The Exchanges

Q So what's the, you said, and you, I did the research before even reading your bio just now, you guys are ranked extremely high in the Salesforce app exchange. For other people and other business lines looking to rank higher in the Salesforce AppExchange, what's the secret? How do you rank so well?

A I mean, the algorithm, I think, has changed slightly over time. But one of the things that helps us the most is that we are an end user based application. So you don't install Serious Insight just once for your org. Instead, if you've got a thousand salespeople, they will all use Serious Insight. And we benefit from that because those thousand people can come in and write nice reviews. About the app, tell the world how they use it, why it was valuable in their daily workflow. Uh, and that's been really, really good for us. So we've got, you know, over 1100 reviews on the app exchange, which, you know, puts us behind some pretty famous apps like DocuSign and EchoSign.

AI assessment note: “those thousand people can come in and write nice reviews”

Q Well, we'll chat more about attach here in a second, but give us some more updates on the business. So last time we spoke, you were, I think you told me each customer is paying about six bucks a month. Is that still the case or have you driven up the ARPU a bit?

A Yeah, it's got, it's, it's up a bit from there should be a higher above eight now as we introduce more plans, more bundles. So we've been trying to build out more of an all in one sales stack, right? So instead of having to go out and assemble multiple pieces and try to connect them all together and integrate them, which we struggle with as a company, it's like a full-time job for somebody just to make sure all your tools work together. We're trying to build those tools into a core solution so that once you have a CRM in place, Whether that's Salesforce or something else, then we can be that one additional tool that powers the actual selling activity. So everything from Prospecting at the top of the funnel. So we built some integrations with inside view and full contact and others all the way down to the signing of the contract at the very end, which we now use attach for with the hello sign integration. And then we cover the meeting scheduling and the email tracking and so on and so forth. The drip campaigns through the middle of the, of the cycle. So we've been focused on that and focused on kind of driving up that ARPU as a result of having a more complete stack.

AI assessment note: “it's up a bit from there should be a higher above eight now”

Q Okay. And you mentioned your team size was 55 folks. What's the breakdown on that in terms of engineers versus salespeople?

A So we got 20 folks on the engineering team, broadly speaking. So those are engineers, product designers, product managers. And then on the sales side, we have about 20. And then the balance are customer success and support. So there's about 10 folks there. And then, you know, give or take, uh, seven folks, eight folks on the marketing team. Some of those, if you pull all those up, it's probably over 55, but that's because as a pretty flat organization, a scrappy startup, there's some folks that, that have, that wear multiple hats. Yeah. Um, so, which is great. You know, we, we love that. We try to move fast. And so, uh, folks are working with customers kind of on all, on all spectrums.

AI assessment note: “we got 20 folks on the engineering team... on the sales side, we have about 20.”

Q And you mentioned your team size was 55 folks. What's the breakdown on that in terms of engineers versus salespeople?

A So we got 20 folks on the engineering team, broadly speaking. So those are engineers, product designers, product managers. And then on the sales side, we have about 20. And then the balance are customer success and support. So there's about 10 folks there. And then, you know, give or take, uh, seven folks, eight folks on the marketing team. Some of those, if you pull all those up, it's probably over 55, but that's because as a pretty flat organization, a scrappy startup, there's some folks that, that wear multiple hats. Yeah. Um, so, which is great. You know, we, we love that. We try to move fast. And so, uh, folks are working with customers kind of on all, on all spectrums.

AI assessment note: “we got 20 folks on the engineering team... on the sales side, we have about 20”

Q break, break down this attach kind of thing for me. So first thing I want to ask, there's a lot of people listening right now that have companies that are sub, you know, a hundred K and monthly recurring revenue who are looking to sell to companies like you. How does a CEO like you determine what companies to go out and acquire and how did you land on attach?

A You know, for us, I think the keys are, it's gotta be complimentary to the existing stack that we've built already. So a tool that replicates identically some of what we've already built is probably not going to be attractive, but if it fills a gap, if it's a missing piece, And so we had spec'd out and even started building, uh, how are we going to do attachment tracking and how are we going to do the e-signature at the end when someone sends out a contract and we want all that to be logged into Salesforce and tracked. Um, but we knew that it was going to take us pretty long time to build it, uh, cause it's a complex project. And so when I looked on the market, there were certainly large companies doing this, which we can't acquire them. Uh, we'd more be a target for them. Um, and so we were looking for companies of that fits into that metric, right? Where they reached a certain size, they've got a really nice built out product somewhere in the range that you're talking about. You know, I would say companies that are in, you know, Pre-market. So maybe they're at zero all the way up to, you know, a hundred K maybe even a bit more than that, but that are looking at their options. I think, you know, if it's a company that's just super, super fast growing and maybe they're on the verge of raising money or kind of charting their own path, then that's probably what they're going to d…

AI assessment note: “it's gotta be complimentary to the existing stack that we've built already.”

Q talk more about the strategic decision to add another product, why you do it at all. Uh, but first we need to have a little bit of understanding in terms of the historical context. So last episode, you articulate a lot of your growth came from your unique ability to own a single distribution channel, which was ranking high. I believe in the Salesforce app exchange. Am I accurate there?

A Yeah, definitely. Our initial growth going back five, six years ago, we were really jumpstarted on the Salesforce app exchange. Now that we've been out in the market five, six years, you know, a lot of our continuing growth is through word of mouth, uh, which is, which is great, right? We love referrals because it means someone's taken our app from one company to another or suggested to a friend. Uh, but more and more, our effort now is finding new vectors, uh, to get out to market and making sure we're unique because now, as you know, There's hundreds, maybe thousands of sales enablement and sales acceleration tools. So it's becoming a very, very busy space. And so how can we differentiate ourselves in that, in that crowded space?

AI assessment note: “Yeah, definitely. Our initial growth going back five, six years ago, we were really jumpstarted”

Q And is most of that going towards, what, ads or sponsorships at conferences or what?

A Yeah, some, some sponsorships. We've done historically a lot of sponsorships at conferences. We found, uh, and at least toward the end of last year, that attendance was starting to drop at some of the conferences, so we think that might be a trend. We're not sure yet. Um, and we know there's plenty of other companies still doing great at conferences, but we feel like maybe that hit its peak, that people have been going to big conferences now for the last five plus years for sales, and now they're starting to say, whoa, saturation point, right? We've done all these conferences. So, so we've started to scale back some on that front and really focus on getting what we consider to be really high quality content out there, long form blog posts, Podcasts like the one that you do.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, some, some sponsorships. We've done historically a lot of sponsorships at conferences.”

Q I see. And are you testing, like, conference spend, or, like, where are you spending, uh, you know, your paid dollars?

A Yeah, it's a good question. Historically, we've done a ton, a ton of conferences, so lots of traveling, lots of pressing the flesh, meeting folks on the conference floor, which has been great. I think toward the end of last year, we started to do less of that. There seemed to be diminishing returns. I think I noticed Conference attendance seemed to be going down. So I don't know if that was just as symptomatic of the latter half of the year, or if we had just reached a tipping point where people said, hey, I've been to enough of the conferences. I get it. I've heard all that I want to hear. And so I'm going to sit this one out. So while we're still doing conferences, it's safe to say, We're doing a lot more, um, other types of outreach. We're doing more, uh, paid spend than we have in the past, and we're doing more on the content side, right, to try to create good, uh, SEO results and attract people into the top of the funnel.

AI assessment note: “We're doing more, uh, paid spend than we have in the past”

Q paying you more for these additional features. Um, how do you, I mean, you already hit this, right? This is a really, really fragmented space. Uh, you see companies like drip exiting to what was it? Lead pages. I think, uh, you have kind of a lot of activity in this space. Um, why is it so fragmented? Why can't there be like a winner, a winner and a loser?

A Right. What will be really interesting to see over the next, you know, honestly, couple years, because things move so fast in the sales software space, is if you look at marketing automation as, as a direction that this could go, then you've got, you know, four really big unicorn companies that came out of that time period, and then you've got kind of a middle tier of companies, and then you've got a really long tail of folks that did marketing software. Right now, we're still in that time where there's hundreds of sales enablement and sales acceleration tools What will be interesting to see is if at some point there's going to be a consolidation or if in fact the space is so big and companies are still in demand for just finding the best tools for each job. So I, the big question in my mind is will companies continue to buy eight, nine, 10 pieces of software to form their quote unquote sales stack and piece them together and put someone, you know, in responsibility for that job? Or is there going to come a point where they say, gosh, this is just too much. It's too fragmented. It's too hard to integrate all those apps. What we really want is one platform or maybe two, three apps that we can stitch together and that work really well together. So what we're trying to do is position ourselves well to A, be the best at what we do, which historically we've been the best at connecti…

AI assessment note: “Right now, we're still in that time where there's hundreds of sales enablement”

Q So what do you measure in terms of like, like when you're measuring billing and ARPU and CAC and stuff like that, do you measure number of seats or number of businesses and a business could have a thousand seats?

A Yeah, pretty much all the above. I mean, we certainly track a number of available users in a company's Salesforce org, The number of users on trial with us when we're talking with the decision maker at an organization, which is frequently a sales ops manager, sales enablement, sales effectiveness, Salesforce admin, VP of sales. We're looking for customer facing roles. So we serve not only sales people, but also folks that work in customer support and customer success. Anyone that's in the inbox and the calendar a lot working with customers benefits from our app. It's a big time saver. And it helps organizations actually adopt Salesforce, which is one of the big challenges of any CRM platform is that it's hard to get people to go in and update manually a database.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, pretty much all the above. I mean, we certainly track a number of available”

Q Okay. And help us understand that you, you mentioned depth of integration as a key factor for you guys. Hopefully, obviously, that depth is also helping you keep churn super low. What is your monthly churn at right now?

A Uh, so net negative turn. So we always add more seats, uh, then, then we lose, you know, the, the primary reasons, and for those listeners in the SAS business, they'll, they'll probably nod their heads. And for those that are unfamiliar with SAS, you know, one of the main reasons is simply the credit card number changes. Um, so we have folks that, that are really focused on, uh, just following up on getting a new credit card, um, and getting it updated. Uh, so, you know, turn is something that, that all of us in the SAS business really focus on. Because we want to minimize that. And that's the magic of recurring revenue is getting it to come back next year.

AI assessment note: “so net negative turn. So we always add more seats, uh, then, then we lose”

Q Okay. And help us understand that you, you mentioned depth of integration as a key factor for you guys. Hopefully, obviously that depth is also helping you keep churn super low. What is your monthly churn at right now?

A Uh, so net negative churn. So we always add more seats, uh, then, then we lose, you know, the, the primary reasons. And for those listeners in the SAS business, they'll, they'll probably nod their heads. And for those that are unfamiliar with SAS, you know, one of the main reasons is simply the credit card number changes. Um, so we have folks that are really focused on, uh, just following up on getting a new credit card, um, and getting it updated. Uh, so, you know, churn is something that, that all of us in the SAS business really focus on. Cause we want to minimize that. And that's the magic of recurring revenue is getting it to come back next year.

AI assessment note: “net negative churn. So we always add more seats, uh, then, then we lose”

Q Yep. That makes a lot of sense, Brandon. You've done a lot since we last spoke. Acquisitions, all kinds of other stuff. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

A Man, that's a great question. Uh, I know last time I had mentioned really anything written by Richard Feynman. He's a physicist from way back, worked on the Manhattan Project. Uh, lately I've been supplementing that, I think, with even more World War II books. As you know, I live here in Knoxville, and just up the road from this is Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which is known as the secret city. So for any listeners that are interested in that sort of thing, pick up a book about Oak Ridge, and you'll find it fascinating. During its heyday, they were building houses here, like one every 30 seconds. In order to do the enrichment of uranium during World War II. So, this area used like, 15% of the electricity in all of the United States during its peak time during the later stages of the World War. So, fascinating history for those history buffs out there.

AI assessment note: “pick up a book about Oak Ridge, and you'll find it fascinating.”

Q So what do you measure in terms of like, like when you're measuring billing and ARPU and CAC and stuff like that, do you measure number of seats or number of businesses and a business could have a thousand seats?

A Yeah, pretty much all the above. I mean, we certainly track a number of available users in a company's Salesforce org, The number of users on trial with us when we're talking with the decision maker at an organization, which is frequently a sales ops manager, sales enablement, sales effectiveness, Salesforce admin, VP of sales. We're looking for customer facing roles. So we serve not only sales people, but also folks that work in customer support and customer success. Anyone that's in the inbox and the calendar a lot working with customers benefits from our app. It's a big time saver. And it helps organizations actually adopt Salesforce, which is one of the big challenges of any CRM platform is that it's hard to get people to go in and update manually a database.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, pretty much all the above. I mean, we certainly track a number of”