Building Offline with David Shaner - Thirteen Years, Three 'Eras' and a Whiteboard..always a Whiteboard.
From human connection to subscriptions, survival, and systems thinking on the way to full GenAI automation.
Who is David?
David Shaner is the Founder and CEO of Offline, started Offline as a senior project at NC State in 2012. Thirteen years later, it’s a profitable, multi-city subscription business serving thousands of diners and hundreds of restaurants, run by a team of two and a half people.
This conversation covers the long arc: false starts, pivots, near shutdowns, COVID, consumer monetization, and why most founders underestimate how hard it is to get unit economics right.
Some startup stories look clean in hindsight. This one doesn’t, and that’s exactly why it’s worth reading.
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How I met David:
David and I met years ago. Someone in the Triangle startup community connected us, and we agreed to meet at a Starbucks near my old office in Durham. David was oddly resistant to meeting there, which I didn’t understand at the time.
Then he walked in carrying a giant physical whiteboard.
He explained, very seriously, that he couldn’t have a meeting without one. That meeting turned into a full-on whiteboard session, and I remember thinking, “I’m definitely going to remember this guy.”
Years later, that rang true and I knew I wanted him on the pod.
Listen/Watch Our Interview:
This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. In this episode, we focus on Offline’s origin story and business evolution, not AI (yet).
Highlights from Part 1
Offline has effectively been three different companies under one brand
Early versions tried to reinvent Meetup, and failed
A city-guide app reached ~3M people/month but couldn’t monetize
Consumer businesses can look successful while quietly breaking
Subscription was the first model that truly worked
Restaurants don’t want “deal seekers”, they want incremental revenue
Offline works because it optimizes excess capacity, not discounts
COVID forced a near-shutdown, and a total rethink of operations
Today, Offline runs across 10 cities with ~600 restaurants and ~10,000 subscribers
Most founders only hear about the winning version of a company. This episode shows the cost of getting there: years of pivots, wrong turns, false confidence, and learning, sometimes the hard way, how markets actually work.
Offline didn’t succeed because of a clever growth hack. It survived because David kept learning, iterating, and refusing to confuse traction with sustainability.
How to watch:
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📌 What’s Next
In Part 2, we shift from company history to company leverage.
We’ll dig into:
How David automated large parts of Offline
Running a multi-city business with ~2.5 people
His personal productivity system
AI SDRs, AI Chief of Staffs, and orchestration tools
When process helps, and when it actively hurts
If Part 1 is about endurance, Part 2 is about leverage.
Subscribe to Triangle Tweener Talks to be notified of Part 2, and explore more Triangle founder stories at tweenertalks.com.