SmartBear
company on 6 shows · 25 statements across 5 episodes · said 72 times in 10 episodes since 2018
Top Founders 21 
My First Million 6 
the Official SaaStr Podcast 6 
Founder's Journal 3 
the Startup Ideas Podcast 2 
Lenny's Podcast 1
Mentions by year, every show
tap a year for its mentions
Top Founders 21the Official SaaStr Podcast 6My First Million 6Founder's Journal 3the Startup Ideas Podcast 2Lenny's Podcast 1
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 11 mentions in 3 episodes 4 per episode
2022 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
2018 20 mentions in 1 episode
every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →
25 statements about SmartBear, every show
Cohen: SmartBear found dropdown cancellation survey results were pure noise
“So at SmartBear, people would cancel. We'd put up this form and a dropdown list, you know, too expensive project ended, you know, this little stuff like we do so that we could gather data. And one of them did have more more selection than the rest. And I reali…”
Cohen: SmartBear sold for $2B in 2020 at 50% profit margin
“It was sold in 2020 for two billion and it doesn't have a thousand employees. It's super profitable. Like it was publicly said then what the profits were. It's 50% bottom line of profit.”
Cohen: Founders should accept acquisition offers that cross their financial freedom line
“This is why when you get offered some money to sell the company, it's often a good idea to take it. Of course it could be big in the future, but if you haven't crossed over to this life-changing amount of money yet, what I was in that post called the freedom l…”
Cohen: Expected value is the wrong way to evaluate startup acquisition offers
“Now what's interesting with the box game is if you're a statistician or you're an economist, what you would say is there's no difference between the two boxes because the expected value of both box is ten million. So they're the same. And my point is, no, they…”
Gumbert: Software developers hold enterprise buying power and reject direct marketing
“Developers are holding all the power, and they're your starting point and entry point into the company, so we really focus on You know, what is that awareness to land motion? How do you land a developer? And they have a very sensitive BS meter, so they don't w…”
Gumbert: SmartBear automates social queries into Slack for rapid support responses
“We have automated feeds that go from that into Slack, that go from Slack to our support, and we're trying to respond within seconds and either bring them back to our community for community help, or just reply right away with the solution.”
Gumbert: Partner marketplaces drive growth despite requiring vendors to sacrifice margin
“Placing your product in a partner marketplace is something to really, really look at, and you might be giving up a little bit of margin, but that's where everybody is, and they want that connection from their working environment. This has been a, you know, a g…”
Gumbert: SmartBear receives over 30,000 trial signups every month
“We have over 30,000 people taking out trials every month at SmartBear”
Gumbert: Cutting trial leads to sales by 45% increased deal opportunities 20%
“We decreased the number of QLs or trial qualified leads to sales decreased by 45% last year, and the number of deal opportunities went up by 20%.”
Cohen: Sold SmartBear in 2007 before its $450M Francisco Partners acquisition
“This is my previous company, SmartBear, and, ah, it was sold just last year to Frisco Partners for four hundred and fifty million dollars, that's awesome, except that I sold it to Insight Partners in 2007, so.”
Cohen: WP Engine passed $100M ARR and secured $250M from Silver Lake
“I founded WP Engine in 2010, and like I said, we now, ah, we're, we've passed a hundred million annual revenue, we just got a two hundred and fifty million dollar investment from Silver Lake, and, ah, we're worth more than SmartBear, right?”
Software Quality Testing Has Shifted Left to Developers
“The quality markets move from sort of traditional QA groups. Into now what you're talking about a DevOps continuous deployment environment where testing is shifting left into the developer world.”
SmartBear's Average Annual Contract Value is $2,500
“Our average transaction is about 2500 dollars. ... Annual. So that's an annual.”
SmartBear Drives 20 Million Downloads and 400,000 Inbound Leads Annually
“You know, we have twenty million downloads a year. For example, we process about 400,000 leads, people that raise their hand and say, Hey, I'm trialing. I'd like to buy.”
SmartBear Was Acquired by Private Equity Firm Francisco Partners
“Yeah, so we just sold to Francisco Partners in, in the spring.”
SmartBear Scaled an Acquired Startup From $1M to $45M in Revenue
“So we acquired smaller companies along the way founder led one of them, for example, was as small as a million dollars. It's now about forty five million dollars of our revenue.”
SmartBear Raised Only $1.5M Before Its Private Equity Buyout
“I think it was in a million and a half range.”
SmartBear Approaches $100 Million ARR With 10,000 Customers
“So we are going to be at 10,000 customers. Many, many more users, of course, hundreds of thousands of users and we're approaching about a hundred million dollars.”
SmartBear Maintains Revenue Growth in the Mid-20% Range
“Yes, we were had been growing in the mid-teens. Before that, we were growing, you know, through, sorry, that's organic. Inorganically, we had been able to Grow faster than that. We're now in the mid twenties.”
SmartBear's Net Revenue Retention Ranges From 115% to 120%
“Our net retentions in the one 15 to one 20% range.”
Some SmartBear Customers Scale From $2,000 to $1 Million in Spend
“Some of our customers are million dollar up to million dollar customers and they started off with 2000 dollar spend.”
SmartBear's Gross Revenue Retention is in the High 80s
“We're in the right around high eighties. We're trying to get to 90.”
SmartBear Targets CAC Below $1.25 Per $1 of New ARR
“So we think about acquisition in terms of What does it take us to acquire a dollar of new revenue or new ARR rather than a new customer? And our metric is we try to stay below a dollar 25.”