Friends and family invested in a hockey kid from Eveleth. Now they are reaping rewards.

Darren Wercinski jokes he may never have to buy a drink at the Eveleth Fourth of July party ever again.

He recently sold Reach Media Network software company to Poppulo, an affiliate of the private equity firm Vista Equity Partners. And the friends and family members who were early investors and stuck with him got handsome checks.

Wercinski grew up on the Iron Range, playing on the 1993 Eveleth-Gilbert High School state championship hockey team and going on to play for Dartmouth College.

When he and Marc Kline, a Best Buy colleague, decided they wanted to strike out on their own, the two kicked around a bunch of ideas. But Wercinski’s experience as a rink rat was how they settled on Reach Media Network.

He knew ice arenas needed a way to get information out to athletes, coaches and parents. The pair figured they could use media screens that had directions, schedules and community information. As a bonus, Reach could sell ads and split the revenue.

It was classic captive audience marketing. Visitors to the centers saw the ads as they had to watch the screens for schedules and assignments.

The Eden Prairie company’s first client was the Super Rink in Blaine. Others followed suit.

“Back then, if one ice arena had something cool. The rest of them wanted to get something cool,” Wercinski said.

The company soon realized that outside of Minnesota communities didn’t spend a lot on ice arenas. So Reach began expanding the screens to corporate and education campuses as well as to large fitness and restaurant chains.

That model worked well for a while as Reach built up a nationwide ad sales team.

Over time, though, it became harder and harder for sales reps to sell enough ads to support all the screens deployed.

Wercinski and Kline pivoted from an advertising sales company to a SaaS (software as a service) vendor. In other words, Reach now sells the software for the screens on a subscription basis and clients can sell their own ads.

The hardware side of the business also made the transition easier. When the business started in 2005, a 50-inch plasma display screen cost $3,000, which would have been a huge investment for an ice arena.

Now Wercinski says a 50-inch display screen might be $250 and Reach’s software works with nearly any digital display.

Wercinski says that pivot to the SaaS model likely saved the company from a trend of slowing ad sales and put it back in the “startup” category.

Since then, Reach has signed over 9,000 software clients and now powers over 25,000 screens.

As Reach revamped growth, it drew the attention of private equity investors.

It wasn’t the first time. Over the years, Wercinski not only bought out some of the early investors and Kline, he entertained other offers to sell the company. However, most were “cost-out” deals where the firms were looking to add Reach’s customers but cut its employees.

His sale to Poppulo, a workplace communications company based in Denver that includes a big digital signage business, preserves the Reach brand. Poppulo also pledged to keep the company’s 50 employees, half of whom are in Minnesota.

“By joining forces, we are not only enhancing our offerings but also expanding our ability to support businesses of all sizes in creating exceptional communication experiences,” Ruth Fornell, chief executive of Poppulo, said in a news release. “This acquisition is a key milestone in our growth strategy.”

In the early days, Wercinski leaned on his friends and family as he and Kline raised $350,000 to get the company’s business plan going.

About 20 of those early investors, mainly from Eveleth, invested around $10,000 each.

Because the company was profitable right away, Reach didn’t have to seek much more outside financing after that.

Terms of the Poppulo deal were not disclosed, but Wercinski said his co-founder and all the investors had a much better return than if they had invested in an S&P 500 index fund.