Founder Snapshot
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Founder: Dan Koukol, CEO & Co-Founder
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Company: Digit
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Stage: Seed ($XM)
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Investors: Assembly Ventures (lead), Hyde Park Angels, Grand Ventures
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Founded: 2021
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Previous: 9 years consulting for manufacturers (Fortune 500 to mom-and-pop), CEO of Prodigy Disc (5x’d revenue)
Co-Founder Snapshot
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Co-Founder: Simon Kronenberg, CRO & Co-Founder
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Previous: 3 startups across B2C consumer electronics, edtech, and B2B SaaS
Dan’s nickname in middle school was “Data Dan.” He was the Excel nerd, building things in Visual Basic while his classmates did whatever middle schoolers do. The name stuck through college.
“My sophomore year, one of my professors was also consulting for manufacturers on the side,” Dan says. “He had essentially signed up for a digitalization contract that he wasn’t sure how to fulfill.”
The professor asked for help on what was supposed to be a multi-month project. Dan did the whole thing in four days. “I lived on Red Bull, Taco Bell, Little Caesars… It’s embarrassing to say now - my dietary habits were horrible back then.”
That sprint led him to start his own consulting firm as a sophomore. He ran it for nine years, working with 75+ companies across manufacturing and distribution. Fortune 500 brands like Allegra and Gold Bond. Volkswagen plants where he built just-in-time inventory systems. Mom-and-pop textile mills. He saw every ERP system, every implementation, every failure mode.
“I knew the product. I had seen it done wrong so many times.”
The Disc Golf Detour
When Dan’s wife was expecting their first child, he wanted off the road. He tried to convince a few $50 million manufacturers to let him come in as CEO.
“They all said no, as you might expect. But I’m glad I asked, right? The worst they can say is no.”
He found a smaller opportunity: Prodigy Disc, an injection-molded disc golf manufacturer doing $2 million a year and losing money. They let him in. Over the next 18 months, Dan grew the company from $2 million to $10 million in revenue, from 14 to 51 employees, and brought them back to profitability.
The secret was a homegrown operations system he built there - the early version of what would become Digit. Four years ago, he turned it into a company.
Two Co-Founders, One Origin Story
Dan met his co-founder Simon through their respective wives, who were college roommates more than ten years ago. “They frequently remind us we wouldn’t have Digit without them” Dan chuckles.
Dan’s co-founder Simon Kronenberg brings a different perspective. This is Simon’s fourth startup, his first as co-founder. He’s been the one-man go-to-market operation: running the website, outbound campaigns, sales demos, closing deals - all of it. “I’ve been on like 500 sales calls over the last two years,” Simon says.
The team is 11 people, heavily weighted toward engineering, product, and customer success. Now they’re swinging the pendulum toward growth.
Simon has seen what happens when startups hire based on pedigree alone. “I’ve seen fairly unsuccessful hires that have come from what seemed like the very senior roles at large successful companies who really struggle to make an impact in this world where there’s no resources and things are so messy.”
That’s why he values startup experience over industry experience. “With any startup there’s a lot you don’t know even if you have the industry experience. It’s more about this quick feedback experimentation loop.”
The Founding AE They’re Looking For
“A hunter and a closer are the two words,” Dan says. “Someone that will scratch, claw, do whatever is necessary to win.”
Simon has a clear hiring philosophy: culture first, then capability. “You could be the best at what you do, but if you’re not a culture fit, it’s a no.”
They use what Dan calls “the airport test” - if you get stuck overnight at an airport together, will you still be friends the next day? Beyond that, Simon is looking for a creative problem solver - someone who can get deals to the finish line.
“We can fill up the calendar of a salesperson on week one even without them doing additional prospecting,” Simon says. The inbound is there. They need someone who can also hunt the bigger deals - the mid-market companies moving off NetSuite.
Why Someone Should Care
The ceiling is high. Digit is building what Simon calls “the hub of operations” for any company dealing with inventory, production, or warehouses. Thousands and thousands of companies.
“I have days sometimes where I talk to a drone manufacturer in the morning, a boat manufacturer after, and then a juice concentrate distributor,” Simon says. “You really feel so connected to the physical world around you.”
This year, Dan says, Digit will start stealing customers from the big dogs. The product has matured enough that their thesis - proactive AI-powered guidance sitting on top of operational data - will finally hit the product.
“We don’t want to just be a system of record,” Dan says. “We want our system to be proactive and push insights to you. I was really good as a consultant, but I pale in comparison to large language models. They’ve read every book.”
The manufacturers who bet on Digit early are already seeing it work. For the right founding AE, this is the chance to massively accelerate your career.
Learn More
Digit is building the operating system for manufacturers and distributors, challenging legacy ERPs with a modern, AI-powered platform.
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Website: https://digit-software.com
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Connect with Dan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielkoukol/
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Connect with Simon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skronenberg/
