DataMove

Rick Heimanson's path to DataMove started with the success of his first company, Shugo, which he bootstrapped starting in 2008. Shugo became a secure file transfer platform for payroll providers, growing to over $1M in ARR before being acquired in January 2018 for millions of dollars. After working at the acquiring company for 2.5 years, Rick discovered the "Startups for the Rest of Us" podcast in 2021 and was struck by how much it could have accelerated his first venture. That same year, former Shugo customers began calling him about a critical gap in the market: they needed a Zapier-like solution to seamlessly move payroll data between different systems and vendors. Rick initially dismissed the idea as "boring," but the more he thought about it, the more he realized this could be transformative for the payroll and HR industry.

Rick didn't immediately jump into DataMove. He spent months convincing himself the timing was right, even though he'd always known he'd start another venture after Shugo's exit. This time around, his approach was different. Rather than self-fund entirely like he had with Shugo, Rick took on a small seed investment to gain not just capital but mentorship and community. He joined Tiny Seed, reasoning that having access to experienced founders and advisors would be invaluable. This decision reflected a key lesson from his first company: relationships and trust matter enormously in the payroll/HR space. DataMove positioned itself as a no-code data exchange platform, with the tagline "reinventing the way data moves," focused on helping payroll providers and HR vendors integrate seamlessly without manual, error-prone data work.

Rick's acquisition of early customers was almost automatic—they were his former customers from Shugo who had been waiting for a solution like this. Because he'd built deep relationships and trust over a decade in the payroll industry, word spread quickly. This time, Rick was intentional about leverage existing relationships rather than trying to cold-sell from scratch. He attended industry events, maintained his reputation, and positioned himself as someone who understood the pain points intimately. By the time DataMove launched in 2022, Rick had a pipeline of potential customers ready to adopt the platform.

One critical lesson Rick learned from Shugo that he applies ruthlessly to DataMove is saying "no" to feature requests. In his first company, he built features customers swore they desperately needed, only to see them go unused. Now, when customers propose new features, Rick often gives them a proposal: they fund the development, and he ships the feature to all users (both own the IP). This ensures he's building what people actually need while getting paid for custom development. In November 2022, a customer was so convinced a new feature would bring them hundreds of clients that they paid for it—but zero customers ended up using it. Rick doesn't regret it: they paid for the roadmap, and he didn't waste engineering time. He's also obsessed with IP assignments, having learned the hard way during Shugo's acquisition that unclear IP ownership can derail even a done deal. Every employee and contractor now signs an IP agreement from day one.

DataMove has grown to approximately 70 customers, with each customer often processing payroll for hundreds or thousands of small businesses across the country. Rick is growing the company more deliberately this time, prioritizing relationships, strategic partnerships, and saying no to distractions. He's also giving back to the startup community through Tiny Seed, mentoring first-time founders who are earlier in their journey. Rick credits the lessons learned over 20 years in the payroll industry and his experience building Shugo—plus the wisdom he gleaned from "Startups for the Rest of Us"—for his more measured, relationship-focused approach with DataMove. He's optimizing for long-term value creation rather than quick growth, knowing from experience that sustainable SaaS companies compound over time.