Jun 27, 2021 · 22m · top-founders
ProjectCor Hits $1m ARR, Raises at $40m Valuation for Profit Tracking Tool for Agency's
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In an interview with Nathan Latka, ProjectCOR co-founder and CEO Santi Biblioni discusses scaling an AI-powered project profitability vertical SaaS to nearly $2 million ARR, breaking down their $6 million Series A round at a $40 million valuation, sales quota economics, and go-to-market strategy.
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 34.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 5.5 Guest teaching 2.7 Guest disagreement 1.3 Nathan pushing back 2.3
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 3:01 Santi reframes category away from project management
Santi politely rejects horizontal project management comparisons, insisting COR is an end-to-end vertical profitability solution.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 4:33 Nathan demands average contract value instead of seat priceNathan cuts through per-user pricing talk to pin down the actual average company revenue figure.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 13:29 Santi clarifies inbound individual term sheet mechanismSanti educates Nathan on how an unsolicited individual check without board seat demands allowed them to extend their round at higher valuation terms.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 16:07 Nathan synthesizes tranche valuations and dilution mathNathan rapidly converts Santi's dispersed funding stories into exact valuation numbers and dilution percentages ($2M on $20M and $4M on $40M).
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vertical Software Differentiation and Pricing Structure | 5 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Nathan presses Santi to differentiate COR from general project management tools and clarifies per-user versus total contract value economics. Santi explains the vertical SaaS value proposition and details their $19k ACV. | |
| Organizational Headcount and Sales Rep Quota Economics | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Nathan quickly does on-the-fly quota math based on Santi's OTE and quota multiples (3.5x to 4x on $150k OTE leading to $600k-$700k quota). Santi confirms the calculations and explains their sales structure. | |
| Founding Background, Bootstrapped MVP, and Early Traction | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Nathan inquires about co-founder equity splits and initial MVP spending. Santi openly describes investing $10k with his co-founder to get their initial MVP off the ground. | |
| Series A Fund Allocation and Product-Led Growth Strategy | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Nathan asks about how the $6M Series A will be allocated across departments. Santi explains the 70/30 split between go-to-market growth and product-led features. | |
| Series A Valuation Multiples and Strategic Angel Investors | 7 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Nathan breaks down the atypical fundraising structure of raising a $2M tranche followed by a $4M tranche at a higher valuation. Santi lists his high-profile angel investors and validates Nathan's valuation math. | |
| Revenue Milestones, Acquisition Channels, and Retention Metrics | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Nathan calculates monthly run rates from customer counts and decomposes Santi's 114% NRR into 4% gross churn and 18% expansion. Santi eagerly confirms the churn and expansion breakdown. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Billable-hour firms face a profitability problem, not a project management problem
“What we understood is that in the billable hours market, like all companies that sell hours, Project management is not a problem. The real problem that is behind project management is projects profitability.”
ProjectCOR targets agencies, law firms, and consultancies selling billable hours
“So we sell to agencies, to consulting firms, to law firms, accounting firms, these companies that are selling hours, they need to understand their profitability on a, in real time.”
80% of ProjectCOR customers switched from horizontal tools like Asana and Trello
“80% of our current customers have switched from tools like Asana, Trello, Monday, ClickUp you name them, Jira, Trello.”
ProjectCOR averages $19,000 ACV, with top enterprise contracts exceeding $100,000
“Today, our ACV is 19,000 dollars per year. Yeah, but of course we have, like, enterprise customers that have, like, are paying us over 100 K per year, and we have some now, we have a lot of SMBs who are paying, I don't know, like, five K a year.”
ProjectCOR sets sales quotas at 3.5x to 4x OTE with 50/50 splits
“Normally between 3.5 and four X quota versus OTE. So we normally do OTE half and half for sales reps. Half and half means if you have an OTE of 150 K, it's 75 salary, 75 commission. And then your quota is going to be like 3.5 or four X, that amount.”
ProjectCOR built its MVP for $10,000 and acquired its first few customers
“I mean like, 10 K to just, like, get the a minimum MVP, a minimum buy-all product get it, like, up and running. It was awful, but we launched it, and we had, like, three, three to four customers with that and that's how we got into 500.”
ProjectCOR served approximately 115 clients as of June 2021
“Today we have 115 clients more or less.”
ProjectCOR allocates 70% of Series A capital to growth, 30% to product
“So we're gonna invest 70% growth, which is like marketing, like all lead gen marketing, pre-sales, sales, and post-sales. And then we're gonna allocate 30% of the capital to product, which is already very robust and working pretty well with a great, like custo…”
ProjectCOR grew 9.8% month-over-month, reaching roughly 180% year-over-year revenue growth
“We were growing at a nine, 9.8% month over month. So we, I mean, that's like kind of doing 171 180% year over year. That's like tripling revenue year over year.”
ProjectCOR split its $6M Series A into two tranches to optimize dilution
“We raised two million and then we raised four at different valuations, different terms, the same round, but we were, yeah, as we were growing, we decided to split terms and yeah, for the last four million, we got diluted like 10%.”
ProjectCOR targets over $2 million ARR by December 2021
“Our goal this year is to get, to continue growing into this nine, nine, over nine percent by the month, and this will help us achieve. Our goal is to be over two million dollars in ARR.”