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Jun 22, 2023 · 19m · top-founders

How we pivoted our customer experience map to hit 80% Gross Margin

Rory Codrington · 15m spoken Nathan Latka · 46s spoken
0:00 / 0:00

gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions

TrustKeith founder Rory Codrington details how mapping customer experience journeys and restructuring operational workflows enabled his bootstrapped compliance SaaS to optimize service delivery and target an 80% gross margin benchmark. He shares actionable frameworks for bottom-up cost accounting, team pod restructuring, and cross-functional alignment to scale toward $10M ARR.

How this conversation actually went

Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 4.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →

Nathan as informed peer 0.0 Guest teaching 0.0 Guest disagreement 0.0 Nathan pushing back 0.0
05100:0010:003:14–6:33 · Nathan as informed peer 0/10 Mapping the Customer Experience Journey and Identifying Bottlenecks This segment is a solo conference presentation by Rory Codrington detailing how Trust Keith maps its customer journey on Miro. Nathan Latka does not participate on stage, resulting in zero host involvement and no combativeness.6:37–10:08 · Nathan as informed peer 0/10 The Strategic Importance of Achieving 80% Gross Margin Rory explains why 80% gross margin is a crucial efficiency metric using Bessemer Cloud Index data and engages in a collaborative Q&A with an audience member regarding COGS versus CAC payback. Host Nathan Latka is absent from the stage.10:10–16:23 · Nathan as informed peer 0/10 Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Approaches to Calculating Gross Margin Rory delivers a solo breakdown of bottom-up versus top-down gross margin calculations and details how restructuring customer delivery pods streamlined operations. There is no host involvement or adversarial friction.16:28–19:50 · Nathan as informed peer 0/10 Scaling Towards the 80% Goal, Team Alignment, and Conclusion The speaker concludes his presentation on scaling towards 80% gross margin and answers a brief audience question about the slide materials. The host remains absent from stage interaction.3:14–6:33 · Guest teaching 0/10 Mapping the Customer Experience Journey and Identifying Bottlenecks This segment is a solo conference presentation by Rory Codrington detailing how Trust Keith maps its customer journey on Miro. Nathan Latka does not participate on stage, resulting in zero host involvement and no combativeness.6:37–10:08 · Guest teaching 0/10 The Strategic Importance of Achieving 80% Gross Margin Rory explains why 80% gross margin is a crucial efficiency metric using Bessemer Cloud Index data and engages in a collaborative Q&A with an audience member regarding COGS versus CAC payback. Host Nathan Latka is absent from the stage.10:10–16:23 · Guest teaching 0/10 Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Approaches to Calculating Gross Margin Rory delivers a solo breakdown of bottom-up versus top-down gross margin calculations and details how restructuring customer delivery pods streamlined operations. There is no host involvement or adversarial friction.16:28–19:50 · Guest teaching 0/10 Scaling Towards the 80% Goal, Team Alignment, and Conclusion The speaker concludes his presentation on scaling towards 80% gross margin and answers a brief audience question about the slide materials. The host remains absent from stage interaction.3:14–6:33 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Mapping the Customer Experience Journey and Identifying Bottlenecks This segment is a solo conference presentation by Rory Codrington detailing how Trust Keith maps its customer journey on Miro. Nathan Latka does not participate on stage, resulting in zero host involvement and no combativeness.6:37–10:08 · Guest disagreement 0/10 The Strategic Importance of Achieving 80% Gross Margin Rory explains why 80% gross margin is a crucial efficiency metric using Bessemer Cloud Index data and engages in a collaborative Q&A with an audience member regarding COGS versus CAC payback. Host Nathan Latka is absent from the stage.10:10–16:23 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Approaches to Calculating Gross Margin Rory delivers a solo breakdown of bottom-up versus top-down gross margin calculations and details how restructuring customer delivery pods streamlined operations. There is no host involvement or adversarial friction.16:28–19:50 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Scaling Towards the 80% Goal, Team Alignment, and Conclusion The speaker concludes his presentation on scaling towards 80% gross margin and answers a brief audience question about the slide materials. The host remains absent from stage interaction.3:14–6:33 · Nathan pushing back 0/10 Mapping the Customer Experience Journey and Identifying Bottlenecks This segment is a solo conference presentation by Rory Codrington detailing how Trust Keith maps its customer journey on Miro. Nathan Latka does not participate on stage, resulting in zero host involvement and no combativeness.6:37–10:08 · Nathan pushing back 0/10 The Strategic Importance of Achieving 80% Gross Margin Rory explains why 80% gross margin is a crucial efficiency metric using Bessemer Cloud Index data and engages in a collaborative Q&A with an audience member regarding COGS versus CAC payback. Host Nathan Latka is absent from the stage.10:10–16:23 · Nathan pushing back 0/10 Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Approaches to Calculating Gross Margin Rory delivers a solo breakdown of bottom-up versus top-down gross margin calculations and details how restructuring customer delivery pods streamlined operations. There is no host involvement or adversarial friction.16:28–19:50 · Nathan pushing back 0/10 Scaling Towards the 80% Goal, Team Alignment, and Conclusion The speaker concludes his presentation on scaling towards 80% gross margin and answers a brief audience question about the slide materials. The host remains absent from stage interaction.

speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)

0:00 · Nathan 29.1% · guest 70.9%0:00 · Nathan 29.1% · guest 70.9%3:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%3:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%6:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%6:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%9:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%9:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%12:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%12:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%15:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%15:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%18:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%18:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 8:49 Audience challenge on non-COGS overhead

In an entirely cooperative conference presentation, the only slight friction comes from an audience member questioning whether focusing narrowly on COGS misses larger overhead expenses like marketing.

 Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 0:00 Host conference quality standard intro

Nathan Latka only speaks during the pre-recorded introduction, stating the high bar set for conference speakers before handing over to the recorded talk.

 Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:26 Clarifying gross margin vs burn rate

Rory explains to the audience that early-stage companies burning heavy cash can still display strong gross margins since COGS isolates delivery costs from customer acquisition expenses.

 Nathan holds their own ▶ 0:00 Host platform metrics database pitch

Nathan demonstrates domain authority in his intro by referencing SaaS benchmarks and his platform's extensive founder metric database.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
ChapterTopicNathan as informed peerGuest teachingGuest disagreementNathan pushing backWhy
Mapping the Customer Experience Journey and Identifying Bottlenecks 0000 This segment is a solo conference presentation by Rory Codrington detailing how Trust Keith maps its customer journey on Miro. Nathan Latka does not participate on stage, resulting in zero host involvement and no combativeness.
The Strategic Importance of Achieving 80% Gross Margin 0000 Rory explains why 80% gross margin is a crucial efficiency metric using Bessemer Cloud Index data and engages in a collaborative Q&A with an audience member regarding COGS versus CAC payback. Host Nathan Latka is absent from the stage.
Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Approaches to Calculating Gross Margin 0000 Rory delivers a solo breakdown of bottom-up versus top-down gross margin calculations and details how restructuring customer delivery pods streamlined operations. There is no host involvement or adversarial friction.
Scaling Towards the 80% Goal, Team Alignment, and Conclusion 0000 The speaker concludes his presentation on scaling towards 80% gross margin and answers a brief audience question about the slide materials. The host remains absent from stage interaction.

Statements from this episode (9)

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Codrington: TrustKeith has crossed $1M in ARR
“We are, as of this quarter, we're north of a million dollars of annual recurring revenue.”
Rory Codrington Jun 22, 2023 ▶ 2:03
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Codrington: TrustKeith ACV is around $23,000 per year
“To give you context, our average customer value is around, so, 23,000 dollars per year.”
Rory Codrington Jun 22, 2023 ▶ 2:12
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Codrington: Solving sales-to-CS handover bottlenecks improved TrustKeith's gross margin
“Particularly, I think that the big moment is that kind of handover from sales to customer success. That's where we found a lot of bottlenecks that we've been solving that has made an impact on our Gross margin as well.”
Rory Codrington Jun 22, 2023 ▶ 6:18
Disclosure
TrustKeith prioritizes operational efficiency over chasing unicorn-scale growth
“I'm not expecting us to have some, like, unicorn growth, and that to be the exciting metric of the business. I see something like the efficiencies, which we have so much more control over, as ultimately a really good piece of value that we can build in the bus…”
Rory Codrington Jun 22, 2023 ▶ 7:10
Opinion
Codrington: Most SaaS startups overspend on CAC with paybacks over 12 months
“I think where most companies are then overspending is on the customer acquisition side of things. Until they can get that, you know, you think about the customer acquisition payback period, I think for a lot of companies, it's sort of north of 12 months.”
Rory Codrington Jun 22, 2023 ▶ 9:41
Insight
Codrington: Cost-mapping customer experience stages reveals expensive delivery moments
“So when we come back to the swim lane sort of, ah, experience map that we've got already, we can actually go in there and start attributing cost to each stage of these as well. So we can get real granular around what are the expensive parts to it, and particul…”
Rory Codrington Jun 22, 2023 ▶ 10:43
Disclosure
TrustKeith eliminated its Customer Success Manager role by restructuring delivery teams
“So we did a team restructure, and we've now got this kind of pod format here with the senior privacy manager, two DPOs, and two privacy associates. And by streamlining that, we've got rid of the customer success manager role.”
Rory Codrington Jun 22, 2023 ▶ 12:29
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Codrington: Monthly customer check-ins drove significant March 2023 NPS jump
“By having that protected time, The customer, you know, did their stuff. We always had that check-in point, and really as a result of that, they were making better progress. It was a more efficient use of our team's time, so we weren't having to chase. It was j…”
Rory Codrington Jun 22, 2023 ▶ 14:11
Disclosure
TrustKeith's gross margins are tracking ahead of schedule toward 80%
“Putting goals on an annual basis, and we're tracking on a monthly, so you can see our actuals were above where we wanted to be and we're on track to that golden 80%.”
Rory Codrington Jun 22, 2023 ▶ 16:49
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