Apr 28, 2023 · 16m · top-founders
Pivot City! How we pivoted 6 times on our way to $20m in revenue
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
At SaaS Open, Blackthorn.io founder Chris Federspiel explains how his company scaled to $14M in ARR without venture capital through aggressive product pruning, debt-funded acquisitions, and strategic enterprise pricing within the Salesforce ecosystem.
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 5.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 0.0 Guest teaching 0.0 Guest disagreement 1.0 Nathan pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 11:05 Founders suck at pricing critique
Chris bluntly criticizes founders for undervaluing their software out of fear of losing small deals, urging aggressive price increases.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 0:00 Conference standard introNathan establishes a strict, high bar for tactical data and transparency before introducing the stage recording.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:25 Warning against dead-end integration partnershipsChris educates the audience on why most AppExchange integration partnerships waste developer time without generating revenue unless aligned with genuine distribution.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 0:20 Latka database plug and metric depthNathan promotes his proprietary SaaS database and metrics filtering system to set analytical expectations for the presentation.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blackthorn Company Overview and Operating Structure | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Solo presentation monologue where Chris shares Blackthorn's ARR growth, remote setup, and debt facility structure without host involvement. He admits he previously thought 'go to market' was a 'baloney term' before learning its value. | |
| Building, Failing, and Pruning Nine Product Lines | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Chris delivers a keynote breakdown on killing off seven failed product lines to focus solely on payments and events. He candidly shares his aversion to people management and non-product executive duties. | |
| Scaling Market Reach Through Non-Dilutive Acquisitions | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Chris explains how Blackthorn acquired PCI-Fi and Texty using structured seller financing and non-dilutive debt facilities to accelerate NRR without dilution. | |
| Evaluating Strategic Partnerships and Philanthropic Commitments | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Chris warns the audience about time-wasting partnerships that bring no distribution, contrasting that with successful revenue shares with Stripe and giving back via Stripe Climate. | |
| Customer-Driven Feedback and Product Prioritization | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | Monologue focusing on listening to enterprise customer requests and aggressively raising prices. Chris argues that technical founders fundamentally suck at pricing due to fear of losing deals. | |
| Product Packaging and Comprehensive Solution Selling | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Chris summarizes key tactical lessons around packaging features into high-level solutions and decisively killing underperforming revenue lines. |
Statements from this episode (17)
Federspiel: Blackthorn has reached approximately $14M in ARR
“So, we're at about fourteen million ARR now.”
Federspiel: Blackthorn took $18M in debt, no VC, and has no board
“We have a big, well, I guess it's all relative, eighteen million debt facility, 14 of which we've drawn so far, but we have no board, it's just me, ah, we have no VC, and we plan to be breakeven, well, 23 is not, it's the end of twenty-twenty-two, it's our fis…”
Blackthorn shifted focus to $50K+ enterprise subscriptions over smaller deals
“So we didn't want to sell two, three, four, five K subscriptions. We wanted to do 50 K, hundred K plus space subscriptions.”
Blackthorn funded its first 10 employees with $1M in services revenue
“You can see over the first few years, we were doing about a million a year of ProServe. That was paying for about 10 of us to work there”
Federspiel: A software company cannot scale selling a $3,000 product
“So if you have to have a go to market cadence where you're selling a three K product, you can't scale your company.”
Blackthorn acquired PCI-Fi at $130K ARR for $850K paid over time
“They were a 130 K ARR. We agreed on eight 50 K purchase price. We did a down payment. We paid over two and a half years.”
Blackthorn acquired Texty for $3.25M using debt for the down payment
“So, we were at 550 K ARR. I said, hey, you know, what do you guys want to sell this thing for? They said six X, and I said, okay, that sounds fair. So it ended up being like three and a quarter million. And so we did 1.2 million down payment. We didn't have th…”
Blackthorn paid Texty's $2M acquisition balance over 24 months from cash flow
“The other two million were to be paid over 24 months, which we paid over our own cash flow. And they were going to be incrementing payments. So they started small, and then they grew with the size of our company, and they agreed with that.”
Federspiel: Blackthorn makes roughly $1M annually from its Stripe revenue share
“And now we're making somewhere in the vicinity of like a million a year off of that partnership, where our customers don't get charged.”
Federspiel: System integrators drive 75% of Blackthorn's leads
“They actually bring us the deals. That's, like, 75% of our leads that we have now.”
Blackthorn donated $120K to Stripe Climate before reaching profitability
“So we do one percent of our revenue goes to Stripe Climate. I think this goes into my own personal interest, but part of our building of our company culture. We've given away a 120 K to date, and for a company that's not yet even break even”
Blackthorn closed a $1M annual contract, 10x its previous historical maximum
“Our payments app is now two and a half times more expensive, but the biggest customer we had for the longest time was a hundred K a year. We recently sold one that's a million a year for a really, really big deployment doing mobile payments.”
Blackthorn increased its events app average ARR from $12K to $45K
“Our events app is now four times more expensive, but our average ARR was about 12 K for the longest time. It's now up around 45 K because we started to land a lot bigger accounts”
Federspiel created 930 unique custom prices in Stripe for early Blackthorn customers
“I had 930 different prices that I looked in my Stripe product price book over the first three years. I had a unique price for every single customer.”
Federspiel: Blackthorn has 630 customers and processed $3B in transaction volume
“We have about 630 customers. We've processed about three billion bucks through the app, and we sent thirty-one million SMS messages, which is Twilio is the underlying technology here.”