The Exchanges

Q This real time data is obviously really important. I think my audience will be wondering, okay, I use like ramp or Brex and they build some of this inside of their tools. Your pure play, I think doing expense management like this, how would you compare and contrast yourself to some of these card providers?

A So we're not doing expense management. We are on the customer invoicing side. So it's more on, they, you know, selling and, uh, getting paid for the software. So, or their things. So that's more on the side where we're in, but definitely we are pure, you know, that's the only thing we do. We typically sit between like a Salesforce and a HubSpot and a backend like a NetSuite or a QuickBooks and perhaps your own service and how to get that orchestrated and done in a good way, all the way from, you know, quoting, Dealing with the subscription over its lifetime. Maybe you're doing upsells. You're doing indices. You're doing things with that. Maybe it's a customer success team. Maybe you do self-service. How to get that all in one place, have one source of truth, and then make sure everything is correct when it turns to like revenue recognition, when you have your, you know, your ARs to report to the board, et cetera. So that's how we fit in.

AI assessment note: “So we're not doing expense management. We are on the customer invoicing side.”

Q Talk to me a little bit more about how you're going to market. Pricing is a key piece of go to market, right? So how do you package this? What's the average customer paying you per month to use Unium?

A So typically, uh, I would say like an average price point is around 30,000 dollars a year, uh, a year that is, right? So, um, so that's some average, but, but you know, quite, quite a big spread from, from small companies to big companies as well. Uh, we try to align it with value and then, you know, we try to find some sort of proxy that you also can measure, right? So we typically find, you know, a number of legal entities and some sort of AR tier being the best proxy so far. So that's how we do it. So if you have 10 companies in 10 countries and you're making, you know, a hundred million dollars, the value will be something different from, you know, one company in one country and one million dollars, right? So, so we try to proxy that as much as possible. Yeah.

AI assessment note: “average price point is around 30,000 dollars a year”

Q So how would you, okay, so same question, right? How would you compare yourselves against, against them? Or do people use you both together? Charge B plus Union, Stripe plus Union?

A No, no. I think it's, I think it's, um, fairly straightforward, I would say. So, so we are focused only on B to B, so we don't do any B to C. So you definitely have some players, you know, doing a bit of B to C, and also like B to small B, where it's very, very standardized. Maybe it's an online, 99 dollars a month, very standardized. Um, they are doing it great. You know, go with that. Um, we're more into, like, when companies are doing bigger deals, Maybe a higher average revenue per deal and maybe more light items, perhaps a bit more, I would say more, uh, custom. It could be as well, or a mix of like an online channel and enterprise deals. And that's typically where we come in. So I wouldn't say it's quite a, depending on what kind of business you're having, what makes sense.

AI assessment note: “we are focused only on B to B, so we don't do any B to C.”

Q So going back to the founder story here, obviously a lot of people, at least I think the best founders, they build for their own pain they had. Before Unium, where were you? How did you discover that this was a problem you wanted to build for?

A Yeah. So, uh, I've been in the software or SaaS industry for some 20 years now. So I started my career at Medius. So there we were actually doing supplier invoice management and a bit of expense management as well. Um, and, and sort of did the whole journey from selling software, you know, installations and all that stuff and doing the transformation into the cloud and subscription models. Um, and pretty much Did everything around that. Uh, and one of the last things we did actually was to, you know, get one of these your place systems, uh, ready for that. And in, you know, Introduce it to the organization, et cetera. And I just figured, so I've been thinking about, I, I wanted to start my own company at some point. Uh, but I need an idea.

AI assessment note: “I started my career at Medius. So there we were actually doing supplier invoice management”

Q Um, are you over, are you over a hundred percent?

A Uh, yes, but I, I think also, like, in our size, I, I know there's a lot of talk about, like, net retention, and I totally agree that it's, of course, important to have that, because it's, you know, a value, what do the customers say? What do they really, really think when it comes to the wallet, right? But I think also, when you are, you know, when you're not super, super big, I think, like, new customer growth, Is equally, if not more important as well. I, if you do the math, I definitely see, you know, a ramping effect if you accumulate over years. Um, but also I think like new customer growth is equally important in the early days.

AI assessment note: “Uh, yes, but I, I think also, like, in our size”

Q A lot of folks listening to this, especially Sassiest and Nordics, they might be wondering, how do I hire my first two reps? What quota do I give them? How much time should I give them to ramp up to that quota? How did you make those decisions for your first one or two sales hires?

A Um, I, uh, I think we, I think, I think we didn't really put a quota and treat them as a sales prep. It was more like, Hey, now we're going to do this together. So, so I, I think that's a bit of a different approach maybe. And, and, you know, okay, let's lean in, let's do this together and, you know, uh, find out how to do it. Um, But I think we've always, when we've been talking about quota, we've been talking about, you know, the five times or the four to six times ARR is what it should be. But I think it's also overly optimistic thinking that you will have that on day one when you don't have a brand, you don't have a solution, you don't have the customer reference, you don't have it. Right. So I think you have to be a bit careful with not oversetting that. I think you have to sort of grow into that quota as well. So, uh, yeah.

AI assessment note: “I think we didn't really put a quota and treat them as a sales prep”