The Exchanges

Q you know, a lot of things engineering, I see more SaaS founders that getting the, like the sales motion with actual people involved, like the reps hired onboarded and sticky is really difficult. So it sounds like you're comfortable being vulnerable. Why do those two people quit that recently left? And how are you thinking about the next one? What are, what learnings are you taking to the next one?

A Yeah, this was a really good learning experience. So, um, one quit because he was an entrepreneur on the side and his business got too busy and I kind of motivated him to continue working on that. So almost my fault, but I'm proud of them. And then the second one was once, so I had this very experienced sales rep, Liam was in the middle and then we had a junior sales rep. And so when the middle rep quit, The disparity between my senior sales rep and the junior sales rep was so vast that I fired this junior sales rep the next day. I was like, oh, I'm like, you're not going to be able to cut it. And so now I'm only going to hire someone from a competitor that has five to 10 years experience. And the words I've been using in the interviews have been, I need you to come in and hit the ground running. I think as a SaaS founder with, we have 12 employees, I don't have a lot of time for training, And so I want people to come in and know the language, know how to sell already. And so it, I call it, I need them to hit the ground running. And so I'm really only looking at people directly from my competitors and we're using a recruiter to help us with that.

AI assessment note: “one quit because he was an entrepreneur on the side and his business got too busy”

Q you know, a lot of things engineering, I see more SaaS founders that getting the, like the sales motion with actual people involved, like the reps hired onboarded and sticky is really difficult. So it sounds like you're comfortable being vulnerable. Why do those two people quit that recently left? And how are you thinking about the next one? What are, what learnings are you taking to the next one?

A Yeah, this was a really good learning experience. So, um, one quit because he was an entrepreneur on the side and his business got too busy and I kind of motivated him to continue working on that. So almost my fault, but I'm proud of them. And then the second one was once, so I had this very experienced sales rep, Liam was in the middle and then we had a junior sales rep. And so when the middle rep quit, The disparity between my senior sales rep and the junior sales rep was so vast that I fired this junior sales rep the next day. I was like, oh, I'm like, you're not going to be able to cut it. And so now I'm only going to hire someone from a competitor that has five to 10 years experience. And the words I've been using in the interviews have been, I need you to come in and hit the ground running. I think as a SaaS founder with, we have 12 employees, I don't have a lot of time for training, And so I want people to come in and know the language, know how to sell already. And so it, I call it, I need them to hit the ground running. And so I'm really only looking at people directly from my competitors and we're using a recruiter to help us with that.

AI assessment note: “one quit because he was an entrepreneur on the side... fired this junior sales rep”

Q So who are ultimately, cause you could sell this to a variety of different people. Who are you ultimately selling it to? I mean, is it kind of hedge funds, REITs, that kind of folks?

A So private equity is a, is an avenue. We, um, provide about, we have about five clients in private equity that own big REITs, um, and or have very large real estate, um, holdings. I really like home insurance. I think that industry is massive and so important. And, um, it's, it's again, very traditional. It needs to be updated. And so that's been a primary focus. We have a ton of the largest, um, home insurers in our pipeline and, um, And we're moving forward with them in 2019. Um, and then real estate tech. If you look at Zillow and Trulia, like there's the Keller Williams, So the Bees, Remax, Realtor, all of them want to get the same sort of online listings like Zillow and they're just being dominated right now.

AI assessment note: “private equity is a, is an avenue... I really like home insurance”

Q Listen, there's nothing wrong with that. Again, just to be clear, It's really great that you can measure the usage metric, the value metric being number of API calls because it is directly correlated to your revenue. If you have your whole team focused on increased number of API calls, get the onboarding right, get it involved in the stack, that will drive more revenue, correct?

A Yes, we wanted to take, like, the small, medium, large approach. It's like we have a 15,000, a 100,000, and a 500,000 API call package, which has its, has its pros and cons, because sometimes, depending on how much a certain user uses their calls, it fluctuates the price per API call overall at the end of the month, and so while that is a, it's a North Star metric that we're tracking very closely, it's changing every single month depending on each customer's usage, because They're getting charged for, they have up to this amount of calls. If they have 15,000, they might only do 1000 this month and then do 14,000 next month. And so we don't have enough predictability there, but I believe by, give us another six months and we'll have some really good data on that.

AI assessment note: “Yes, we wanted to take, like, the small, medium, large approach.”

Q And, and why, obviously it's nice for the ego, it's nice for the bank, blah, blah, blah, but I mean, you have a free cash flow machine, right? I mean, why, why, why take the extra capital after the Techstars program?

A Honestly, born and raised in small town Canada, started the company in a small town outside of Vancouver, never had access to capital relationships, um, or venture capital. And when I really started, when I went through Techstars and saw, I came, I came from this town in Kelowna, British Columbia to Boulder, like a Mecca of startups and venture capital, like There's Twitter across the street, Amazon, Google right there. I, I didn't have this picture of what it, what it really was to build a startup. And when Foundry Group offered us money, you know, I, I put them in a tier one investor category and they've had so many successes with data businesses that I knew having them on my side as like a head coach or a general manager, however you want to look at it, our chances of success go up so much more. And just being an entrepreneur, those are some of the best people you can learn from.

AI assessment note: “having them on my side as like a head coach... our chances of success go up”

Q you have to commit all, you know, the founder, especially you have to commit all your other IP and they'll want all these other things sort of included on the same cap table. Now it sounds like that's exactly what you did with this business that was doing 3.5 million a year. Do you regret that today? Would you have tried to keep them separate if you did it again?

A Yes, for sure. Honestly, like, you know, when, if we were to go raise a series A, there's a pretty good chance that I would take it off the table instead of taking like cashing out a little bit of my founder stock or something at that raise. Um, I would probably just be like, I'll just take that business out because one, it's a little bit of a headache for us to do the reporting on to them. Um, and ultimately they know it's not the end goal for us. And so we've pitched the stated so hard. So I absolutely would recommend, um, if you can still raise at the same value though, Because your VCs are smart and they're like, oh, you have this cashflow business in the back. Like, of course we want a piece of that. And so, um, yeah, you're, you're going to work with VCs because of their network and their intelligence most of the time. So, um, it would have been a harder pitch, but I absolutely would have tried it.

AI assessment note: “Yes, for sure. Honestly, like, you know, when, if we were to go raise”

Q So what's your play with them? You're, you're, you're doing a, you're, you're, you're indexing sixty million and selling the data back through to them, or?

A I wish we could index sixty million overnight. That would make them very happy. Um, essentially, um, and you know, we're not even totally working on that project with them, but essentially when you zoom in on a map, when you're looking at all the properties, Um, these MLS powered websites are only able to provide Homes and properties that are currently listed on the MLS or have been and are on market. And so when you zoom in, if you want to get more pages indexed, you need public record, um, to index every single property that's in that geography that you're zoomed in on. And Zillow has been working towards that and has done a very good job compared to some of these other MLS providers. And now everyone wants to get into that race because it's really important to, to keep your brand around and keep it relevant. You have to have really good SEO and being able to index What would be five million properties versus a hundred and, you know, ten, hundred and twenty million properties. Um, you have to have good public record data at an affordable price. That's, that's scalable. And so those are the tools that we're building.

AI assessment note: “we're not even totally working on that project with them, but essentially”