Client Success Stories - GrowthLab Financial Services -

Interview with Dan Gertrudes, Founder and CEO of GrowthLab

Tell Us About Your Journey

What’s my journey as an entrepreneur? I would actually start by saying it was unorthodox, unintentional. I don’t want to say I fell into it because I try to be deliberate. I had spent 15 years in corporate America. The last 10 years I was in a Fortune 500 company. I would actually say that I was one of the fortunate ones post-2008, not just to have a job, but to have one of the best experiences that anybody would ever want in their career. Restructurings, turnaround.

We always talk about what it feels and what it looks like, especially in the startup world, up, up, up. But there are times where companies falter. There are times where there is distress out in the economy, and it does impact small, medium-sized businesses. I’m very grateful for that experience, because of that experience, it truly parlayed me into GrowthLab. It’s why I started GrowthLab.

What Is the History of GrowthLab?

I knew after four or five years during the great recession, I felt like at the age of 38, it was my opportunity to do something for me, something that I could build. Taking my learnings from all those 10, 15 years of corporate experience. I set off to do fractional CFO services for venture-backed startups. Ironically, that’s probably about 10 and a half years ago is when I actually met the team at Gesmer.

One of the things I realized in 2014 is I didn’t want to do it alone. I set out to identify potential acquisition opportunities within the accounting space. I’m not an accountant. I’m not a CPA. Frankly, I’m a non-accountant who owns an accounting firm. What I realized back in 2014 was, in order to provide that full finance and accounting value stream to whether it’s startups or medium-sized businesses, you really needed the full gamut. It couldn’t be serviced by one person because you had to create leverage.

So I started GrowthLab in mid-2014. I did my first acquisition in 2015. I brought on some great shareholders and senior managers to help scale the business to where we got to 10 years later. Today, 10 years later, we have over 40 team members, and we provide everything from the nuts and bolts of the bookkeeping, the controllership, financial planning and analysis, virtual CFO services, and finally, business tax.

What Motivates You?

I’m motivated by taking my diverse experiences, professional, personal, academic experiences, taking those experiences and leaning into innovating, nurturing, elevating my team, the entrepreneurs that we work with, because there would be no business without our great customers, and the accounting industry as a whole. I enjoy that because I really want people to take risks. I lean into that risk-taking to help others achieve their goals.

What Challenges Have You Faced?

When I think about challenges, I really try to view them as opportunities. I try to approach them through wisdom, courage, justice, and discipline. As we approach the summer of 2023, I had this feeling that some of the dynamics in the economy, the business, the impact that inflation and the rising cost of capital was having on small businesses, including ours. I had this feeling that I had to make some changes because ultimately, I came to the realization that what got us here is not going to get us there. So I set off on a journey to begin to restructure the business.

I say this over and over again, in any professional services business, it’s people on one side of the equation and people on the other side. Your employees are people, your customers are people. Pretty much every decision you make is going to impact a human being. I think it’s important for any business manager, any leader, really approach these decisions through those four virtues, because you are going to impact people, and you need people in order to execute. I’m excited because I sit here almost nine, ten months after beginning the restructuring of our company. I’m excited because we’re now positioned to capture new opportunities.

What Advice Can You Offer to Other Entrepreneurs?

What advice can I offer other entrepreneurs? I like to answer that through the lens of mental health. All too often, entrepreneurs, you find yourself lonely. Everything falls on you. That’s a heavy feeling. My advice to entrepreneurs is, yes, you do need the tenacity, you need the grit, you need the conviction, the self-confidence, but you also need to be able to control yourself. You need to have that discipline. Lean into tenacity, but don’t forget about the discipline, because otherwise, entrepreneurs are just like, you end up burning out. If you burn out, you’re going to impact your employees, your family, your customers. You can’t go it alone.

The second piece of advice is, even though entrepreneurs are inherently risk-takers, they actually aren’t. It’s okay to take a risk; it’s got to be a calculated risk. Many entrepreneurs, they start-off as solo entrepreneurs, me, myself, and I. At some point, you need to take the leap of faith and invest in the team. Start building the team to create that leverage.

Because one of the major ways you make money in business is by leveraging people, leveraging human capital. Take the risk. Then, once you’ve taken that risk, the next step is reinforce risk-taking behaviors in your business. Have your employees take risk. Risk-taking without retaliation. It’s amazing, the culture you create.

Where Do You See GrowthLab in 3-5 Years?

The answer to that question would have looked so different in 2020, 2021. The capital that was available for companies like ours was actually growing because as companies went from being fully premise-based to remote, and it was getting more and more difficult to actually hire employees to either come to the office or work at that time, the market for our services began to expand. I would say it expanded exponentially because if you look at our growth rates, we were growing between 30% and 45%.

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We have to go deeper with our customer relationships. We need to go wider with what we’re providing them. That’s on the market-facing side. We also need to reinvent how we go to market. I believe it’s going to be back to basics with some of the learnings over the last three years.

What Value Has Gesmer Updegrove Provided to GrowthLab?

The value that Gesmer has provided GrowthLab isn’t just in the form of professional services. The value has been in employment law, litigation, IP. The team is nimble, the team is agile. Not that we’re looking for every lawyer, every professional service provider to be picking up the phone at 9:00 PM. That’s not what we’re looking for, because we don’t want that in our customer base. What we’re looking for is direct advice and risk mitigation and the protections we need, the risks that we need to know in order for us to make decisions.

Why Go With Gesmer?

You can obviously go with Gesmer for the legal services. They’re very focused on startups and venture-backed startups. The more important thing is they’re an integral part of the startup community, the ecosystem here in New England. As an entrepreneur, not going it alone, and it kind of takes a village, that’s what you’re going to get from service providers like Gesmer.

As you’re thinking about who you’re going to bring on as a service provider, as a legal advisor, think about the other value, the extra value that you bring, because those relationships could be the difference.