Sep 20, 2022 · 28m · top-founders
Venture Studio Spinout Hits $250m Valuation for Clean Data Room SaaS
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Habu CEO and co-founder Matt Kilmartin discusses scaling his data clean room software company to nearly $1.2 million in monthly revenue, detailing their venture studio origins, consumption-based pricing model, and strategic partnership with Snowflake Ventures.
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 36.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 5.8 Guest teaching 3.3 Guest disagreement 3.0 Nathan pushing back 5.0
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 20:15 Matt challenges the value of sharing revenue metrics
Matt directly rejects Nathan's line of questioning, arguing that listeners will not learn anything from him disclosing exact revenue figures.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 19:38 Nathan refuses Matt's deflection on growth numbersNathan directly rejects Matt's claim of ignorance, telling him not to act naive since he knew the questions were coming and labeling his response 'such a political answer.'
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:38 Matt explains enterprise buying realities during early lockdownsMatt educates Nathan on why setting rigid upfront pricing anchors during the initial outbreak of COVID would have killed enterprise deals that needed immediate flexibility.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 11:42 Nathan explains B2B viral loops using the Bill.com playbookNathan demonstrates SaaS distribution expertise by showing how second-party exposure in platforms like Bill.com and Habu turns counterparties into paying licensees.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise Use Cases and Consumption Monetization | 6 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Nathan quickly grasps the clean room concept by analogizing it to Crossbeam and formulating the HEB/Procter & Gamble slot usage scenario, which Matt affirms as a sharp summary. | |
| Sponsor Message: Scaling B2B Marketing with LinkedIn | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Segment features an extended mid-roll sponsor read by Nathan followed by a brief discussion where Matt explains expanding upsells beyond seat licenses into ML modules. | |
| Early Enterprise Proof-of-Concept Strategy During Lockdowns | 5 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Nathan probes how Habu converted early POCs and whether pricing was anchored upfront. Matt explains that the initial COVID onset demanded flexibility rather than rigid upfront fee locks. | |
| Customer Milestones and Inherent Network Effects | 6 | 3 | 3 | 6 | Nathan details network effects seen in companies like Bill.com before pressing Matt on his personal payout from the $700M Crux sale, which Matt diplomatically downplays. | |
| Venture Studio Dynamics and Founder Cap Tables | 6 | 3 | 4 | 6 | Nathan drills into the mechanics of venture studios and asks about founder cap table dilution. Matt politely declines to give specific percentages while explaining the operational involvement of studio partners. | |
| Go-To-Market Expansion and Category Awareness | 7 | 3 | 5 | 8 | When Matt avoids sharing precise historical growth figures by claiming his CFO should answer, Nathan forcefully pushes back, calling it a 'political answer' and demanding real numbers. | |
| Strategic Investment Rationale with Snowflake Ventures | 7 | 3 | 2 | 5 | Nathan examines valuation multiples and sales compensation structures, while Matt provides transparency into their 6-month quota models and verticalized sales strategy. | |
| M&A Speculation and Value-Added Investor Guidance | 6 | 3 | 6 | 7 | Nathan presses Matt on whether Snowflake has acquisition rights or a ROFR. Matt refuses to answer the buyout hypothetical, prompting Nathan to point out his telltale facial expressions. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Clean room software enables analytics across distributed datasets without sharing data
“Clean room software is neutral infrastructure where two parties can effectively do analytics across distributed data sets.”
Major cloud data warehouses now offer native data clean room capabilities
“What's interesting is, is a lot of the cloud data warehouses do this, are doing this now. So AWS, GCP Microsoft are trying to do this, and that's where data sharing now happens at the cloud data layer. And then Snowflake and Databricks have capabilities around…”
Disney is an enterprise client of data clean room startup Habu
“A use case for us is Disney. Disney's a client. Disney owns Hulu, ESPN, and they have all the two TV viewership data, basically.”
Habu does not charge both sides of its data collaboration marketplace
“We want to make it friction free for data collaboration, so we are not charging both sides.”
Habu averages mid-$300K annual contract values for its enterprise customers
“Our average ACV is by mid-three hundred K range.”
Habu uses consumption pricing rather than traditional seat-based software models
“We don't have a seat model right now. It's more based on as people are consuming more slots and collaboration.”
Habu launched commercially two weeks before the March 2020 COVID shutdowns
“We've been building, we've been at it for three years, built technology for a year, launched commercially two weeks before the shutdown. So March of 2020 is when we launched commercially.”
Every initial proof-of-concept deal converted into an ongoing Habu customer
“All those deals, we did sort of six month deals with to do sort of POCs or first value engagements. Every single one of them has continued on as a customer.”
Krux Founders' Studio Superset Launched 10 Startups via $65M Fund
“So the founders of Crux started a venture studio. It's a fund called superset. It's a sixty five million dollar fund and they start startups. They're not VCs. They start, so they actually started 10 companies in the last three years.”
Habu Closes Series B Funding with Snowflake Investment
“We actually just closed our series B snowflake invested in us actually as well.”
Superset venture partners served as Habu's CTO and board chairman
“So the sort of the CTO who actually was the CTO of Salesforce's marketing cloud and CTO of my last company, he was the CTO of Habu for two years. The other super set partner is actually chairman of our board.”
Habu underinvested in sales and marketing while over-focusing on product engineering
“We stayed a little too lean too long on the sales and marketing function, I would say. We had a ton of engineering, product engineering, and but I didn't, I felt like we probably could have invested earlier in sales and marketing”
Habu licenses identity products from its direct data competitor LiveRamp
“There's a public company called live ramp who has a, is a competitive, has a competitive product. So anyways but listen, great company. We actually use some of their identity products as well.”