675: Would you acquire Mattermark? Artesian $700k MRR, $40M Raised w/ CEO Andrew Yates

Andrew Yates. He's the CEO and founder of Artesian and they want to make sellers more effective at engaging with buyers using smart data and new techniques to create the right impact. He's been involved in the sales and marketing for the past 25 years and is aiming to make a difference to people by creating software companies that make a meaningful dent in the universe.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Escape Velocity
• What CEO do you follow? – Godfrey Sullivan
• Favorite online tool? — Microsoft Outlook, GeckoBoard, Salesforce
• How many hours of sleep do you get? — 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wished I knew more how money and leverage finance works"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:13 – Nathan introduces Andrew to the show
• 01:46 – Artesian provides a sales acceleration platform
  • 01:56 – With Artesian, you can track every single customer, prospect and competitor every day and manage your pipeline risk
  • 02:11 – Artesian's phrase is "customer curious businesses"
• 02:44 – Artesian combines thermographic data with the real-time contextual intelligence
• 02:50 – You can ask Artesian to find you a company that fits a certain profile
• 03:15 – Artesian has natural language processing science that scans over 10M sources of structured and unstructured data
• 03:47 – Artesian started providing their service in 2010
• 03:54 – Artesian currently has 30K paying subscribers with 100 large enterprise customers
  • 04:09 – Artesian covers a broad sector
  • 04:20 – Artesian's customers are in high value, relationship-oriented, sales engagement
• 04:30 – Team size is 60
• 04:38 – Artesian's goal is to accelerate more in 2017
• 04:50 – Average pay per customer is $10K to over $2M per year
• 04:59 – Artesian licenses to software per user, per month basis
• 05:04 – 68% of target ARR for 2017 has been contracted
• 05:38 – Before, Artesian's licenses were cheaper
• 06:08 – The 30K customers are the number of seats from 120 enterprise customers
• 06:43 – Artesian made the decision to take down their cash burn in terms of investment
  • 07:04 – Artesian was burning $300K-400K a month
• 07:15 – Artesian has raised $40M in equity and debt
• 07:50 – MRR is $700K
• 08:24 – Customer retention is around 93 and 120 in terms of net
• 09:10 – Artesian is now number in the GT crowd ranking in terms of the most popular and most intelligent platform
• 09:59 – Artesian uses a team of researchers to build deep and cool data sets
• 10:39 – Artesian also invites users to define their own sales triggers
• 11:40 – Nathan had Danielle in Episode 318
• 12:00 – Andrew thinks that a market consolidation practice is inevitable
  • 12:26 – A scenario where companies could join forces to give broader reach and greater depth—a better customer experience is definitely more valuable
• 12:47 – Andrew also drives growth for Artesian
• 12:58 – It is important to spend time speaking with other companies that are active in the same space
  • 13:14 – The companies can be quite different and quite complementary
• 13:29 – The last round was a bridge round
• 13:49 – Artesian is currently equipped to keep going, without investments, for the next 2 years
• 14:08 – By the middle of 2017, Artesian will be in a cash flow, breakeven profitability state
• 14:40 – CAC
  • 14:41 – Artesian was tracking 1x in Year 1
  • 15:08 – Artesian uses great people to drive adoption
  • 15:13 – Artesian has 5 methods inside the platform
  • 15:25 – Artesian uses customer relationship management and what the system is telling them to do
  • 15:42 – Running 89% daily user engagement
• 16:15 – Artesian launched a way to build a smart calendar for each user every day
  • 16:29 – Artesian is partnered with FullContact and others that provide social profiles
• 16:56 – Artesian is spending $60-70K on acquisition depending on the segment
• 17:20 – LTV is 5.2 years
  • 17:30 – Artesian tracks this by looking at the average of customers they're holding on to
  • 17:40 – HBC is one of their customers
• 19:28 – Andrew would be interested in talking with Salesforce to share the value
• 19:38 – 50% of Artesian is owned by institutions
• 19:46 – Andrew has 2 co-founders
• 21:27 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Companies in the same space should talk more—they can find out how they're different and how they complement each other.
2. Being transparent shows that you want people to see your value and learn from it.
3. Handling your finances and controlling what you burn wisely will help your company manage without additional capital.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives