After a career-ending injury as a jockey, Evan Daly rebuilt his life from the ground up. First as a personal trainer, then as the co-founder of Glean, a health and wellness app with thousands of subscribers.

In this episode, Evan shares the full story: the unexpected pivot from personal training to technology entrepreneur, how he scaled a business with no technical background, and why community was the foundation from day one. You’ll hear how he and co-founder Sean Casey turned spreadsheets and Google Forms into a powerful platform, and how building with Devika unlocked the next level of scale.

In this episode:

• How Evan went from racing horses to building digital products

• His first viral growth moment

• Launching Glean with 3K+ signups in minutes

• The marketing moves behind 100’s of lifetime members

• Why simplicity, transparency, and control are key to scaling software

• What non-technical founders should know before building an app

Like what you hear? Follow the show and visit devika.com to learn how we help founders go from idea to impact. https://omny.fm/shows/build-and-scale-with-devika

Youtube Link

https://youtu.be/EleQoRCYMN8 - live at 12:01am on the 9th

Chapters:

00:00 – Intro
00:40 – Retired at 19: From Racing to Rock Bottom
03:00 – The Accidental PT Business
05:21 – The Social Media Explosion
07:31 – From 200 to 700 Members
08:47 – When Google Sheets Break: Time to Build
09:16 – The App Idea: Sitting on the Beach
10:28 – Picking Devika as a Tech Partner
11:39 – Go-to-Market and Launch Strategy
15:55 – Community as the Foundation
17:24 – Building the 4 Pillars of Glean
20:21 – Control, Integrations, and MVP Discipline
21:12 – Lessons in Product, Team, and Support
23:04 – Building Tech Without Being Technical

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steve Shelley started his career cleaning planes and went on to build one of Australia’s largest aviation ground handling businesses, AeroCare, before co-founding Deputy; a workforce management platform valued at over $1 billion and used by businesses all around the world.

Now, he’s applying that same winning playbook to his passion for motorsport. As the owner of New South Wales’ premier racing circuit, alongside Sydney Motorsport Park, Steve is putting his stamp on the future of the sport in Australia. His latest venture, 1Racer, is a new platform designed to streamline race-day administration and revolutionise how events are run across Australia and beyond, developed in collaboration with Devika.

In this episode, Steve unpacks the parallels between building traditional businesses and scaling software, what he learned from bootstrapping Deputy before raising over AUD $100 million in 2018 (the largest in history at the time), and why partnering with Devika was the right move to bring 1Racer to life.

🎧 Like what you hear? Follow the show and visit devika.com to learn how we help founders go from idea to impact.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.