Insight
Badshah: Outbound SDR models trap SaaS startups in crowded competitive echo chambers
“What we learned is as having an SDR and going completely outbound, that's when you're going to run into all of that competition, right? Because everybody is sitting in that echo chamber. But if you can have a good product with a very simple value prop and let …”
Disclosure
Badshah: Socedo turns away B2C leads to focus exclusively on B2B
“So that's when we started the segment and say, Hey, listen, on the sales side, we're going to really focus on just selling to B to B companies that can actually leverage this system for their sales team. And we're going to start to turn away the B to C compani…”
Disclosure
Badshah: Socedo intentionally paused growth to lock in product-market fit
“So we are, we're continuing to grow and I think we're relatively flat to where we were probably about six months ago. Again, we're kind of going through that cycle of figuring out what we're going to be. Are we playing at the enterprise side of the market, the…”
Insight
Badshah: Do not double headcount just to grow top-line revenue
“What you don't want to do is you don't want to say, Hey, we're at 20 employees. We're going to grow to 40 just for the sake of growing top line revenue, but we're going to be running in the wrong direction. We're going to go collect a whole bunch of B to C cus…”
Opinion
Badshah: Hootsuite was built to manage audiences, not grow them
“Hootsuite and these other social media management systems have really been built to manage an audience, not to necessarily grow an audience. And so this is great for B to C marketers, where what you're doing is you're publishing content to a very large populat…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Socedo deliberately targets slower 2x growth in 2017 to prioritize retention
“Right now we're actually looking at it and saying, Hey, we're going to slow down growth a little bit in 2017 and really kind of target to do a two X in 2017 while we focus on taking the customers that we have today and really becoming more and more core with t…”
Insight
Badshah: Raising a $5M Series A is pointless without deployment capacity
“I mean, there's no point in going and doing a five million dollar series A if we can't make use of that capital very quickly.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Socedo achieves 90% Twitter-to-LinkedIn match accuracy and 80% email accuracy
“We don't guarantee an accuracy rate, but our accuracy rates are pretty high. So we normally see accuracy of about 90% when we're going from a Twitter account to a LinkedIn account match. And then from email address, you kind of get to accuracy rates around 80%…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Badshah: Socedo is at a $2.5M ARR run rate
“I think we were a little bit higher there and, you know, again, are kind of in a two and a half range now.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Socedo's average contract value is $12,000 to $15,000 annually
“Average is around 12,000 to 15,000 dollars a year.”
Disclosure
Socedo has raised $1.5 million in capital to date
“So we've raised about 1.5 million to date and you know, kind of been extremely capital efficient, right?”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Socedo grew revenue 3x in 2016 and reached 200 paying customers
“So 200 customers, we grew revenue about three X in 2016 and are growing quickly into 20 17 as well.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Some enterprise customers pay Socedo up to $500,000 per year
“And some customers are paying all the way up to half a million, you know, a year and then smaller
Customers as well”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Socedo generates all inbound leads using its own demand generation platform
“So we don't actually spend a lot of money on marketing. We really kind of drink our own champagne and all of the leaves that are coming in are really kind of coming from our own system.”
Disclosure
Socedo enriches data using FullContact, Clearbit, SellHack, and direct social feeds
“So full contact is one of them. Clearbit is one that we use. And then we look at, you know, providers like cell hack and others, and then we connect right into the social media feeds as well.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Socedo's gross monthly customer churn is approximately 2%
“So our gross customer churn monthly is around two percent.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Socedo achieves net negative revenue churn through monthly customer upgrades
“We are. Yes, exactly. So we see greater upgrades than churn on a monthly basis.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Socedo's customer acquisition cost is approximately $6,000
“We pay around 6000 dollars to acquire a customer.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Socedo estimates its customer lifetime value at approximately $20,000
“We look at lifetime value today is around 20 K.”
Disclosure
Badshah: Socedo sets Account Executive quotas at $4,000 monthly MRR
“So we're now, I think around about 4000 dollars in MRR per month per AE.”
Disclosure
Badshah: Socedo enterprise accounts start at $1,000 monthly license fees
“We do grow our enterprise companies, but they all kind of start there around a thousand dollars per month on their licenses.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Badshah: Socedo customer count remains flat at approximately 200
“Still hanging out around there.”
Disclosure
Badshah: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is a close mentor
“Hometown hero Satya Nadella, one of my close mentors, and he's just doing some fantastic things.”
Assertion Supported
Socedo operates with a 25-person team based in Seattle
“We've got about 25 people in Seattle at this point.”
