'This is ours to lose': The founder of a $470 million company describes how she took on companies trying to copy her ideas

Sarah Jacobs

Payal Kadakia founded fitness startup ClassPass in 2013.

Today, ClassPass can be found in 39 cities around the world. It has generated more than 30 million class reservations and is currently valued at about $470 million.

It was only a matter of time until someone else wanted to try something similar.

In an interview with Business Insider US editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell on Business Insider's podcast, "Success! How I Did It," Kadakia talked about dealing with copycats, and how her team set ClassPass apart.

"So how do you deal with that as a founder when you've got something successful that's working, that's hot, and then all these copycats come out and undercut your price, or try to?" Shontell asked.

Kadakia answered:

"It was an interesting phase in the company. I believe you win the race by looking forward, not behind. It became a little hard. There was this phase where I feel like every day I would get to my desk and the team was talking about it, and people were talking about it, and so we were like, 'All right, this is ours to lose.' That's how I felt. I think we kind of knew we had to kind of take on the market and expand rapidly, and we did that. We went to 20 cities in a matter of six months."

Now, Kadakia said, ClassPass is on track to be profitable.

You can listen to the full interview here:

Subscribe to "Success! How I Did It" on Acast or iTunes. Check out previous episodes with:

• DropBox founder and CEO Drew Houston
• AOL CEO Tim Armstrong
• BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti
• Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg
• Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James 

Here's an excerpt of the transcript:

Alyson Shontell: You go through all this. You've changed the price. You figure it out. You've iterated. And how many markets are you in?

Payal Kadakia: We're in 39 cities globally.

Shontell: OK. And how many users? Can you share any metrics?

Kadakia: We're past 30 million reservations since we launched ClassPass, so 2013.

Shontell: That's tremendous growth. So much so that a slew of copycats came out.

Kadakia: Yeah. That was an interesting phase.

Shontell: There's all these people. So how do you deal with that as a founder when you've got something successful that's working, that's hot and then all these copycats come out and undercut your price, or try to.

Kadakia: It was an interesting phase in the company. I believe you win the race by looking forward, not behind. It became a little hard. There was this phase where I feel like everyday, I would get to my desk and the team was talking about it and people were talking about it and so we were like alright, this is ours to lose. That's how I felt. I think we kind of knew we had to kind of take on the market and expand rapidly and we did that. We went to 20 cities in a matter of six months.

Shontell: Wow.

Kadakia: Yeah.

Shontell: Are you guys making money?

Kadakia: We're on track to be profitable.

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