SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 791: BrightFunnel Marketing Tech Passes $3m ARR, 70 Customers
Sep 23, 2017
25:52
Chris Mann. He has over 25 years of experience in product management and strategy. In 2010, he joined Bizo and created a marketing automation system for B2B paid advertising and led the company through its $175M acquisition by LinkedIn. He was also involved in LinkedIn's advertising business. Prior to Bizo, Chris held product leadership role in IBM and Coremetrics. Today, he is the CEO leading Brightfunnel.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Hard Thing About Hard Things and High Output Management
- What CEO do you follow? – Russ Glass
- Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Come from the heart"
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 02:00 – Nathan introduces Chris to the show
- 02:53 – Chris was the head of product at Bizo when they were just starting with 15 people
- 03:31 – Chris began advising for Brightfunnel when there were only 18 people in the company
- 03:41 – He was still at LinkedIn at the time and the previous CEO told Chris to join them
- 03:58 – Chris joined as head of product and the transition was planned for him to take the CEO seat
- 04:06 – Chris took the CEO seat in April
- 04:30 – Chris had to stay with LinkedIn after the acquisition
- 04:55 – Chris thinks LinkedIn won't have a mature and dominant advertising platform from a scale standpoint
- 05:22 – "The scale would never get to Facebook"
- 06:20 – Chris has been in the advertising game for 8 years
- 06:35 – Back at Bizo, Chris built something like Brightfunnel
- 06:49 – When Bizo came to LinkedIn, they acquired Fliptop
- 07:18 – LinkedIn isn't the company you should go to when you want to improve your advertising
- 07:39 – Chris solved the problem and he knows B2B marketing well
- 08:24 – Chris talks about the transition
- 08:46 – The transition has been smooth
- 08:53 – Chris has built great credibility and relationships within the company
- 09:13 – The company just had a record quarter where new ARR was three times more than last year
- 10:33 – In B2B marketing today, there isn't a measurement platform that can see every single marketing activity
- 10:49 – Brightfunnel puts the data together in a way that it is understandable for the marketers to optimize
- 11:55 – Brightfunnel is SaaS-based with an annual subscription
- 12:08 – ASP last quarter was $93K which is great for a cloud company
- 12:35 – 150 marketers have touched Brightfunnel
- 13:33 – Brightfunnel doesn't take any deal less than $30K
- 13:44 – Average ARR per customer is around $50K
- 13:53 – Team size is 45, 1/3 engineers with 8 in marketing and 6 in sales
- 15:00 – When Brightfunnel was at a Marketo's conference, the head of marketing brought in puppies
- 15:30 – There were a lot of people who came to their booth
- 15:57 – Cost per lead has been around $59 across all programs
- 16:10 – Conversion is 30% of their pipeline
- 17:38 – For $1M a quarter for a new ARR, Chris wants to have 5M pipeline
- 18:00 – Team is based in San Francisco with 2 remote
- 18:24 – Brightfunnel just crossed the 70-customer mark
- 19:09 – Average ARR
- 19:50 – Logo churn is around 10% annual
- 20:20 – RPU expansion is around 20-25%
- 21:41 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- The transition from one company to another is always a learning experience.
- LinkedIn won't have a mature and dominant advertising platform.
- Marketers need a platform like Brightfunnel that will help them become more effective with their campaigns.
Resources Mentioned:
- Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
- 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
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
- 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
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives