Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Popovic.
Hi Dan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I was heavily influenced by my father, he was a great business leader/entrepreneur as he did a lot of work in commercial real estate – had his own firm and help build up the Cobb County area in the 80s and 90s. As a result of that, it took me down the path of getting a degree in finance to be really smart with my money. We thought about doing the father/son real estate thing, but I was a bit of a nerd. I liked technology so I started my career in IT Sales which quickly took me into Product Management. I then decided to further my technical skills and I got a masters in IT. I wanted to bond with my counterparts to ensure them they had someone that could provide vision and great details on technology requirements. From there, I worked in fortune 500 companies and startups. I then went on to launch a health and wellness marketplace that used gamification as a way to reward individuals on their health accomplishments. I was an endurance athlete myself and then managed such events and I created a unique technology platform to bring it all together.
I’ve also wanted to build solutions that had a positive impact, either individually or on businesses. This was a fun endeavor as I was instrumental in launching two state-wide campaigns, one in Georgia called Active Georgia and another in Tennessee called Walk Tennessee. From there I took my skills and created a marketplace to support local, independent Chefs during the pandemic. To help them keep their businesses open. I am also working on a side project specific to Pets and their Families – this is a big passion of mine. In a nutshell, I have a lot of experience in conceptualizing, building and launching high-tech solutions in a lot of different industries and I have employed various methodologies along the way in support of these solutions. The methodologies was always dependent on the size and makeup of the team. I love building new and innovative solutions, but more importantly, I like leading and inspiring the next generation of product leaders.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I wish where to being as there has been many challenges from firing team members to having my code held hostage by a third-party dev team for payment before releasing any sort of code to not getting investment. For instance, my latest venture has a solid business model, but unfortunately it’s in a very, very competitive space – Food Tech. When you have large companies like Ubereats and doordash raising significant money yet not being in the black (profitable), it makes it very hard for a smaller company with less resources and leadership to get funding to move into the next round.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am most known for my product management skills, not only being a great visionary/leader but knowing how to effectively create GTM Strategies. I am very good at building out the framework, learning from pragmatic marketing and successfully launching solutions that have generated 10s of millions in revenue to impacting over 9M consumers.
What I am most proud of is the work with cMEcompete where we built this really cool marketplace that connected people to community fitness events and partnered with REI and Wholefoods to reward them for their health accomplishments. This marketplace was instrumental in creating two statewide campaigns that resulted in Cities competing against each other to see who was the most active in Georgia and Tennessee.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I love mentoring early and late-stage companies, so one way is to send me product ideas or business plans and I can help create a GTM Strategy, Competitive Landscape, and Differentiators on how to launch and price out accordingly. I can help with the customer experience and innovations around new UI approaches.
One way to support me is my current passion around Pet Health. I would love to collaborate with some like-minded individuals as I have already created a website and mobile apps and I am working on an animated pet series where I will also be leveraging WEB3 and NFTs in hopes of creating a network effect marketplace for Pet Families.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://petsrfit2.com/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvjrkrH57FA&t=55s
