What Was Matt Giovanisci's Failed Startup Spruce?

Spruce was Matt Giovanisci's attempt to turn the monthly spreadsheet behind Swim University into software. He logged traffic, new email subscribers, and revenue, then calculated churn, traffic-to-email conversion, and the split between digital goods and affiliate income. He shared the sheet through Money Lab. His partner said they should connect Google Analytics, email, and the money tools, then return a health score, a Baremetrics-style view built for publishers rather than subscription software. Giovanisci still likes the idea. They tried to ship in 60 days. He designed Spruce, then learned Ruby on Rails, Git, PostgreSQL, and Heroku instead of the PHP and MySQL he already knew from WordPress. He calls the new stack the mistake.