Jan 11, 2022 · 17m · top-founders
Voice AI Company Raises $17m at $80m Valuation, 50x Revenue Multiple, Scaling Fast with NDR of 120%
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In this episode of Conversations with Nathan Latka, Symbl.ai co-founder and CEO Surbhi Rathore discusses building a developer-first conversational AI platform, scaling monthly processing volume to 10 million minutes, and securing a $17 million Series A round at an $80 million valuation with a 125% net dollar retention rate.
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 47.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 6.0 Guest teaching 2.2 Guest disagreement 2.0 Nathan pushing back 3.0
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 13:05 Refusing revenue disclosure
Surbhi firmly refuses Nathan's repeated attempts to multiply ACVs by customer counts to back into an MRR figure.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 13:10 Nathan pressing on extrapolated run rateNathan refuses to let the revenue estimate drop, insisting he is merely multiplying numbers Surbhi previously provided.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 13:22 Clarifying blended vs. committed customer tiersSurbhi educates Nathan that ACVs cannot be multiplied across the total customer base because pay-as-you-go developers skew the blended average.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 15:27 Nathan citing Techstars standard terms and NDR benchmarksNathan displays sharp domain expertise by precisely naming standard Techstars equity stakes and benchmark net retention rate targets.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introducing Surbhi Rathore and Symbl.ai's Mission | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Nathan clarifies pricing details when Surbhi mentions fractions of dollars per minute. Surbhi explains their usage-based pricing architecture and contract tiers collaboratively. | |
| Early Founding, First Customer, and Product-Led Growth Motion | 6 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Nathan inquires about customer counts, growth rates, and funding motivations. Surbhi candidly breaks down their product-led growth motion and recent Series A. | |
| Sponsor Break: Flatfile Data Onboarding Platform | 6 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Following the sponsor read, Nathan attempts to calculate valuation based on typical 10-20% dilution. Surbhi politely refines his valuation math without disclosing precise proprietary numbers. | |
| Expanding the ESOP Pool and Global Team Distribution | 7 | 4 | 6 | 7 | Nathan attempts to extrapolate MRR by multiplying stated customer counts by ACV. Surbhi firmly pushes back and refuses to disclose revenue, noting the customer tier nuances. | |
| 50x Revenue Multiple, COVID Inflection, and Techstars Roots | 8 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Nathan demonstrates domain knowledge regarding Techstars terms and SaaS net retention dynamics. Surbhi shares historical revenue growth and key metrics from their pitch. | |
| The Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Nathan runs through standard rapid-fire questions, which Surbhi answers directly and amicably. |
Statements from this episode (20)
Symbl.ai charges strictly by minutes analyzed, not per seat
“So you only pay based on usage and irrespective of how many seats, how many products you apply. It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, it's the number of minutes, which are analyzed by the platform that people get charged on.”
Symbl.ai's largest customer account has an ACV between $150K and $200K
“More than that. Not a million, but yeah. One 5200 thousand.”
Symbl.ai will land million-dollar enterprise contracts by 2023
“Absolutely. Super bullish about it. And actually talking to a few customers about that.”
Symbl.ai's customer count is in the high double digits
“Today we have customers in higher double digits.”
Symbl.ai expects to cross 100 enterprise customers by early 2023
“Soon. Probably first, first quarter of the next year.”
Symbl.ai's processed API minutes are growing at 20% month-over-month
“I would say 20% is kind of like our average growth.”
Symbl.ai closes $17M Series A led by Great Point Ventures
“We just closed I think a couple of weeks back, a seventeen million series A, which was led by Great Point Ventures.”
Latka: Founders currently sell 10% to 20% equity in Series A rounds
“Most of the deals I'm seeing today, at least folks that come on the show, the series A's folks are selling between 10 and 20% today.”
Symbl.ai raised its Series A at a valuation slightly under $100M
“So a little lesser than your lower range, the one that you just mentioned right now, but I think it was just a function of where we are as a company and what was our previous, because we got a pretty good multiplier based on our previous valuation.”
Symbl.ai increased its employee stock option pool to 15% at Series A
“We did a 10, 10% at our previous rounds, but this round specifically, we set up actually 15%.”
Symbl.ai's team is 80% engineering, primarily based in India
“80% engineers still. We are just building out our go-to-market team, which is a big thing that we took on after our series A. That was one of the biggest motivations of investment that those dollars 80% is engineering and 60% of the overall company actually is…”
Symbl.ai's starting annual contract value for enterprise clients is $30K to $40K
“I think 30 to 40 K is like a great area for people to kind of get started. ACV.”
Advanced Symbl.ai enterprise customers begin contracts at over $200,000 ACV
“There are some folks which already know the use cases and they usually start at 200 K above because they exactly know How to start.”
Symbl.ai uses a Twilio-style base plus variable pricing model
“It's a pretty similar Twilio model. So it's a base revenue and that there's a variable revenue.”
Symbl.ai built its Series A pipeline with only one dedicated sales rep
“Like this round was so exciting because we had a bunch of pipeline, but no one to actually, we have literally one sales guy, like that's insane.”
Symbl.ai generated only $5,000 in monthly recurring revenue in late 2020
“At 20, 20, same time we were doing like peanuts like five K a month.”