There's no hard goods. We're not impacted by tariffs. These kind of things that a lot of folks have to deal with. You know what? If we can create sort of this premium experience, really enhance it, really showcase the benefits and the value, I think we have something great and we're able to execute on that. And as well as, you know what? We created a massive affiliate platform within Evite. We're now Amazon's one of their largest gift affiliate partner. And so, this is a shocker. For over two decades, we've been the leader of digital invitations. We didn't even have a digital greeting cards business. And now eCards is a massive part of our business. And so, instead of just this one-trick pony where, hey, we had a lot of users and we're just going to inundate you with a bunch of ads, let's do something better, where it greatly scales and monetizes without the need for human capital and all these other things. And we've been able to do that.
0:28:52.5 David Yeom: And so, yeah, I mean, before, less than 2% of our users were opting in for the premium experience. It's well over 20% now. It's been a game changer. Now, obviously, like anything, it's been a tremendous amount of work. It took great people. It took a lot of tremendous heartache and pain. Because like anything, look, we're human. We don't ever want to impact people. But sometimes everyone wants to be a CEO until it's time to do the brutal CEO-like things.
0:29:24.6 Everett Sands: The Marines have a saying, everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
[laughter]
0:29:31.4 David Yeom: It is gut-wrenchingly difficult. And there is no such thing as overnight business success, right? It's tremendous work day in and day out. And are you willing to put in that work on a consistent basis? Be humble, right?
0:29:47.1 Everett Sands: Yeah. I tell everybody, there's so many stories about the front and the back. There's so little stories about the middle. So you pivot the company, multiple pivots, clearly. You exercise this concept of having the right product set, which clearly you got that from previous. How did you know it's working? Were you looking at unit economics? When did you say, we're on to something, or we've started to figure it out?
0:30:12.8 David Yeom: Most of the times, and this is why most, whether it's a startup or a turnaround, they don't work, is because you know why? It's probably been done before. It's not like it's the first, it's a brand new idea. No one's ever even thought of it. There are certain signals that people have tried it in some capacity, usually. But the difference was that, and what's different about me and this current team than the past is we weren't willing to give up. It's like, no, no, no, no. Okay. So this didn't work. So now we'll go with the second variation. Then we'll go with the third variation. And so we stayed at it. And it took a couple, I will tell you, sequencing, variations, and this and that. And so thanks to the most subtlest thing, that'll make the difference and the breakthrough you need. And so the thing I'll say is, yes, what is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing and expecting different results. That's absolutely true. But are the conditions and the things that you're doing actually different where you can expect the results to be different?
0:31:24.4 David Yeom: And so we stuck with it. We just weren't willing to take no for an answer. And I would say, kind of burning the ship because there was no other route because we got rid of the sales team. We're not dialing for dollars anymore. This has to work. So, we were fortunate that we stuck with it and we got the couple big breakthroughs as COVID was also unwinding. One of the pieces was that things would naturally come back up. And so the user activity and events were coming back. And then we got another big break on getting the Amazon gift affiliate sort of things going. But again, I don't think a single thing went the way we expected it off the get-go. And it's no surprise looking back just because, you know what? The people who were there, my predecessors, they weren't dummies, right? Like they tried a bunch of stuff. But you know what? We kept at it and we tried different things until we actually really broke through. And then once you have something, then now let's double down on it, right? Let's really sort of keep at it.
0:32:30.6 Everett Sands: Is that like associated with like your core values? Like what makes you stay all in? I'd call it the grit, so to speak.
0:32:40.4 David Yeom: Yeah. Just like, you know, I was saying, you know, with all of these sort of initiatives that we were doing with eBay in the beginning, they didn't work the first time. My first startup did not work the way I wanted it the first time. You know, I think failure is a great teacher, right?
0:32:56.3 Everett Sands: For sure.
0:32:57.8 David Yeom: And look, I tell my kids, like, don't be afraid. Like, go for it, right? If you're learning from it, I truly believe this with all my heart. You know, if you're learning from it, because there is no finish line.
0:33:09.3 Everett Sands: That's right.
0:33:09.8 David Yeom: But I will definitely say, when you take an L, it's like, boy, is it a motivator, right? And I just had so much conviction that, you know what? These things are going to work. Not everything probably worked, but you know what? Enough is going to hit. But once something really hits, if you're fortunate enough, there is this sort of exponential push that one might experience, and we definitely felt that. And so we started hitting these growth vectors. And, you know, I say this a lot. With any startup, momentum, wow, double-edged sword.
0:33:49.3 Everett Sands: Absolutely.
0:33:50.5 David Yeom: When you have momentum, boy, you got to be all over it. And you can get into what I call, like, a good friend of mine, Anthony Cho at Providence says, flow state, where things are, you're just feeling the growth and the wind behind your back. That tailwind is such a precious thing, and when you have it, you got to ride it because it doesn't last forever.
0:34:09.9 Everett Sands: That's right.
0:34:10.4 David Yeom: Because on the flip side, you know, when you're feeling the headwinds and the lack of momentum, boy, it is, it's like that monument of the guy pushing the boulder up the hill. That is what you're feeling every day.
0:34:25.4 Everett Sands: That's right.
0:34:25.9 David Yeom: You're banging your head against the wall and things just aren't clicking, right? It impacts morale and everything else. And so, but boy, when it is working, it's like, what a special feeling, right?
0:34:37.6 Everett Sands: It's a great thing. So as you think about that, like, what would you tell younger David or any entrepreneur that might be listening to us today?
0:34:45.3 David Yeom: It's not meant to be hokey, but it really is true. I absolutely believe everyone has an inherent sort of thing that they're just really good at, right? Like you're designed and you have a sort of an ability that's just better than most people.
0:35:02.9 Everett Sands: Yeah.
0:35:03.6 David Yeom: And you just like something where, you know what, just on your free time, you're just going to spend time sort of, you know, looking more into it. And so that is what you're supposed to be doing. And so it's just like Michael Jordan wasn't made to play baseball. He was made to be the greatest basketball player. Exactly.
0:35:22.1 Everett Sands: You are the CEO of the world's first and leading digital platform that brings people together because everybody loves a good party.
0:35:28.9 David Yeom: Everyone loves a party.
0:35:30.2 Everett Sands: So where do you see it going in the future?
0:35:32.2 David Yeom: I see us, we've only been a US brand and US business this whole time. But you know, it's not just Americans that want to party, right? People in Asia and South America and Europe, et cetera. And so we are going to create Evite globally. That's definitely a next huge thing. But really what, you know, you asked a really great thing around as we think about growth. Is it the customer? Is it, you know, product expansion, this and that? You know, you have to take a lot of those things into account. But, you know, when we think about the core of what our mission is, in-person get togethers, right? To promote that, you know, boy, that opens up a pretty big market. And, you know, when we think about, you know, our brand promise to our user, which is, you know what? We want to be helpful to you to have your best party ever. It's like we want to sort of remove all the frictions and the things that, you know, people think about when hosting something, right? Whether it be a wedding, et cetera. What are the things that creates a lot of, you know, friction and pain points for you and we want to help to resolve that. So whether it be even party financing, because you know what? Throwing just a birthday party for your kids, whoo, that can get pretty pricey, right? Let alone a wedding, funeral, or these.
0:36:47.7 Everett Sands: We can talk about that.
0:36:48.6 David Yeom: Exactly. And so from, or it could be as simple as, you know, RSVP, guests, reminders and this and that. So, I mean, there's just so much, but then it's like, again, we just got to be very mindful and smart about the way we sort of introduce that to the market, right? I think, again, the pitfall is trying to get a little too cute and overthink some things and try to, you know, get ahead of things before. You got to think about like what is the things that your customers really care about, especially like, you know, when you think about like all these like amazing AI breakthroughs, you know, it's just like you could try to get, you know, ahead of yourself and, oh, like here's this like cool fancy AI that'll like take your invitation and make it into a movie and this and that. Do they really want that? Like you have to sort of ask this goal to your brand promise of what you're trying to sort of solve for your users.
0:37:39.4 Everett Sands: It's just so amazing you've taken this 1998 business like just re-birthed it and you're taking it. I mean, I have so many thoughts about where your headed. I just want to like be on that global stage with you, like, I know. But this has been a great conversation, man, and just so appreciative for you coming through.
0:38:00.6 David Yeom: Oh, no, thank you.
0:38:00.7 Everett Sands: We might have to do this again because I want to hear more about the journey and we got to help these folks.
0:38:05.8 David Yeom: I'll send you an Evite.
0:38:07.5 Everett Sands: Yes, absolutely.
0:38:09.2 David Yeom: Let's party. All right.
0:38:11.5 Everett Sands: Thanks for hanging out with us on Small Business Unscripted. Want more? Head to smallbusinessunscripted.com for episodes, helpful resources, and to keep the conversation going. Follow Lendistry at Lendistry, L-E-N-D-I-S-T-R-Y, on all major platforms. See you next time.