SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 806: SaaS: Recruiting Tool w/ $60m Raised, 2000 Customers, Unleashes CRM
Oct 8, 2017
21:10
Daniel Chait. He's the CEO and co-founder of Greenhouse, which designs tools that help create and navigate a new world of work. Daniel has been a technology entrepreneur in New York for nearly 20 years. Before Greenhouse, he co-founded Lab49, a global firm providing technology consulting solutions for the world's leading investment banks. He's a proud graduate of the computer engineering program at the University of Michigan.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Nudge
- What CEO do you follow? – Kim Scott
- Favorite online tool? — Trello
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7.5
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "The dotcom crash"
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:35 – Nathan introduces Daniel to the show
- 02:10 – Greenhouse sells recruiting software that corporations use to design and execute their hiring process
- 02:40 – Greenhouse is a SaaS company
- 02:50 – Average customer pay per year varies
- 03:05 – The pricing model depends on the size of the company
- 03:40 – Greenhouse tends to price higher than their competitors' because they offer a premium software solution
- 04:05 – Greenhouse is in the recruiting software space which is currently crowded
- 04:15 – Daniel shares some of their competitors depending on the categories
- 05:10 – The competition is extremely fragmented
- 05:33 – Greenhouse falls into all the categories, from the smaller ones to enterprise
- 06:05 – Greenhouse offers three tiers
- 06:24 – Greenhouse was launched in 2012
- 06:32 – First year revenue was around $50
- 07:33 – Post product revenue is around $1M
- 08:25 – Greenhouse currently has 2000 customers
- 09:03 – Team size is 195, based in San Francisco and New York
- 09:30 – Greenhouse has raised $16M from their series C round
- 09:53 – Daniel enjoyed doing their fund raising and he believes in their investors
- 10:13 – Every round is different
- 10:40 – This was the first time that Daniel raised outside the investment
- 11:19 – Greenhouse has a world-class retention rate
- 11:36 – 97% of their customers have renewed
- 11:55 – Most of the team is in inside sales
- 12:36 – Daniel shares where their expansion comes from
- 13:11 – Greenhouse's newest product is Greenhouse CRM which is still in beta
- 14:10 – The inside sales team job is heat mapping the products used by a customer
- 14:41 – The expansion is through additional growth
- 15:15 – LTV-CAC ratio
- 15:48 – "We have a healthy ratio"
- 16:04 – Payback period
- 17:00 – The weirdest thing Daniel did to acquire new customers
- 17:43 – They went from market research to marketing
- 17:57 – ARR
- 18:07 – Daniel on hitting the $50M ARR mark by end of 2017
- 19:40 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Create something that will make you stand out in a competitive and crowded market.
- Focus on how you can increase your customer retention rate—perhaps it's by adding new products that will better serve them.
- Raising a capital round can help you gain new customers.
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