SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

After receiving his MBA from Stanford, Steven Benson worked in Sales at IBM, HP and Google where he was Google Enterprise's Top Sales Executive in 2009. In 2012 Steven founded Badger Maps, the #1 Sales App in the Apple App Store, which helps Field Sales People be more successful. How do you put touch on such a low price point? The sales cycle is quick, about 3 weeks, so we're able to put touch on most free trials even though starting price point is $35 a seat. Marketing, Sales, and customer success all tied together but manage themselves in pods. There is no variable comp, including the sales roles. Everyone is on salary and everyone owns equity so they can take part in upside. What is revenue growth? Back in December 2016 we were doing $130k, now in August 2017 we're at about $180k in MRR so about 80% yoy growth rate. We're using bank debt, 19% interest rate with LighterCapital, to fund growth because its non dilutive. In July 2017 spent about $15k on paid marketing. Has sales team of 30 that works those leads and makes up larger part of cost structure. Are you cash flow positive? (Minute 17) Yes because we're pulling cash forward in the form of multi year deals. We incentivize this by giving customers a 20% discount. Favorite business book is Predictable Revenue. I'm following Jason Lempkin at SaaStr. My favorite online tool is gmail. Steven has no kids, gets 7 hours of sleep and is currently 39. He wishes his 20 year old self would choose a career path that he enjoyed, that their are jobs in, and that he was good at. Connect with Nathan: Website Twitter Facebook Page Snapchat Instagram

I really enjoyed this interview with Dave for two big reasons: He's playing in a space that is not typical for B2B SaaS He's using freemium consumer adoption to drive enterprise leads at a very low CAC of $80 which he makes back in well under 12 months. Dave is the CEO of TeamSnap. He has more than 20 years of experience in technology leadership positions. He was previously CEO of SANRAD, a venture-funded storage networking company, which he joined in 2006. He also helped found LeftHand Networks, a Boulder-based company sold to Hewlett Packard. Prior to that, Dave was with Hewlett-Packard. An avid skier and wannabe competitive cyclist, Dave lives in Boulder with wife Deb and two children, Mariel and Gabe. He enjoys reading, cooking and microbreweries Revenue Model: Over 1m teams use TeamSnap and 250,000 of those teams pay Dave $80 per year to use TeamSnap to manage team communication, logistics, and more. The average team has 30 people ranging from coaches, to players, to players parents. TeamSnap leverages 3 revenue streams with the SaaS component making up 40% of the total revenue mix. SaaS revenues are about $20m in ARR from 250k teams paying $80 per year. Total revenue is approaching $50m which Dave expects the company will cross in Q1 2018. Overall the business is growing over 100% year over year. On Launching in 2009 in poor economy: Dave: 2009 was best time for us to launch. The trough of a recessions is best time to get company going due to low opportunity cost. In recession there are talented people available for hire. 2009 revenue was less than $100,000. It took Dave just 3 years to break $1m in ARR which happened in 2012. Fundraising First 5 years from 2009 to 2014 the company was bootstrapped. Dupont funded the company with his own capital and local area angels. He put a couple hundred thousand in himself in early days. In 2014 they took their first institutional capital and have sense raised a total of $43.7m. On seasonal users and how that affects TeamSnap gross logo churn monthly: Teams pay $15 during the season then stop paying us off-season. We don't look at this as churn because we know they come back next season. They are simply "in-active". The company looks at revenue per customer on an annual basis which averages about $80. On customer acquisition: We use our consumer app which people use for free to drive enterprise sales in a land and expand strategy. 30% of new consumer customers come through referrals. We've boosted that up by spending about $500k per month on Google and FB ads mostly. Payback is pretty strong, under 12 months. They'll pay $80 to acquire a customer that is worth about $280 over their lifetime which puts LTV to CAC ratio at about 3.5. Cash Flow: Net burn is really close to our discretionary marketing budget of $500k/mo. We are in good shape cash wise. Near September of next year (2018) we'll be cash flow breakeven at much higher revenue level. We'll figure out then what to do strategy wise. We are on the path to being a billion dollar company. I have no desire to sell out quickly to anybody. Build as big as can, shoot for IPO, create fantastic product over long haul. Strategy towards IPO: Large competitors like Comcast compete with us with their subsidiary called SportsEngine. Dicks sporting goods has a competitor in space called BlueSombrero and AffinitySports. Lastly, a private equity funded company called BlueStar Sports compete with us. Many of our competitors are purchasing small players and just aggregating. A short term private equity play versus a long term 20+ year deal. Would you accept $400m offer from Comcast? (minute 22) Well it would depend on the moment in time. In 2016 probably, in 2017 maybe, next year when revenue is higher, no way in hell! What is your favorite business book? The Hard Thing About Hard Things Is there a CEO you're following or studying right now? Samir, SendGrid CEO Whats your favorite online tool? Apple pencil to evernote. How many hours of sleep do you get every night? 7 What would you tell your 20 year old self? I'm married with 2 kids, married for 30 years, and I'm "approaching a milestone birthday". I wish my 20 year old self knew that "nobody does it alone". Connect with Nathan: Website Twitter Facebook Page Snapchat Instagram

Rob Frohwein. Back in 2008, he recognized that companies like eBay offered automated access to small business transactional data via APIs. He also realized that small businesses could simply share this data to allow underwriters to make better, faster credit decisions and provide a great user experience. Because of that, he co-founded Kabbage in Atlanta, Georgia, to leverage the power of real-time data automation through technology. The company has since expanded to serve all small businesses throughout the U.S., providing billions of dollars to more than 100,000 customers.