Ringpin

John Stern and Brian Levine, both with 20+ years of experience in technology consulting and e-commerce, started Ringpin in late 2016 as a side project. The initial spark came from building an omni-channel contact center for a San Diego insurance agency that kept acquiring other agencies and needed a unified communication platform. However, John and Brian's real passion wasn't phone systems—it was about connecting people anywhere and enabling digital actions from any location.

The original vision was an omni-channel contact center similar to Dialpad or Talkdesk. But when the insurance agency was acquired by private equity before the platform launched, John and Brian found themselves with technology they weren't particularly excited about. The real breakthrough came during the pandemic when John was in Brazil in late 2019 and successfully ordered ice cream through a QR code. He texted Brian: "Hey, this is pretty cool. Now you can do something fun with QR." As they watched China and Asia embrace QR codes for contactless access during COVID, they realized the US market was about to be forced into QR adoption. They pivoted hard, combining their omni-channel communication background with QR code technology to create a platform for physical businesses to drive digital experiences.

The founders deliberately avoided the crowded restaurant menu space, instead focusing on their backgrounds in e-commerce and retail. They started by targeting API partnerships rather than hunting individual customers one-by-one. Their first major partnership was with Postal.io, a B2B account-based marketing platform. Postal used Ringpin to help customers like Nam's Bake Shop burn QR codes onto wooden cookie boxes with personalized videos inside. The reaction was so strong that Postal wanted QR codes on every package they shipped. By the time of the interview (early 2021), they had 45 total customers (mostly from the old contact center business), but only 7 from the new QR/physical-to-digital pivot.

John and Brian bootstrapped for nearly 5 years, only going full-time in June 2020 as the pandemic accelerated adoption. Despite having 45 customers, they were generating under $5,000 per month in revenue because most early customers were on the old contact center pricing model. Their minimum starter price was $2,000/month, but the real growth opportunity lay in the enterprise pipeline. They learned that direct sales to SMBs didn't work as well as API partnerships that gave them access to entire customer bases overnight. They also adopted a product-led approach, letting developers build with their API and then upsell to enterprises. The bootstrap model was brutal—John admits "it's been a struggle to make it this far"—and they were planning to raise $3-5 million after signing a few enterprise deals.

Ringpin had grown to serve customers like 40 pizza shops in Toronto who use the platform on mailers and boxes to re-engage customers and drive reviews. John and Brian demonstrated real use cases: payment processors could embed QR codes on bills for one-click payments; e-commerce and shipping companies could add interactive experiences to packages. They were partnering with platforms across multiple industries (not just restaurants) and building both white-labeled and branded versions. The company was at an inflection point—small revenue but massive enterprise opportunities in the pipeline, with founders finally going all-in after maintaining day jobs for years.