SwagUp

Michael Martocci has been an entrepreneur since childhood, reselling groceries to neighbors and later launching multiple business ventures. In 2015, he dropped out of College of William & Mary to co-found a fitness training business with NFL veteran Steve Weatherford. A turning point came when working at Brand New Matter, a VC firm in NYC, where he observed how heavily startups invested in brand, employee experience, and community building—and how central swag was to all of it. Yet there was no great company making it simple and accessible.

Michael's swag background ran deeper than most. In college, he and a friend had needed custom flags for an app launch and discovered that sourcing them domestically was prohibitively expensive. They found a supplier in China and launched a side business selling custom flags online, eventually expanding to fraternity shirts and merchandise. He'd shelved that when partnering with the NFL player, but the SwagUp concept crystallized at the VC firm. The breakthrough moment came when they fulfilled their first large order: a swag pack—an assortment of items bundled as a set for new hires. "We realized we could build a business around productizing and simplifying that experience that was traditionally very messy."

Michael was not technical and had limited funds, so he bootstrapped ruthlessly. He used a combination of Wix and Typeform to create an intuitive customer experience without significant upfront cost. Typeform fed into Trello, creating a seamless workflow for backend operations. He ran "a few simple Google Ads early which led to some early traction on validation." For at least 18 months, he operated this lean stack before bringing on a CTO and reinvesting profits into rebuilding systems.

This scrappy approach reflected Michael's philosophy: "Get something out there quick, get feedback, and see where it goes. See what works and then build it." It worked far longer than expected, but eventually Typeform couldn't provide the UX flexibility needed for the pack builder, and Trello buckled under massive amounts of data and files. There was no single source of truth. Only then did he invest in proper infrastructure—a homegrown ERP built on Salesforce and custom-built software.

The first few months were humble. "The first few months, revenue was pretty low, sub $5k, but it was something, especially given no one knew who we were." Google Ads provided early validation through inbound leads. Then came the watershed moment: an early order from Soylent. "That was very encouraging, as it proved people were likely looking for a better way."

After the first major swag pack order—around $10k—and repositioning explicitly as a swag pack company, growth accelerated dramatically. "The next month we did about $40k and never looked back." Michael credits this to what he calls "Purple Cow thinking"—they had become remarkable and differentiated in a stale industry.

Google Ads worked initially for validation and early customer acquisition. But Michael was disciplined about focus: "We never really dug into social media and social ads. Facebook Ads testing early on brought a lot of low-quality leads so we ignored it." His principle was simple—test channels but double down on what works.

What worked spectacularly was the viral loop inherent to the product itself. "There's an inherent virality to what we do because our finished products are out in the world, gifted to people. Recipients always want to know where they came from, which leads back to us." This created a self-sustaining acquisition engine as long as customer experience remained exceptional. Later, Michael became personally active on Twitter, which "helped us build a strong community around the brand."

The biggest obstacles stemmed from growth and team-building constraints. "Balancing being aggressive with growth with the financial limitations of being self-funded" forced strategic sequencing of infrastructure investments. Most painful were people management and technical architecture decisions made early that accumulated debt. "Without good data, it makes it hard to make good decisions and build strong processes."

By the time of this interview (May 2021), SwagUp had grown to 2,500+ clients, a 150-person team, and "multiple 8 figures in sales"—all while remaining 100% bootstrapped. The company was growing 2x-3x annually, reinvesting profits aggressively. Michael's vision was clear: "We want to build a billion revenue business over the next 5-7 years and I think we'll get there."

The business evolved from scrappy startup to scaled operations spanning a 40,000-square-foot fulfillment center, sophisticated technology (Salesforce ERP, custom software), and specialized teams. Yet Michael remained focused on avoiding bureaucracy and maintaining "a penchant for action." His two core lessons: never lose the ability to move fast and iterate, and hire incredible talent as early as possible—"bringing in great talent compounds."

Michael's own growth as a founder mirrored the company's. He went from solopreneur selling via Typeform to CEO managing a leadership team, with a strategic focus on long-term vision, product strategy, and team building. He remained engaged by the bootstrapping challenge, the aggression and risk-taking it demanded, and the opportunity to build "the biggest and best business in this industry without the need for outside capital."