When Domm Holland first announced his company, Fast, had failed, he settled in to be "the world's punching bag."
"The big reality is, if you look up almost any founder — local or a big name — they’ve failed before; everyone has," Holland said. "The difference is no one ever heard of them. I've had two very large-profile businesses, both of them with highly publicized endings."
Fast, a one-click payments company that was nearing a billion-dollar valuation, crashed nearly as quickly as it had come on the scene.
In August 2021, Holland announced he chose Tampa for the company's eastern headquarters and soon garnered the attention of nearly every major player in the region, from Tampa Mayor Jane Castor to Amalie Arena, and became an executive committee board member at the Tampa Bay Economic Development Corp.
But while 2021 was a boom cycle for startups, with sky-high valuations, major funding rounds and hiring sprees, 2022 brought the beginnings of a more subdued, cautious market.
And Fast ran out of cash.
“The change in market conditions is what meant we couldn’t raise more capital; our overheads were too high, and user economics were too low,” Holland said. “It meant we were unfundable in the changing landscape.”
The company was eventually sold to San Francisco-based Affirm Holdings (Nasdaq: AFRM) for an undisclosed amount. Holland had to remain tight-lipped throughout the deal, with the warning any comment from him could cause the buyout to fall apart and leave his 300 employees in the lurch.
“It was very tough falling on your sword and having to skulk away,” he said. “But that’s what being a founder is: doing super hard things, standing up the next day, and taking another step.”
The next step for Holland has arrived with his new company Trady. The company has been in beta mode since March; it was publicly unveiled last week. Trady uses artificial intelligence to allow service-oriented jobs like contractors, plumbers and electricians to build a site within seconds.
The site is free to set up and allows the service person an end-to-end process, from viewing the bookings and job details to taking payments through the site. Trady makes money by taking a percentage of any payment sent through the website. It also recently launched Trady Elite, which is $99 per month and helps the service person grow their business with a more hands-on role from the Trady team, including marketing, placement in online directories and a custom domain name.
Holland’s mindset in tackling Trady versus Fast is as different as the companies themselves. In October 2021, after signing a deal with Amalie Arena, he touted the dozens of deals, hundreds of employees and anticipated millions he expected to make.
While he has high aspirations for Trady, he is approaching it with a more prudent take.
“To be honest, we’re trying to stay more present,” he said when asked about an eventual exit plan. “Who knows what’ll happen in the years to come? We’re just scratching the surface; this is one of the biggest markets in the world, and there is so much for us to do here. We’re solely focused on serving as many companies the best we can.”
The company has 13 employees, with no plans to increase dramatically in the coming months. The company completed an angel round for an undisclosed amount, and again, there are no immediate plans for a public seed round or Series A.
“Almost all the money we received late last year is still in the bank,” he said. “We’ve kept the team quite lean, and we’re cautious to expand, so we have quite a lot of runway. We’re still a venture-backed company and we’ll raise money again, but we’re not seeking it at the moment.”
