Jun 14, 2020 · 21m · top-founders
RJMetrics Founder $4m+ ARR Explains How They Lost To Looker
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Serial entrepreneur Bob Moore reflects on the architectural and market shifts behind RJMetrics and Stitch Data, and explains how those lessons shaped his partner ecosystem platform, Crossbeam, as it scales toward one million dollars in 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 30.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 4.8 Guest teaching 4.5 Guest disagreement 1.3 Nathan pushing back 2.3
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 16:22 Moore rejects the platform premise
Moore pushes back directly against Latka's framing of wanting to build a platform, arguing that the entire platform metaphor is outdated for modern SaaS.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 17:28 Latka tests the super node thesisLatka challenges Moore's distinction between platforms and super nodes by asking him to identify an actual platform within the video conferencing market.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 16:22 Bill Gates' definition of a platformMoore educates the audience and host on the economic definition of a platform versus ecosystem super nodes, highlighting why VCs are skeptical of pitch-deck buzzwords.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 5:52 Latka quotes exact past episode dataLatka demonstrates superior preparation by citing precise customer counts, ACV, and ARR metrics from Moore's interview three years prior.
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 Bob Moore and Founding RJMetrics During the 2008 Crash | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Latka prompts Moore to recount the rise and fall of RJMetrics based on his postmortem. Moore educates on how shifting data architecture (the advent of Amazon Redshift and Snowflake) fractured their full-stack monolithic offering. | |
| Spinning Out Stitch Data and Scaling to Talend Acquisition | 6 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Latka demonstrates deep context by referencing exact metrics from Moore's prior interview (400 customers, $800 ACV, $4M ARR, $22M raised). Moore explains the Stitch carve-out during the Magento acquisition and its subsequent $60M sale to Talend. | |
| Looker's $2.6 Billion Exit and Founding Crossbeam | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Moore recalls realizing Looker won after their $2.6B Google acquisition, contrasting closed analytics tools with ecosystem-first tools. He explains how Crossbeam functions as a neutral data escrow layer between partners. | |
| Commercial Traction, Revenue Timelines, and Use Cases | 5 | 3 | 1 | 4 | Latka drills into Crossbeam's commercial progress, pressing Moore on paying customer counts and the exact timeline to reach $1M ARR. Moore clarifies that while M&A due diligence is a valid use case, recurring go-to-market data sharing is the core driver. | |
| Debating True Platforms versus Ecosystem Super Nodes | 5 | 8 | 4 | 4 | When Latka asks how founders can turn their products into true platforms, Moore rejects the premise, quoting Bill Gates to argue that most modern SaaS leaders like Zoom or Slack are super nodes in an ecosystem rather than platforms. Latka presses Moore to name a video conferencing platform to test the theory. | |
| The Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions | 5 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Moore breezes through the Famous Five rapid-fire questions, and Latka delivers a comprehensive summary of Moore's career trajectory across RJMetrics, Stitch, and Crossbeam. |
Statements from this episode (10)
Moore: RJMetrics Launched on the Day Lehman Brothers Collapsed in 2008
“That was 2008 the day Lehman Brothers collapsed, we launched that company.”
Moore: Cloud warehouses broke RJMetrics' full-stack model by unbundling data storage
“Redshift and later Google BigQuery and companies like Snowflake innovated on this model, and basically, if you think about that data warehouse as being, like, in the middle of the stack of what RJ Metrics was, it broke our stack right in half, because No one w…”
Moore: Stitch matched RJMetrics' size in 28 months with no new capital
“Yeah, we didn't put any new net new capital into the business. When it got acquired, I think the team was in the thirties. And from a like magnitude standpoint, it was almost the same size that RJ metrics was when we sold it. So in 28 months, we drew stitch up…”
Moore: Looker won the BI market hands down with $2.6B sale
“Looker just got bought for two, 2.6 billion. And the consensus was basically like we fucked up. Yeah. They won hands down with that number.”
Moore: Closed SaaS data silos are an antiquated architecture
“RJ was almost like where your data went to die. Like, we pulled data in from all these systems, and we analyzed it, but the outputs of our system didn't really go anywhere. You just kind of came to RJ and consumed what RJ created. In the modern SaaS economy, t…”
Moore: Partner ecosystems are a major new SaaS growth channel
“The maturity of the API economy and all the interoperability of all these SaaS platforms Has created basically a new channel, a new growth channel for SaaS businesses, which is selling through and building market through your partners and all the different com…”
Moore: Crossbeam is pacing to reach $1M ARR in 6 to 9 months
“If we hit our targets, it'll be six ish, nine ish months total will get us from zero to a million. And I think we're based on this quarter, we're pacing toward that.”
Moore: Acquirers demanded RJMetrics' full customer list before term sheets
“This literally happened to me when we were selling RJ to Magento because we had other potential buyers and all the buyers wanted to see our full customer list before they gave us a term sheet.”
Moore: Slack and Zoom are ecosystem super nodes, not true platforms
“What we're seeing out in the market is that the big success stories, you look at companies like zoom companies like slack, you know, the latest IPO crop in SAS, I would argue that very few of them are like true platforms. What they really are is super nodes in…”
Moore: AWS and Salesforce qualify as true platforms
“When I think of platforms, I think of like, you know, Amazon web services. I think Salesforce is a platform because their app store is a true, true there are companies that are entirely existent because the only thing they do is provide technology on top of Sa…”