The Exchanges

Q Oh, twenty-twenty. Mm-hmm. Okay. And how do you, what are the metrics that each person making a call? What, how do you motivate them? Is it number of calls per day, number of answers? I mean, what are the metrics there?

A Yeah. So, I mean, there's, there's all kinds of levers, uh, that you look at. I mean, certainly number of calls, uh, for the greener SDRs is, is crucial so that you get enough reps under your belt. Uh, but as you get better at asking questions and having conversations, then you can have a lower number of calls because you're going to convert more of those calls into good conversations and then good conversations into actual demos booked. And then as you get better, your show rate improves. So, I mean, early on, you know, it was like, you got to do a hundred, a 150 calls a day. Uh, now we have technology and auto dialer stuff, so our new guys, you know, up to 200 calls, uh, you know, early on, but, you know, once they get good, it can come down to, you know, a hundred calls a day in order to, you know, hit their, hit their OTE.

AI assessment note: “our new guys, you know, up to 200 calls, uh, you know, early on”

Q Okay. Okay. So it's a significant investment for you guys. That makes a ton of sense. Talk to me a little bit more about capitalization. So again, you broke a million in 2018, 13,000,020, 20, you're about to break twenty million run right here this month. Um, how have you funded the company? Are you bootstrapped or raised to date?

A Still, still bootstrapped, uh, you know, always being approached currently entertaining a couple of, uh, firms, you know, they're always, you're always trying to, you know, date somebody and create relationships. Um, you know, honestly, the, you know, we, we went from, you know, running like 20%, uh, EBITDA margins in 20, 20, 23, made the conscious decision to reinvest everything. So we went through a zero, uh, EBITDA model, built a lot, a lot of headcount, a lot of building. And so we're really poised for 20, 24 to double. Uh, and so I don't know that I need the money. You know, it's, it's never a bad thing to take a little bit of money off the table and have a war chest, but, uh, you know, we're, we hit our, our targets for this year and it's, it's going to be an absolute rocket.

AI assessment note: “Still, still bootstrapped, uh, you know, always being approached”

Q I look so bad now. Okay. But, okay, so let's tap into that guilt, right? What are those things where you're like, man, I really got to tell these founders these couple things about our early days.

A Yeah. So, I mean, there's so many lessons that you learn from different stages, right? Um, you know, in the beginning, you know, when you're just trying to, you know, make any kind of money from, you know, like zero to a hundred clients, uh, you have to just be on top of everything, right? Um, that we've come to learn was wartime. Like that was the wartime CEO in me where it's like, you know, you're screaming to get stuff done. Like you're breaking everything. It like systems don't matter at that point. Just getting a result matters. And then, you know, you evolve into, you know, having more people and, and then you have to have systems and training systems. Um, you know, I think one of the biggest realizations, you know, in the last year that I've had is whoever starts with you is typically not going to finish with you. And that's something that most people don't talk about and they don't tell you. So you're not emotionally prepared for that when it happens. Uh, so if you have people that you're really close with that have started this company and with you for a while, you know, life changes and sometimes they leave.

AI assessment note: “whoever starts with you is typically not going to finish with you”

Q Okay. Andre, did you have a question? Ah, same question. So if someone's at two million in ARR, growing 70% year over year, could they get a secondary done?

A 2,000,020, I mean, it depends how much you want to take off the table. So, what we found is because we were only willing to do like a 20% deal, They weren't getting as much skin in the game. They didn't really like, they don't love the secondary amount, even though they all say on their website, they love giving you liquidity. They don't, they want you to be, you know, tied to the game and, you know, not go off and be distracted. So, um, it, it, it depends and you probably get more favorable secondary if you do more than 20%. That was probably one of the hardest parts of our ask is where, you know, they had a lot of problem with that.

AI assessment note: “it depends how much you want to take off the table.”

Q So the, what you guys are looking at now is actually the slide deck that Matt said he sort of put together. Um, and I didn't dig deeper and asking Matt via email, well, what's the slide deck for? But it looks like you're trying to do something now because you've put your slides together in a beautiful story. So what's happening now? Are you looking to raise?

A So we're, we're toying with the idea. So, uh, depending on where you guys are at, I mean, you probably get hit with all the emails. Hey, you know, would it be helpful if we met, you know, even if you're not looking to raise, you know, the, the typical, there's, there's one guy who trains all these guys how to sit, how to send an email, uh, cause it's the same template, but, um, it's like right when you hit 200 K a month, there's some API they have into Stripe that just tells them, start sending those emails to that guy. Right. Um, but no, so I, I actually started taking those calls just to see what's what, right. I, I didn't go to school for any financial stuff. I walked out of college after six weeks. I'm a sales and marketing guy. I've never been in the VC world. I've never played there. So once we started to get success, I was like, well, what are these guys about? What are they going to talk about? You know, what are they going to look at? And so I actually used them, uh, three times in the last three and a half years to dissect our business and tell me what's wrong with it. Right. Uh, they're all going to be, you know, like, oh, your business is so great. Right up until the point where you're like, give me money. And then they want to tell you what everything that's wrong with your business. And so you want to get to a term sheet. You don't want to just have the nice talks…

AI assessment note: “So we're, we're toying with the idea.”

Q Tell me that story. What's the last physical event you went to and what was the playbook there? You sponsor a booth, you do a dinner. What'd you do?

A Uh, I mean, the last one we went to, we, we were just guests and our team was just backpacking it, uh, but great relationships there. Um, you know, the one right before that, they got, uh, 30 minutes to speak and present. Uh, you know, so I mean, obviously if you can speak, that's going to be the, uh, the ideal way to go to get in front of everybody. Uh, you know, most of the time booths are tough, uh, you know, unless they have a reason to come to the booth, they don't typically come to the booth. So speaking is, is the best way to go. Um, but if it's a smaller group, then So backpacking and shaking hands, uh, works just as well.

AI assessment note: “the last one we went to, we, we were just guests and our team was just backpacking it”

Q call on you to like throw your old co-founder under the bus because they won't let you buy back their equity, but just raise your hand if you had some old co-founder, someone that had equity where there was some kind of friction, raise your hand high. This is like come to, this is the Oprah moment of SAS, right? We're all together. All right. So what was your story?

A It's not even just the cap table, right? It's, it's just, it's also employees, you know, Uh, had a, had a gentleman who was with us from very, very early on, and he was with us for, uh, over three years. And, you know, had a life change where, you know, got a girlfriend, she was a while, a ways away. Um, he wanted to work remote. We said, absolutely not. We are not remote first. We're remote. We're remote never. Um, I hate that business model. Uh, but, uh, you know, so then he got mad at us and, you know, put in his notice, like, Hey, I'm going to leave. And we said, cool, you know, you can stay as long as you continue producing. And, uh, he just stopped doing good work, right? He started slacking on how he handled clients and caused some upsets.

AI assessment note: “It's not even just the cap table, right? It's, it's just, it's also employees”

Q Oh, great. Okay. So how do you get, I mean, there are founders listening right now that want to do all stock deals, whether they're selling into one or they're, you know, a company like you that are doing one, how do you get to alignment on what the valuation is and how many, you know, fully diluted shares the acquiring, you know, the company you're acquiring will get?

A Uh, that's a, that's a great question. I'd say there, there's no science to that. It's definitely an art and, and really it comes down to how strategic is it, right? Like if you're just acquiring a company, it's going to give you a little bit of revenue and do it. Like it's, it's not that fun, but you know, I wanted to go out and find a company that was in optometry, had deep roots in optometry. So I found one that was founded by an optometrist, had a great product that was very new to the market, had a lot of potential. And so what I did, I mean, I overpaid, it was a very strategic, uh, acquisition, but, uh, but there's one universal law of, uh, startup founders. Everybody thinks their company's worth more than it is. And so, uh, you know, you have to, you know, you have to navigate those waters, you know, the, the egos that may or may not exist, uh, you know, when it comes down to actually talking about value and all of those things. So, uh, and a lot of people look at What's going to happen versus what they've actually done. And, you know, once you've been in the game long enough, you know, you know, what you think is going to happen is, is usually drastically different than what does happen. So, uh, nine times out of 10 founders won't hit their, you know, projections for the new year.

AI assessment note: “there's no science to that. It's definitely an art and, and really it comes down to how strategic”