The Exchanges

Q And what's the breakdown between both of those? Like, uh, I guess you were founded in 2014. So you were doing this self-service all the way up through 20 20. Is that right?

A We, we actually just, um, got out of self-service last month. So we, yeah, so, but, but over, I would say since we, we started really focusing on B to B in mid-twenty-twenty, And that business just started kicking in beginning of 20, 21. So since like really the beginning of 20, 21, it's gone from almost zero percent, um, B to B to about 60 to 65%. So it overtook the majority of our revenue. Um, and more important, probably more importantly than the ACV, the retention is a lot better on the B to B side. I kind of anticipated that, but I didn't anticipate the degree to which it would be better. So we realized that our business is actually much better suited to be an enterprise SAS company, as opposed to like a self-service product, totally product driven one. Um, so that's, we decided to just, it's still technically an experiment because we don't know if self-service is totally in our past, but we want to see what this business, how it performs with a just total B to B model.

AI assessment note: “it's gone from almost zero percent, um, B to B to about 60 to 65%”

Q Now here's a question for you. Do you ever worry about growing into that valuation?

A Um, do I worry about it? Oh, well, yeah, I mean, we, it's kind of like the trajectory here that we've signed up for. Um, I'm very confident we will because we, Crystal's an interesting business in that we have this, like, very big, kind of sexy vision that we can project where, it's true, it's, like, kind of why I do this. I want everybody to have a handbook for how to work with everybody else. Um, I think that is ultimately going to be good for, like, millions of people. That's the big far-off vision, kind of what we're working towards. But in the process, because of the pressure we put on with the bootstrapping in the beginning, um, we've got this revenue model that works. It doesn't work great yet. Like we're not, you know, it's, it's not growing, you know, two, 300% year over year. But we've got the, the core of it working, and with some optimization, we're going to grow into that, into that valuation relatively quickly.

AI assessment note: “we're going to grow into that, into that valuation relatively quickly.”

Q Yeah. That's been a while. I mean, have you given any thought to like buying them back out?

A Um, you know what? I haven't really. It's, it's, it's more of like, so there's not, there's not a great reason to buying them back out at this point. I don't think because Salesforce is a really helpful partner for us. So, um, and they're, they're just great to, to work with. They're really, it's really good. Um, it's been a good partnership. Like I like having, really like having them on the cap table. Um, Salesforce is also one of our larger customers too. So it's kind of great to have those multiple, you know, multiple levels of connection. So I would say if they were just a random VC, then I'd be looking at that. But because it's strategic and good Salesforce, um, yeah, I, I like having them on the cap table. There's no.

AI assessment note: “I haven't really. It's, it's, it's more of like, so there's not, there's not a great reason”

Q All right. Very, very cool story here. Um, we're also excited to have you Speaking at founder 500 on September first in Austin, Texas. Why don't you tease a little bit what you're speaking about? What, what should people expect to see in your slide deck?

A Yeah, I've always thought that you shouldn't go speak in an event unless you have something to say. So I wanted to actually, I'm glad we actually had an interesting insight from the last couple of years. Um, I think the most helpful thing for me was, um, getting out of my security blanket, which was our self-service business and leaning on a sales team. And letting my sales and customer success teams do what they do well. And ultimately figuring out that we could increase our LTV, um, from around roughly five, roughly 500 to 2000 total. Um, and that's across the whole customer base. That's because the, the LTV between our two businesses, um, are vastly, vastly different. Um, so that's, um, that was the main insight. So being able to in, um, 18 months or so, or maybe a little more than that. It might be, it might span a two year technically span, but going total LTV from like 500 to 2000 has been a really big insight for us. And that's just going to keep improving. I'm trying to accelerate that by just making sure most of our new customers are all coming in this like 8000 and upside. And, um, We're kind of continuing to just let the self-service business sit in its current form.

AI assessment note: “getting out of my security blanket, which was our self-service business and leaning on a sales team”

Q So it's getting, it's getting up there. Now, did you recruit those 350 out of individual users who used to be your self-serve, or do you have to go recruit those 350 brand new over the past 12 to 18 months?

A It's in a mix. So the breakdown is, actually, I don't really know the new breakdown other than just guessing it, but there's definitely a contingent of those who were using our product for a long time as individual users. And then we didn't just change the pricing model. We also added a lot of robust features to the product that made better for enterprise. So a lot of them have come in through self-service mechanisms. Um, some examples of those are like big professional services organizations, like Accenture is one of our big customers. They've, they've used Crystal as individuals for a very long time. Um, and ever since then, we've kind of slowly been piecing together Team deals and going with more BDB motion. So it's kind of an example of that. Yeah.

AI assessment note: “It's in a mix. So the breakdown is, actually, I don't really know”

Q folks is go look at all your thousands of self-serve users paying 29 bucks a month. Look at the domain name of signups, sort, you know, alphabetize them and then highlight conditional formatting in Excel where there's duplicates. And when you see Accenture, Accenture, Accenture, and there's like seven people on a team at Accenture using you, there's clearly an enterprise motion there. Is that sort of what you did?

A Yeah, so there's a difference between self-service customers and Crystal's free user base. We've got a massive free user base. It's about 30 to 40,000 people, depending on the month, who sign up monthly for our product, and they go through the motion of filling out personality assessments, downloading trials of our tools. Like, there's a lot of things you can do in Crystal for free. That's still the main funnel for our enterprise business, but there is a segment of those who have signed up for, um, Different types of paid subscriptions we've had over the years. And I mean, if you were to add them all up, there's probably been something like 18 to 20,000 of those paid customers for some Crystal product. Some of those have been recurring. We've also had non-recurring products in the past. So of those, that's kind of like the low hanging fruit for us. So we can either look at the current customers, also revisit the ones who have had a, you know, individual subscription in the past and start rolling out in like a marketing qualified lead flow.

AI assessment note: “we can either look at the current customers, also revisit the ones who have had”

Q Yeah. So how do you, I mean, do you, you mentioned like you shut it off and now B to B is 65%. Like what does shut off mean? Do you stop servicing them? Let them turn off. Like, what does that mean?

A No. So we, everyone that had a self-service account still has access to all their tools and they, and most of those users are pretty active at this point because, um, they've, they've had the opportunity to just like, you know, you settle out with that churn curve. So our approach with that has been let them keep their access to the tool, but at the same time, Build onto the enterprise offerings that we have. And there's a lot you can do in Crystal now that you just, as a company that you can't really do as a customer or as an individual user. So we've been trying to go in from a value perspective, like, all right, let's, let's make this enterprise product more appealing to these customers who have these like self-service accounts. But as far as new customers go, you can right now, if you go to Crystal's pricing page, there's a free user. You can't sign up for the self-service account. So for that, we've, we've used the approach. We've actually just like kind of taken the approach to a lot of these other sales enablement businesses like Gong, where it's just this big pricing request form. And you can kind of go through that and, um, Just basically just talk, talk to our sales team at a pretty fast, still pretty high velocity, like.

AI assessment note: “everyone that had a self-service account still has access to all their tools”