SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders EP 581: DocSend $11M Raised, 2800+ Company Customers, 10,000+ Seats Because Links > Attachments For Docs with CEO Russ Heddleston
Feb 25, 2017
26:45
Russ Heddleston. He's the CEO and co-founder of DocSend. Previously, he was a product manager for Facebook. He arrived at the B2B acquisition of the product Pursuit.com. Russ also had roles in Dropbox, Greystripe and Trulia. He received a BS in Computer Engineering and MS Computer Science at Stanford along with an MBA from Harvard.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Good to Great
- What CEO do you follow? – Keith Krach
- Favorite online tool? — Gmail and Slack
- Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Do things well and be patient with them—and then, they will turn out well later"
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:33 – Nathan introduces Russ to the show
- 02:03 – Pursuit was a human resources to management referral program for employees
- 02:22 – Russ shopped their company to Facebook
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- 02:38 – Russ explains why they made this decision
- 03:38 – Russ was the product manager for Facebook's pages team
- 03:55 – Russ worked both for the brands and personalities
- 04:15 – DocSend was launched in 2013
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- 04:24 – DocSend's first version was made in 2010
- 05:18 – First year revenue was zero
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- 05:27 – "We were focused on growth"
- 05:50 – DocSend was doing something of very high value; not necessarily for a broad user base
- 06:40 – DocSend has been approached by a hedge fund
- 06:59 – Most salespeople are using DocSend long term
- 07:37 – Average customer pay per month
- 08:42 – Most deals of DocSend are outbound deals
- 09:00 – Average enterprise prices:
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- 09:24 – The price varies from $50-90 per month
- 09:40 – Outbound target for a team of 30 and above
- 10:10 – Average contract value depends on the size of the company
- 10:30 – Team size is 25 with 6 sales people
- 10:42 – Team location is San Francisco with 1 in New York
- 11:08 – Pricing plan was introduced a year after DocSend launched
- 11:35 – The current number of DocSend's paying companies
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- 11:48 – There's a mix of logo and seat count
- 12:04 – Average seats per company
- 12:45 – Total number of users under paid plan
- 13:03 – DocSend has raised capital for $10M in VC and $1M in venture debt
- 14:03 – Venture debt was done post-series seed
- 15:00 – Average MRR
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- 16:16 – Possible minimum average MRR
- 17:00 – Russ shares the difference of inbound self-serve and outbound
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- 17:25 – Russ gets excited with outbound
- 18:25 – Gross monthly customer churn
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- 19:01 – The churn for self-serve is quite high, but not for outbound
- 19:45 – Net negative churn
- 20:12 – The expansion would benefit the team
- 20:38 – As the company gets bigger, the more they need DocSend
- 20:48 – DocSend closed their last financing last year
- 21:00 – DocSend doesn't need to raise capital at the moment
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- 21:25 – "We don't need to get acquired"
- 23:00 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Focusing on growth rather than revenue is never bad thing.
- Improve your product until you are no longer expendable to your customers.
- Do things well and be patient with them—in time, they will turn out for the better.
Resources Mentioned:
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
- Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal
- 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.
- 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
- Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket
- 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