SEED ROUND: MEET THE FOUNDER
PAULINE TORRES
DAPIT
BY Russell Nichols
a food critic or food blogger.
If I could have any other job, I’d be . . ................................................................
a great team.
A startup can’t be successful without .............................................................
“Elevate
The book that best represents my approach to business would be ................
Your Career: Live A Life You’re Truly Proud Of”
................................................................................................................................
by Helen Horyza.
..................................................................................................................................
there could be technical errors.
My biggest fear about launching was . . ...............................................................
set goals
If I could give my younger self some advice, that would be .............................
for yourself. Never give up.
..................................................................................................................................
DOES DAPIT APP SUPPORT MORE THAN ONE ADMINISTRATOR? “When you
enroll your business, the business owner is able to control it, but can set up a
store manager to have employees do approvals.”
HAVE BUSINESSES REACHED OUT FROM OTHER STATES? “We want to make this
go nationwide. We’ve been having people reach out from Florida and Pennsylvania,
but we started here in Yolo County, so the majority of businesses are from Yolo.
That’s our community.”
For more on DapIt, read Russell Nichols’ Startup of the Month column at
comstocksmag.com.
150
comstocksmag.com | March 2020
With gift cards, both physical and digital, continuing to soar in
popularity, DapIt, a Woodland-based startup, aims to bring their
convenience to small businesses while cutting down on plastic.
“We want to give small businesses like us a way to fight Amazon,
Target, those giants who are just making more and more money,” says
cofounder Pauline Torres, who launched the startup in 2018 with her
husband, Cesar Torres. “Small businesses don’t have the money to fund
an app.”
The idea for the DapIt app came in 2017, when the couple was on
vacation for Cesar’s birthday. Friends in other places wanted to buy
them a drink or appetizer remotely. But the restaurant had no options
for receiving gifts. They did research, saw a business opportunity and
jumped on it.
The Torreses raised about $190,000 from family and friends to
produce the first version of the app. With a subscription fee of $5 a
month, businesses can be on the DapIt App network, where custom-
ers anywhere can buy their digital gift cards. As of January, 75 busi-
nesses have signed up, mostly in Woodland, and the Torreses plan to
expand the network to Sacramento and beyond. This year, the couple
hopes to raise at least $1 million to ramp up.