The Exchanges

Q And so help me understand, like, why, why is Gong paying? And is it one time, you know, train my account executives one time, and then I quit in six months or what's going to make them stick? Content stickiness is tough.

A Well, you know, there's actually a huge amount to learn. If you're like, if you're a BDR, if you're a CS rep, if you're in sales, If you're in revenue operations, if you're in marketing, there is an enormous amount to learn. And we're, we're actually building out learning journeys that literally go over multiple, multiple years. And actually really what you could do over, let's say a five or six year period, you could literally start as an SDR. We could up, we can upskill you over your two year stint as an SDR. We can stay with you as we then you transition into an AE and spend three, four years into as an AE. We can then help you as you develop into an AE leader. And start doing sales, uh, sales management up to VP right up to, um, becoming a CRO. So we literally have, you know, learning tracks that can stay with you for many, many years.

AI assessment note: “we're actually building out learning journeys that literally go over multiple, multiple years.”

Q Yeah. I mean, this is a, this is a crazy operation. So, I mean, are you, are you seeing people, I mean, gongs new, but people that maybe signed up a year ago, are they sticking around? Are they, are they decreasing number of seats over time?

A Uh, they're, they're, they're buying, they're buying more. So our net, our net dollar retention, So, you know, bearing in mind, we're still like just, yeah, so just over 18 months old, right? Um, and net revenue retention's about a 120%, but I think we're predicting that that's gonna, you see, as the curriculum grows, more, more, more teams start to then, uh, buy seats, right? So we're really going deep at the moment on building out curriculum for customer success. Once that happens across 200 customers, you know, that's, that could be another, you know, 200 times 20 seats. Of customer success people that want to upskill, right? So we have a really amazing, you know, multi like NDR story that's going to happen over multiple years as we build out the curriculum. And there's not really that many tools in the, in there, like the sales stack that could literally, you could get a seat for every single person in go to market, not even a CRM would have that reach into a go to market team.

AI assessment note: “they're buying more. So our net, our net dollar retention... net revenue retention's about a 120%”

Q I just get to figure out why you're doing this. So, like, your best time to spend, if, if you really believe what you're teaching, is to go do this and have equity inside of a company and go earlier and earlier to Join earlier and earlier in a new tech company so you can get a larger chunk of equity. Like, why are you not doing that?

A It's a bit messy to go down that end and start taking equity. What we want is a really, like, just very, um, frictionless model. Um, and we actually just signed, um, we're announcing this on the 19th of January. We just signed a global partnership with the Revenue Collective. So every single Revenue Collective member, of which there's 4000, gets a single user access to SIA. The combined revenue of the Revenue Collective membership companies is about a trillion dollars. So we've got a very, you know, we've got a two year, um, partnership with them, which was struck. That's going to be absolutely huge. And that, that is kind of getting us like firmly into ICP. Those, those, uh, revenue leaders get access to our, you know, world-class education. And then, and then we sort of upsell the, the, um, the academy to, to, to, to them. That's a nice, simple, there's no kind of equity discussion. It's literally, Per seat model after 20 seats per region, and that, that's, that's the core business.

AI assessment note: “It's a bit messy to go down that end and start taking equity.”

Q Yeah. That's a big, big, big guys. Okay. Interesting. And so people might be listening going, wait, why does he need to raise for, for a business like this? There's not a lot of hard costs. Why raise three million bucks and sell that equity?

A Um, well, we're going pretty fast. So we've, we've now, we've just ramped up the, um, our AE team to nine people. We, where we want to get to is basically, um, to about 20 courses in production every single quarter. So we want to just, you know, we want to go super, super fast. I know you're a huge fan of bootstrappers and I, and I am absolutely too. Um, I'm, but also I'm, I'm, I'm a huge fan of speed and that's obviously what capital kind of like, kind of gives you. Um, So we're kind of going for the sort of speed strategy and dilute rather than the kind of like, maybe take it a little slower, um, and kind of bootstrap. I mean, we could have done, um, but I just chose not to, not to go down that route. We want to kind of like establish ourselves as the global platform. Um, and to do that, we need to move super fast in my view.

AI assessment note: “we're kind of going for the sort of speed strategy and dilute”

Q if I, if Gong, if I'm an AE at Gong and Gong just emails my whole team and says, Hey guys, just so you know, we just bought sales impact. You're going to kick off on Monday. I'm like, as the AM going, Oh gosh, another training tool. They want me to go through. What am I going to get on Monday? I log in and what do I see?

A Um, well actually they kicked off with, uh, so we're working with their, their SDR team. Um, and we actually just, we kicked off with them. It's a short course that's quite new for us, uh, with Katie, Kevin Dorsey. He's an absolutely fantastic, fantastic coach. Um, and he kicked off with a, with a, so we teach two hours a week. That's it. So we're not overwhelming the learners. Everyone's got targets. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's busy being in sales and going to market. Um, and they loved it. You know, it was basically, you know, one of the big names in the industry teaching them, It was a four hour course over two weeks on best practice in cold calling. So best practice in scripts, uh, attitude, that whole, the whole, the whole piece. And it went down an absolute, an absolute storm.

AI assessment note: “we teach two hours a week... a four hour course over two weeks”

Q I know you price this, it says on your pricing, starting at 1750 per month, what do people get for this and who are some of your customers?

A So we've been busy. Um, so we were about a one million of ARR when we talked back in, back in Jan, just, just over. So we're close to four now. Um, we're over 200 customers. Um, we've landed, uh, companies like Gong, uh, Outreach, Klaviyo, G.T. is just about to sign Something special. And we have another huge, huge brand, um, that we actually can't talk about just yet, who's just about to roll, roll us out globally, um, after a three month trial, um, in, in Europe. So we have over 200 customers now. I'd say the bulk of the customers are sort of series A to series C. But, but as you know, as I've just alluded to, we've, we've, we've now winning customers also kind of, um, in, in the enterprise.

AI assessment note: “we've landed, uh, companies like Gong, uh, Outreach, Klaviyo”

Q And take me through how you got those first one or two customers. Where'd you find them?

A Probably, like, network. I've been doing a lot of, in the end, when I left Unidays, I did a lot of, like, voluntary teaching, and so I was, that's where I sort of discovered this kind of, like, problem existed kind of almost everywhere in, in, in sales. Um, so I built a pretty good network, and we just hustled the first few customers, and we literally started with maybe, like, with just two of us, and we had, like, three or four decks, and we had a couple of courses, But we, we immediately, when we launched the business, we wanted to do it on subscription because one of the main problems in sort of sales education, if you like, is a lot of the solutions, whether you're looking for an expensive consultancy firm or an expensive consultant, they come in and it's one hit. Whereas what we're creating, I guess the category that we're trying to create, um, is, you know, we're calling sales education as a service. So you literally subscribe to this and we repeat our courses Five, six times a year.

AI assessment note: “Probably, like, network. I've been doing a lot of... voluntary teaching”