This month’s four-minute FirstMile Founder interview is with Matt Burdumy, the co-founder and CEO of Anuvi, a FirstMile Ventures 2020 portfolio company. Anuvi transforms COBRA for Brokers & HR from an administrative headache into a revenue-driving, risk-reducing, and supportive off-boarding compliance solution. Matt came to Colorado for his first startup product role at Craftsy. He later left there to join Denver-based unicorn Guild Education before starting Anuvi in 2022. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
At first, I wanted to be a fighter pilot because I was obsessed with Top Gun—but that dream didn’t last long. In high school, I started my first business: a DJ company with a friend. Growing up in a small town in Connecticut, I noticed that many school events had terrible music and DJs. My dad helped me get the equipment, and after we nailed our first PTA-sponsored dance, word spread, and soon all the PTAs were booking us. I ended up selling the business before heading to college, which sparked my interest in entrepreneurship. At Georgetown, I decided to branch out and registered for a computer science class alongside my business courses. At the time, being an engineer wasn’t exactly “cool,” but I took the class because I was a computer nerd at heart. After a summer internship in banking—which I absolutely hated—I was lucky enough to meet Andrew Yang of Venture for America during my senior year. That connection led me to a startup job at Craftsy in Denver and eventually to Guild, setting the stage for my career in tech and business. Was starting Anuvi an "aha moment" or a "gradual realization"? More gradual. There is this myth in the startup world that you must have a mission originating in your childhood that you then build a company around. It was not the case for us - we had not operated in this space for a long time. We identified this problem space as one where we were confident tech could solve much more comprehensively. We did have an “aha” moment when we started pitching the idea to insurance brokers – they were quickly asking when it would be available for their clients. If you could go back in time to when you first started Anuvi and tell yourself something, what would it be? We should have been more confident and aggressive - raised a little more, grown the team more, etc. We were a little too afraid of failure and worried we’d have to pivot. We actually had the foundation we needed at the time to have grown faster in our first 18 months. What is the best constructive feedback you have gotten, and how bad did it hurt when you first heard it? I don’t recall the feedback being particularly harsh—perhaps it was delivered thoughtfully, or maybe I knew I needed to hear it. Two moments, however, stand out in my career so far. The first was at Craftsy, where an excellent PM pointed out that I was avoiding problems I didn’t already have solutions for. Instead, I was focusing only on problems I could conceptualize solutions for quickly and confidently. She emphasized that to be a great PM, you need to tackle challenges that don’t have immediate answers and push yourself beyond your comfort zone. The second instance came from a manager who pointed out my tendency to dominate conversations and talk over others. He led by example, demonstrating how to “speak softly but carry a big stick.” That’s a lesson I’m still working on. Why is Colorado a great place to start a company? There is a huge diversity of people and industries here, which I have come to value over the years. A lot of my friends here are not in the startup world. So when I leave work to see them, I get a broader array of feedback and ideas. At the same time, Denver/Boulder does have a strong startup community and a gritty founder culture. Most founders I know here are genuinely focused on building lasting businesses. Not all of the startups here are software businesses, so I again get valuable and thoughtful feedback. Being based in Denver was not a knock when we raised our last round. I think many view building here as an asset or at least normal. Ten years ago, that might not have been a founder’s experience. Additionally, the angel community here is phenomenal. We got great feedback on our unique value prop. Angels loved our niche industry focus which helped get us off the ground. We were dreaming big enough for them to invest. Fast-pitch questions:
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