The Exchanges

Q All right. Let's jump into Paragon. What's it do? Describe a customer and how they're using you today.

A Yeah, so Paragon is a embedded integration platform for SaaS apps. So what we do is help software companies integrate their products with third-party SaaS applications like Salesforce, like HubSpot, and allow them to get to market faster with new integrations to provide to their customers. So an example of a customer is, uh, Saleshood. Uh, some of our audience may be familiar. It's a sales enablement platform, and by nature of their products, uh, they need to integrate with the data in their customers' CRMs, like Salesforce and HubSpot, for example. So With Paragon, they're able to easily embed these ERM integrations into their products and provide them as customer facing integrations that allow them to connect to their customers' CRM data in Salesforce or HubSpot, for example.

AI assessment note: “Paragon is a embedded integration platform for SaaS apps. So what we do”

Q Okay. Very cool. And then what is the, uh, kind of the market for this? Are you targeting kind of productivity, entrepreneurship kind of folks, or are you actually targeting kind of salespeople inside of kind of enterprise teams?

A Yeah, so there's a good mix of both. A lot of our users have been at smaller companies, our sort of, you know, solo entrepreneurs, um, where obviously there's, there's no barrier to adopting a new technology product. As soon as you start getting to larger companies, there starts to be some type of buying process involved, um, where it's a little bit more complicated, and since we are sort of a premium SaaS product, uh, we like to go for the bottoms-up adoption kind of model, uh, where there's as little friction as possible. Uh, so we're seeing a good mix of, you know, smaller companies, smaller teams, early stage startups, as well as, um, some bigger companies. We have multiple users at Dropbox, Twitter, Airbnb, um, where a lot of the users there have just adopted the product on their own.

AI assessment note: “there's a good mix of both. A lot of our users have been at”

Q We can't, we can't skip over that. You have some genius there. You know, you don't just, that doesn't just happen. You do things that makes that happen. What kind of things did you do? Was it reaching out to the YC kind of a network? Was it, you know, harassing mom and dad and friends and getting them to vote? What was it?

A So that was actually completely pre-YC. Um, what we did was, you know, when we first started building Polymail, um, we were in private alpha at the time. And we started building kind of this little community of people who we'd invite, uh, to try out the app. And we actually had this slack team that we built and people would just add them there and kind of communicate with them on a daily basis and really get a sense of, you know, what were they looking for out of, you know, an email solution and how can we solve that? And over time, we kind of grew this community to several hundred people and we, uh, kind of developed actually a pretty close relationship with a lot of these early users. So when we went on to product times and launched, um, we got a lot of sort of our early supporters from that alpha community, uh, To come onto product times and kind of, you know, leave comments and leave these reviews, but how, you know, we were both really great to work with as a product team and really dedicated to solving the problems, um, and actually building a solution that, that worked and was what they were looking for.

AI assessment note: “we got a lot of sort of our early supporters from that alpha community”

Q Fast forward, why Series A in spring of last year? What makes this company expensive to grow?

A Yeah. So first of all, I think we hit an inflection point last year where we had, uh, grown at a nice rate. We validated that, you know, this is really a problem that customers have in the market and that we have a product that customers love using. And, uh, because of that, you know, we felt it was a good time for us to pursue a series a, um, you know, in terms of growth for us, there's really two areas of investments, um, engineering and go to market. So as far as engineering, um, you know, we, uh, Are building integrations on behalf of our customers, and that requires really a dedicated integrations team, which we, um, essentially utilize to build and maintain the integrations that our customers are then using through their products through Paragon as well. Um, so we're able to use, you know, the funding from our Series A in order to, um, you know, invest into the products, growing our integration catalog, growing the products and our features in general on the go-to-market side. Um, you know, we are always, well, I would say before our Series A, we were in a position where it was really just me and I think one account executive who was leading sales. Um, so that we were able to validate, you know, we're able to get customers, you know, customers are buying the product. We're able to validate that, you know, we have a go to market motion, at least the early workings of one t…

AI assessment note: “there's really two areas of investments, engineering and go to market”

Q So Brandon, you, you're like up against something very interesting, and I'm curious to see how you're solving this. I mean, you're basically having convinced people to give up something that they have a deep, deep relationship with, which is their email provider, like Gmail, you know, Yahoo, whatever. How are you convincing people to make that switch? Because your app looks beautiful.

A Thank you. So in order to use Polymail, you actually keep using your Gmail accounts or your Outlook account. You just plug that into Polymail, and we actually support multiple accounts. So if you have, you know, work, multiple work accounts, personal account, you can plug them all into Polymail, and you can get going like that. What we found is that, you know, a lot of people are unsatisfied with the Gmail web interface, you know, having to install multiple web plugins that results in a very cumbersome experience that slows down the browser, and then none of those features, you know, really translate over to mobile, even if you've installed them. All onto your desktop and your web browser. Uh, so we found that people, you know, we're really looking for a much better sort of product experience to help them manage your email. And we were able to build that and deliver it with all email.

AI assessment note: “you actually keep using your Gmail accounts or your Outlook account”

Q So Brandon, you, you're like up against something very interesting, and I'm curious to see how you're solving this. I mean, you're basically having convinced people to give up something that they have a deep, deep relationship with, which is their email provider, like Gmail, you know, Yahoo, whatever. How are you convincing people to make that switch? Because your app looks beautiful.

A Thank you. So in order to use Polymail, you actually keep using your Gmail accounts or your Outlook account. You just plug that into Polymail, and we actually support multiple accounts. So if you have, you know, work, multiple work accounts, personal account, you can plug them all into Polymail, and you can get going like that. What we found is that, you know, a lot of people are unsatisfied with the Gmail web interface, you know, having to install multiple web plugins that results in a very cumbersome experience that slows down the browser, and then none of those features, you know, really translate over to mobile, even if you've installed them. All onto your desktop and your web browser. Uh, so we found that people, you know, we're really looking for a much better sort of product experience to help them manage your email. And we were able to build that and deliver it with all email.

AI assessment note: “you actually keep using your Gmail accounts or your Outlook account. You just plug that”

Q Oh, okay. Sorry. I mean, even if it was more conservative, right? I guess even fast growing tax companies today, the best ones are getting only like eight, nine, 10 X. You are way above, let's just put it this way. You are way above that, right? Maybe you were at like a 40 or 50 X instead of a hundred X, but this question is still the same.

A Yeah. So look, I think that's, you know, the folks that we have on our team and, you know, we have an amazing team of incredibly talented folks, I think are here really because they believe in the long-term vision of Paragon and what we're doing and really the opportunity that lies ahead of us in the market. I think that if we are successful in executing our vision, Paragon will become the default solution for customers building integrations. Um, and so I think, you know, our, we and our team by extension are really focused on that long-term vision more so than the, Day to day or year to year fluctuations of the market. And I would say that ultimately, um, you know, our team has not, uh, really expressed concern. And I think that we are not concerned about, you know, seeing some of what, uh, the market may be showing us, you know, in these few years, we know the market changes, you know, year to year, but ultimately we're focused on, I think really the potential and the opportunity of what we can achieve at Paragon in the longterm. And, um, that's what we're most excited about.

AI assessment note: “really focused on that long-term vision more so than the, Day to day”